The Legend of Elfego Baca

A legendary figure that is enduringly popular in the Mexican-American communities of Albuquerque is Elfego Baca, a Mexican-American lawman, lawyer, and politician in the closing days of the American wild west. He is well regarded for defending local Mexicans against the abuses of cowboys.

Elfego Baca (1865-1945) was born in New Mexico just before the end of the American Civil War. His family later moved to Topeka, Kansas when he was a young child. Upon his mother's death in 1880, Baca returned with his father to Belen, New Mexico (about 35 miles from Albuquerque) where his father became a marshal.

In 1884, at age 19, Baca stole some guns and bought a mail-order sheriff's badge and more or less appointed himself deputy sheriff in Socorro County, New Mexico (near present-day Reserve, New Mexico).

His goal in life was to be an top-notch peace officer. He wanted, he said, "the outlaws to hear my steps a block away." Southwestern New Mexico was still relatively untamed, open cattle ranching country. Cowboys roamed the land and did pretty much as they pleased. They would come into town, drink at the saloon, harass the local Mexicans, and shoot up the town.

The Frisco Shootout
On December 1, 1884, in the town of Frisco (now Reserve), Elfego Baca arrested one of the cowboys who had been shooting up the town and had taken pot shots at Baca. The man's friends wanted him released but Baca refused to do so. After threats from the cowboys, Baca took refuge in the house of Geronimo Armijo. A standoff with the cowboys ensued and a gang of 80 cowhands attacked the house. The story has it that the cowboys fired more than 4,000 rounds into the house until the house looked like Swiss cheese. Incrediby, not one of the rounds hit Baca. During the siege Baca killed four of the attackers and wounded eight others. After 36 hours, the attack ended when the cowboys ran out of ammunition. Baca walked out of the house unharmed.

In May 1885 Baca was charged with the murder of one of the cowboys who had attacked the cabin and he was jailed until his trial for murder. In August 1885 he was acquitted after the door of Armijo's house was entered as evidence. It had over 400 bullet holes in it.

Law and Order
After he officially became the sheriff of Socorro County, indictments were handed down for the arrests of many of the county's criminals. When his deputies began to arm themselves, Baca stopped their pursuit of lawbreakers. Instead, he sent a letter to each of the accused, saying, "I have a warrant here for your arrest. Please come in by March 15 and give yourself up. If you don't, I'll know you intend to resist arrest, and I will feel justified in shooting you on sight when I come after you." Most of the outlaws turned themselves in voluntarily.

In 1888, Baca became a U.S. Marshal. He served for two years and then began studying law. In December 1894, he was admitted to the bar and joined a Socorro law firm. He practiced law on San Antonio Street in El Paso from 1902–1904.

Elfego Baca In Later Years

Political Life
Baca held a succession of public offices, including county clerk, mayor and school superintendent of Socorro, and district attorney for Socorro and Sierra counties. In his book "The Shooters", Leon Metz writes that "most reports say he was the best peace officer Socorro ever had."

From 1913 to 1916 he served as the official representative in the U.S. of Victoriano Huerta government during the Mexican Revolution, a post which earned Baca an indictment for criminal conspiracy when Mexican general José Inés Salazar escaped from prison. Defended successfully in court by the New Mexican lawyer and politician Octaviano Larrazolo, Baca's reputation grew among Southwestern residents.

Baca unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Republican when New Mexico became a state in 1912, and he remained thereafter a valued political operative known for his ability to turn out the vote among the Latino population. Working at times as a private detective, he also took a job as a bouncer in a Ciudad Juárez casino. In the public arena, Baca worked closely with New Mexico's longtime Senator Bronson Cutting as a political investigator and wrote a weekly column in Spanish that praised Cutting's work on behalf of local Latinos. Baca contemplated his own run for governor despite his declining health, but he failed to secure the Democratic Party's nomination for district attorney in 1944.

Metz also writes, "Elfego was, and is, controversial. He drank too much; talked too much ... he had a weakness for wild women; he was often arrogant and, of course, he showed no compulsion about killing people." On his 75th birthday, Baca told the Albuquerque Tribune that he had defended 30 people charged with murder, and only one went to the penitentiary.

In July, 1936, several years before his death, Janet Smith conducted an interview with Elfego Baca. Her notes can be found at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection. During the interview Baca said, "I never wanted to kill anybody, but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first."

Legends
Many legends surround the life of Elfego Baca. One legend concerns his mother, Juanita. As the story goes, his mother, while pregnant with Elfego, was playing a softball game known as Las Iglesias. When she went up for a fly ball, out came Elfego and entered the game.

Another legend says that Baca stole a gun from Pancho Villa and Villa put a price of $30,000 on Baca's head but the reward was never collected.

Elfego Baca lived a remarkable life, legends notwithstanding. Although he died quietly in his bed in 1945 at age 80, he had more brushes with death than most men of his time. In 1958, Walt Disney released a movie titled "The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca". Another movie titled "Elfego Baca: Six Gun Law", starring Annette Funicello, was released in 1962.