Juan Jose Carrera and Luis Carrera were shot together in Mendoza as traitors on this date 200 years ago.
They two of the Hermanos Carrera, a generation of siblings that played a prominent role in the Chilean War of Independence during the 1810s. We have already detailed them through the entry on their more notable brother Jose Miguel Carrera … who would go on to share their fate in 1821.
The Carrera Family, by Arturo Gordon Vargas (early 20th c.) features patriarch Ignacio, who was part of Chile’s first independent junta, along with Jose Miguel, flanked by brooding brothers Juan Jose and Luis, as well as their sister Javiera Carrera, the “Mother of Chile” and creator of the Chilean flag.
Said Jose Miguel had established a dictatorship in 1811-1812, with his brothers as trusted lieutenants. But Chile’s initial flower of independence from 1810-1814 was crushed by Spanish reconquest thanks in part to a deadly rift that had opened between the Carreras and fellow independentista Bernardo O’Higgins: prior to the decisive loss to the Spanish, Luis Carrera and O’Higgins had fought a literal battle with one another. They patched things up well enough to fight the Spanish together a few weeks later, but once in exile in Mendoza, Argentina, after their defeat they hurled recriminations at one another for the outcome. Luis even killed O’Higgins’s aide Juan Mackenna in a duel.
In the fullness of time it was the destiny of O’Higgins to be the father of a (permanently) independent Chile … and the destiny of the Carreras to be antagonists he overcame to do it.
O’Higgins attained leadership of the independence movement from exile and after elevated himself to dictator of free Chile in 1817. The Carreras promptly began scheming against him lead in old times, resulting in the arrest of Luis and Juan Jose in Mendoza. They were executed there hours after word reached the city that the Chilean patriot army had finished off the royalists.
The Carreras on their way to execution.
On this day..
- 1756: John Symmonds, "Spanish Jack"
- 1818: Josiah Francis and Homathlemico, false flagged
- 1819: Robert Dean, "rational incoherence"
- 1554: A cat dressed as a prelate
- 1859: Baltimore's Plug Uglies
- 1642: George Spencer, pork loin
- 1430: Seven Parisian conspirators, during the Hundred Years War
- 1763: Elizabeth Morton, bad with kids
- 1943: Elise and Otto Hampel, postcard writers
- 2007: Ajmal Naqshbandi, Fixer
- 1763: Ann Beddingfield and Richard Ringe, two sides of a triangle
- 1857: Mangal Pandey, rebellious sepoy