A Priest for San Antonio
Magonistas under the command of Encarnación Diaz Guerra crossed the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, and, on June 26, 1908, attacked the town of Las Vacas (today Ciudad Acuna), Coahuila. Eleven attackers, ten soldiers, and two customs inspectors were killed, and the surviving raiders soon retreated into Texas. Far from touching off popular uprisings, such a raid served to illustrate the PLM’s military impotence.
The raid, however, had important consequences. First, at the October 1908 term of the federal district court in El Paso, indictments for violation of the neutrality laws were handed down against leading PLM figures: Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón, Antonio I. Villarreal, Antonio de Pio Araujo, Encarnacion Diaz Guerra, and Praxedis G. Guerrero. In addition, several magonistas who had allegedly participated in the raid at Las Vacas were indicted.[i]
Second, American authorities launched an investigation of the raid. The investigators were: Luther Ellsworth, the American Consul at Ciudad Porfirio Diaz (today Piedras Negras), across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas; Collector of Customs Robert W. Dowe; US Attorney Charles A. Boynton; US Marshal for the Western District of Texas Eugene Nolte; and Captain C. H. Conrad, commanding the troops at Del Rio. This interagency group conferred in Del Rio on July 1 and the next day went to Las Vacas to meet with Mexican officials. Their conclusion was that between forty and seventy-five men from Del Rio had attacked Las Vacas using firearms concealed on the American bank of the Rio Grande. The neutrality laws had indeed been violated. The investigators recommended the establishment of a special “secret service” to monitor Mexican revolutionary movements and border conditions.[ii]
Their recommendation posed a problem for Attorney General Bonaparte. Since he did not yet have agents of his own, Bonaparte had hoped to borrow a Secret Service agent from the Treasury Department to surveille the border, but Congress had prohibited such an arrangement. The person Bonaparte had in mind was veteran Secret Service operative Joe Priest. He not only spoke fluent Spanish, but had experience in the Canal Zone in Panama, in Puerto Rico, and in Cuba, but he was also well acquainted with the Mexican border. Bonaparte came up with a clever solution: Congress’s prohibition did not apply to the State Department, and Bonaparte persuaded the Secretary of State to pay Priest’s salary and expenses from State’s neutrality fund and place him under Department of Justice (DOJ) supervision. Congress was thus neatly circumvented, and Joe Priest became a DOJ agent. So did Dan Riley, a Furlong Detective Agency operative employed by the Mexican government for three years. Like Priest, Riley was paid by the State Department but worked for the DOJ. Unlike Priest, Riley may also have remained in Mexican employ as an informer.[iii]
Several federal agencies participated in the neutrality enforcement effort. The State Department played the leading role because of the desire to maintain good relations with Mexico, but Justice, War, Treasury (Customs Service), and Commerce and Labor (Immigration Service) were also actively involved. “Since Ellsworth had taken the initiative to investigate the Las Vacas affair, the [State] Department encouraged him to continue his efforts by making him its special representative in matters of neutrality. He conscientiously and enthusiastically pursued his new duties.”[iv] Ellsworth worked in close cooperation with Joe Priest, whom he considered remarkably well-qualified for the task.
Priest came on board in July 1908, reporting to the US attorney for the Western District of Texas, John A. Boynton. Priest’s headquarters were in San Antonio, where on the night of September 27, 1908, he arrested magonista Calixto Guerra. But Priest ranged widely. On November 25, 1908, at Wilburton, Oklahoma, he and a deputy US marshal arrested Encarnación Diaz Guerra, the magonista colonel who had led the Las Vacas raid. Priest worked well with Ellsworth and Boynton, but he had difficulties involving jurisdictions with the chief deputy US marshal with whom he had to deal. Priest’s activities were severely curtailed on July 31, 1909, when he was struck down by a serious abdominal hemorrhage. Even though confined to bed for months, he translated many of the magonista documents the authorities had seized. These included correspondence between the PLM and American socialist sympathizers such as John Murray.
The Treasury Department balked at releasing Priest permanently to direct border security. This, combined with Priest’s worsening medical condition, ultimately fatal, prevented him from accepting Attorney General Bonaparte’s offer in June 1909, to become “Chief Special Agent of the Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation, with headquarters in San Antonio, Texas.” Leading the San Antonio field office, he was to be devoted entirely to the investigation of neutrality matters on the Mexican border.[v]
[i] U. S. Commissioner, El Paso, nos. 88, 100, 101, 117, 156, and U. S. District Court, El Paso, nos. 1359, 1362-69, 1371-74, 1376, and San Antonio 2006, 2007, FRC-FW.
[ii] US Attorney to Attorney General, July 20, 1908, CE; Kerig, Luther Ellsworth, 15-16.
[iii] Kerig, Luther Ellsworth, 16-17.
[iv] Kerig, Luther Ellsworth, 18.
[v] Priest to Secretary of State, September 20, 1909; Ellsworth to Assistant Secretary of State, September 30, 1909, 90755-158, Department of Justice, RG 60, NARA.
