Pilot Colonel Jacinto Rodríguez Díaz (

Totonicapán Totonicapán is a city in Guatemala. It serves as the capital of the department of Totonicapán and as the administrative seat for the surrounding municipality of Totonicapán. History In 1838 Totonicapán was declared an independent republic ...

, 16 August 1901 –

Guatemala City Guatemala City (, also known colloquially by the nickname Guate), is the Capital city, national capital and largest city of the Guatemala, Republic of Guatemala. It is also the Municipalities of Guatemala, municipal capital of the Guatemala Depa ...

, 28 September 1929) was one of the aviation pioneers in Guatemala.

Biography

Rodríguez Díaz attended the military school, where he graduated as infantry second lieutenant, and then was assigned to the Presidential Army Staff of

Manuel Estrada Cabrera Manuel José Estrada Cabrera (21 November 1857 – 24 September 1924) was the President of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920. A lawyer with no military background, he modernised the country's industry and transportation infrastructure, via granting c ...

. A few years later, travelled to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

to attend the aviation school in that country. Along with Miguel García Granados Solís, Óscar Morales López and Ricardo "Chato" Rodas were the aviation pioneers in Guatemala when they collected funds to buy the first airplane in the country, which they christened with the name "Central America".An image of the "Central America" can be found here
Peten culture and more: "Central America" plane piloted by Jacinto Rodríguez Díaz
Consultado el 5 de agosto de 2014

First airline service in Guatemala

In 1929, Guatemalan military aviators – led by Colonel Miguel García Granados Solís – had been able to set up a modest airline service in the country using three

Ryan Brougham The Ryan Brougham was a small single-engine airliner produced in the United States in the late 1920s and early 1930s.Taylor 1989, p. 772. Its design was reminiscent of the Ryan M-1, M-1 mailplane first produced by Ryan in 1926, and like it, was ...

B-5 single engine planes that they used to transport mail and cargo to the farthest posts in Guatemala. Rodríguez Díaz flew to

El Petén EL, El or el may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities * El, a character from the manga series ''Shugo Chara!'' by Peach-Pit * Eleven (''Stranger Things'') (El), a fictional character in the TV series ''Stranger Things'' * El, fami ...

, a region that due to its remote location, it was much easier to reach El Petén by plane than by land. Rodríguez Díaz landed in Santa Elena on 20 Jul 1929,

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

in two occasions and La Libertad also in 1929. The first plane to land La Libertad was piloted by coronel Miguel García-Granados Solís -grandchild of former president Miguel García Granados- in 1926, followed by a visit of the famous American pilot

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, and author. On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first nonstop flight from New York (state), New York to Paris, a distance of . His aircra ...

and Rodríguez Díaz was the third to land there in 1929. But this pioneering service did not last very long: Rodríguez Díaz died in September 1929 in an air crash in Guatemala City, Garcia Granados left Guatemala and a French Aerial Mission arrived to Guatemala to train the military pilots of the Military Aviation Corps in warfare techniques.

Death

Colonel Rodríguez Díaz died on 28 September 1929, in a tragic accident known as "Dolores Street air crash"', along with lawyer José Luis Balcárcel (member of the Generation of 1920 intellectuals and classmate of future Literature Nobel Prize awardee

Miguel Ángel Asturias Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (; 19 October 1899 – 9 June 1974) was a Guatemalan poet-diplomat, novelist, playwright and journalist. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967, his work helped bring attention to the importance of i ...

, among others), the child Carlos Montano Novella and engineer Julio Montano Novella, Guatemalan Consul in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Only Julio Montano survived. Rodríguez Díaz's tomb was designed and built by Guatemalan sculptor Rafael Yela Günther and is in the Guatemala City General Cemetery.

Awards and recognitions

For his numerous services to his country, Colonel Rodríguez was awarded 53 medals and 15 trophies by the different army bases of the time: Fort Matamoros, Guard of Honor, Fort San José and the President's Army Staff. Colonel Rodríguez's father donated all his son's awards and trophies to the Guatemalan Military Academy after his death.

Jacinto Rodríguez Díaz Island

The Guatemalan government named a little island in his honor in San Miguel,

. The island is situated in N 16°55'59.99" and W 89°52'59.99" and is a tourist attraction visited by those who come for the

Tikal Tikal (; ''Tik'al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the Pre-Col ...

National Park and other interesting sites in that region.

Notes and references

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rodriguez Diaz, Jacinto 1901 births 1929 deaths Aviation in Guatemala Guatemalan military personnel People from Totonicapán Department Guatemalan aviators Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1929 Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Guatemala