Gustavo A. Madero

Gustavo Adolfo Madero González (Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila de Zaragoza, January 16, 1875 - Mexico City, February 19, 1913) was a Mexican politician, brother of Francisco I. Madero, founding member of the Progressive Constitutional Party for which he served as a deputy. Anti-Porfirio and anti-reelectionists, the two Madero brothers, Gustavo Adolfo and Francisco Ignacio, fought against the renewal of the government of General Porfirio Díaz and to prevent his re-election.

His foray into politics was not circumstantial, it was more due to the close relationship between him and his brother Francisco, which can be traced back to childhood and through the studies they both completed in Europe and the United States, Gustavo identified with the democratic cause and the principles that his brother upheld, supporting him during the revolutionary process and once Francisco was elected as president of the republic. A key figure in the government of President Madero, he was brutally murdered and tortured during the coup carried out by Huerta.

Gustavo dedicated himself to industrial and agricultural businesses, not only in his native state, but also in Jalisco, mainly a textile factory in Lagos de Moreno and in other entities of the Mexican Republic. In 1910 he managed a good stationery business in Monterrey. Once the regime of his brother was installed, Gustavo did not want to accept any position in the administration; but in 1912 he was forced to occupy a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in the XXVI Legislature.

In 1941 his name was given to one of the delegations in Mexico City.

Financial in the Revolution

In January 1911, as a result of the disappointing response to the call of November 20, and after learning about the small uprisings that had been taking place in the north of the country, Gustavo went to Washington to obtain a loan, with which he could buy weapons and war supplies. A month later, on February 14, Francisco Ignacio Madero crossed the border.

In May 1911, a few days after the capture of Ciudad Juárez (the battle that led to the fall of the dictator) and in the midst of a new armistice agreed to negotiate peace, Gustavo wrote: «Today we definitively resolved to request the resignation of Díaz as a condition for peace and since we know that he will not agree, we are preparing for war, since there will probably be a need to attack Juárez."

Gustavo Madero in 1912

By then Gustavo was already negotiating the loan. He confidentially obtained an important loan that meant (in terms of the material support that the revolutionaries received) the final straw of the Porfirian regime. On the 9th, the Standard Oil tankers delivered a good amount of dollars to the revolutionaries. The next day, without financial problems, the revolution took over Ciudad Juárez and on May 25, Porfirio Díaz was presenting his resignation. Alfonso Taracena in his book Unofficial History of the Mexican Revolution: « Oil was the collapse of Madero."

The Last Days

He had been appointed Mexican ambassador to Japan in 1913. However, the Tragic Ten stood in his way. He witnessed the armed rebellion against the government of Francisco I. Madero by generals Manuel Mondragón, Félix Díaz, Bernardo Reyes, Victoriano Huerta and Aureliano Blanquet. On February 9, 1913, this movement called the Tragic Ten began, a period of just over ten days of uprising against the Maderista government. On Tuesday, February 18, Victoriano Huerta betrayed the president, joined the reaction and, in agreement with H.L. Wilson, the US ambassador, imprisoned Francisco Ignacio Madero and José María Pino Suárez (Wilson's well-known participation could well be due to promises unfulfilled by Gustavo, whom the ambassador called "rogue". Gustavo was a person who did not trust Huerta and it was he who warned his brother Francisco about his plans, ignoring this.

Prisoner

On February 18, 1913, after lunch at the "Gambrinus" with Victoriano Huerta, Gustavo is apprehended and taken to a military barracks known as La Ciudadela on Huerta's orders. That same afternoon, Huerta signed in the National Palace, as "General in Chief in charge of the Executive Power".

The martyrdom of Gustavo A. Madero

At close to midnight on Tuesday, February 18, 1913, an emissary from "La Ciudadela" arrived at the National Palace to inform Victoriano Huerta that General Manuel Mondragón demanded the delivery of the prisoners he had in the Palace. Huerta refused to do so, because although he had declared himself president, he still did not have the resignations of Madero and Pino Suárez, so he did not want to risk them getting out of his hands; but to please Mondragón, he ordered that Gustavo A. Madero and the mayor of the palace, Don Adolfo Bassó Bertoliat, whom he had also taken prisoner, be handed over.

A “court” presided over by Cecilio Ocón sentences them to death and they are taken to another apartment in “La Ciudadela”. But the emboldened soldiery pursued them in a roaring, frenzied parade. Some mock Gustavo, others unload on the defenseless politician their fists of steel.

«By shoving, amid profane shouts, full of insults and blows, amidst a diabolic chorus of mockery and blasphemies, the first victim lowered to the place of his final torment [...] Ninety or a hundred pounced on the defenseless prisoner"; "and with kicks, slaps and sticks they took him to the patio, where the statue of Morelos is [...] dripping with blood, his face decomposed by the blows, his hair in disarray and his clothes torn [...], he clung with both hands to the door frame and offered money, begged his ferocious victimizers not to kill him; he remembered his wife and his children [...], his brother, a candidate for the scaffold [...] The citadels laughed and at each sentence they called him a coward. One gave the example, a deserter from the 29th battalion named Melgarejo, with his bayonet he gouged out his only eye. Blind Don Gustavo launched a painful cry of terror and despair. He shrank back, with the violence of a spring, and then, he was speechless [...] ».

“They made fun of him: Coward! –they yelled at him– keep an eye out! (this is how the anti-maderismo nicknamed Gustavo, who was one-eyed), ¡Llorón! –and they stuck the tips of their clubs, their swords, their daggers into it. They threw him into the yard and he, maddened with pain, ran staggering, hands over his face, a bloody mess. A mob of assassins launched after him [...] Among them were youngsters of seventeen or eighteen, students of the military school (Military School of aspirants), corrupted by the aristocratic scoundrel, transformed into criminals by their bosses and teachers [...] Mondragón, pleased and pleased, contemplated the painting, without taking part in it [...] Stumbling, [Gustavo] was still able to walk a short distance over the courtyard dirty with blood and mud [... ] Finally, he stumbled against the statue of Morelos and bled to death at the foot of the monument [...]».

More than twenty rifle muzzles unloaded their projectiles on Gustavo.

Don Juan B. Izábal, who recounted these scenes, brought a flashlight to the face of the deceased, «they saw that he was dead... One of the assassins fired a new shot at the corpse, saying that "it was the shot of grace" [...] Then they mutilated him, ripping off some noble organs, covering the wounds with earth and dung [...] The corpse was left there, abandoned, until dawn, when they buried it in a hole they made in the same patio [...] Upon receiving death, his body presented thirty-seven wounds. Immediately, the soldiers rushed over the body to strip it of its belongings, sixty-three pesos, three letters from his wife and cousin, Carolina, dated Monterrey, and a notebook that ended with the phrase, "Everything He is lost. The soldiers don't want to fight. The historian Oscar Grajales López narrates that among Gustavo Madero's clothes they found a letter in which his wife asked him to return home and forget about political life. "Let them gouge each other out." He also had a pistol stolen from him that the family recovered in a pawn shop. The thieves had charged two pesos for this jewel.

Don Adolfo Bassó Bertoliat was shot at La Ciudadela around 3:00 a.m. m. on Wednesday, February 19, 1913, shouting: Long live Mexico!.

In the building that the Library of Mexico occupies, there are some plaques that commemorate the death of Gustavo A. Madero.