Famous Firsts
Hispanic Heritage Month - Sep. 15 - Oct. 15, 2007
Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo
Birth: December 7, 1859 in MexicoDeath: April 7, 1930
Occupation: Governor (State), Jurist, Senator
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Larrazolo, Octaviano Ambrosio (Dec. 7, 1859 - Apr. 7, 1930), jurist, governor of New Mexico, and United States senator, was born at Allende in southern Chihuahua, Mexico, the son of Octaviano and Donaciana (Corral) Larrazolo. His boyhood memories were of the tragic years of the Reform and the French intervention in Mexico. In 1870 he went to Tucson as the protégé of Bishop J. B. Salpointe, and when the latter became archbishop of Santa Fé (1875), young Larrazolo accompanied him to that city and studied at St. Michael's College. For a year he taught school in Tucson, and from 1879 to 1884 was a high-school principal in El Paso County, Tex. In the latter year he became clerk of the district at El Paso, serving until 1888, when he was admitted to the bar. He was elected district attorney for western Texas in 1890, and again in 1892. In January 1895 he moved to Las Vegas, N. Mex. During these early years he was a Democrat, and was the Democratic nominee for delegate to Congress from New Mexico in three different elections (1900, 1906, 1908). Each time he ran well but was defeated.
Throughout the Southwest, Larrazolo early came to be recognized as a brilliant orator in both English and Spanish, and also as a champion of the native people, who then constituted about half the voting population of the territory. When New Mexico was preparing for statehood (1910), he was instrumental in having written into the state constitution "strong provisions guaranteeing the rights of the Spanish-speaking voters against disfranchisement and protecting them against discrimination on account of language or racial descent. It assured the use of the Spanish language officially, together with English, for years to come" (Walter, post, p. 101). Hoping to better himself and his people politically, he became a Republican in 1911 and, in a dramatic speech at the party convention that fall, presented for governor a native New Mexican. His candidate was not nominated, but for the next twenty years Larrazolo was an important factor in New Mexican politics, and Spanish-Americans received greater recognition from both leading parties. Larrazolo himself was elected the first post-war governor (1918). When the coal miners' strike became general in the Rocky Mountain region in 1918, he invoked martial law and prevented the strike from spreading into New Mexico. He advocated federal aid to farmers and stockmen, and indorsed the idea of giving the public lands to the states in which they were situated, his proposal including the ownership of subsoil as well as surface. As Republican nominee for justice of the state supreme court, he was defeated in 1924; but in the fall of 1928 he was elected to the United States Senate.
Larrazolo will long be remembered as a fine example of the Spanish-American race; he was tall, of vigorous frame, and handsome, with the proud, courtly, and punctilious bearing of a Spanish gentleman. He was an ardent patriot of his adopted country and one of the most effective representatives of the native people of the Southwest. He was twice married: first in 1881 to Rosalia Cobos, who died ten years later, having borne him two children; and second, Aug. 4, 1892, to María García, by whom he had five children. His death occurred in Albuquerque.
SOURCE: Dictionary of American Biography.