Eligio Ancona

Eligio María Ancona Castillo (November 30, 1836 – April 3, 1893) was a teacher, lawyer, novelist, historian, playwright, journalist, and Mexican politician who was born in Mérida, Yucatán.

[3] Eligio Ancona was a councilor on the city council of Mérida, but when the Second Mexican Empire[4] took control, he disagreed with the new regimen so much that he declared himself republican and abandoned his post.

He criticized the regimen of Maximilian I[5] by writing and directing the newspaper, The Pill (La Píldora), which was quickly censored by the government.

There are two possibilities for his birthday: the first is recorded as December 1, 1836 by Francisco Sosa in “The Contemporaries” (1884)[7] and by Gustavo Martínez Alomía in Historians of Yucatán (1906).

[8] The controversy was seemingly elucidated in 1936, when the baptismal record of Eligio Jesús Acona Castillo was found in the parochial archives of the cathedral of Yucatán with Ancona's birthday listed as November 30, 1835.