Ignacio L. Bonillas

Ignacio Bonillas grew up on the Sonora-Arizona border and combined engineering with Mexican public service. The Pan American Union's contemporary obituary records his birth at San Ignacio, Sonora, in 1858, attendance at an early Arizona public school, and several years as a teacher. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1880, graduated in 1884, and worked as a mine assayer in Tombstone. ¹

Under Venustiano Carranza, Bonillas served in the communications and public works ministry. He joined the Mexican delegation to the 1916 bilateral commission convened after Francisco Villa's raid on Columbus and the subsequent American military expedition into Mexico. Appointed ambassador in 1917, he defended Carranza's government against hostile publicity in the United States and headed Mexico's delegation to the Second Pan-American Financial Congress in Washington in 1920. ¹

Carranza then backed Bonillas to succeed him as president, provoking opposition from Álvaro Obregón and other revolutionary leaders. The struggle culminated in the Agua Prieta revolt, Carranza's fall and death, and Obregón's accession, ending the prospect of a Bonillas presidency. Bonillas died on 31 January 1944. ^{2, 1}