Note XXI-26 — Chapter XXI · RENEWED EFFORTS FOR CENTRAL AMERICAN UNITY. 1873-1885.

With the evidence obtained during the day and night of the 1st, several persons said to be implicated were arrested, and the judicial investigation was initiated. The plan of the sedition was ascertained from the acknowledgments and confessions of its promoters and others. The priest, Gabriel Aguilar, José Lara Pavon, Enrique Guzman, and others, as appeared in the testimony, had organized themselves as a society, recognizing one another by means of signs, to promote a revolt. The execution of their plan was left to A. Kopeski, commander of the artillery, and his second, Capt. Leon de Rodas, at whose quarters assembled in the night of the 1st a number of men who were then armed, to be ready for relieving the guards at the palace and comandancia general, after they had been narcotized with wine and morphine furnished by Aguilar. This part of the plot once accomplished, the commanders of other bodies of troops were to receive forged orders to bring their men, without arms, into the city, when others in the conspiracy stationed outside would seize the arms. One of these orders, ostensibly signed by Barrios, was sent Oct. 31st to the comandante at Palencia, who, not doubting its genuineness, was on the point of obeying it; but despatched an officer to inquire where he was to station his men, and the object of the call. The president at once telegraphed to other commanders, and was advised that they had similar orders. One man was arrested, and then another, until the plot was unravelled. A large portion of the criminal element, as well as of the lower classes, were mixed up in the affair. The president, his family, ministers, and friends were to be assassinated. Rich men would have to ransom their lives with sums ranging from $50,000 down to $10,000. Daggers, gags, and morphine were discovered. Barrios decreed, Nov. 5th, that the parties should be tried by court-martial. This decree was countersigned by all his ministers; namely, J. Barberena, José Ant. Salazar, Lorenzo Montúfar, and under sec. of war A. Ubico, then in charge of the portfolio. Foreigners as well as natives realized their narrow escape from a fearful catastrophe, and commended Barrios and his ministers for their action. The justice of the sentences was fully acknowledged. Barrios, in his message to the constituent assembly, in March 1879, alluding to the affair, said: 'La sociedad guatemalteca se vió por un momento al borde de un abismo de sangre y devastacion.' The reactionists, he added, unable to demand the abolition of the reforms which had so greatly improved the condition of the people, 'pedian al puñal y al veneno, á ese recurso traidor y alevoso, una hecatombe suprema, una montaña de cadáveres.' Barrios, Mensaje, March 15, 1879; Salv., Gaceta Ofic., Nov. 13, 18, 1877; Pan. Star and Herald, Dec. 1, 1877; La Voz de Méx., S. F., Feb. 23, 1878.