Lee Christmas was born on February 2, 1863 in Louisiana. As a young man he worked as a tugboat pilot and afterwards worked as a railroad laborer.In 1894 he moved to Puerto Cortes, Honduras, where he joined a group of rebels who were fighting against the government, but he later defected and joined the government forces. He threwhis lot with General Manuel Bonilla who took power but was later overthrown by President Davila.
This is were Samuel Zemurray steps in and helps Bonilla who had always been a staunch supporter of the banana companies get back in the presidency, Christmas who along with Mike “Machine Gun” Molony and other mercenaries helped make this happen, after this success was made General. Because of his participation in this movement which didn’t have the approval of the US government he was stripped of his US citizenship.
Now Christmas was really feared in the country as he moved around on a train with armed flat cars, usually machine guns which he was more than ready to use. He was in reality Mr. Zemurray’s hatchetman, and along with him were several more US citizens who were also mercenaries.While he did lead a good life for a few years in Honduras, President Bonilla died not long after gaining the presidency and Lee’s fortunes changed, Mr. Zemurray who was able to obtain most of what he wante from Bonilla, knew he was indebted to Christmas so he got him a job as chief of the Sanitary Police in Guatemala, after two earthqukes had struck that country, which was nearly completely controlled by United Fruit, which was now nearly completely in Zemurray’s hands.
He somehow regained his US citizenship, but by 1923 he was sick with tuberculosis and had managed to become penniless, luckily for him Guy Malone was now chief of police in New Orleans and sent him money for passage back to New Orleans were he died in 1924.
During his life in Honduras he mainly enforced the will of the United Fruit company and Mr. Samuel Zemurray, his memory is still alive here, many legends have been made around his figure, in the end he was just a man who found that violence in a country like Honduras paid well.As an afterthought and just for the fun of it, a train in Honduras was called a Machangay (I say was because there is no more railroad in the country) now this word is the Honduranization of machine gun.
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