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Ortega's original political organization from which he exercised his influence was not the antireeleccionista club which he founded a chapter of at the behest of the Maderista organizer, Abraham Gonzales. Rather, it was a group known as the Agricultural Society of Cuchillo Parado, of which he was a member of the junta directiva. This junta directiva issued, between 1898 and 1903, a series of pleas to the central government requesting protection for their lands and even requesting a notarized testimony of the village's original land grant. Since Porfiro Diaz was in collusion with Terrazas and Creel in their illegal annexation of village lands in order to expand their hacienda holdings, he saw to it that the federal government simply ignored these pleas. Their letters were never answered. Meanwhile, as hacienda lands grew and village lands shrunk, all over the state villagers were constantly becoming more militant, or at least more angry and prone to become more militant.
At the same time, the empowerment that the villagers had previously enjoyed was taken away from them, when they were no longer able to elect their own local leaders. Instead, "jefes politicos" were chosen by the state, with the approval of the federal government, and these people were almost always corrupt, hostile to the locals, and favorable to the hacendados. The jefe politico of Ojinaga was Ciro Amarillas, who was likely to take the most cruel and violent measures against the locals in favor of the highest bidder, especially when it came to arrangements to displace people from their land. For instance, it is recorded that he sent an armed group - probably rurales - to burn the houses and fields of the villagers in La Mula in order to claim their lands "for a certain foreigner". This foreigner, as it turned out, was the American millionaire William Randolph Hearst.
It can be assumed that the Americans in Shafter and Marfa felt no common cause with Hearst, who would just as happily sent thugs to burn them out and take their land away if he thought that this were feasible. In the long run, these Americans did support the revolutionaries, although the fact of vested financial interest in these arrangements did loom rather large.
The chief organizer of the cause of Francisco I. Madero in the state of Chihuahua was Abraham Gonzales, and his job was to try and convince all the persons who had been there fighting openly against the authorities up until now, or who seemed to have common cause with the stated goals of Madero and his allies to organize a joint front under the leadership of the Maderistas, whose groups were known as the Antireelectionist Clubs. This name came about due to their using the fact of Porfirio Diaz continually being reelected as president of Mexico in rigged elections.
Once Gonzales had organized this front, Ortega now began to organize his movement in his role as an antireeleccionista, and he also carried out other duties as a Maderista agent. One of these chores was to work out the details of some arrangements that were initiated in Presidio and Shafter, Texas where arrangements were made in which arms were to be purchased by the revolutionaries with borrowed money, which would be paid back by bringing cattle from Mexico over to Presidio, and selling it there. In this way, the local American ranchers, who were also stockholders and depositors at the bank that was servicing the loans, stood to make money both through the amortization of the loans and in the cattle trade itself. At the center of these arrangements were Ortega and an arms merchant in Presidio, John Kleinman.
Gonzales and Francisco I. Madero himself actually spent more than a month in Presidio and Shafter in 1910, preparing the attack on Ojinaga - purchasing arms and recruiting soldiers. Accounts of the period relate how "There are fully 10,000 Mexicans possessing modern arms who are ready at the least chance, should they gain the confidence in a rebel leader, to cross the border and flock to the aid of the men who have already rebelled." Another report mentions "the exodus of Mexicans employed in ranches throughout Texas to join rebels who are active in the Ojinaga region." |
