Biography
Victorio Correa was a coal miner and National Miners Union picket captain in the 1933 Gallup, New Mexico strike. He was wounded in the leg by a strikebreaker or company supporter during that strike. His brothers Alejandro and Gregorio also organized among Gallup miners. Victorio participated in the International Labor Defense, the Unemployed Council and protests for relief work. After the April 4, 1935 confrontation in which Sheriff M. R. Carmichael was killed, he was held in the state penitentiary at Santa Fe and prosecuted with nine other men for murder. The jury acquitted Correa in October, but he was immediately returned to jail under $2,000 bond on a separate accusation of helping a prisoner escape. He also faced deportation proceedings.
The October 9, 1935 Daily Worker’s interview with Isabelle Ochoa places him in the state penitentiary with Juan Ochoa following the Gallup prosecution. She reports that Correa’s wife and five children had been evicted. The family account supplies no new individual intake or discharge date. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n242-NAT-oct-09-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=2
The April 20, 1935 Daily Worker named Victorio Correa among the Gallup defendants facing first-degree murder proceedings in Santa Fe after the early-April confrontation at the courthouse. The April 19 report described a preliminary hearing, with forty-five defendants appearing and three unavailable through wounds or illness. The report establishes charges and hearing participation, but does not individually establish continued physical detention for every person in its roster. No complete term or exact arrest date is established. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n095-NAT-apr-20-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=1
Page 1’s May 10 Santa Fe dispatch individually identifies this Gallup defendant as $7,500 murder bail; Unemployed Miners Union member and active 1933 strike leader. It describes fourteen workers held in the state penitentiary death-house area awaiting trial, ten on first-degree murder accusations and four on escape accusations. Pretrial placement in that area does not mean a death sentence was imposed. Bail set does not establish bail posting; later dispositions in the existing record remain distinct. Page 8 calls for trade-union defense. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n113-NAT-may-11-1935-DW-Q.pdf
The account identifies him as a wounded 1933 picket captain and a 1935 Santa Fe prisoner facing murder, escape and deportation accusations. His 1933 wounding does not establish a separate 1933 arrest. Daily Worker, October 7, 1935, original PDF page 5. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n240b-NAT-oct-07-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=5
Page 8 individually names this defendant among seven acquitted of murdering Sheriff M. R. Carmichael in the Gallup case. The same report explicitly says all seven were immediately remanded to jail for inability to furnish $2,000 bond on the separate accusation of aiding and abetting a prisoner’s escape. Acquittal of murder therefore is not entered as physical release. Printed Augustine Cavillo, Gregory Correa and Rafael Gomez are retained as contemporary roster variants of the matched existing defendants; the report supplies no individual actual discharge or completed service. Source: https://newspapers.swco.ttu.edu/bitstreams/34268242-ac0d-472e-8d03-7eb5b704a2c0/download
The October 20 Santa Fe dispatch identifies this acquitted Gallup defendant among the three for whom habeas corpus proceedings were being started to prevent deportation. Printed Correo/Gregario variants refer to the existing Correa defendants. The planned legal step is not an order granting freedom or proof of actual discharge. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n253-NAT-oct-21-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=1
Page 4 reports the Denver conference's resolution to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins protesting attempts to deport Gregorio and Victorio Correa and Rafael Gomez to Mexico after their Gallup trial acquittals. It records threatened immigration removal, not an executed deportation, and does not equate acquittal with discharge from the separately reported escape proceedings. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n263-NAT-oct-31-1935-DW-Q.pdf
Daily Worker, April 25, 1935, pages 1–2: The April 24 Santa Fe report individually lists this Gallup defendant among ten bound over after the preliminary murder hearing, among six held under an aggregate $45,000 bail; no individual allocation is supplied here. It reports murder accusations dismissed against thirty-eight of the original forty-eight and four other defendants retained under $500 bail on prisoner-escape accusations. Its overlapping reference to the ten as held for assisting escape is preserved as the report's wording, without replacing the later individualized charging and trial history. The paper alleges deputy gunfire killed the sheriff and miners; that account is attributed. Continued detention, not a final imposed sentence or exact discharge, is established. Three unnamed released defendants reportedly were immediately seized for deportation; those unnamed transfers are not assigned to this person. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n099-NAT-apr-25-1935-DW-Q.pdf
Gallup jail-start date
An appeal dated September 24, 1935 at New Mexico State Prison, Santa Fe, and printed on October 1, individually lists Victorio Correa among its ten signatories. The prisoners state that they have been jailed since April 4, 1935. This first-person custody statement supports recording April 4 as the beginning of confinement in the Gallup case. It does not establish a physical release date, a completed sentence or present-day custody. The scheduled October trial is not used as release.
Daily Worker, October 1, 1935, original PDF pages 1–2, especially the complete signed appeal on page 2. Some page 1 text is damaged in the surviving scan; the date and signatures on page 2 are legible and were checked visually.
Contemporary Gallup defense account
Described as married with three children and member of the ILD and Unemployment Council. The three-child description is retained as this pamphlet’s claim alongside the later five-child family account, without assuming either account supplies a complete household history. The group containing this name is described as held on $7,500 murder bond. The pamphlet says all ten also faced aiding-escape allegations with an additional $1,000 bond. The printed roster actually contains nine names despite referring to ten defendants and “these four” before listing only three in the first group. No missing individual is supplied by inference. These early bail conditions are distinct from later post-trial bonds; neither the bail amount nor the advocacy account establishes a release or time served.
Louis Colman, Night Riders in Gallup (1935), pages 3, 11–12.
Daily Worker, May 11, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, October 31, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, April 25, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
