page_title: Execution by firing squad
section_title: Mexico
hierarchical_section_title: Execution by firing squad / By country / Mexico
context_page_description: Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading, is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Execution by shooting is a fairly old practice. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are usually readily available and a gunshot to a vital organ, such as brain or heart, most often, will kill relatively quickly.
  A firing squad is normally composed of several military personnel. Usually, all members of the group are instructed to fire simultaneously, thus preventing both disruption of the process by a single member and identification of the member who fired the lethal shot. To avoid disfigurement due to multiple shots to the head, the shooters are typically instructed to aim at the heart, sometimes aided by a paper target. The prisoner is typically blindfolded or hooded, as well as restrained, although in some cases prisoners have asked to be allowed to face the firing squad without their eyes covered. Media portrayals have frequently shown the condemned being offered a final cigarette as well. Executions can be carried out with the condemned either standing or sitting.
context_section_description: During the Mexican Independence War, several Independentist generals (such as Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos) were executed by Spanish firing squads. Also, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and several of his generals were executed in the Cerro de las Campanas after the Juaristas took control of Mexico in 1867. Manet immortalized the execution in a now-famous painting, The Execution of Emperor Maximilian; he painted at least three versions.
  Firing-squad execution was the most common way to carry out a death sentence in Mexico, especially during the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War. An example of that is in the attempted execution of Wenseslao Moguel, who survived being shot ten times—once at point-blank range—because he fought under Pancho Villa. After these events, the death sentence was reduced to some events in Article 22 of the Mexican Constitution; however, in 1917 capital punishment was abolished completely.
caption: Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, by Édouard Manet, 1868.
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