Mexican-American hero, born in Socorro, New Mexico, USA. A fearless lawman, he protected Mexican-Americans from Texans in New Mexico Territory. In 1884 he arrested a drunken Texas cowboy and killed another Texan who tried to free him. Besieged and shot at by a mob of Texans, he surrendered, was tried, and found innocent. He was sheriff of Socorro Co and then turned to practising law (18941945).
Elfego Baca (February 10, 1865–August 27, 1945) was a legendary lawman, lawyer, and politician in the closing days of the American wild west.
Elfego Baca was born in New Mexico just before the end of the American Civil War. Upon his mother’s death in 1880, Baca returned with his father to Belen, New Mexico where his father became a marshal.
In 1884, at age 19, Baca stole some guns, bought a mail-order sheriff’s badge, and more or less appointed himself deputy sheriff in Socorro County, New Mexico. Baca meant to put an end to that.
The Frisco Shootout
On December 1, 1884, in the town of Frisco (now Reserve), Elfego Baca arrested a carousing cowboy who had actually shot at him. Following threats from the cowboys, Baca took refuge in the house of Geronimo Armijo. thus Baca was able to escape injury.) During the siege, Baca shot and killed four of his attackers and wounded eight others. When they had left, Baca walked out of the house unharmed.
In May 1885, Baca was charged with murder for the death of the one of the cowboys killed in the attack on the cabin. In August 1885, Baca was acquitted after the door of Armijo’s house was entered as evidence.
Law and Order
Baca officially became the sheriff of Socorro County and secured indictments for the arrest of the area's lawbreakers.
In 1888, Baca became a U.S. Marshal.
Political Life
Baca held a succession of public offices, including county clerk, mayor and school superintendent of Socorro County, and district attorney for Socorro and Sierra Counties. In his book The Shooters, Leon Metz writes that “most reports say he was the best peace officer Socorro ever had.”
From 1913 to 1916, Baca served as the official representative in the U.S. of Victoriano Huerta government during the Mexican Revolution, a post which earned Baca an indictment for criminal conspiracy when Mexican general José Inés Salazar escaped from prison. Successfully defended by the New Mexican lawyer and politician Octaviano Larrazolo, Baca's reputation grew among Southwestern residents.
When New Mexico became a state in 1912, Baca unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Republican. Working at times as a private detective, Baca also took a job as a bouncer in a casino across the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
Baca worked closely with New Mexico’s longtime Senator Bronson Cutting as a political investigator and wrote a weekly column in Spanish praising Cutting’s work on behalf of local Hispanics. Baca considered running for governor despite his declining health, but he failed to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for district attorney in 1944. He was often arrogant and, of course, he showed no compunction about killing people.” On his 75th birthday, Baca told the Albuquerque Tribune that as a lawyer he had defended 30 people charged with murder, and only one went to the penitentiary.
In July, 1936, several years before his death, Janet Smith conducted an interview with Elfego Baca. Baca told Smith, “I never wanted to kill anybody, but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first.”
Legends
Many legends surround the life of Elfego Baca.
Another legend says that Baca stole a pistol from Pancho Villa, and the angry Villa put a price of $30,000 on Baca’s head.
Elfego Baca lived a remarkable life. Episodes of the series were later edited into a movie titled Elfego Baca: Six Gun Law, which was released in 1962.
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