Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
Was Zorro based on a real person?
SHORT ANSWER Perhaps, but we’re not sure. Much like the mythos of Robin Hood, there are candidates for a real-life Zorro, but the truth is likely lost to time…
LONG ANSWER Like his English equivalent Robin Hood, much of the Zorro legend is made up of folktale, fiction and a loose association with real historical outlaws.
American writer Johnston McCulley created the character for a story called The Curse of Capistrano, first published in All-Story Weekly in 1919. The action-packed deeds of the young nobleman in early 19th-century Spanish-ruled California, who donned a black mask, hat and cape, and defended the victimised poor from their oppressors – carving his trademark Z with three swishes of his blade – immediately appealed. The next year, Zorro became a silver-screen star, played by Douglas Fairbanks.
There was no actual Don Diego de la Vega, (the unmasked identity of Zorro) but real men have since been put forward as potential inspirations. One name is William Lamport, an Irish soldier sent to Mexico and executed by the Spanish, although the more likely contender is Joaquin Murrieta. He was a gold miner-turned-bandit and leader of a gang responsible for a host of robberies, kidnappings and murders in California – only to become something of a folk hero when Native American novelist John Rollin Ridge wrote a bestselling book about him in
