I’ve passed two frightful years due to this same gang, and was even robbed by them,” wrote the priest Dámaso Martínez on September 29, 1857. “I suffered all of this, but did not think my own life was in danger. Today, this is not the case. … I believe the Indians have sold my life to them.
During the nine months prior to the writing of this report to the Guadalajara See, the parishioners of Santa Maria del Oro had presented a series of demands for money in the priest’s possession. Some 400 pesos had been gained from the forced sale of their lay brotherhood’s property, and they wanted the money so they could buy back the land. By August 1857, however, the parishioners’ attempts at legitimate reclamation, through both ecclesiastical and civil channels, had ended in disappointment. Rumors had long circulated that these Indian parishioners were allied with a prominent gang leader in the region, Manuel Lozada. Thus it likely came as little surprise when Martinez found himself huddled in his church in late September as Lozada’s gang ringed the town, accompanied by the town’s prominent Indians, and demanded that the priest and the local magistrate come out and surrender. Martinez was rescued only by the intervention of state troops, who scattered Lozada’s gang and allowed the priest to flee.