From a young age he was very hardworking. He devoted himself to
livestock and
agriculture on his
hacienda in
Huatabampo,
Sonora, which he lost when took up arms against Governor Ignacio Pesqueira, after proclamation of his Plan of the Promontories, on 2 September 1873, for which he was exiled from Sonora for ten years.
Mining businessman and municipal president of Ocampo, Chihuahua In the aforementioned year of 1873 he settled in the mineral of
Ocampo, in the
State of
Chihuahua, very close to the Sonoran municipality of
Yécora. He was a shareholder of the Santa Juliana Mining Company, and
municipal president of Ocampo. With this position, he arrived on 22 January 1883 in the town of Pinos Altos ("High Pines"), where he suffocated a
strike of
miners and had three workers shot in the Las Lajas neighborhood: Blas Venegas, Cruz Baca, and Ramon Mena. Two or three hours later, the political chief Ramón Campos arrived in the town and ordered the execution of two labor leaders, promoters of the strike: Juan Valenzuela and Francisco Campos.
Return to Sonora In 1888 he sold his shares in the
mining sector and returned to Sonora. Upon learning that the
Porfiriato government (the long term of
General Porfirio Díaz in office) began to grant concessions for the use of the waters of various rivers, giving ownership of the demarcated land in exchange for the cost of the technical work and construction of the works for the irrigation of those lands, presented his project for the southern region of Sonora called
Valle del Yaqui. On 22 August 1890, by means of a contract signed by Conant and
General Carlos Pacheco, Secretary of Development, Colonization and Industry of the regime of Porfirio Díaz, the Federal Government granted the concession to open 300 000 hectares of land (741 290
acres) for cultivation and open
irrigation canals taking advantage of the waters of the
Yaqui and
Mayo rivers, in the State of Sonora, and the
Fuerte River in the State of Sinaloa. The approval of the contract was published four months later, on 22 December 1890. Conant undertook the first demarcations on the Yaqui River lands, with his own resources, those of his brother Benito and those of fellow shareholder Santos Valenzuela, but the magnitude of the project required more financing. He traveled to New York and formed the Sonora-Sinaloa Irrigation Company, partnering with
American investors, to found a company that was integrated by Walter Logan, as president and treasurer; Carlos Conant as vice president and general manager; Salter S. Clark as secretary, and Z. O. Stocker as
civil engineer. With the above, this businessman born in
Guaymas became one of the first
settlers of the now fertile
Valle del Yaqui. == Personal life ==