Biography
Manuel Avitia was one of the ten Gallup, New Mexico miners charged with first-degree murder after the 4 April 1935 eviction riot, and one of the three convicted of second-degree murder at Aztec on 17 October 1935 and sentenced to forty-five to sixty years at hard labor in the Santa Fe penitentiary. On 4 April 1935 a crowd of Gallup, New Mexico coal miners protesting the eviction of a National Miners' Union family clashed with deputies; Sheriff Carmichael was killed and two miners shot dead. Under martial law some six hundred were rounded up, dozens held for deportation, and ten miners — most of them Mexican-born — were charged with first-degree murder, facing the electric chair. At the Aztec trial in October 1935 three were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to forty-five to sixty years; the rest were acquitted, several only to be seized for deportation. The Gallup case became one of the ILD's great Southwestern defenses.