File No. 812.404/43.
Vice Consul Blocker to the Secretary of State.
Piedras Negras, January 19, 1915.
Sir: I have the honor to comply with the Department’s telegraphic instruction of January 14. * * * The church of St. Guadalupe was entered by order of General Murguia and the records of membership, marriage certificates, and other archives of importance were seized and carried to the outskirts of the city where a bonfire was made of them. The priests were permitted to cross to Eagle Pass without being molested. The church has since been closed and has received no further molestation.
The second offense was the arrest of three French teachers in the College of Our Lady of Guadalupe located at Durango, who passed through Piedras Negras en route to San Antonio. They were held up and searched; 1,900 pesos were found on their persons, which was seized by the authorities, who held that an order from General Carranza had been received instructing them to confiscate all the belongings of the priests of the Catholic Church and to place such money as confiscated to the credit of the Constitutionalist Government. * * * I immediately called on Colonel Castro, then commandant of the city, and requested that the money be returned, advising him that [the teachers] were not priests and that such instructions could not be applicable to teachers; that should he continue to hold the money, this Consulate would look upon it as a non-Christian act and of hostility to foreigners. * * * Colonel Castro returned the money to them and they are now safe in San Antonio.
These two instances are the only occurrences where outrages were committed upon the Catholic Church in this consular district that this Consulate has any information of, and I have made inquiries in all the towns of the district.
I have [etc.]