Ten striking New Mexico miners face potential death sentences, framed-up for the murder of a sheriff shot by his own deputies on April 4, 1935. The multi-racial fight raged for years as the National Miners Union fought to organize the southwestern coal field. Over 100 miners would be deported.

‘Gallup’s Latest Round Up’ by Philip Stevenson from Labor Defender. Vol. 11 No. 1o. October, 1935.

(Special to the Labor Defender, from Santa Fe, N.M.) No modern cause celebre offers a clearer example of the anti-labor violence of the supposedly “impartial” and “democratic” capitalist state than does the Gallup case, in which 14 defendants face death or long prison terms on framed murder and other charges.

The story of Gallup, beginning in 1933 when National Guardsmen did their best to break a strike called to enforce the government’s own guarantee of the right of collective bargaining–continuing through the trouble of April 4, 1935, when 600 workers were illegally “rounded up,” third-degreed, beaten, jailed without warrants, for the death of a sheriff, while not one person was held for the death of two workers–and still in progress today in the form of an official terror which has abolished every civil and constitutional right for workers is a story of close collaboration between:

1. The Gallup ruling class, composed of (a) the coal operators and their hirelings, gunmen, foremen, straw bosses, etc., and (b) members of the notoriously corrupt “Gallup ring” of the Democratic Party, including state Supreme Court Justice Zinn (recently found guilty by the Bar Association of gambling with funds entrusted to him for the payment of delinquent taxes, yet still a member of the Court), State Senator Clarence Vogel (whose whole- sale evictions of working-class leaders precipitated the April 4 trouble), and ex-Gov. A.T. Hannett (reactionary boss and lobbyist, who defended Vogel when Vogel was bounced from the Gallup City council for protecting prostitution).

2. County officials, notably Sheriff D.W. Roberts (who admits having killed two workers on April 4) and his gang of deputized thugs.

3. The state of New Mexico, through its National Guard in 1933, and in 1935 through its state police under the authority of state’s Attorney-General Patton who is also a prosecutor in the Gallup case.

4. The federal Department of Justice, represented by its employee, Deputy U.S. Marshal Mollica, who has taken a leading part in the illegal “round-ups,” unwarranted arrests and interferences with civil rights since April 4.

5. The federal Department of Labor, through its employees of the Immigration Bureau who have already deported some fifty Mexicans from Gallup and threaten to deport some seventy more, among them defense witnesses in the case.

6. The state machinery of “justice”–from the Supreme Court to Justice of the Peace Bickel of Gallup.

7. Relief officials of the New Mexico ERA who have used relief, and the threat of cutting off relief, to terrorize workers into docility and stifle defense activity.

The meaning of this collaboration is plain enough to hit every worker square between the eyes: The American ruling class pretends not to “believe in” the class struggle, but in practice it proves itself expert in maintaining a united front of armed, political and economic power against the working class.

Ever since April 4, relief officials have beaten down relief standards till today a family of 5 in Gallup receives $10 a month, or 2c per meal per person, with no allowances for rent or fuel.

On July 14, the Gallup unemployed called a mass meeting to protest relief cuts. Sheriff Roberts “consented”—on condition that no Mexicans attend the meeting, although a large proportion of Gallup workers are Mexican! To enforce this condition, he sent some ten of his deputized thugs armed with guns and tear-gas, who rigidly excluded the Mexicans. Similarly armed and aiding in this brave task were Deputy U.S. Marshal Mollica, the federal immigration official Philip C. Berney, and two state police. These terrorists repeatedly interrupted the meeting, tried to prevent one of the Gallup defendants from speaking; and when the meeting insisted on hearing the speaker, they called the chairman to account for obeying the majority and permitting the speech. So much for free assembly and free speech in Gallup!

Since this incident the workers of Gallup have been forced again, as in the strike of ’33, to go underground and meet in secret. But their amazing courage remains undaunted. They do meet. And when, recently, they are denied access to one of their leaders who was held incommunicado in jail, they got themselves arrested on minor charges in order to penetrate the jail!

The condition of the families of the Gallup defendants is desperate. Early in August it was found that the wife and two children of Juan Ochoa, outstanding working-class leader held without bond, had been four days without food. Augustin Calvillo’s family was in similar straits, and the youngest child, born only three weeks before Augustin’s arrest, was seriously ill. Emergency relief was rushed by the Santa Fe Gallup Defense Committee and protests lodged with the state ERA, which promised immediate action. But it took a week of pressure before either family received its first relief order and then at the starvation rates quoted above. (Editors note: The Prisoners Relief Dept. of the I.L.D. is now sending regular monthly relief to all the Gallup prisoners and their families. This helps a little–but does not solve their serious problem.)

The Gallup defendants were saddled with another rabid prosecutor when District Judge James B. McGhee was appointed to try the case in place of Judge M.A. Otero, Jr., who was disqualified in June (presumably because of his Spanish ancestry and liberal reputation) on the affidavit of the District Attorney and his co-persecutors of the Gallup workers. Except that he came from an anti-Catholic, anti-Mexican district on the Texas border, little was known of Judge McGhee until Aug. 26. On that date he heard a defense motion for a change of venue from San Juan county (next door and similar to Gallup, with a longstanding tradition of Ku-Klux-ism) to Santa Fe county. No one was prepared for the openness of McGhee’s hostility. Not only did he monotonously overrule the defense, but he would allow no explanations of the attorneys’ grounds for objection, and even once shouted “Sit down!” when defense attorney Wirin attempted to finish his statement.

He denied the motion for the change of venue, in the face of affidavits and exhibits proving the existence in San Juan county of a secret vigilante organization dedicated to stamping out radicalism and “un-Americanism” by violence (several of the Gallup defendants are radicals and Mexicans), and in spite of the fact that the county seat, Aztec, a village of 800 with a single tiny hotel, cannot possibly accommodate a trial involving 14 defendants, many attorneys, and scores of witnesses.

McGhee also set an early trial date, Sept. 30, although the defense has had no real opportunity yet to prepare its case. The first time defense attorneys went to Gallup to investigate, they were threatened by drunken armed thugs (one of whom is now an honored member of Gallup’s police force!) second attempt resulted in the kidnapping by armed vigilantes of Robert Minor and defense counsel David Levinson. Judge McGhee remained unmoved by these facts and refused a postponement of the trial.

His hostility was most clearly exposed, however, in his closing remarks. He began by complaining the case had already had “too much publicity” (though the defense’s side has been consistently suppressed by the press associations). He forbade the attorneys “on either side” to make any statements to the press concerning the case, what they expected to prove or disprove, etc. He announced that taking pictures in or near the courthouse during the trial would be forbidden (to which attorney Wirin replied that none of the defense attorneys were running for office in New Mexico!), and threatened to “investigate and punish” attempts “by either side” to distribute “propaganda” on the case in San Juan county.

In plain language this means that San Juan county’s present prejudice against the defendants is to be carefully preserved. It means that the Bulletin of the Gallup Defense Committee, the only publication to present the facts of the case in New Mexico, will be considered as “propaganda” and suppressed, while the Gallup Independent, propaganda organ for the Gallup coal operators and the nearest daily newspaper to San Juan county, whose attacks on the defendants have been consistently violent and voluble, will continue to circulate freely in San Juan county as it has in the past!

With such a prosecutor-judge, in such a remote, narrow and prejudiced locality, the danger of convictions for the innocent defendants has greatly increased. To hostile local, state, and federal officials of our “impartial democracy,” add now a hostile judge and jury, and it can be readily seen that one thing, and one thing only, can insure the acquittal of the Gallup workers–an avalanche of mass protests to Governor Clyde Tingley, Santa Fe, N.M. and demands for their unconditional release.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n10-oct-1935-orig-LD.pdf