This is Part 1 of a three part series.
“Harry Mitchell, owner of the Mint café, Juarez, and Rogelio Sanchez, an employee, were in jail in Juarez Friday charged with traffic in drugs”
Front Page of El Paso Herald-Post, August 28, 1931.
From 1920-1929, the Prohibition era through the onset of the Great Depression, Juarez flourished as an internationally recognized tourist center renowned for its night life’s vibrant atmosphere and uninhibited attitude. The bars, saloons, cabarets, and gambling halls first fell into formation along Calle Comercio, the main business street (the name later changed to Calle 16th de Septiembre). Mid-decade those venues were joined by competitors jockeying for position near the Santa Fe Street international bridge along Avenida Juarez. Recognized as possessing the finest menu among the city’s bars, saloons, and cabarets was Severo Gonzalez’s Central Café. After Christmas Eve 1926 Harry Mitchell’s Mint Café changed the venue’s address and added fine dining to become Gonzalez’s chief rival.
Both restaurateurs strove to offer the most fashionable destination and meals of distinction in Juarez.
Harry Mitchell
Henry “Harry” Noble Mitchell was born on April 8, 1888 in the English village of Blechington, England to William and Elizabeth Mitchelli. Two years later the growing Mitchell family packed up their belongings, sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean, and set up their household in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.ii
Determined to strike off on his own, in 1906 18-year-old Harry Mitchell departed Canada for the United States.iii 1906 was also the year, while passing through the city onboard a west bound train headed for California, that he first laid eyes upon his future home, El Paso, Texas.iv Mitchell arrived in San Francisco shortly after the great 1906 fire, securing work as a bartender at the Palace Hotel, a survivor of the voracious inferno’s devastation. Harry’s entry position at the Palace provided valuable training and experience for the Englishman’s future in the hospitality industry.
By 1907 Mitchell had relocated south to Los Angeles eventually gaining employment for 18 months as a barkeep at the Hotel Hayward.v Harry left the position on March 12, 1909, possessing a reference from the Hotel Bar Manager assuring future employers that Mitchell was “a careful, obliging and trustworthy workman”.vi
For health reasons, Mitchell moved to El Paso in 1912vii where he soon found employment tending bar at the city’s prestigious Hotel Paso Del Norte.viii By October 1, 1913 Mitchell’s experience and personality paid off with a promotion to Head Bartender of the Paso Del Norte, a title granting him the authority “to the carrying out of the policy of the bar at all times, including the hiring of the necessary help.”ix
29-year-old Harry Mitchell filled out his draft card on June 5, 1917. For the section inquiring “By whom employed” Harry jotted down, “Not employed at present.” To the question, “What is your present trade, occupation or office?” Mitchell responded, “Clerk,”x suggesting he had left the bar trade to explore other careers.
It was not for the establishment of a dry zone in El Paso that he departed from bartending, Mitchell’s draft card had been completed before Prohibition became law in Texas. The other information gleaned from his draft card was the fact that he remained a bachelor. A year later Harry served five months, from July 19 to December 17, 1918, in the US Army.xi
At the age of 31 Harry Mitchell appears January 3, 1920, living in Jackson, Missouri and informs a census enumerator that he is a salesman in the saloon industry, apparently his first job after being discharged from military service. Mitchell also discloses that he has a Kentucky born 21-year-old bride named Lela.xii
By November 1920 an advertisement for the Central Café in Juarez, owned by Severo Gonzalez, lists the manager for the restaurant as Harry Mitchellxiii and places the nomadic Englishman back on the El Paso/Juarez international border. By late April, 1921 the restless Harry Mitchell again had changed employment and was managing the Oasis Café in Juarez.xiv
With the purchase and consumption of alcoholic beverages legal in Mexico during his tenure at both the Central and Oasis Cafes in the early years of American Prohibition, Mitchell would have grasped the potential in purchasing his own bar in Juarez. El Paso, a short street car ride across the international bridge to the bars and nightclubs strewn along the streets of Juarez, especially along Calle16th de Septiembre, was acquiring a national reputation as a lucrative “wet” location to hold major conventions.
Pinning down the date that Harry Mitchell opened the Mint is an elusive task, but there is a clue of the fledgling saloon lodged in an October 7, 1921 newspaper. The reference is to an older American who, after a three-day drinking binge, was reported dead in a “squalid room in a house in the alley back of the Mint bar in Juarez.”xv As Harry was managing the Oasis Café in April, 1921, and the Mint was in operation by October 1921, those dates narrow the time span to that five-month interim that the bar keep would have first pushed open his saloon doors.
Little information about the early years of the Mint’s operation is available. Photographs on post cards place the first location of the Mint between Lerdo and the Pino Suarez Alley, on the same short section of the block as Severo Gonzalez’s Central Café. Post-Prohibition, an article in an El Paso newspaper provided a brief description of Mitchell’s maiden venture into operating his own bar, “Harry Mitchell and Coleman Feeney (bartender) donned their white aprons and stood behind the bar of the Old Mint—a little two-by-four cabaret with a horseshoe bar. Several years later Mitchell and Feeney opened up a larger and better Mint just around the corner from the old location.”xvi
Noticeably omitted from that news article was the name of the business partner that Harry Mitchell had acquired nine months before the Mint Café moved to its second location. The new co-owner was a local Juarez “businessman” named Enrique Fernandez.
ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ.
Enrique Fernandez was born and raised with his four brothers in the San Isidro area of east Juarez. During the dawn of US Prohibition Enrique began driving a taxi and soon began running liquor across the US/Mexico borderline. On the afternoon of March 18, 1920 Enrique and three associates were arrested for rum running and taken into custody in possession of 20 cases of liquor, 480 pints. Enrique failed to show up for his trial. However, while in custody he experienced a life changing epiphany-the actual smugglers were paid meager wages to confront all the risks: hijackings, gunfights, arrest, and imprisonment. The boss who hired the smugglers remained safely in Juarez and reaped windfall profits on the alcoholic contraband. Enrique Fernandez was determined to be El Jefe.xvii
Though Enrique had failed to appear in court, he did not avoid El Paso. In July, 1920 the smuggler was arrested in El Paso on a hit and run charge. Fernandez’s taxi had struck and knocked down a nine-year-old boy, but instead of rendering aid Fernandez abandoned his cab and fled on foot for two blocks before pursuers chased him down and hauled him to the police station. His young victim sustained a serious scalp wound, bruising, and possible internal injuries.xviii
By early summer 1921 it was known that Fernandez had expanded his trafficking with morphine and cocaine. Two US federal narcotic agents, J. J. Brooks, and C. J. Bright, made a connection with Enrique Fernandez in Juarez and began negotiations for purchasing morphine and having the narcotic delivered to El Paso.
On June 6 Fernandez, Leopoldo Barrientas, and a third man known as Hernandez, met with Brooks and Bright at the undercover agents’ Lake Hotel room in El Paso (510 W. Missouri). The trio presented a sample of morphine to the officers, and entered negotiations to sell 25 ounces of morphine and 25 ounces of cocaine; a price of $35 per ounce ($608 in 2023) was agreed upon by both parties.
On the morning of Wednesday, June 8, 1921, Leopoldo Barrientas and Hernandez picked up the two agents. With Enrique Fernandez following in his car, Barrientas drove east to El Paso’s lower valley and, at approximately 10 am, stopped the vehicle at the foothills of a ravine just west of the Ascarate region. Fernandez stepped out of his car, approached Barrientas’ vehicle, and directed Brooks to follow him. Fernandez led the way to the ravine where, lodged under a pile of tumbleweeds, sat a buried suitcase. When opened the luggage held the bottles of morphine and cocaine. The agent flashed his badge and drew his revolver. Fernandez reached for his back hip pocket, but, noticing Brooks’ gun, he raised his hands.
Glancing down the ravine, Brooks spied the top of the sniper’s face and cap pop up behind a clump of weeds immediately before the gunman squeezed off a shot at the agent. Realizing that Brooks’ attention was distracted, Fernandez leaped into the ravine and scurried away; Hernandez also escaped during the gunfire.
Brooks returned fire four times and retreated to his car. The agent, with his revolver jammed in Barrientas’ back, forced the driver to walk as a human shield in front of Brooks back to the ravine. Brooks picked up the suitcase of drugs, then, Barrientas still between the agent and the gunman, the men walked backwards to the car. Not sure if they were outnumbered or out gunned, the agents opted to return to El Paso with their sole prisoner.
Possibly because the agents were hoping Fernandez would believe his identity and connection to narcotics were not known and he would feel safe to return to El Paso, Enrique Fernandez’s name in the case was not known released until Barrientas’ trial in early November.xix
One insight garnered from Barrientas’ trial were the payment methods used by Juarez drug dealers. Brooks and Bright revealed that payment had to be deposited in a Juarez bank, or had paid a person in Juarez that the trafficker had selected, prior to any delivery of narcotics into El Paso.xx
Fernandez’s repertoire would soon broaden again with counterfeiting and gambling added to his underworld enterprise.
Such was the character of Enrique Fernandez, the person Harry Mitchell welcomed as an equal partner in the Mint Café.
Partnership
There is no known record when Harry Mitchell and Enrique Fernandez first met or if they were friends or social acquaintances before entering the partnership, much less which one initiated the idea of becoming partners in the Mint Bar.
Among the possible reasons why Harry Mitchell and Enrique Fernandez entered into the partnership are: Fernandez wanted a legal investment for his illicit gains; the Mint was not financially solvent; Mitchell needed seed money to expand the bar and Fernandez, in exchange for a partnership, volunteered to supplement Mitchell’s investment with an infusion of cash, Mitchell benefited in having a Mexican citizen as a partner; and Fernandez had access to a supply of alcohol to run into El Paso.
If Fernandez did bail out the Mint Cafe, Mitchell would have felt, or been compelled to be, obligated to Fernandez.
The date of the Mitchell/Fernandez partnership is not known but clues can be extracted from the Mint’s newspaper advertisements. A September 26, 1925, ad in the El Paso Times announces that tickets for the upcoming Pete Loya-Johnny McCoy boxing match were available at the Mint in Juarez. At the bottom of the ad was the name of the owner, Harry Mitchell.
The next published advertisement, months later, is the first reference to Mitchell and Fernandez’s partnership. In the El Paso Times, Saturday, March 6, 1926, a small ad listing the names of the two owners, Harry Mitchel (sic) and Enrique Fernandez.xxi The partnership was likely established on an unknown date during that five-and-a-half-month span.
According to Marshall Hail, a reporter for the El Paso Herald who interviewed and established a relationship with Enrique Fernandez, the crime boss purchased fifty percent of the café, “Fernandez prospered magnificently. He bought a half interest in the Mint café, the most popular oasis for American prohibition refugees in Juarez for many years.”xxii
Narcotic Connections
Dye Accusation
A profitable sideline for a well-stocked Juarez bar was the smuggling of liquor across the border to El Paso and other destinations inside the United States. The ability and willingness to participate in this trade was not only of concern to local and state governments along the US border with Mexico, but also to federal authorities in the United States.
On April 25, 1925 the American consulate in Juarez sent a “confidential” dispatch to the State Department in Washington, D. C. titled, “SMUGGLING ON THE BORDER BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE CIUDAD JUAREZ CONSULAR DISTRICT IN MEXICO”. In the dispatch’s section “SMUGGLING OF LIQUOR INTO THE UNITED STATES” John W. Dye, the US Consul in Juarez wrote:
Late investigations have revealed to the public that nearly every saloon in Ciudad Juarez, American or Mexican owned, is a market place for bootleg liquor. One may order any kind and quantity of liquor in a Juarez saloon, pay for it and for its smuggling and have it delivered to any address in El Paso.
Nearly every wholesale and retail liquor man in Ciudad Juarez is believed to be directly or indirectly connected with this illicit traffic.
Some of the men, all of Ciudad Juarez, are as follows:
Julian M. Gomez, Wholesaler, 16th of September Street.
Antonio J. Bermudez, Wholesaler, 216 16th of September Street
Ulises Irigeyen, Wholesaler, Ciudad Juarez Brewery.
Raymundo Garcia, Wholesaler, 16th of September Street.
Luis C. Gonzalez, Wholersaler, Railroad Avenue.
Tom, Tom Walker Bar.
Harry Wright, Globe Bar.
Jack Thomas, Central Bar.
Jimmie O’Brien, O’Brien’s Bar.
R. Mr. Aguilar, Aztec Bar.xxiii
But this was not the only list compiled by the American Consulate in Juarez that graced Harry Mitchell’s name. Nor was liquor smuggling the most incriminating accusation documented by Consul Dye against Mitchell.
A different section of the confidential dispatch listing Mitchell as a liquor smuggler identifies a more serious contraband, “SMUGGLING OF NARCOTICS INTO THE UNITED STATES.” Consul Dye writes,
There are believed to be at present huge stocks of narcotics in Ciudad Juarez ready for shipment to the United States by some illegal method.
The following are some of the suspects among the higher ups of the narcotic smuggling gang-
Harry Mitchell, Mint Bar, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Tony Hernandez, Mint Bar, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Enrique Hernandez, Mint Bar, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
William Martin, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Tom Mitchell, Ciudad Juarez, and El Paso, Texas
Raymundo Garcia, 113 16th of September Street, Cd. Juarez.xxiv
It is clear from the dispatch that Dye not only believed that Harry Mitchell was involved in narcotic smuggling, but identified the liquor merchant as one of the “higher ups of the narcotic smuggling gang.”
Though Harry Mitchell had a brother named Tom, the Tom Mitchell on Dye’s list was not related to Harry, but the owner of The Stag Bar in Juarez.xxv
This is Part 1 of a three part series.
i Texas Department of State Health Services, Vital Statistics Unit, death certificate No. 40667, Harry Mitchell, May 16, 1971, El Paso, Texas.
ii Bill Lockhart, “The Harry Mitchell Brewery,” American Breweriana Journal, November-December 2005, #138, p28.
iii 1920; Federal Census, Place: Kansas City Ward 8, Jackson, Missouri; Roll: T625_926; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 124; Image: 400, accessed on Ancestry.com April 12, 2016.
iv“Andy Gump Visits the Mint and Tries On Everything,” El Paso Times, March 18, 1928, p. 21.
v Bill Lockhart, American Breweriana Journal, p28.
vi Recommendation letter from J. W.Boun, Mgr. for Harry Mitchell, Harry Mitchell Scrapbook, El Paso County Historical Society.
vii Lockhart (p. 28)
viii El Paso Times, March 18, 1928, p. 21.
ix Letter from M. A. Shenick to Harry Mitchell, October 1, 1913,” Harry Mitchell Scrapbook, El Paso County Historical Society.
x U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Registration State: Texas; Registration County: El Paso; Roll: 1953280; Draft Board: 2, Ancestory.com accessed April 13, 2016
xi “Harry Mitchell Applies For Citizenship Papers,” El Paso Times, May 13, 1937, p. 14.
xii 1920 United States Federal Census, Census Place: Kansas City Ward 8, Jackson, Missouri; Roll: T625_926; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 124; Image: 400, Ancestory.com; accessed April 13, 2016.
xiii Advertisement for Central Café, El Paso Herald, November 24, 1920, p. 9.
xiv “’Oasis’ Café Breathes Air of Big Cities,” El Paso Herald, April 25, 1921, p. 7
xv “Three Nights In Bar Rooms Across The River and Visitor Crosses the River OF Death,” El Paso Herald, October 7, 1921, p. 1.
xvi “Sale Buries Mint Café,” El Paso World News, August 15, 1935, p. 1.
xvii Marshall Hail, “Enrique Fernandez,” University of Texas at El Paso Special Collections (UTEPSC), MS145, John J Middagh Papers, Box 12, Folder 147, Enrique Fernandez, pp. 2-3; “Officers Seize 20 Cases Booze; 4 Men Arrested,” El Paso Herald, March 19, 1920, p.11.
xviii “Boy Ran Down, Chauffeur Is Caught After A Chase,” El Paso Herald, July 24, 1920, p. 17.
xix “Mexican Fires Four Times at Federal Agent Who Nabs $25,000 in Smuggled Goods,” El Paso Times, June 10, 1921; “Bullet Battle in Ravine Is Described by Officer Who Was Sniper’s Target,” El Paso Times, June 14, 1921, p. 5; “’Tons of Dope’ Ready For Sale on Bankers’ Plan, Two Officers Testify in Federal Court Case,” El Paso Herald, November 2, 1921, p. 10.
xx El Paso Herald, November 2, 1921.
xxi Advertisement, El Paso Times, September 26, 1925, p. 6; Advertisement, El Paso Times, March 6, 1926, p. 6.
xxii Marshall Hail, “Enrique Fernandez,” (UTEPSC), p. 5
xxiii Confidential Dispatch from John W. Dye to State Department, April 25, 1925, Records of the Foreign Service, Record Group 84, Mexico, Ciudad Juarez Consulate, Classified 1923-1942, 800-840.1, Box 1.
xxiv Ibid.
xxv “Dry Agents Fail To Locate Driver Of Liquor Truck,” El Paso Times, August 26, 1922, p. 3; “Mitchell Rum Case Appealed By Government,” El Paso Times, November 6, 1925, p. 2.