On this date in 1922, Mexican General Francisco Murguia was shot at the Tepehuanes cemetery in Durango.
A photographer who found martial glory in the Mexican Revolution, Murguia (FindAGrave.com entry | Spanish Wikpiedia entry) was ally to revolutionary president Venustiano Carranza against rivals like Pancho Villa. He spent the late 1910s as Carranza’s military governor of Durango and Chihuahua where Jamie Bisher in The Intelligence War in Latin America, 1914-1922 denounces him “a brute” distinguished by “ruthlessness that stood out even in the Mexican Revolution … Murguila’s Chihuahua would be remembered for the corpses strung up in silent ranks along the roads.”
His loyalty to the Carranza cause after its namesake was deposed and assassinated in 1920 caused Murguia to flee to Texas for a time. He found his way into these dark pages by returning to lead a planned constitutionalist revolt against dictator Alvaro Obregon; anticipating the support of a coordinated rising, he was supported in the moment only by scanty fractions of the anticipated forces, leaving him nothing but the doomed bravado of a man before the muzzles.
“I have been granted the honor of directing my own execution, and I have sufficient fortitude to command it, but I shall not do it because I do not wish to commit suicide. For — and hear me well — they are not executing me; they are assassinating me. Viva Carranza!”
On this day..
- 1939: Edmund Jankowski, Olympic rower
- 1842: William Caffee, Mineral Point spook
- 1946: Arthur Robert Boyce, the king's housekeeper's lover
- 1929: Habibullah Kalakani, Tajik bandit-king
- 1833: Ira West Gardner, creepy stepfather
- 1938: George Brain, Wimbledon murderer
- 1822: David Lamphier
- 1912: George Redding, making Emile Gauvreau's career
- 1943: Not Anatoly Kuznetsov, insignificant little chap
- 1943: Six POWs, inscribed on a ouija board
- 1463: David of Trebizond and his heirs
- 1615: Kate McNiven, the Witch of Monzie
- 1920: Kevin Barry