Aquiles Serdán
Aquiles Serdán Alatriste (born November 8, 1877 in Puebla , † November 18, 1910 ibid) was one of the leading figures in Francisco Madero's pre-revolutionary struggle against efforts to re-elect the quasi-dictatorial Mexican President Porfirio Díaz . His death in 1910 made him the first martyr of the Mexican Revolution .
biography
family
Aquiles Serdán was the third child of Manuel Serdán Guanes and María del Carmen Alatriste Cuesta . He had two older sisters ( Carmen and Natalia ) and a younger brother ( Máximo ). In 1908 he married Filomena del Valle y Abelleyra ; The marriage had three children: Aquiles , Héctor and Sara - the latter was not born until three months after the death of their father.
Political commitment
In an interview in 1908, the almost eighty-year-old President Porfirio Díaz, who had ruled dictatorially since 1877 - with an interruption of four years - said that he was pleased that opposition parties were also forming in the country. This statement was understood by Mexico's oppressed opposition members as an invitation to make their political views public. One of the leaders of the opposition was Francisco Madero, who in 1909 published a pamphlet against the planned, but basically unconstitutional, re-election of the president the following year.
In June 1909, an association called Luz y Progreso ('Light and Progress') was founded in Puebla , which also included Aquiles Serdán, who had already been temporarily detained in February for participating in a demonstration against the re-election of the governor. The weekly La No Reelección was printed with a very limited edition in the small print shop of a like-minded comrade , and the mood in the Luz y Progreso association became increasingly radical; Weapons were probably bought secretly and hidden in Aquiles Serdán's house ... Francisco Madero was arrested in the run-up to the elections, but after Porfirio Díaz was re-elected, he was pardoned; he emigrated to Texas , where Aquiles Serdán followed him briefly. The latter, however, returned to Puebla in November 1910 with the task of leading the opposition to the dictator from there.
death
On November 17, 1910, the governor of the state of Puebla ordered the house of Aquiles Serdán to be surrounded and monitored. The opposition members hidden there subsequently shot and killed two police officers and then withdrew to the roof terrace of the house, while the women stayed on the ground floor. In the subsequent firefight, Máximo Serdán , Aquiles' younger brother, was killed. He himself continued to hide in a storage room that his wife had delivered with boards; he stayed there for another 14 hours. A guards who remained in the house eventually discovered him and he was killed under circumstances that were ultimately unknown - so he became the first martyr of the Mexican Revolution.
Honors
- In 1930, the city of San Andrés Chalchicomula near Puebla was renamed Ciudad Serdán .
- On November 11, 1932, his services to the fatherland were officially recognized by President Abelardo L. Rodríguez : His name was immortalized in gold letters on a plaque in the Chamber of Deputies.
- In the same year a municipality in the state of Chihuahua received its name.
Web links
- Enciclopedia de los Municipios y Delegaciones de México: Municipio Aquiles Serdán, history - photos and information (Spanish) (Spanish)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Serdán, Aquiles |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Serdán Alatriste, Aquiles |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Mexican revolutionary |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 8, 1877 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Puebla |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 18, 1910 |
| Place of death | Puebla |