Ignacio Bonillas
Ignacio Bonillas Fraijo (1 February 1858 – 23 June 1942) was a
mine engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was tapped by President Venustiano Carranza
as his successor in the 1920 presidential elections, but the revolt of three Sonoran revolutionary generals overthrew Carranza before those elections took place.
Biography
He was born on 1 February, 1858 in
Tucson, Arizona, where he completed his primary studies. He received his degree in civil engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1882. Shortly before finishing his degree, he married a woman originally from Boston. Shortly after getting married he returned to Sonora, where the State Government commissioned him along with engineer Charles Herbert to make the outline of the future town of Nogales, in 1884.
Bonillas began to provide services to the state of Sonora in 1890. Bonillas had to make the measurement of the legal estate of Santa Anna and in the same year, he left leading a group of volunteers and defeated in the mountains a party of
Apaches who were marauding the area. On 19 March 1900 the state legislature waived the examination so that he could exercise his profession as an engineer, and the Executive issued the corresponding diploma. Bonillas was "long connected with Sonora's mining and contracting companies, trusted by the U.S.-based Southern Pacific Railway."[1]
In 1910 he joined the Anti-reelectionist Party of
Punitive Expedition from Mexico that had unsuccessfully sought to capture Pancho Villa following his incursion into Columbus, New Mexico.[2]
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Alvaro Obregón, and Plutarco Elías Calles, the unknown civilian Bonillas was an unacceptable successor to the presidency, and they staged a revolt under the Plan of Agua Prieta. Carranza, his cabinet, the Supreme Court, and Bonillas fled by train from Mexico City in May 1920. The train was intercepted by rebels. Carranza was murdered, and Bonillas was captured.[4]
Bonillas died on 23 June 1942 in the United States.
See also
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