The Villarreal telegram (1911)

At a glanceKnown key applied · complete

The telegram: A telegram of 27 March 1911 from Federico González Garza at El Paso, Texas, to Braulio Hernández at Presidio, Texas; clear Spanish with four coded words.
Where: CEHM-Carso, Mexico City, Fondo CMXV (Archivo Federico González Garza), CMXV.15.1420.3-6; ledger entry 1462, which listed it from the CEHM record ("texto en clave"), with no decipherment.
The cipher: Five pairs of letters swap in place, in both directions: L–A, N–E, R–I, S–O, T–U.
How it was deciphered: With the five pairs of the Hernández key card of the same fonds (CMXV.16.1557.1, scan 16), found and applied by William Echols; the key was not recovered from the ciphertext. The project re-ran the four decryptions and did not see the images or the card.
What it says: Did you receive the pills? You should stay there. Villarreal will leave Wednesday or Thursday, taking a cannon. Write back.
Still open: No comparison with the images or the card; whether the telegram is in print was not searched here.
Credit: The transcription, the key card and the reading are William Echols’s (issue #351), made with GPT-6.1 Sol in Codex. The images were not seen here and are not reproduced.

01 The telegram

A telegram of 27 March 1911 from Federico González Garza at El Paso, Texas, to Braulio Hernández at Presidio, Texas, in the Archivo Federico González Garza (Fondo CMXV) of the CEHM-Carso in Mexico City, CMXV.15.1420.3-6 (two images, front and reverse). It is in clear Spanish with four coded words. The CEHM record calls it “texto en clave” and gives no decipherment, and catalogue 1462, the ledger’s entry for this fonds, listed it with no known decipherment on that record. William Echols read it with GPT-6.1 Sol in Codex and sent the transcription, the key and the reading; the project could not reach the images and worked from his submission.

02 The key

Five pairs of letters swap in place, in both directions: L–A, N–E, R–I, S–O and T–U; every other letter stays as written. The contributor takes the pairs from the Hernández key card of the same fonds, CMXV.16.1557.1, scan 16. The same box holds the card headed “Herrera. Moreno.” (scan 7), with which another telegram of the fonds was deciphered (its own page); that is a different key. The key was not recovered from the ciphertext.

Coded word	Read with the pairs
VRAALIINLA	VILLARREAL
OLADIL	SALDRA
AANVLEDS	LLEVANDO
CLESE	CANON

Checked here, with an own script: the four coded words (29 letters) decrypt with the five pairs to the words above, as the contributor gives them, and the words fit the clear text around them. The card and the transcription were not compared with the images.

03 The reading

¿Recibió píldoras? Conviene permanezca esa. VILLARREAL SALDRA miércoles ó jueves, LLEVANDO CANON. Escriba. — González Garza

In English: Did you receive the pills? You should stay there. Villarreal will leave Wednesday or Thursday, taking a cannon. Write back. The coded CANON is written without the tilde, and is read as cañón. The contributor gives no background about the people or the pills, and none is added here.

04 What remains uncertain

The transcription and the key card were not compared with the CEHM images by the project, and no human has repeated the check.
That the card is the one filed for this correspondence is the contributor’s identification.
Whether the telegram is already in print (Narváez’s books, the recipients’ papers) was not searched here; the contributor reports none found.
No statistical validation is recorded: four words are too few for a language-model test.

Full texts

The transcription and the decryption of every document on this page, so that the reading can be used and checked. Short files are shown here; all are in the repository.

Telegram of 27 March 1911 to Braulio Hernández (CEHM-Carso CMXV.15.1420.3-6)

A telegram from Federico González Garza at El Paso to Braulio Hernández at Presidio: did you receive the pills? you should stay there; Villarreal will leave Wednesday or Thursday, taking a cannon; write back.

Transcription

transcription.txt

# CEHM-Carso, Fondo CMXV (Archivo Federico González Garza), CMXV.15.1420.3-6. Telegram of 27 March 1911, Federico González Garza (El Paso, Texas) to Braulio Hernández (Presidio, Texas).
# Transcription as given by the contributor (William Echols, issue #351). Coded words in capitals.
¿Recibió píldoras? Conviene permanezca esa. VRAALIINLA
OLADIL miércoles ó jueves, AANVLEDS CLESE. Escriba.

González Garza

Decryption

decryption.txt

# Coded word -> letter-for-letter decryption with key.tsv (applied mechanically).
VRAALIINLA	VILLARREAL
OLADIL	SALDRA
AANVLEDS	LLEVANDO
CLESE	CANON

Reading

reading.md

# Telegram of 27 March 1911, the text read (Spanish)

Decoded words in capitals; CANON stands for cañón.

¿Recibió píldoras? Conviene permanezca esa. VILLARREAL SALDRA miércoles ó jueves, LLEVANDO CANON. Escriba.

González Garza

Translation

translation.md

# Translation

Did you receive the pills? You should stay there. Villarreal will leave Wednesday or Thursday, taking a cannon. Write back.

González Garza

Key: key.tsv

05 Sources

CEHM-Carso (Centro de Estudios de Historia de México, Fundación Carlos Slim), Fondo CMXV, Archivo Federico González Garza: the telegram CMXV.15.1420.3-6 (record 12723) and the key card CMXV.16.1557.1, scan 16; the images are not reproduced here.
William Echols, issue #351: the transcription, the key and the reading.

The documentation, the key, the transcription, the reading and the check are in targets/hernandez1911.

Cite this page

William Echols and Daniel Bourdeau, “A telegram from González Garza to Braulio Hernández, 27 March 1911”, Cyphersolver, posted 9 November 2026, https://cyphersolver.com/hernandez1911.html.