Aureliano Blanquet
Encyclopedia
Aureliano Blanquet was General during the Mexican Civil War who led the coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

 during the Decena trágica. Blanquet has been identified "as one of the major villains of the Mexican Revolution".

Biography

He was born in 1849 in Morelia
Morelia
Morelia is a city and municipality in the north central part of the state of Michoacán in central Mexico. The city is in the Guayangareo Valley and is the capital of the state. The main pre-Hispanic cultures here were the P'urhépecha and the Matlatzinca, but no major cities were founded in the...

, Michoacán
Michoacán
Michoacán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 113 municipalities and its capital city is Morelia...

. In July 1911 Blanquet commanded federal troops stationed in Puebla. On July 12 a group of armed men fired shots at the rival maderistas and fled into the federal army barracks. The incident erupted into an all-out battle in which Blanquet defeated the maderistas. 46 were killed, including women and children. On the next day Madero
Francisco I. Madero
Francisco Ignacio Madero González was a politician, writer and revolutionary who served as President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913. As a respectable upper-class politician, he supplied a center around which opposition to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz could coalesce...

 publicly hugged Blanquet and cleared him of any wrongdoing; he ordered radical maderistas to surrender arms to Blanquet's federals and go home. The Puebla Incident also created international tension after the fleeing maderistas killed German and Spanish expatriates who stood in their way.

In June 1913, Huerta dismissed General Mondragon as Secretary of War, and replaced him with Blanquet.

In October 1913 dictator Victoriano Huerta
Victoriano Huerta
José Victoriano Huerta Márquez was a Mexican military officer and president of Mexico. Huerta's supporters were known as Huertistas during the Mexican Revolution...

 dissolved the federal congress and prepared for a rigged referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...

 to legitimize himself as the President, with Blanquet named as vice-president.

In July 1914, when the Huerta government collapsed, Blanquet resigned as Vice President, and departed from Mexico with Huerta.

On August 19, 1914 Blanquet his 29th battalion of 400 men and other federal troops against the Carrancistas in Puebla. He captured the city and received a tip that two Carrancistas agents, brothers Ramon and Raphael Cabrera, where on their way to Puebla. Blanquet's federals captured the Cabreras and shot them on Blanquet's order. The two surviving Cabrera brothers, Luiz and Alfonso, avenged the dead with a campaign of terror, killing over sixty Federal officers.

In March 1919, Blanquet returned from exile to support the Felix Díaz rebellion against Carranza. On April 7, 1919, he was killed in a battle at La Barranca de Chavaxtla, Veracruz.
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