Posted on 04/07/2022 7:54:22 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
California on April 7, 1836 saw the first known installment of what would become a rich tradition of history of vigilance committee lynchings in the state — over an affair of the heart.
This was Alta California under Mexican rulership, a decade before the Yankees gobbled it up in the Mexican-American War.
Maria del Rosario Villa had abandoned her husband Domingo Felix (or Feliz) back in 1834 to take up with a vaquero named Gervasio Alipas (or Alipaz). The honor-stricken husband spent two years fruitlessly trying to reconcile until in 1836 at his behest the alcalde successfully pressured Maria into returning to her husband.
But on the couple’s return trip to their ranch, the lover Alipas intercepted them and did the husband Felix to death. Narciso Botello’s* annals describe that Alipas “took hold of his [Felix’s] horse and threw himself on Felix, grabbed him by his neckerchief, and pulled him off, dragging him along downhill and twisting the neckerchief, strangling him” — then pitched the choking victim into a gully where he finished him off with a machete. “Later it was proven by the tracks that the wife had been present.” (Source) She helped him dump the body near San Gabriel Mission, too.
Outraged both by the dastardly murder and by the wanton violation of matrimony that precipitated it, a gang of 55 organized themselves as a Junta of the Defenders of the Public Safety, led by Victor Prudon, a recent arrival to the area from the Hijar-Padres colony.** As no militia could be mustered inclined to oppose its will, on April 7 the junta forced open the jail where Alipas was interred...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
I was wondering where “executed today” had gone. But here it is! YAY!
Sounds like a happy ending to me.
Sounds like they had it coming.
Their deaths seem to have been a bit better than the one they reserved for the husband. Why would the husband even want her back? She must have been quite the hottie.
Thank goodness lynchings are now illegal in the U.S.! Far too many these days!
Quite the atrocity. Only part I missed is which specific policy of the Donald Trump administration is responsible for the tragedy. Seems every reporter goes out of his way to blame every bad thing on him.
Oddly enough...in landscaping and roof replacement. The whine of gas-powered blowers and the rat-tat-tat of roofing guns forever becoming a part of California's residential landscape.
Might cut crime in California with more of that today.
That, and how did it make climate change worse?
Whatever her appearance was, honor and marriage vows were extremely important.
He was probably Catholic so he couldn’t divorce her and remarry.
If he wanted an heir, he needed her.
There might have also been some issues with the dowry.
“This was Alta California under Mexican rulership, a decade before the Yankees gobbled it up in the Mexican-American War.”
Mexico sold the land, I guess you didn’t read that?
1.Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
2.Treaty of Mesilla, Gadsen Purchase
.
I have read that there were fewer than 50 Californio families at that time. They were the descendants of Spanish soldiers who married Kumeyay women.
“Why would the husband even want her back?”
No foolin’ but legally she was his property and that paramour wasn’t worth spit and death-by-exercised-husband was justified in the eyes of the law.
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