Demetrio Vallejo ended his hunger strike April 10, twelve days after he began it as a protest against the refusal of the Mexican authorities to respond to his application for "confinamiento" after serving nine years of a fourteen-year prison sentence. The leader of the railway workers was sentenced on charges of violating Article 133 of the Federal Penal Code, a vague law barring activities involving "social dissolution" [disolucién social]. The courts interpreted Vallejo's leadership of a strike in 1959 as infringement of this law.
But under Mexican law, a prisoner is also entitled to being released from jail and "confined" to a specified town after serving a certain part of his sentence. Vallejo's hunger strike was intended to secure this right in his case.
There was no news from the prison of Santa Marta Acatitla as to Vallejo's physical condition after his long strike. His health in general was poor after the many years of imprisonment. It was not even known under what conditions Vallejo brought his fast to an end.
The press claimed that his family persuaded him. There were also ugly rumors of physical measures instituted by the prison authorities. Another rumor, evidently circulated by government officials, was that his appeal for "confinamiento" would be granted "but not under pressure."
Vallejo's case has been attracting more and more national attention. In the April 17 issue of Siempre, the most widely read political magazine in the country, the well-known critic and literary figure, Carlos Monsivais, devotes a full page to the case and to the plight of Mexico's mounting number of political prisoners. He holds that public indifference to this question is evidence of moral decay in Mexican society and the growth of political indifference.
Monsivais pays tribute to those in Mexico (students and other political prisoners) who have expressed solidarity with Vallejo by going on hunger strikes of longer or shorter duration. He maintains, however, that these can only be isolated actions. What is required is a rebirth of the nation. This should begin with condemnation of political repression and in particular the condemnation of the "criminal ‘application of the law of social dissolution."
Demetrio Vallejo's protest action has not yet had time to attract wide at-