Sundance Kid (left) and Butch Cassidy (right)
The Bandidos Yanquis was the nickname given to the American criminals Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by authorities in Bolivia while they committed several bank robberies there between 14 February 1905 and 7 November 1908. The two of them were killed in a shootout with the Bolivian Army and police in 1908.
History[]
The legendary outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were originally train robbers from the Wild West of the United States in the 1890s, riding with the "Hole in the Wall Gang" and robbing Union Pacific Railroad trains. However, they learned in 1898 that Union Pacific executive E.H. Harriman hired a group of specially-trained men to hunt them down until they were killed, as they caused loads of trouble for his business. They fled to Bolivia after finding out that he sent the feared Indian tracker Lord Baltimore and the lawman Joe LeFors after them, having failed to secure amnesty and having their hopes dashed about becoming officers in the US Army during the Spanish-American War.
The two of them settled in Bolivia, where they eventually learned some Spanish and began to commit bank robberies. The "Bandidos Yanquis" appeared on wanted posters across the country, and Cassidy's fears that LeFors was looking for him in Bolivia led him to suggest "going straight". They briefly worked as payroll guards for prospector Percy Garris, but Garris was later killed by bandits while returning from a mine with them. They had to return to a life of crime, and in 1908 they stole from a caravan returning to La Paz from the Alparico Mine, taking the donkey with them to a village.
However, a boy in the village noticed the branding on the donkey, and he alerted the police. Several policemen had a shootout with them, but when they killed many of them, the police chief called in the Bolivian Army. Scores of Bolivian mounted troops arrived, and their captain was surprised that they called in reinforcements to take care of two men. The two men had already been wounded, and when they ran out to shoot at their enemies, the Bolivian troops fired on them in several volleys from three angles, gunning the two men down.