His Death
Relatively little is known about Castillo, while accounts of his death vary widely, he was a private in the Mexican army from Jalisco. In 1938, while serving in Tijuana, Mexico, he was accused of the rape and murder of Olga Camacho Martínez, an eight-year-old girl who disappeared on February 13, 1938 and whose decapitated body was found shortly thereafter. The girl's father, by some accounts, was involved in a labor dispute arising out of the closing of a local casino by President Lázaro Cárdenas.
Castillo was arrested and allegedly confessed; other accounts claim he maintained his innocence until his death. A crowd, perhaps led by the girl's parents and others connected with the labor dispute, attempted to seize him while he was in custody, setting fire to the police station and the city hall and preventing firefighters from responding to the fires. The local authorities turned him over to the army, which proceeded to sentence him to death after a summary court martial.
Castillo was executed pursuant to la ley fuga, in which he was taken to a cemetery and given the opportunity to flee, while being shot at by a firing squad as he fled. Had Castillo escaped he would have been a free man.
He was not, however, so fortunate. He was buried at the site of his execution.
Read more about this topic: Juan Soldado
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“American family life has never been particularly idyllic. In the nineteenth century, nearly a quarter of all children experienced the death of one of their parents.... Not until the sixties did the chief cause of separation of parents shift from death to divorce.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“For God was as large as a sunlamp and laughed his heat at us and therefore we did not cringe at the death hole.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)