Chihuahua – Yesterday, September 23, marked the 59th anniversary of the assault on the Madera military barracks in Chihuahua, which occurred in 1965 and is remembered as an episode in the history of the guerrilla in Mexico.
Characters such as Arturo Gámiz and Pablo Gómez would lead the rebel group, which also included Antonio Scobell, Miguel Quiñones, Óscar Sandoval, Rafael Martínez Valdivia and Emilio Gámiz, Arturo’s brother, Salomón Gaytán and at least five other people, according to the chronicles of the time. The event in 1965, inspired by the then recently concluded Cuban revolution of January 1, 1959, left a trail of death that shook many families in the country, but particularly in the state of Chihuahua. The assault on the barracks marked a before and after in the war of that time as a clear manifestation of social discontent among peasants, teachers and members of the Popular Party. The dissidents planned to follow the manual of “Guerrilla Warfare” by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, used during his assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, as well as the actions of stealing weapons and sabotage.
The strategy consisted of taking the 125 soldiers who were at the military base by surprise. Meanwhile, members of the Popular Guerrilla Group (GPG) surrounded the barracks and fired the first shots, but the plan they had conceived did not go as planned.
According to the story, they tried to dissuade the military forces, however, the soldiers responded to the attack. It was dawn when hostilities began between the two sides, whose differences in strategy, training, discipline and number of members were extremely wide. There were 125 soldiers, while the rebels were at most 15 and poorly armed. It is said that the rebels shouted slogans to the military, such as: “Surrender! Surrender! Surrender!”, then the rain of bullets began. Upon hearing the shouts and the roar of the gunfire, the soldiers reacted immediately, however, the light of a locomotive blinded them, causing some casualties among them. Even so, the rebels could do little and it quickly became a killing field for them. The M-1 bullets and machine guns drowned out the sound and effect of the austere weapons used by the guerrillas, which were grenades, carbines and 7-millimeter rifles, as recorded by those who lived through that episode in the history of the municipality of Madera.
It was approximately at 8:30 in the morning when the fire ceased, leaving a balance of six soldiers and eight guerrillas dead, among them Arturo Gámiz.
Legend has it that the first to fall under the military’s volley of lead was Professor Pablo Gómez, who lay lifeless next to a flag with the phrase “Long Live Liberty!”. Dr. Arturo Gámiz followed, and so, one by one, the bodies of eight guerrillas lay in the field while the rest escaped the military siege. Those who managed to survive went into the mountains, but the area was reinforced with more soldiers and it was impossible for the GPG forces to reorganize for another attack. Later, the inhabitants of Madera witnessed the gruesome scene where the bodies were displayed by the Army as a warning so that no one else would dare “break the order.” Thus, the assault on the Madera military base went down in history as an event that claimed the lives of several people, including the main leaders of the movement that sought a response to the problems suffered by rural inhabitants, as well as the educational, agricultural, livestock and forestry sectors in the then troubled state of Chihuahua.
#paid #lives #challenge #Army
