📸 General Pascual Orozco: The Last Ride of a Revolutionary 🇲🇽⚔️
This haunting image captures General Pascual Orozco in May 1914, mounted with solemn purpose in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila—a man hardened by war, betrayed by allies, yet undeterred in his revolutionary conviction.
Once hailed as a hero of the early Mexican Revolution, Orozco rose to prominence in 1910 as a key commander in the northern campaigns against Porfirio Díaz, fighting side by side with Francisco I. Madero. His victory at the Battle of Ciudad Juárez was pivotal in toppling the Díaz regime. But glory turned to disillusionment. Feeling marginalized by the new Maderista government and frustrated by the lack of promised reforms, Orozco rebelled once more—this time against Madero himself—in the Plan de la Empacadora of 1912.
By 1914, Orozco had allied with Victoriano Huerta, the very dictator who ordered Madero’s assassination—a decision that cast a long shadow over Orozco’s revolutionary legacy. In this photo, taken shortly before Huerta's fall and the revolutionary tide turned decisively against him, Orozco appears weary yet resolute. His face reflects the complexity of a man caught between ideals and the brutal pragmatism of power.
This would be among the final known images of Orozco in Mexico. After Huerta's collapse, Orozco fled north into exile. He would die just two years later, ambushed and killed under controversial circumstances in Texas, labeled a bandit by some, remembered as a revolutionary by others.
🖼️ In this moment, captured forever in black and white, we see a man who once helped ignite the flames of revolution—now riding toward history’s twilight.