I inclose a copy and translation of his pronunciamiento, dated at a village
within five miles of this city.
[Inclosure.—Translation.]
Cortina’s pronunciamiento.
gen. john n. cortina to the
nation.
Fellow-citizens: Ten months ago the despotic
government of D. Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada tore me from my home, where I
lived quietly at the side of my family, availing itself, for this
purpose, of mean and miserable calumnies, which, desiring to give a
varnish of legality to an act really unauthorized by law, the government
itself put in circulation. Six months I was in prison in the capital of
the republic, pending the investigations which were being instituted,
and from which the government could not do less than desist, convinced
of the fruitless result of its perverse machinations.
The trial being abandoned, I was taken out of prison, the minister of war
ordering me to remain in the capital, where I spent three months more,
subject to an excessive surveillance from the police, and with the
restriction that I should not go even a league from the city.
This unjustifiable excess of arbitrary acts exercised against me had no
other origin than the caprice of the government, which, knowing my
integrity, understood that it could at no time rely upon me to make me
its accomplice in the efforts for the re-election
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to which it aspires with entire disregard
of the unanimous will of the people, who reject it.
Now that I have succeeded in freeing myself from the clutches of the
tyrant and in regaining my liberty, I earnestly protest before the
nation against the outrages committed upon my person by the arbitrary
government of Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, and I assure you also that I
will be, as ever, the defender of the guarantees which the constitution
of ’57 concedes to the people, and which the plan of Tuxtepec,
proclaimed by the well-merited citizen Gen. Porfirio Diaz, seeks to make
effective, which plan I accept and second in all its parts, and will
defend at all cost.
I invite, in the name of the public liberties, all Mexicans who love
their institutions, and who in other times have fought with me in
defense of liberty, to rally around the flag which is unfurled by the
well-merited General Porfirio Diaz, because it is the symbol of the
constitution of ’57, under whose shade alone can be given to the people
of Mexico a truly republican government.
Viva la constitucion de ’57! Viva el Cuidadano General Porfirio Diaz, su
defensor
Free suffrage and the constitution.
Azcapotzalco, May 18,
1876.
JUAN N. CORTINA.
