The Mexican Lindbergh—And Why New Jersey Remembers Him

Emilio Carranza near the end of his short life.

(Rafael J. Del Vecchio)

“All glory is fleeting,” the ancient Romans were fond of reminding their heroes. The wisdom of this is attested to by the life of Emilio Carranza Rodriguez.

When he died in 1928—yesterday was the seventy-eighth anniversary of his fatal plane crash—he was one of the most famous fliers in the world, perhaps on the verge of being placed on the same pedestal as his friend and inspiration Charles Lindbergh. Nearly eight decades later, he is unknown in this country—except to the 300-odd locals and visiting Mexicans who gathered in the middle of the New Jersey Pine Barrens this past Saturday to honor him.

If you didn’t know to look for it, you might zoom right by the clearing where a 12-foot monument stands off a little two-lane road in the heart of one of the most isolated parts of the Pine Barrens. If you stopped, there’s a good chance you’d be the only person there, though tributes in the form of pennies, nickels, dimes, and artificial flowers testify to numerous pilgrimages.

The monument, erected in 1933 and paid for by contributions of pesos from Mexican children, is constructed in the form of a giant pylon. The image of an Aztec eagle is carved on one side. On the other side is the dedication to “Capitan aviator Emilio Carranza, muerto tragicamente el 12 de julio 1928.” Captain Carranza, the “Lone Eagle of Mexico,” or “Mexico’s Lindbergh,” died trying to fly from New York to Mexico City.

Like Lindbergh, Carranza flew a Ryan B-1 monoplane. He had become friendly with the great American aviator the previous September at a ceremony in El Paso, Texas, and they renewed their acquaintance four months later when Lindbergh made a goodwill flight from Washington, D.C., to Mexico City. Carranza resolved to return the gesture with a flight the other way, but he was forced by fog to land in North Carolina. A day later he completed the journey to Washington, and he was greeted by President Calvin Coolidge and a host of journalists from all over the world.

Already a national hero in Mexico—he was the grand nephew of Don Venustiano Carranza, who became the first constitutional president of Mexico, nephew of the Mexican aviation pioneer General Alberto Salinas Carranza, and a veteran of the Jaqui rebellion—he enjoyed a brief holiday as an international hero, attending banquets in New York and receiving honors from President Coolidge and Mayor Jimmy Walker. His face appeared in newspapers, magazines, and newsreels all over the world. However, he wasn’t satisfied with having fallen just short of Lindbergh’s achievement. The 23-year-old determined that he would return nonstop from New York to Mexico City, the longest solo flight ever attempted in the Americas.

He waited for a series of thunderstorms to pass and finally gave up in frustration and decided to postpone the flight. Then while at dinner he received a telegram from his superior officer in Mexico ordering his immediate return. He took off sometime after 7 p.m., to the cheers of several hundred well-wishers, heading for the New Jersey coast. In the dark of night, his plane, laden with extra fuel, was caught in another storm; he was apparently unable to maneuver out of danger and crashed into what is now the Wharton State Forest, in the town of Tabernacle.

The following afternoon at around 3 a local man named John Carr, who was picking berries with his family in an area known as Sandy Ridge, found a piece of a silver wing. Later Carr would claim to have discovered Carranza’s body; the Mexican pilot, he said, was holding a flashlight in his hand. Today no one is quite sure exactly why Carranza was ordered home and left under such conditions.

The authorities were notified, and Mount Holly Post 11 of the American Legion was summoned. “In this desolate spot,” reads the history on Post 11’s website (www.post11.org), “was born the Post’s program of international amity.” The Legionnaires helped recover the flier’s body, placing a protective ring around the crash site and hacking their way through the dense underbrush to make a path to carry the body out. They carried Carranza to Mount Holly; his casket, accompanied by United States Army officers, was draped with an American flag from Mount Holly Post 11 and taken by train to Mexico City. The flag hangs today in Mexico’s School of Aviation.

The next year, the Legion conducted the first memorial service at the Carranza crash site, making “a solemn pledge to conduct a pilgrimage each year, and pay honor to the memory of Captain Carranza.” The promise has remained unbroken for 77 years.

Last weekend saw more visitors to the monument than pass by in a normal year, as hundreds of tourists, locals, and visitors from Mexico gathered in Tabernacle to attend the annual Carranza memorial service and the Carranza Festival. Carranza relatives, officials from the Republic of Mexico, and members of the Mexican Culture Center joined representatives of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Girl and Boy Scouts, New Jersey State Police, and the county sheriff’s office in a fiesta picnic that included a live performance by a local band, the Sugar Sand Ramblers, and, according to William Heller, senior vice commander of Post 11 and chairman of the Carranza committee, “even a piñata or two.”

What the Mount Holly Legionnaires call a “re-enactment march” of the carrying of Carranza’s body from the forest was done to the music of “Going Home.” Wreaths were placed on the monument, and the United States Air Force honored Carranza with a “missing plane” fly-by, in which a squadron leaves a gap in the formation to signify a fallen flyer.

The Carranza Festival in Mexico has always been a major event, but in recent years in New Jersey “the festival had kind of dwindled down in recent years,” Heller said. “A few years ago we decided to revive it into a fitting tribute to Capt. Carranza and his desire to establish goodwill between the United States and Mexico. There are people in Mexico who still sing songs about this man. We’re not going to let his memory fade away in New Jersey.”

With luck, Carranza’s story may soon be well known outside of New Jersey and pockets of Mexico. Right now there are three filmmakers preparing documentaries on the flier’s life: Robert Emmons, of Rutgers University—Camden, Josh Feldman, a native Jerseyian currently working as a producer in Los Angeles, and a Mexican-American filmmaker from Chicago, Juan Carranza, who is no relation to the captain. “There’s a small community who pays tribute to a Mexican hero that no one else in the U.S. knows about,” says Carranza. “This is a story that has to be told.”

—Allen Barra is a contributing editor of American Heritage magazine.