r/AmericanHistory

JANUARY 27, 1961,
THE RAID THAT ALMOST BLEW ITS OWN COVER

On January 27, 1961, my grandfather, IRS Intelligence Group Supervisor Fred G. Pastore, was coordinating a series of federal raids targeting illegal coin-operated gambling machines across Massachusetts.

The staging area?

A Howard Johnson’s on Route 1.

Shortly after noon, three moving vans were positioned behind the restaurant. Federal agents began transferring their equipment into them — Federal Reserve Bank canvas money bags, raid kits, crowbars and other gear.
One truck headed toward Taunton.
Another toward Southbridge.
A third toward Canton.

The raids were scheduled to begin at 1:30 PM.
Then something unexpected happened.
Fred went inside Howard Johnson’s for lunch.
While he was eating, he watched a Massachusetts State Police cruiser pull into the parking lot.

Then came a WBZ sound cruiser.
Apparently, people at Howard Johnson’s had seen a group of men loading money bags and equipment into moving vans and called authorities to report the suspicious activity.
The police — and the news media — had unknowingly stumbled onto the staging area for a federal operation.

Fred deliberately didn't identify himself. As he later wrote:
“I believed that to identify myself at that time would, in all probability, alert him to the fact that federal raids were in progress.”

At 1:30, after the raids had begun, Fred approached the WBZ driver and suggested he call his news editor.
The official press release had just gone out.

By 2:00 PM, a WBZ Channel 4 cameraman arrived and headed south on Route 128 after the agents.
Fred stayed behind at Howard Johnson’s, taking telephone reports from his agents and relaying the results to his Chief before eventually heading to Taunton himself.

But by then, word was spreading incredibly fast.
Reporters began following the agents from location to location — and someone apparently warned the owner of the gambling machines.
At four remaining locations, the machines were gone.

Then comes perhaps my favorite line in the entire report:
“Fortunately, the agents discreetly persuaded the owner of the machines…to return them to the various cafes so they could be legally seized on the search warrants.”

Fred concluded:
“I mention this merely to illustrate how fast the news travels.”

More than six decades later, I found his original account of that day among the papers he left behind.

These are the kinds of forgotten stories hidden inside The Box — firsthand records of organized crime, gambling, corruption and federal investigations in Boston and New England during an extraordinary period in American history.

CONFIDENCE OF THE MOB

The story of IRS Intelligence Group Supervisor Fred G. Pastore — told through the records he left behind.

NOTE: The document does have a typo that says 1962 on one page instead of 1961.

If you guys like these kinds of documents and stories, let me know, I’ll drop more. I have a whole box full of them. Take care.

Her father continued to associate there with figures such as Klaus Barbie, the National Socialist war criminal known as the “Butcher of Lyon.”

However, Monika turned her back on everything that environment represented. In the late 1960s, affected by the poverty and injustice in Bolivia, she broke with the fascist world surrounding her father and became radicalized. After the assassination of Che Guevara in Bolivia, she joined the National Liberation Army (ELN) that he had founded. Her code name was now “Imilla,” which means “Girl” in an indigenous language.

The event that made Monika Ertl known worldwide occurred on April 1, 1971: the assassination of Roberto Quintanilla, the Bolivian consul in Hamburg and a former intelligence officer considered one of the main figures responsible for the death of Che Guevara. Quintanilla was one of the men who posed next to Che Guevara's lifeless body and gave the order to cut off his hands.

Monika entered the consulate building in Hamburg disguised as an elegant woman. When she came face to face with Quintanilla, she pulled out her gun and shot him three times. The note she left at the scene read: “Until victory or death.” This act resonated around the world as “Che's revenge.”

After the assassination, Monika returned to Bolivia and continued her clandestine activities. One of her main objectives was to kidnap the National Socialist war criminal Klaus Barbie, an old friend of her father who at that time was advising the Bolivian dictatorship.

However, on May 12, 1973, she was ambushed by Bolivian security forces. She died in a confrontation in the streets of La Paz. Her grave was kept secret, and her body was never returned to her family.

On it, the territories on the east coast where the newly formed United States appears referred to in Ottoman Turkish as the "Land of the English Republic" (İngliz Cumhurunun Ülkesi).

The map also marks the Iroquois Confederacy, named the "Government of the Six Nations." Other tribes are also indicated, including the Algonquins, Chippewa, Western and Eastern Sioux, and the Black and White Pawnee.

The map was not originally designed by Ottoman cartographers, but is a direct Turkish translation of the plates from William Faden's General Atlas published in the late 18th century.

This work was part of the modernization reforms of the Ottoman Empire (Nizam-ı Cedid), introducing for the first time detailed geographical knowledge of the Americas to the Istanbul public.

Although Prado was not a career military officer, he retained the rank of Reserve Officer. Upon assuming the presidency in 1939, he frequently appeared in public in the uniform of a Reserve Lieutenant. He did so deliberately to gain the support of the military, consolidate his authority in an unstable political context, and project an image of a leader close to the armed forces, especially while leading the victorious campaign against Ecuador that culminated in the 1942 Rio de Janeiro Protocol.

Here are some closer up shots of a map I made last year of the Mexican-American War

It is made with the juice of the Jenipapo fruit, which reacts and darkens upon contact with the skin.

Vintage travel poster featuring a Junkers Ju 52/3m operated by Aeroposta Argentina, promoting the Buenos Aires to Río Grande route in Tierra del Fuego during the 1930s

It tells the story of four cultural artifacts looted by Chile from a Lima museum in 1881. Each one bears a name engraved on the barrel and breech band: El Trepidoso (The Trembling One), El Triunfante (The Triumphant One), El Colérico (The Angry One), and El Destruidor (The Destroyer). These cannons were made in Peru at the end of the colonial period, between 1772 and 1780, and their names allow them to be identified and distinguished.

Each one reflects the artistic sensibility of its time. And because they are cultural artifacts from a national cultural institution, such as the books from the National Library of Lima returned in 2007 and 2017, they also deserve to be returned, at this significant moment for building new relationships, as we approach the 150th anniversary of the tragic war.

Source(s):

.- Chipana Rivas, Johnny. (2026). Stolen heritage: The case of the colonial cannons from the Lima Artillery Museum looted by Chile in the War of the Pacific. Published in the ISHRA journal, UNMSM, No. 16.

I translated this article from Arabic into English, and I apologize if there is any mistake in the Mexican names.

I hope you like this post. My regards from Egypt ..

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Source: The Egyptian magazine Al-Muqtataf المقتطف, issue (6), published on June 1, 1948.

Author of the article: Muhammad Gamil Bayham محمد جميل بيهم (1887–1978 AD), historian, politician, writer, and Lebanese Arab reformist. He has dozens of works, articles, and writings of a historical, intellectual, and political nature.

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Did the Pharaohs, the Babylonians, and the Indians take their civilization from Mexico?

Similarities between Mexico and Egypt

I had the opportunity to visit Mexico three months before the last war. A friend invited me to dinner at one of the large restaurants in Mexico City, and the attire of the women working in the establishment powerfully caught my attention, as it reminded me of what I had seen so many times at the Cairo Museum: the Pharaonic mummies. For it did not differ at all, neither in details, colors, nor motifs, from the clothing of women in the time of the Pharaohs, from the headdress to the footwear.

"Why did the restaurant owner choose for his employees the garments of the daughters of the Nile from the Pharaonic era?" I asked this question to my companion, and he smiled and told me: "This attire is nothing more than the traditional costume of Mexican women in antiquity."

This answer awakened my interest and my desire to know the historical relationship between Egypt and Mexico, and my curiosity increased even more when, in the Valley of Teotihuacán, about fifty kilometers from the capital, as well as in Cholula, Micalco, and Chonula, I saw pyramids similar to those of Egypt, erected on a geometric base forming angles that point to the seasons of the year, just like the Great Pyramid of Giza. I also asked myself whether Egyptian culture had reached the American continent, bringing with it the design of the pyramids.

I went further in my reflections and questioned whether the belief in the immortality of the soul, along with the art of mummification that accompanied it, had also traveled from Egypt to Mexico within the same pyramid project, given the connection between both practices, and even more so because the method of mummification was identical between the Pharaohs and the inhabitants of South America, not differing even in the tiniest details.

This interest in the past awakened in me a spirit of curiosity and the need to observe the neighborhoods (everyday life) to see if the resemblance between Egypt and Mexico could still be perceived in the present era.

However, one might expect the resemblance between the two countries to be remote, because Mexico is situated upon mountains and deep valleys, and its people reflect the hardness of the rocks and the fierceness of the eagles; while Egypt stretches along the fertile and lush Nile Valley, its inhabitants reflecting the smoothness of the rivers and the sweetness of the warbling of birds.

But, even so, I have observed numerous similarities to this day between Egyptians and Mexicans, especially in rural areas. How alike they are in the choice of colors, in women's garments, and in their gold necklaces; and how close they are in the practice of ancient agricultural methods and their tools, not to mention certain ancestral customs.

These are manifested in some popular festivities and other acts, particularly in the engagement ritual (or the asking for a bride's hand). Furthermore, the resemblance between the two peoples often also shows in some foods. In Egypt, ful medames is the quintessential popular dish, and in Mexico, it is corn seasoned with acid and chili, which is also their popular dish.

Corn is the most important food element for Mexicans and they depend on it, just as the Egyptian peasant depends on fava beans (ful), and they use transparent leaves as wrappers for tobacco.

And just as the Egyptian is by nature fond of spicy seasonings and enjoys dishes full of all kinds of spices and pepper, the Mexican also pays great attention to these condiments, especially spicy ones. Their passion for them reaches such a point that in a city called "Mérida" they prepare a fruit salad loaded with hot chili.

Furthermore, light-heartedness, love of fun, and unconcern for tomorrow are part of the Mexican's nature, just as they were of the ancient Egyptians. The Mexican spends the wages of his day without calculating what tomorrow will bring, based on the rule: "Spend what you have in your pocket, for what is in destiny will come to you."

If we attribute this great resemblance between the two peoples to the influence of climate and heat in both countries, without relating it to history, how then would we explain the resemblance between them in specific national industries?

For if you enter a store selling Mexican antiques and national handicrafts, and look left and right observing the national weavings and other manufactures that preserve the Mexican style, and see the carpets, pottery, shapes of vessels, and reflect on the engravings, dyes, colors, and drawings you behold, it will seem to you that you are inside a warehouse of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo, or in one of the Pharaonic museums.

In addition to this, I have observed that the Red Indians (Indigenous peoples) of Mexico, who constitute the majority of the people, not only resemble Egyptians and Iraqis from rural areas, but the resemblance extends to a great number of similarities between them and the Bedouins of other Arab countries.

Whoever reads the book "The Elephant and the Ethnologists" by the renowned Elliot Smith feels captive to the same amazement as the author, and wonders how the Americans, a thousand years ago or more, could sculpt the figure of the elephant, despite the fact that this animal does not live in their lands. He also wonders, along with him, whether Hindu culture moved from India to the American continent, bringing with it the drawing of the elephant.

Furthermore, whoever flips through the pages of a notebook that the United States Information Office had given to its owners, his gaze stops at the drawing of a village resembling the villages of Egypt, and he asks himself the purpose of publishing that strange drawing, alien to America, when the notebook exclusively included American scenes. And here on the next page he reads the following note: "This is a view of a village built by the Red Indians approximately one thousand years ago in the state of New Mexico. The houses are of the adobe type, which they call 'adobe,' a word taken from the Coptic 'tub' (brick), and the Red Indians still inhabit these houses."

The truth is that Mexico is one of the most anciently populated countries in the Americas; for some historians affirmed that the Valley of Mexico had been inhabited for twenty-five thousand years. The historian Prescott said: "Mexico was the most prominent country in Latin America for its civilization." Likewise, its earliest inhabitants were distinguished by their intelligence and their morals, as demonstrated by the vestiges they left behind, similar to those of Egyptian and Hindu cities, and the news they transmitted about conquests and novelistic adventures in which the legends of the Normans and the Italians (by which he refers to the Romans) that appear in the tales about their heroes are reflected.

And it is no wonder, then, that the tribes of Eili, more than a thousand years before Christ, built in Guatemala and Yucatán cities that were a marvel for the beauty of their construction and architecture, and whose vestiges still bear witness to this; all of this gives an idea of the high degree of civilization that Mexico achieved.

Among the most outstanding things to be found in Yucatán, and seen in those derelict buildings known as the ruins of Chichén Itzá, is the sumptuousness, good taste, and architecture they harbor, as well as the ruins of Mitla and Kiaro.

And we are amazed at these vestiges and reflect on whether it was Egypt and India that took from Mexico, or whether it was Mexico that took from them. For some historians related that the pyramid of Shishilco, erected on the outskirts of Mexico City, is between four and ten thousand years old.

And if it is true that this pyramid was built several thousand years ago, then Mexico preceded Egypt in the erection of pyramids; otherwise, perhaps the pyramid of Shishilco was contemporary with the first pyramid raised by the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, or that, at the very least, it was built at the time when the three great pyramids of Giza were raised by the fourth Pharaonic dynasty.

This made me raise another question from the moment I directed my gaze towards the pyramids erected in Teotihuacán, Totochicalcro, and Acholula, in Mexico. The reason is that these pyramids are built in the form of a stepped terrace, according to astronomical principles, as demonstrated by the daily and monthly calendars based on the movements of the Sun and the Moon.

The two largest of these pyramids bore the name of the Sun and the other the name of the Moon. They also drew my attention to some reliefs on these pyramids, very similar to the engravings and drawings of India, and not far removed from the reliefs of the Babylonians and Chaldeans. However, the three pyramids of the Plateau (of Egypt) were smooth, without steps or ornamentation.

The question that arose within me is whether Mexico took the idea of the pyramid from somewhere other than Egypt, with all the purposes that entailed, especially religious ones, since in the vestiges of Babylonia evidence has been found that the ancient Babylonians built their high pyramids in a stepped form, each level with less surface area than the previous one, just like the pyramids of Mexico.

But what about the statue erected in front of the entrance to the Temple of the Warriors in the ruins of Chichén Itzá, in Yucatán? If the idea of the pyramids was not transmitted from the Pharaohs, but was taken from Babylonia, has it been considered that this great statue, which represents the head of a woman on the body of an animal, is not also a copy of the Sphinx that lies in Giza?

And what about those inscriptions of a pictographic nature found in Mexico on the tombs of some great chieftains and in other places? They are very similar to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing carved on stones and papyri.

These are data that are still mysteries, since archaeological excavations in Mexico only date back to the beginning of this century.

Perhaps Mexico, which brings together in its customs features that agree with India, Babylonia, and Egypt, maintained contact with the East, and perhaps the means of transport and communication between the different points on Earth in remote times were at a more advanced level than sailing ships and vessels.

Who knows if the story of the flying carpet was not born from a reality whose traces time has blurred, and what has reached us from it, transmitted by word of mouth, has now become mere legend?

The End ...

This law stipulated that all children of enslaved people born in Peruvian territory after the declaration of independence (July 28, 1821) would be considered free citizens.

It should be clarified that what José de San Martín implemented was not an immediate manumission, but rather a process of gradual abolition of slavery, a preferred approach in most Iberian American nations of the time. Similar measures had been enacted previously in Chile (1811) and in the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (1813), as well as in Gran Colombia (officially known as the Republic of Colombia), which approved "freedom of birth" on July 21, 1821.

However, in practice, this law fell far short of granting absolute independence. To avoid disrupting the agrarian economic structure or antagonizing the landowners, the law established a legal system known as "patronage" or "child-rearing." Under this system, although children were technically born free, they were required to remain under the guardianship and servitude of their mothers' masters to "compensate for the costs of their upbringing." This regime extended until the age of 24 for boys and 20 for girls.

A key military context: Both the royalist and revolutionary forces offered freedom to slaves as an incentive to enlist. José de San Martín relied heavily on troops of Black descent—who formed a vital part of the liberating armies of the Andes and Peru—so this decree also sought to respond to social pressure and consolidate popular support for the independence cause.

Despite the limitations of the law and the fact that landowners considered it a temporary adjustment brought about by the war, the freedom of children born to enslaved mothers marked the beginning of the decline of the institution of slavery. Other complementary provisions followed, such as the decree of November 6, 1821, which granted freedom to slaves belonging to Spaniards who emigrated from the country.

The definitive and total abolition of slavery in Peru would take more than three decades to materialize. It finally occurred on December 3, 1854, through the celebrated decree promulgated by President Ramón Castilla in Huancayo, a process largely financed by the substantial revenues of the guano era, with which the State directly and financially compensated the former slave owners.

Image: “Negros chalas en el día del Corpus” by the Black Peruvian painter Pancho Fierro (ca. 1830), detail.

This genre watercolor, attributed to the renowned Lima painter Pancho Fierro, sharply and with documentary value portrays the militias, troupes, and festivities of Lima society at the dawn of the republic. In it, we see a Black Peruvian couple carrying the second design of the Peruvian flag created by the Marquis of Torre Tagle, highlighting the prominent role of the Black population in the iconography of the revolutionary cause.