Francisco Javier Montez de Ballesteros (1872-1912), better known as Javier Escuella, was a Mexican revolutionary, gunmen, outlaw who was affiliated with the Van der Linde Gang during the late 19th century. He was captured by his former outlaw comrade, John Marston in 1911 during the Mexican Revolution, was arrested and hanged without trial in Texas in 1912.
Biography
Escuella playing the guitar, 1899
Javier Escuella was born in Nuevo Paraiso, Mexico to a family of peasants; his father was a drunkard who worked on the land of the Allende family. When he was a boy, Javier witnessed his uncle and four other men castrated and fed to pigs for demanding that villagers be paid fair wages. Opposed to the corrupt government of Porfirio Diaz, Escuella became a notorious revolutionary and bounty hunter. He was forced to flee Mexico after killing a high-ranking army officer in a fight over a woman in Punta Orgullo, and he would not be able to return until there was a change in power. In 1895, he joined Dutch van der Linde's gang while they were both trying to steal chickens, and he found a strong connection to Dutch's ideals of freedom. Escuella became unquestioning in his loyalty to Dutch and was one of his most dependable recruits, and he and fellow gang member Arthur Morgan later helped to save a wounded John Marston after the Blackwater massacre of 1899. He went on to take part in numerous robberies, raids, kidnappings, and murders across the American West that year, and he took part in the gang's flight to Guarma after a failed bank robbery in New Orleans. He was captured by the Guarman army and tortured before being freed by his friends, and it took some time for him to recover from his injuries. Upon his return to the United States with the gang, he sided with Dutch and Micah Bell against Morgan and Marston, who had been accused of disloyalty, and he fled to Mexico when the gang disintegrated. By 1907, he was living in the mountains of Mexico, and he became a hitman for Colonel Agustin Allende during the Mexican Revolution. In 1911, he was captured by his former friend Marston, who worked with the revolutionaries to capture Escuella for the FBI. Escuella was lassoed and hogtied during the Battle of El Presidio, and he was driven back to America by agents Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham. Not long after, he was tried and hanged for his crimes.
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