One hundred years ago today, Otilio Montaño Sánchez was shot as a traitor to the Mexican Revolution.
Montaño was a rural schoolteacher who came to mentor Emiliano Zapata via Zapata’s cousin.
Montaño had the distinction of helping Zapata draw up his movement’s “sacred scripture,” the egalitarian Plan of Ayala, and rose with his protege to become Secretary of Public Instructions in the Zapatista governing junta.
This association was destined to be displaced by a different (ex-)revolutionary, Venustiano Carranza, who would break with Zapata and emerge from the Revolution as Mexico’s president. Montaño suffered the fate Carranza’s former allies would have wished to impose upon him: being accused of supporting a pro-Carranza revolt, a revolutionary tribunal had him shot (dishonorably, shot in the back) wearing a defamatory sign reading “So die all traitors to the fatherland.”
A small town in Morelos is named for Montaño.
On this day..
- 1876: Hjert and Tector, the last public beheadings in Sweden
- 1632: Topal Recep Pasha, Grand Vizier
- 1618: Nicole Regnault and the brothers Bouleaux
- 1548: Giulio Cybo, Andrea Doria disaster
- 1616: Margaret Vincent, "Pitilesse Mother"
- 1871: Edward Rulloff
- 1891: Benjamin Harrison spares the Navassa rioters
- 1812: John Bellingham, Prime Minister assassin
- 1965: Eli Cohen, Israel's man in Damascus
- 1990: Dalton Prejean, cop-killing child
- 1781: Tupac Amaru II, Incan insurgent
- 2004: Case Study: Kelsey Patterson