RUBÉN JARAMILLO MÉNEZ: BIOGRAPHY - HISTORY - 2024

Rubén Jaramillo Ménez was a Mexican military and revolutionary of the early 20th century. He dedicated his struggle, both military and political, to the demands of the Mexican peasant people. To do this, he joined the Zapatista revolutionary forces, serving them from the ranks of the Liberation Army of the South.

Jaramillo Ménez's struggle was not only fighting with arms; Once he left the ranks of the army, he continued to fight for a more just life for the peasants and poor people of Mexico, using politics as a weapon against the exploiters.

Rubén Jaramillo Ménez and his fellow revolutionaries

Biography

Early years

Rubén was born on January 25, 1900 in Xochicalco, in a town called Real de Minas, in Zacualpan, Mexico. He was the son of the miner Atanasio Jaramillo and the peasant Romana Ménez Nava. He had six brothers and his grandfather Julián Jaramillo Navas was an active partner in the cause of Benito Juárez.

Enlistment

He was barely fourteen years old when he enlisted in the Zapatista revolutionary forces in the ranks of the Liberation Army of the South, and at seventeen years of age he was promoted to first captain of the cavalry.

Return to civil life

When the Zapatista army began to degenerate its performance, many soldiers and commanders became what they had been fighting.

They fell into theft and brazen looting, disrespecting command lines and disobeying Zapata's orders. Most of that army went over to Carranza's side, turning their backs on the people. It was then the year 1918.

For these reasons, Jaramillo Ménez withdrew from the armed struggle that year and began to work in civilian life. First he did it on a farm in Cassano, then in the San Luis Potosí sugar mills, and later in Tamaulipas as a worker in the oil fields. The fact of separating from the armed struggle led him to the libertarian struggle by other means.

Against the merchants

The passion of Jaramillo Ménez was the vindication of justice and the improvement of the living conditions of the people. This made him fight staunchly against unscrupulous merchants who starved the people by hoarding rice in complicity with the lenders of the Ejidal bank.

This bank established unsuccessful credit unions to monopolize the trade in these agricultural products. Jaramillo discovered and denounced the involvement of cartels in Jojutla supported by politicians of the current government, which earned him dangerous enemies.

Jaramillo's enemies

After the complaints made, Jaramillo was joined by a fierce group of enemies: the powerful rich. When these were linked to this corruption, they made fertile lands and exploited the original peoples. In addition, they controlled crops, production, and trade, enriching their coffers and making the people miserable.

Jaramillo's third wave of enemies was the most heinous. A group of politicians and nouveau riche emerged from the Revolution itself joined the corruption feast. They knew the ex-combatant better; thus, it became easier for them to accuse and declare the incorruptible fighter as a dangerous agitator and, later, as a public enemy.

There were many proposals made to Jaramillo to add him to the corrupt circle, he was even assigned a state company. The rise to the spheres of power and wealth was within reach. But Jaramillo Ménez - as a faithful disciple of Emiliano Zapata - remained loyal to his values ​​and morals, and rejected all those proposals.

Fight without weapons

Rubén Jaramillo's unarmed struggles can be seen in his active participation as a social fighter:

- In 1921 he was the organizer of the Provisional Agrarian Committee of Tlaquiltenango.

- In 1926 he organized the constitution of the Sociedad de Crédito Agrícola de Tlaquiltenango, from where he led a fierce fight against the rice hoarders.

Construction of the Emiliano Zapata sugar mill

During the year 1933, in Querétaro, Jaramillo delivered a proposal to the President of the Republic, Lázaro Cárdenas, to build a mill in Jojutla. With this, he sought to reactivate the sugarcane plantings as a measure of emancipation for the peasants, victims of the rice usurers.

This is how the Emiliano Zapata sugar mill was built, which was born as a space for the free productive activity of the peasants. It was precisely that moral force that made Jaramillo the great obstacle for corrupt politicians and officials to appropriate the profits of the mill, so Jaramillo Ménez had to be eliminated.

Attacks against Jaramillo

The first thing they did was strip him of his position. Later, because of his persistent struggle for the rights of the peasantry, they tried to assassinate him. The judicial police failed in a couple of ambushes near his home.

Later, between paid gunmen and corrupt policemen, they laid a trap for him, from which Rubén Jaramillo Ménez managed to escape again. It was clear that he had no other way: he had to take up arms again.

The resumption of the armed struggle

On February 19, 1943, after a terrible persecution and incessant repression of the peasant movement, Rubén Jaramillo joined a group of former Zapatista guerrillas and, raised in arms, proclaimed the Plan of Cerro Prieto.

The most relevant points of this plan are the following:

- The government must be in the hands of the peasants, workers and soldiers.

- Equitable distribution of national wealth.

- Training for women so that they can become independent without resorting to prostitution.

- Shorter working hours that allow workers to read, think and write.

Jaramillo and his combatants went from town to town making known the reasons for their fight. They were adding the support of the peasantry, which strengthened the popular struggle.

Return to the civil struggle

Militarily, the forces were very unbalanced. They did not count on the military insurrection to level their forces and, while they took shelter in the hill, they left the town at the mercy of the excesses of the governmental power.

For these reasons, in 1944 Jaramillo accepted the amnesty offered by President Ávila Camacho and returned to civil life.

Jaramillo dedicated his forces to popular organization. He coordinated peasant groups to colonize idle lands and hand them over to landless peasants.

Final ambush

On May 23, 1962, under the government of Norberto López Alvear, Operation Xochicalco was carried out. Members of the judicial police assaulted Jaramillo's house, led by Jaramillo's former guerrilla partner, Heriberto Espinoza, alias “El Pintor,” along with troops from the national army and gunmen from the Emiliano Zapata sugar mill.

They took out his entire family along with him. They were taken in government vehicles near the ruins of Xochicalco and shot.

References

1. Danzós, Ramón. (1974), From the Atlixco prison (Life and struggle of a peasant leader), Mexico, ECP, pp. 151-152.
2. Limón López, AG (2006) The murder of Rubén Jaramillo Ménez, in El Paliacate, no. 3, vol. 2, 2nd quarter, p. 58.
3. López Limón, A. (2016). Life and work of Rubén Jaramillo. The Zenzontle / MIR.
4. Monroy, David. (2018) Rubén Jaramillo, last guerrilla leader arrives at the Congress of Morelos. Millennium. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
5. Salmerón, Luis A. (2015). Historians. Stories and stories in Mexico. Number 81. Years VII Page 89