On this date in 1916, Mexican Revolution commander Benjamin Argumedo was shot at Durango.

Every revolution has its opportunists and this cavalryman swerved wildly between the infighting factions — deserting the general and president overthrown by the revolution, Porfirio Diaz, in favor of Francisco Madero (president from 1911 to 1913), then switching to rebel Pascual Orozco, and then to El Usurpador Victoriano Huerta (president from 1913 to 1914 via a coup), and last a swing to the left-wing revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

This man waged a running guerrilla battle against the government until his own death in 1919 … by which time Argumedo was long done for, having been run to ground by Constitutionalist general Francisco Murguia. (Murguia extended him the courtesy of a drumhead tribunal the day before execution.)

Argumedo was reportedly refused a plea to be shot in the public plaza for maximum spectacle, and died with a wish upon his lips that posterity forego noxious flourishes of rank because “we are all equal material for the grave.” (Executed Today endorses this sentiment.)

The corrido “Las Mananitas de Benjamin Argumedo” — “So much fighting and fighting, / so much fighting and fighting, / with my Mauser in my hands. I came to be shot, / I came to be shot / in the cemetery of Durango.” (Full lyrics and even sheet music to be found in Hispano Folk Music of the Rio Grande Del Norte.

On this day..

• 1771: Edmund James and Joseph Jordan, runaway slave aides
• 1888: Oscar Beckwith, the Austerlitz Murderer
• 1852: Samuel Treadway
• 1562: The Massacre of Vassy
• 1996: Antonio James, final judgment
• 1837: The slave Julius, property of John and Rebecca Matthews
• 2013: Naw Kham, Mekong drug lord
• 1864: Martin Robinson, treacherous guide
• 1951: The Mokotow Prison executions of Cursed Soldiers
• 1289: Ugolino della Gherardesca, ravenous
• 2004: Ibtisam Hussein, child-murderer
• 1877: Jack McCall, Wild Bill's murderer