Antonio Rojas (guerrilla)
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Antonio Rojas, nicknamed El Matacuras, was a Mexican Guerrilla who participated in the
Reform War The Reform War, or War of Reform ( es, Guerra de Reforma), also known as the Three Years' War ( es, Guerra de los Tres Años), was a civil war in Mexico lasting from January 11, 1858 to January 11, 1861, fought between liberals and conservativ ...
and the Second French intervention in Mexico. He fought independently in both wars due to his differing and controversial strategies and tactics throughout both wars until being killed at Mascota, Jalisco.


Reform War

He was born on May 10, 1818, at the ranch of El Buey within the vicinity of Tepatitlán. On 1858, after capturing
Guadalajara Guadalajara ( , ) is a metropolis in western Mexico and the capital of the list of states of Mexico, state of Jalisco. According to the 2020 census, the city has a population of 1,385,629 people, making it the 7th largest city by population in Me ...
, an armed group under the command of Rojas killed the conservative general José María Blancarte, who was pardoned by the liberal forces. This caused
Santos Degollado José Santos Degollado Sánchez (born November 1, 1811, in Hacienda de Robles, Guanajuato – died June 15, 1861, in Llanos de Salazar, State of Mexico) was a Mexican Liberal politician and military leader. He was raised by a priest in Michoacá ...
to issue a decree ordering for Rojas' capture although months later this sanction was erected by Degollado himself and pardoned Antonio Rojas from any punishment. On September 7, 1859, after the victory over
Manuel Lozada Manuel Lozada, nicknamed "The Tiger of Álica", was a regional ''caudillo'' based in the region of Tepic, Mexico. He was born in 1828 in the Tepic Territory, Mexico and died on July 19, 1873, in Loma de los Metates, Nayarit. During the Second Fr ...
's troops, General Esteban Coronado and his brigade entered
Tepic Tepic () is the capital and largest city of the western Mexican state of Nayarit, as well as the seat of the Tepic Municipality. Located in the central part of the state, it stands at an altitude of above sea level, on the banks of the Río Mo ...
and later Antonio Rojas arrived. A month later, the French vice-consul Frédéric Ricke and the British consul John Francis Allsopp sent a ship with a cargo of silver to a port not authorized by the republicans, and for this Rojas was sent to collect a fine. Faced with the arrest and some diplomatic complications, Rojas was accused of injuring Ricke and that, as a result, the French vice-consul died. However, Rojas insisted that he followed General Coronado's orders. In 1861, President Benito Juárez and his cabinet negotiated the delivery of more than 30,000 pesos as compensation for damages. In 1860 he captured the town of San Juan de Teúl in Zacatecas, shot 300 conservatives and ordered their wives and daughters to be distributed among his troops. He also collaborated in the capture of
Fresnillo Fresnillo (/fres'nijo/), founded in 1554 by Francisco de Ibarra, is the second largest city in Zacatecas state, north central Mexico and the seat of Fresnillo municipality. As a rail and highway junction, Fresnillo is the center of a rich mining ...
and Colima. In the first months of that year he defeated the conservative generals Jesús Malo and Jerónimo Calatayud. However, due to his repeated looting and murder of civilians, he was a deeply unpopular figure among the liberal ranks with other leaders frowning upon him.


Second French intervention in Mexico

When the French invaded Jalisco at the beginning of 1864, Rojas refused to put himself under the orders of
José López Uraga José Benito Patricio Gabriel López Uraga was a 19th century Mexican general. He participated and fought in the Mexican–American War, the Reform War and the Second French intervention in Mexico. He also served as the Mexican ambassador to Ger ...
, considering him a traitor and neither with
José María Arteaga José María Cayetano Arteaga Magallanes (August 7, 1827 - October 21, 1865) was a prominent Mexican politician and general who served in the Mexican–American War, Reform War and the Second French intervention in Mexico. Executed by Imperial fo ...
as considered him inept so he remained independently for months, being one of the few chiefs who prevented the French from dominating Jalisco with impunity. Together with Julio García, Antonio Rojas signed the
Plan of Zacate Grullo A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a goal. ...
, named after the hacienda in Jalisco where it was enacted and which sought to force the populations to define themselves politically regarding the war using terror. This agreement established the following: *1.- The men who are taken for the service of arms, will not be released for any reason, unless those recruited have some capital because, in this case, weapons and nothing else may be required of them. *2.- The assets of the force will be covered with the interests of the Mexican capitalists, taking first what belongs to the traitors, then what belongs to people who live in places occupied by the enemy and, in the last case, the interests of those who live among us. *3.- In order to carry out our movements more safely and to avoid a surprise, some of the towns, haciendas and ranches that remain in the intermediate line between the places occupied by the republican forces and those of the enemy will be destroyed. *4.- The French who present themselves to our forces or who are apprehended with weapons in hand or without them, will be ordered to take up arms immediately. *5.- The traitors who are apprehended with arms in hand, from the sergeant class upwards, will also be put under arms, suffering the same penalty for those who have accepted public jobs given by the invaders and traitors. *6.- The seeds, cattle and horses that can be collected from the line to be destroyed and from some other points, as agreed, will be taken to the point where our force must be concentrated in a given case. *7.- Those who sign this pact, remain under the indispensable obligation to fulfill it in the part that touches them, in the understanding that whoever breaks it is for the same subject to suffer the arbitrary penalty that others resolve against him. that they had not committed a crime. Rojas's campaigns in the west of the country helped to strengthen the Republican forces led by Benito Juárez and the towns in which he participated at was
Autlán Autlán de Navarro is a city and its surrounding municipalities of Mexico, municipality of the same name in the Costa Sur region of the southwestern part of the state of Jalisco in Mexico. At the Mexican census of 2005, the city had a population ...
,
Mascota Mascota is a town and municipality in Jalisco, in central-western Mexico. The municipality covers an area of 1,591.63 km². The name Mascota comes from the root "Amaxacotlán", which means "place of deer and colubrids". The municipality ha ...
,
Guadalajara Guadalajara ( , ) is a metropolis in western Mexico and the capital of the list of states of Mexico, state of Jalisco. According to the 2020 census, the city has a population of 1,385,629 people, making it the 7th largest city by population in Me ...
,
Tepic Tepic () is the capital and largest city of the western Mexican state of Nayarit, as well as the seat of the Tepic Municipality. Located in the central part of the state, it stands at an altitude of above sea level, on the banks of the Río Mo ...
and Manzanillo. He was close to the soldiers
Pedro Ogazón Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meaning " ...
, Epitacio Huerta, Esteban Coronado,
Ignacio Vallarta Ignacio Luis Vallarta Ogazón (25 August 1830, Guadalajara, Jalisco – 31 December 1893, Mexico, D.F.) was a Mexican jurist and governor of the Mexican state of Jalisco (1872–1876). His baptismal name was José Luis Miguel Ignacio Vallar ...
and Julio García, and to the guerrillas Simón Gutiérrez, Herrera and Cairo, Rochín and
Ignacia Riesch Ignacia is a given name, the feminine version of Ignacio. It may refer to: * Ignacia del Espíritu Santo or Mother Ignacia (1663–1748), Filipino Roman Catholic Religious Sister, declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 * Ignacia Allamand ...
. It is said that his troops were made up of 4,000 troops, nominally the Red Brigade and known as the Galeanos or the Hacheros. His main military enemies were
Manuel Lozada Manuel Lozada, nicknamed "The Tiger of Álica", was a regional ''caudillo'' based in the region of Tepic, Mexico. He was born in 1828 in the Tepic Territory, Mexico and died on July 19, 1873, in Loma de los Metates, Nayarit. During the Second Fr ...
and
Leonardo Márquez Leonardo Márquez Araujo (8 January 1820 – 5 July 1913) was a conservative Mexican general. He led forces in opposition to the Liberals led by Benito Juarez, but following defeat in the reform war was forced to guerilla warfare. Later, he help ...
. After failing in his attempt to invade Colima with 5,000 men, he returned to Jalisco after suffering numerous desertions that nearly made his army fully wiped out. On January 28, 1865, his troops were ambushed by the French forces commanded by Captain Alfred Berthelin at the Potrerillos ranch at Mascota, Jalisco and was killed while fighting Berthelin's forces. According to legend, Berthelin later adopted Rojas' dog until Berthelin was captured and hanged at Colima from an ambush.


In Retrospect

For a guerrilla as experienced as Rojas, the ambush in which he was killed could be because he didn't recover from a gunshot wound that caused severe pain in his leg, causing his military skills to diminish. There are versions that his death was caused by revenge since he had so many pending accounts that one of his previous victims was the one who warned the French of the most vulnerable moment in which they could attack him. Irineo Paz, who was a contemporary of Rojas, wrote a novel about him, said the following: “The readers already know who Antonio Rojas was, and the inhabitants of Jalisco know it even more, in whose state there was perhaps not a town that did not have to resent the horrors of his presence. He was a ferocious guerrilla, almost a bandit, whom Lozada himself, the powerful Tigre de Álica , became afraid of, making him tremble in the very center of his crossroads and burrows. Rojas, however, unlike Lozada and some famous bandits of that time, had the virtue of patriotism.Irineo Paz, ''Algunas campañas,'' tomo I, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica-El Colegio Nacional, 1997, p. 59.


Recovery of Skull

In 1887, the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
received a donation of Rojas' skull by the French antiquarian Eugène Boban who was known for his ventures in skulls, notably in crystal skulls. When described about how he retrieved the skull, Boban stated that he acquired it from another collector who had bought it from a soldier. The skull was confirmed to be Rojas' when Dr. Jane Walsh compared the skull to a photograph of Rojas and the skull currently resides at the warehouses of the Smithsonian Institution.


References


Bibliography

* Meyer, Jean, ''Esperando a Lozada'', Guadalajara, Hexágono, 1989. * Michel, Agistín y Jean Meyer, ''Mascota en la Gran Década Nacional, 1857-1867'', México, Universidad de Guadalajara-CEMCA, 1994. * Olveda, Jaime, ''Con el Jesús en la boca. Los bandidos de los Altos de Jalisco'', Guadalajara, Universidad de Guadalajara, 2003. * Peregrina, Angélica, “Antonio Rojas, un bandido jalisciense”, ''Boletín del Archivo Histórico de Jalisco'', vol. II, núm. 2, mayo-agosto 1978. * Segura Muñoz, Iván, “Las aventuras y desventuras de un guerrillero. Antonio Rojas y los Galeanos de Jalisco”, ''BiCentenario. El ayer y hoy de México'', v. 12, n. 46, 2019, pp. 40–47. * Vigil, José María, ''México á través de los siglos: historia general y completa del desenvolvimiento social, político, religioso, militar, artístico, científico y literario de México desde a antigüedad más remota hasta la época actual; obra, única en su género'', tomo V, México, 1884. {{DEFAULTSORT:Rojas, Antonio 1818 births 1865 deaths Mexican military personnel killed in action Modern Mexico Liberalism in Mexico People from Tepatitlán People of the Second French intervention in Mexico 19th-century Mexican military personnel Military personnel from Jalisco