Gertrudis Bocanegra

Life

Gertrudis Bocanegra was born in Pátzcuaro to Pedro Javier Bocanegra and Feliciana Mendoza, who died on 15 November 1783. She married Lieutenant Pedro Advíncula Lazo de la Vega, a soldier in the Spanish provincial forces of Michoacán, and they had six children: two sons and four daughters. Unusually for a woman of her time, she had read the principal authors of the Age of Enlightenment. When the war began, she quickly took sides.

Her husband and eldest son joined Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's forces when the insurgents passed through Valladolid in October 1810, and both died at the Battle of the Puente de Calderón. She then served as a messenger for the insurgents in the region of Pátzcuaro and Tacámbaro, helping to form a communications network between principal rebellion locations. During the guerrilla war, she was sent to Pátzcuaro to aid in capturing the city but was betrayed and taken prisoner by the royal army in 1817.

Tortured to reveal other rebels' names, she refused. Tried and found guilty of treason, she was sentenced to death. On 11 October 1817, at the Plazuela de San Agustín in Pátzcuaro, she faced a firing squad with a fellow insurgent and harangued her executioners before being shot. She was 51 years old.