The "Holocaust" at El Paso 



story that Villa heard the report and threatened to "make a 

 torch" of every American he could catch. At any rate, the 

 belief that the holocaust inspired the raid is widespread in 

 El Paso. 



Nothing has ever been done to fix responsibility for the jail 

 tragedy, although Mayor Tom Lea promised an investigation 

 and the Grand Jury took the matter up in several meetings. 

 The excuse commonly given is that an investigation would 

 do no more than implicate some prisoner for carelessness, and 

 public interest waned as the danger of a clash with Carranza 

 increased. 



The list of dead printed a couple of days after the fire showed 

 thirteen Mexicans and eight Americans. This list later totaled 

 twenty-seven. The prisoners were held on minor charges, 

 largely vagrancy, and some had no charges lodged against 

 them, being arrested as suspicious characters. The Americans 

 were tramps. 



It appears that the prisoners were warned not to strike any 

 matches in the room where they were put through the lice- 

 killing bath as a preventive against typhus. 



(Extracts from Pamphlet entitled "Who, Where, and Why Is 

 Villa?" by Dr. A. Margo, and published by the Latin-American 

 News Association) 



On the sixth of March, just three days before the Columbus 

 raid took place, there was a little report in the press that 

 could hardly be noticed. In a few lines we read on that day 

 that eighteen Mexicans, who had been admitted as immigrants 

 to this country, were put in jail in El Paso, Texas, where they 

 were put through the customary requirements of taking a 

 bath in gasoline. While going through with this process, the 

 tanks caught fire and the Mexicans were burned to death, 

 while the cells were locked up. The mayor of the city of El 

 Paso announced that the whole thing was an unavoidable 

 accident and that nobody was to blame. These kinds of acci- 

 dents happen pretty often to Mexicans in Texas, and it was 

 just as unavoidable as the lighting of a cigarette. The people 

 in that part of the country were quite stirred up and no doubt 



C 819 H 



