"DICTATOR" CASTRO

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 20, 24 January 1913, Page 7

"DICTATOR" CASTRO

IMMIGRATION OFFICERS TRY HIS TEMPER. TRIES TO THROW THEM INTO THE STREET. By Telegraph.— Pr««B AfSi»clfctlon.—Coj>yflght. (Received January 24, 12.10 p.m.) NEW YORK, 23rd January. General Castro, ex-President, of Venezuela, who is awaiting the Government's decision as to his admittance into the United States, when >ihe migrating officials interviewed him, lost his temper and ordered them out. He sought to throw them into a street and his valets assisted, y [The American Immigration Department decided to detain General Castro, pending a decision to admit him into the United States. Cipriano Castro is a native of El Tachira, one of th© An- i dine provinces of Venezuela. In the ! early nineties he was sent to the Federal Senate at Caracas, and there snubbed j for his uncouth provincialism. He returned to his ranche vowing revenge. After a brush with tax-collectors he raised the standard of revolt, and in a few weeks was proclaimed President of the Andinb Province. Towards the end of 1898, under President Andrade, he was called in by dissatisfied military leaders to bring about a revolution. This he did with the "help of his Andinos, and with such success that he was proclaimed Andrade's successor, much to the disgust of the generals who had summoned him. The President of Venezuela has always in a general way- been the owner of the country, but no one owned it quite so completely as General Castro. He annulled most of the concessions granted to foreigners by his predecessors, and inflicted indignities on foreign residents. As a, result, his ports were blockaded, and he has perhaps received more ultimatums than any other man living. In 1909 his reign came to an end^ and Castro went to Europe. His movements since have invariably been accompanied by sensational developments. On one occasion, when en route to Venezuela in a French steamer, the Venezuelan Government warned the company that he would be arrested if he landed. The company proposed to land him at Trinidad, but the British Government, at the request of the United States, declined the honour. On arriving in the West Indies, Castro found that the only port not barred against hint was Fort de France, Martinique, and here he was landed, the steamship company declining to carry him any further. Two days later the French Government ordered him to depart^ and as he protested that the state of his health made it impossible for him to leave his bed, the colonial police, after receiving the assurance of medical experts that another sea-yovaee would be beneficial to his malady, 'pllcid him upon a stretcher and carried him— protesting vigorously against this "violation of the rights of man"— to the steamship Versailles, which conveyed him back again to Europe.]