Note VI-55 — Chapter VI · CIVIL WAR. 1829-1838.

Tempsky, Mitla, 337, says that Carrera was born in Santa Rosa, misled probably by the circumstance that the first Indian outbreak under his lead occurred there. He was born about 1815 or 1816, and was the illegitimate offspring of Antonio Aycinena, a member of one of the chief families of Guatemala, and of Manuela Carrillo, a servant in the paternal mansion. Through the influence of the Aycinenas he was immediately after his birth adopted by one Juana Rosa Turcios, whose husband's name of Carrera the boy subsequently was given. Such is the version of the author of a manuscript written in July 1844, and entitled Orígen de Carrera, in Morazan y Carrera, no. 4, 1 et seq., the authenticity of which is made doubtful by some inaccuracies in other statements, the object evidently being to give Carrera's descent a little respectability. Stephens, Cent. Am., i. 225, says that in 1829 he was a drummer-boy, leaving the army after the capture of Guatemala by Morazan, and retiring to Mataquescuintla, where he became a pig-driver, or, as Montgomery, Guat., 143-4, has it, a dealer in hogs, having risen in the federal army as high as corporal. Dunlop, Cent. Am., 195, followed by Crowe's Gospel, 141, and Squier's Trav., ii. 429, essentially confirms Stephens' statements. Belly, Nic., i. 75, adds that Carrera was for a time employed in the plantation of a Frenchman named Laumonier, near La Antigua. Montúfar says of him: 'Un joven como de 25 años, sin ninguna educacion, ni conocimientos de ningun género, pues no conocia siquiera el abecedario. Los primeros años de su vida los empleó, ya de sirviente doméstico, ya de apacentador de cerdos, ya de peon en los trabajos de campo.' The same authority refers to Milla's eulogies of Carrera, where the words occur, 'Carrera á pesar de su falta de educacion, y de los hábitos de la vida del campo,' which might have secured for Milla lodgings in the dungeons of the castle of Guatemala. The same writer repeats the assertion often made against the jesuit Paul, later bishop of Panamá, and raised to the position of archbishop of Bogotá, that he said at Carrera's death, in his funeral oration, that the man whose corpse was descending into the tomb was on the right side of God the father. All repentant villains are given some such post-mortem place by sympathizing ministers of the gospel.