Coal camp massacre united Colorado ethnic groups

By Gary Massaro

Funeral stone rises above the level land, a bookmark in a chapter of Colorado history written in blood and punctuated by gunshots.

This is the Ludlow Massacre Memorial - gray granite with black specks. On the west side are the statues of a man and a woman with a child sitting on her lap.

On the other side, a bronze plaque bears the names of the 17 people killed by the Colorado State Militia.

Nearby is a steel door over concrete steps that led to a dark, silent cellar where most of them died.

It was here, between Trinidad and Walsenburg, that coal miners and their families, forced out of company towns, set up a tent colony after voting to strike on Sept. 23, 1913.

It was here that the state militia fired on them on April 20, 1914.

And it was here on the same day that the militiamen set fire to the tents, killing 11 children and two women hiding in a cellar underneath. Five miners and one militia member also died.

Both sides exchanged gunfire on the fateful day. Who fired first remains in dispute.

Former Sen. George McGovern called it ``the bloodiest confrontation in American labor.''

The late Denver Rocky Mountain News columnist Pasquale ``Pocky'' Marranzino called it ``one of the blackest pages in Colorado history.''

Just west of Ludlow, pinyon and juniper blacken the hills that lead to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Seams of coal coursed through those black hills, and it was in the bowels of those hills that miners worked and often died.

The southern Colorado coal miners who struck in 1913 demanded strict enforcement of mining laws. They also demanded that union-appointed weighmen, not company employees, measure their daily production. And they wanted scales inspected by state officials.

They also demanded a safe place to work, $3.45 a day and the right to shop where they wanted - not just in company stores.

Colorado had long been a hotbed of labor strife. Miners had struck off and on since 1883, and they lost each one. Several strikes were ended violently by troops and company security men.

The Ludlow strike was no different - just bloodier.

But it was different for another reason - this time, the miners were united.

Their solidarity so alarmed mine owners that they asked Gov. Elias Ammons to send in the Colorado State Militia.

The miners were largely uneducated men who spoke the languages of their native lands.

Owners of small coal mines in Colorado generally hired only Welsh or Greeks or Italians or Mexicans. Larger camps were segregated from within, with ethnic groups assigned to specific areas.

Workers separated by language, custom and prejudice rarely found common ground.

That's why Ludlow was so frightening to the mine owners, according to the late Barron B. Beshoar, author of Out of the Depths, the union version of the Ludlow Massacre.

The miners set up the tent colony because they had been kicked out of company housing in the mining towns.

Women hanging daily laundry began communicating in a pidgin language and with hand signs and smiles, Beshoar said.

The tent colony's residents feared the militiamen. That's why they dug cellars under their tents, to hide from machine gun and rifle fire.

After the massacre, armed miners from New Mexico came north seeking revenge and touching off more violence.

Mine owners and concerned citizens who wanted peace called for federal intervention. President Woodrow Wilson sent in soldiers to disarm both sides.

American billionaire John D. Rockefeller, the nation's most powerful industrialist, and his family had a big stake in the Rocky Mountains - iron ore mines in Wyoming, coal mines in southern Colorado and rail lines that hauled ore and coal to the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp. in Pueblo. The family owned the mine near Ludlow.

Depending on which side you were on, the Rockefeller family took most of the blame or praise for the way the strike was handled.

After the strike, son John D. Rockefeller Jr. visited the area, talking to miners and mine supervisors.

He apologized, said Tom Noel, history professor at the University of Colorado-Denver.

Rockefeller introduced a peace plan that included a company union. He ``put an awful lot of money in public relations to smooth things over,'' Noel said.

Federal hearings followed to determine who was responsible for the strikes. They accomplished little.

What is the legacy of Ludlow?

``Management was able to paint unions as radical,'' Noel said. ``Most of the press was conservative and discredited the union cause. We're still a non-union state to this day.''

Noel said Ludlow's significance has faded from public consciousness.

``The ruthlessness of throwing those workers out in the cold and then killing them like that isn't recognized as how brutal it was, how oppressive it was,'' he said.

Today, archaeologists are digging around the former tent colony.

``We're trying to keep the legacy of Ludlow alive,'' said Mark Walker, project director from the University of Denver. ``The legacy they left here is the different ethnicities that came together and maintained a solidarity for 14 months.

``It was a fight for basic rights. Their demands weren't radical.''

A decade after the strike, the United Mine Workers of America bought the massacre site and built the monument on the prairie just off Interstate 25, 27 miles north of the Colorado-New Mexico border.

Here is how Beshoar described the monument:

``Below the desolate, almost deserted canyons, out on the wind-blown prairie, an imposing monument of granite erected by the United Mine Workers of America gleams in the last rays of the setting sun, a mute reminder of those who died at Ludlow that others might lift themselves out of the depths of poverty, industrial servitude and despair.''

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THOSE WHO DIED IN LUDLOW MASSACRE

Louis Tikas, 30; James Fyler, 43; John Bartolotti, 45; Charlie Costa, 31; Fedelina Costas, 27; Onafrio Costa, 4; Frank Rubino, 23; Patria Valdez, 37; Eulala Valdez, 8; Mary Valdez, 7; Elvira Valdez, 3 months; Joe Petrucci, 4 1/2; Lucy Petrucci, 2 1/2; Frank Petrucci, 4 months; William Snyder Jr., 11; Rodgerlo Pedregone, 6 and Cloriva Pedregone, 4.

June 29, 1999

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