Rafael de Nogales Méndez

Rafael Ramón Intxauspe Méndez, or Pedro Rafael Inchauspe Méndez, known internationally as Rafael de Nogales Méndez (October 14, 1877 – July 10, 1936 or 1937 ) was a Venezuelan soldier, spy, writer, and adventurer. He rejected the term adventurer, preferring to describe himself as a "knight-errant" driven by the motto "act or die." During World War I, he served as a general in the army of the Ottoman Empire and was a key Western witness to the events surrounding the Armenian genocide.

Early life and origins Born in San Cristóbal, Táchira State, on October 14, 1877, he was baptized in the same town at the San Sebastián Parish Church on March 19, 1878, with family roots in the Táchira town of Seboruco. Rafael de Nogales was the only son of Pedro Felipe Inchauspe (or Intxauspe), a native of Nutrias, owner of copper mines in Seboruco, coffee plantations in El Abejal, and a major shareholder of the Great Táchira Railway. His mother, Josefa Méndez Brito, was originally from Barinas. De Nogales was educated in Germany, Belgium, and Spain, studying philosophy, literature, and sciences at the universities of Barcelona, Brussels, and Leuven. There, he gradually developed an anti-Turkish and pro-Armenian sentiment due to him witnessing the Armenian genocide.

In his writings, Nogales described the massacres and reported that civil authorities preferred to perpetrate the murders at night with the help of Kurdish militias. Regarding Van, he recounted that the attackers of the Armenian quarter were not insurgents, but the civil authorities themselves supported by mobs. When he tried to stop the assault, the local mayor replied that he was merely fulfilling an unequivocal order from the governor-general to exterminate all Armenian males aged twelve and older. During his visit to Aghtamar in Lake Van, where the Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Cross is located, he discovered the corpses of numerous murdered priests.

On June 26, 1915, he visited Diyarbakır and conversed with its governor, Mehmet Reşid, known historically as the "butcher of Diyarbakir." There he witnessed new massacres against the provincial Christian population. According to Nogales's account, Reşid told him that he had received a telegram directly from the Interior Minister, Talaat Pasha, with the explicit order to "Burn-Destroy-Kill."

He soon understood the gravity of his perilous situation, witnessing scenes that "no Christian should be a witness to." Nogales requested his discharge from the army, claiming that he had been secretly sentenced to die by poisoning by the Turkish command for "knowing too much." This claim is contested by historians such as Mehmet Necati Kutlu, who points to a document from General Mahmud Kâmil dated October 1915 indicating that Nogales posed no danger to the Empire even if he disclosed information after his discharge.

Prior to his departure, he served on the Mesopotamian front and the Kut-al-Amara front in 1916. He later joined the Ottoman Fourth Army on the Palestine and Gaza front in 1917, where his contingent defeated the British. He was appointed military governor of Sinai in Egypt, an occupied province that he partially managed to retake—dynamiting the wells of Bir-Biren and taking the Egyptian gate—before being ordered to return to Constantinople.