Octaviano Larrazolo: The Refugee Who Wrote Rights Into New Mexico's Law

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Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo was born in 1859 in Valle de Allende, Chihuahua, to a wealthy landowning family that was ruined after French soldiers ransacked its estate over the family's support for Benito Juárez. At 11 he was sent to the Arizona Territory under Bishop Jean Salpointe to prepare for the priesthood, graduated from St. Michael's College in Santa Fe in 1876, and chose teaching instead while studying law at night. He became a U.S. citizen in 1884, joined the Texas bar in 1888 and served as a district attorney before moving to Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1895. There he left the Republicans for the Democrats and lost races for territorial delegate in 1900, 1906 and 1908 amid allegations of fraud.

At the 1911 constitutional convention, after Democrats rejected his demand that half of statewide nominees be Hispanic, he formed a coalition that wrote Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo protections, bilingual teacher training and a ban on segregated schools for children of Spanish descent into the constitution, then rejoined the Republicans. Elected governor in 1918, he declared martial law during a coal strike, pardoned Mexican soldiers from the 1916 Columbus raid, signed an income tax and backed women's suffrage, and his party refused to renominate him. After losing bids for governor of Puerto Rico and the state Supreme Court, he won a state House seat in 1927 and in 1928 became the first Mexican American U.S. senator, serving one session before his death in April 1930.

• He left his first local school after being physically abused by a teacher.
• Article 2, Section 5 of the New Mexico constitution preserved rights promised by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
• In the 1918 race his opponent attacked his Chihuahua birth, and he won to become the state's first Mexican born governor.
• He argued the Columbus raiders were soldiers following orders who should not answer for their generals' decisions.
• His one measure in the Senate proposed an industrial school in New Mexico for Spanish speaking youth.