Incident at Altar: The Ransoming of Leopoldo Carrillo, August 1875

On September 16, 1875, George Hand, Tucson's Samuel Pepys, noted in his diary: "The anniversary of the Independence of Mexico is not celebrated with as much force as in the past. Leopoldo Carrillo is mad and will not celebrate it." Carrillo felt he had good cause to be mad. It happened like this.¹

By the beginning of 1875, dissatisfaction with the governor of the Mexican state of Sonora, Ygnacio Pesqueira, was widespread as a summer election loomed. Pesqueira, who had risen to power in 1857, had become "increasingly arbitrary, hoarding the governor's office as though it belonged to him by virtue of divine right." Last elected to office in 1872, he had over time delegated the actual running of the government to minions, while absenting himself from the capital for longer and longer periods of time. He wanted the governorship but not the onerous task of governing.²

As local abuses of power increased, the domestic situation destabilized. In addition, Pesqueira had never been able to suppress raids by the Apache into the state. Troops sent by the Mexican federal governmein 1874 were likewise unsuccessful. While the

Born in Opusura, Sonora, Leopoldo Carrillo (1836–1890) later settled in Tucson and became a prominent entrepreneur by the 1860s. He owned a freighting business, ranches, and numerous Tucson homes (which he rented). By the early 1870s, he was one of the wealthiest individuals in Tucson. He served on the Tucson city council, as a Republican, for a term in 1884–1885 but otherwise he was far more successful as a businessman than as a politician. From the Buehman Studios Photo Collection, #B207970, Arizona Historical Society, Tucson.

raids remained a pressing problem, it also became a pretext for new taxes and forced loans.³

Tucson, as depicted in the 1860s. From J. Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country: A Tour through Arizona and Sonora (New York, 1869), 132.

Taxes, however, created a different set of problems. Pesqueira was imposing them primarily on "the coalition of mine owners, merchants, and urban middle class" that had been the very source of his support in the beginning. In September 1873, Carlos Conant had led a military action at Álamos in opposition to Pesqueira and his local henchman, Prefect José María Loaiza. All that came of this was the enrichment of Conant at the expense of the people of Álamos. In early 1874, businessmen in Guaymas complained, with little success, to the state legislature about a new tax on foreign goods imported through that port city. A "milieu of tensions" still remained in Álamos when businessmen there complained in June 1874 that the new taxes were hurting business. Pesqueira was losing the support of his base.⁴

At first, Pesqueira appeared to be somewhat oblivious to the political turmoil that was bubbling up, due to the many months spent away from the capital at his hacienda, Las Delicias. The various anti-Pesqueira factions, realizing the need for unity, coalesced around the Independent Party formed in Guaymas early in 1875. For governor, the party picked General Jesús García Morales, who had been sent to Sonora by the federal government in 1874 to oversee the efforts to suppress the Apache raids. He was also Pesqueira's brother-in-law. Francisco Serna, the Libertad port chief of customs, was selected as vice-governor.⁵

The party claimed that Pesqueira had lost touch with his original "liberal ideas." Now little more than a tyrant, they believed it was critical that he be turned out of office. Returning in April 1875—the same month Yaqui and Mayo Indians renewed their raiding in Sonora—Pesqueira became aware of the resistance building against his candidacy and decided to offer a change. In his place for governor, Pesqueira's cousin, José J. Pesqueira, would run, with Ygnacio as his vice-governor. This decision was roundly mocked.⁶

In the June primary, which also included the election of representatives to federal and state...