Enrique Gorostieta Velarde

Vocation

Mexican soldier best known for his leadership as a general during the Cristero War. In 1927 the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty chose him to lead the Cristeros, an army of Catholic rebels fighting against the government forces of president Plutarco Elías Calles. He enrolled at the Heroic Military College of Chapultepec in 1906. Upon graduation in May 1911, the same month Porfirio Díaz stepped down from the Presidency, Gorostieta — as a protege of Victoriano Huerta — served on campaigns against Emiliano Zapata in September 1911 and against Pascual Orozco in April–May 1912. During Huerta's short dictatorship of 1913-1914, Gorostieta's father was Secretary of the Treasury (Secretario de Hacienda). During the Mexican Revolution he served in the Federal Army of counterrevolutionary dictator Victoriano Huerta, being Huerta's youngest general, and after Huerta's fall fought with Juan Andrew Almazán, but soon fled Mexico for Cuba and later the United States. He died during a shootout on 2 June 1929, aged 38, in Atotonilco el Alto, Jalisco. Link to Wikipedia biography