Word: pedro
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...recently, there was a dull boom in the east; the warning did not save San Pedro. Minutes later, a uniformed column approached the village. "Don't shoot!" cried one marcher. "We're the army." By the time San Pedro's police garrison of 18 realized that the column was made up of some 50 bandits in stolen army uniforms, it was too late. "Surrender or die!" the bandits roared, and with one brief heavy volley, they dispersed the defenders. Two hundred more bandits, not uniformed, but in close formation, poured into the town, shouting, "Long live...
Boys of 14. The rising sun showed villagers who their attackers were: mostly country boys, some as young as 14, every one with a good Mauser rifle (a few had automatic rifles), a revolver, a machete, a knife. Commanding the bandits from San Pedro's central plaza was a lightly built man of about 25, clad in a new ruana (wool poncho). This was the storied bandit chief, Tulio Bautista...
...Girl of 20. When the sack of San Pedro moved into the next operation, looting, it became plain that Tulio had an extraordinary co-commander: a dark, slim girl of about 20. The bandits called her Doña Edelmira; she wore men's clothes, carried two revolvers and a knife, seemed to be Tulio's girl. Edelmira directed the pillage. The bandits stacked the loot in the plaza, loaded it on stolen mules. Bandolero, Edelmira enforced a stern rule upon the men; she permitted no raping or kidnaping of the village women...
...bandits found a single Liberal in the local jail, held on suspicion of aiding the bandits. Freed, this man showed Tulio's boys two drums of fuel intended for a local power plant. "If only they hadn't found that fuel!" mourned a San Pedro survivor later. Tulio ordered the town's homes burned, to flush out any possible police ambush, but forbade his men to fire the church or the school...
...midafternoon the bandits were ready to leave. At the cemetery they buried their single casualty with full military honors. Then they marched away in good order, leaving smoldering ruins and 24 bodies. The surviving people of San Pedro stayed long enough to bury their own dead, to disinter the bandit's body and throw it to the buzzards. Then, the civil war's newest refugees,they straggled westward to seek shelter in neighboring towns...