Doroteo Arango Arámbula (June 5 1878 – July 23 1923), better known as Francisco or "Pancho" Villa,
was a Mexican Revolutionary general. As
commander of the División del Norte (Division of the North), he was the veritable caudillo of the Northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, which, due to its size, mineral wealth, and proximity to the United States, made him a major player
in Revolutionary military and politics. His charisma and effectiveness gave him great popularity, particularly in the North, and
he was provisional Governor of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914. While his violence and
ambition prevented his being accepted into the "pantheon" of national heroes until some twenty years after his death, today his
memory is honored by many Mexicans, and numerous streets and neighborhoods in Mexico are named
for him. In 1916 he raided Columbus, New Mexico,
which provoked the unsuccessful Punitive Expedition commanded by General
John J. Pershing, which failed miserablely in capturing Villa even though they were
equipped with the latest technology of the era and a whole year in pursuit.
Villa and his supporters, known as Villistas, employed tactics such as propaganda and firing squads against his enemies, and
expropriated hacienda land for distribution to peasants
and soldiers. He robbed and commandeered trains, and, like
the other Revolutionary generals, printed fiat money to pay for his cause. Villa's
generalship was noted for the speed of its movement of troops (by railroad), the use of
an elite cavalry unit called Los dorados ("the golden ones") (for which he earned the
nickname El Centauro del Norte (The Centaur of the North)), artillery attacks, and recruitment of the enlisted soldiers of defeated enemy units. Many of Villa's tactics
and strategies were adopted by later 20th century revolutionaries.[citation needed]
As one of the major (and most colorful) figures of the first successful popular revolution of the 20th century, Villa's
notoriety attracted journalists, photographers, and
military freebooters (of both idealistic and
opportunistic stripes) from far and wide.
Villa's non-military revolutionary aims, unlike those of the Zapatista
Plan de Ayala, were not clearly defined. Villa only spoke vaguely of creating communal
military colonies for his troops.[citation needed]
Despite extensive research by Mexican and foreign scholars, many of the details of Villa's life are in dispute.
Pre-revolutionary life
Little can be said with certainty of Doroteo Arango's early life. Most records claim he was born near San Juan del Río, Durango, on June 5,
1878, the son of Agustín Arango and María Micaela Arámbula. The boy was from an uneducated peasant
family; the little schooling he received was provided by the local church-run village school. When his father died, Arango began
to work as a sharecropper to help support his mother and four siblings. The generally
accepted story states that he moved to Chihuahua at the age of 16, but promptly returned to his village after learning that an
hacienda owner had tried to sexually assualt his younger sister. Arango confronted the man, whose name was Agustín Negrete, and
shot him dead. He then stole a horse and dashed towards the rugged Sierra Madre mountains
one step ahead of the approaching police. His career as a bandit was about to begin.[1]
Pancho Villa underwent a transformation after meeting Abraham González, the
political representative (and future governor of the state) in Chihuahua of Francisco
Madero, who was opposing the continuing and lengthy presidency of Porfirio Díaz.
González saw Villa's potential as a military ally, and helped open Villa's eyes to the political world. Villa then believed that
he was fighting for the people, to break the power of the hacienda owners
(hacendados in Spanish) over the poverty stricken peones and campesinos (farmers and sharecroppers). At the time, Chihuahua was dominated by
hacendados and mine owners. The Terrazas
clan alone controlled haciendas covering in excess of 7,000,000 acres (28,000 km²), an area larger than
some countries.
On November 20, 1910, as proclaimed by Madero's
Plan of San Luis Potosí, the Mexican
Revolution was begun to oust the dictatorship of President Porfirio Díaz. After
nearly 35 years of rule the Mexican people were thoroughly tired of corrupt government. Díaz's political situation was untenable,
and his poorly paid conscript troops were no match for the motivated
antirreeleccionista (anti-reelectionist) volunteers fighting for freedom and maderismo. The antirreeleccionistas removed Díaz from office after a few months of
fighting. Villa helped defeat the federal army of Díaz in favor of Madero in 1911, most famously in
the first Battle of Ciudad Juárez, which was viewed by Americans sitting on the top of
railroad boxcars in El Paso, Texas. Díaz left Mexico for
exile and after an interim presidency, Madero became president. On May 1, 1919, Villa married Soledad Seanez Holguin, who became
Villa's only legal wife until his death in 1923. Although many women have claimed to have been married to Villa, in 1946, the
legislature recognized Miss Seanez Holguin as Villa's only legal wife after proving the pair had had a civil and a church
wedding.
Most people at that time assumed that the new, idealistic President Madero would lead Mexico
into a new era of true democracy, and Villa would fade back into obscurity. But Villa's
greatest days of fame were yet to come, and communism in Mexico was further off than most people living in 1911 could have imagined.
Orozco's counterrevolution against Madero
A counter-rebellion led by Pascual Orozco, started against Madero, so Villa gathered
his mounted cavalry troops, Los dorados, and fought along with General Victoriano Huerta to support Madero. However, Huerta viewed Villa as an ambitious competitor, and
later accused Villa of stealing a horse and insubordination; then he had Villa sentenced to execution in an attempt to dispose of
him. Reportedly, Villa was standing in front of a firing squad waiting to be shot when a telegram from President Madero was
received commuting his sentence to imprisonment. Villa later escaped. During Villa's imprisonment, a zapatista who was in prison
at the time provided the chance meeting which would help to improve his poor reading and writing skills, which would serve him
well in the future during his service as provisional governor of the state
of Chihuahua.
Fight against Huerta's usurpation
10 centavo paper fiat money note issued by the Chihuahua state government during the anti-Huerta Constitutionalist rebellion in
1913.
After crushing the Orozco rebellion, Victoriano Huerta, with the federal army
he commanded, held the majority of military power in Mexico. Huerta saw an opportunity to make himself dictator and began to conspire with people such as Bernardo Reyes,
Félix Díaz (nephew of Porfirio Diaz) and US ambassador
Henry Lane Wilson, which resulted in the La
decena trágica ("Ten Tragic Days") and the assassination of President Madero. [2]
-
After Madero's murder, Huerta proclaimed himself as provisional president. Venustiano
Carranza then proclaimed the Plan of Guadalupe to oust Huerta from office as an
unconstitutional usurper. The new group of politicians and generals (which included Pablo
González, Álvaro Obregón, Emiliano Zapata
and Villa) who joined to support Carranza's plan, were collectively styled as the Ejército Constitucionalista de México
(Constitutionalist Army of Mexico), the constitucionalista adjective added to
stress the point that Huerta had not obtained power via methods prescribed by Mexico's Constitution of 1857.
Villa's hatred of Huerta became more personal and intense after March 7, 1913, when Huerta ordered the murder of Villa's political mentor, Abraham González. Villa later recovered
González's remains and gave his friend a hero's funeral in Chihuahua.
Villa joined the rebellion against Huerta, crossing the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande)
into Ciudad Juárez with a mere 8 men, 2 pounds of coffee, 2 pounds of sugar, and 500
rounds of rifle ammunition. The new United States president
Woodrow Wilson dismissed Ambassador Wilson, and began to support Carranza's cause.
Villa's remarkable generalship and recruiting appeal, combined with ingenious fundraising methods to support his rebellion, would
be a key factor in forcing Huerta from office a little over a year later, on July
15,1914.
This was the time of Villa's greatest fame and success. He recruited soldiers and able subordinates (both Mexican and
mercenary) such as Felipe Ángeles, Sam Dreben and Ivor Thord-Gray, and raised money via methods such as
forced assessments on hostile hacienda owners (such as
William Benton, who was killed in the Benton affair), and train robberies. In one notable
escapade, he held 122 bars of silver ingot from a train robbery
(and a Wells Fargo employee) hostage and forced Wells Fargo to help him fence the bars for spendable cash.[3] A rapid, hard-fought series of victories at Ciudad Juárez, Tierra Blanca, Chihuahua and Ojinaga followed. Villa then became provisional governor of the state of Chihuahua. Villa considered Tierra Blanca his most spectacular victory.[4]
As governor of Chihuahua, Villa raised more money for a drive to the south by printing fiat currency. He decreed his
paper money to be traded and accepted at par with
gold Mexican pesos, under penalty of execution, then forced the wealthy to trade their gold for his paper pesos by decreeing gold to be
counterfeit money. He also confiscated the gold of banks,
in the case of the Banco Minero, by holding hostage a member of the bank's owning family, the wealthy and famous Terrazas clan,
until the location of the bank's gold was revealed.
Villa's political stature at that time was so high that banks in El Paso, Texas,
accepted his paper pesos at face value. His generalship drew enough admiration from the US
military that he and Álvaro Obregón were invited to Fort
Bliss to meet Brigadier General John J. Pershing.
Generals John J. Pershing, Pancho Villa, and Álvaro Obregón pose for a photo at Fort Bliss, Texas, 1913. Immediately behind
General Pershing and to the left is his aide-de-camp, 1st Lt.
George S. Patton.
The new pile of loot was used to purchase draft animals, cavalry horses, arms,
ammunition, mobile hospital facilities (railroad cars and horse
ambulances staffed with Mexican and American volunteer doctors, known as Servicio
sanitario), and food, and to rebuild the railroad south of Chihuahua City. The rebuilt railroad transported Villa's troops
and artillery south, where he defeated Federal forces at Gómez
Palacio, Torreón, and Zacatecas.[5]
Carranza tries to halt the Villa advance, the fall of Zacatecas
After Torreón, Carranza issued a puzzling order
for Villa to break off action south of Torreón and instead ordered him to divert to attack
Saltillo, and threatened to cut off Villa's coal supply if he did not comply. Carranza
was attempmting to rob villa of his glory and keep victory for his own greedy motives. (Coal was needed for railroad locomotives to pull trains
transporting soldiers and supplies, and was therefore necessary for any general.) This was
widely seen as an attempt by Carranza to divert Villa from a direct assault on Mexico City,
so as to allow Carranza's forces under Álvaro Obregón, driving in from the west via
Guadalajara, to take the capital first, and Obregon and Carranza did enter Mexico
City ahead of Villa. This was an expensive and disruptive diversion for the División del norte, since Villa's enlisted men
were paid the then enormous sum of a peso per day, and each day of delay cost thousands of
pesos. Villa did attack Saltillo as ordered, winning that battle.
Villa, disgusted by what he saw as egoism, tendered his resignation.
Felipe Ángeles and Villa's officer staff argued for Villa to withdraw his resignation,
defy Carranza's orders, and proceed to attack Zacatecas, a strategic mountainous city
considered nearly impregnable. Zacatecas was the source of much of Mexico's silver, and thus a
supply of funds for whomever held it. Victory in Zacatecas would mean that Huerta's chances of holding the remainder of the
country would be slim. Villa accepted Ángeles' advice, cancelled his resignation, and the Division del norte defeated the
Federals in the Toma de Zacatecas (Taking of Zacatecas), the single bloodiest battle of the Revolution, with the military
forces counting approximately 7,000 dead and 5,000 wounded, and unknown numbers of civilian casualties. (A memorial to and museum
of the Toma de Zacatecas is on the Cerro de la Bufa, one of the key defense points
in the battle of Zacatecas. Tourists use a teleférico (aerial tramway) to reach
it, due to the steep approaches. From the top, tourists may appreciate the difficulties Villa's troops had trying to dislodge
Federal troops from the peak. The loss of Zacatecas in June 1914 broke the back of the Huerta regime, and Huerta left for exile
on July 14, 1914.
This was the beginning of the split between Villa the champion of the poor and the rich cynical constitutionalistas of
Carranza. Carranza's egoismo(selfishness) would eventually become self-destructive, alienating most of the people he
needed to hold power, and doom him as well.
Revolt against Carranza and Obregón
A graphical timeline is available here:
Timeline of the Mexican Revolution
Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
Villa was forced out of Mexico City in 1915, following a
number of incidents between himself, his troops and the citizens of the city, and the humiliation of President Eulalio Gutiérrez. The return of Carranza and the Constitutionalists to Mexico City from Veracruz
followed. Villa then rebelled against Carranza and Carranza's chief general, Álvaro
Obregón. Villa and Zapata styled themselves as convencionistas, supporters
of the Convention of Aguascalientes.
Unfortunately, Villa's talent for generalship began to fail him in 1915. When Villa faced
General Obregón in the First Battle of Celaya on April
15, repeated charges of Villa's vaunted cavalry proved to be no match for Obregón's
entrenchments and modern machine guns, and the
villista advance was first checked, then repulsed. In the Second battle of Celaya, Obregón lost one of his arms to
villista artillery. Nonetheless, Villa lost the battle.
Villa retrenched to Chihuahua and attempted to refinance his revolt by having a firm in
San Antonio, Texas, mint more fiat currency.[6] But the effort met with limited success, and the value of Villa's paper pesos
dropped to a fraction of their former value as doubts grew about Villa's political viability. Villa began ignoring the counsel of
the most valuable member of his military staff, Felipe Ángeles, and eventually Ángeles
left for exile in Texas. Despite Carranza's unpopularity, Carranza had an able general in Obregón and most of Mexico's military
power, and unlike Huerta, was not being hampered by interference from the United
States.
Split with the United States and the Punitive Expedition
The United States, following the diplomatic policies of Woodrow Wilson, who believed that supporting Carranza was the best way to expedite establishment of a
stable Mexican government, refused to allow more arms to be supplied to Villa, and
allowed Mexican constitutionalist troops to be relocated via US railroads. Villa,
possibly out of a sense of betrayal, began to attack Americans. He was further enraged by Obregón's use of searchlights, powered by American electricity, to help repel a
villista night attack on the border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, on November 1,1915. In January
1916, a group of villistas attacked a train on the Mexico North Western Railway, near Santa Isabel,
Chihuahua, and killed 18 American employees of the ASARCO
company.
Cross-border attack on New Mexico
On March 9, 1916, Villa ordered 1,500 (disputed, one official
US Army report stated "500 to 700") Mexican raiders, reportedly led by villista general Ramón Banda Quesada, to make a
cross-border attack against Columbus, New Mexico, in response to the U.S.
government's official recognition of the Carranza regime and for the loss of lives in battle due to defective bullets purchased
from the United States.[7] They attacked a detachment of
the 13th US Cavalry, seized 100 horses and
mules, burned the town, killed 10 soldiers and 8 civilian residents, and took much ammunition and
weaponry. Villa's forces suffered the loss of 80 dead or mortally wounded and 5 captured,[8] mostly from US machine gun emplacements.[9]
The Hunt for Pancho Villa
-
United States President Woodrow Wilson
responded to the Columbus raid by sending 6,000 troops under General John J. Pershing
to Mexico to pursue Villa. (Wilson also dispatched several divisions of Army and National Guard troops to protect the southern US
border against further raids and counterattacks.) In the U.S., this was known as the Punitive or Pancho Villa Expedition. During the search, the United States launched its first air combat
mission with eight airplanes.[10][11] At the same time Villa, was also being sought by Carranza's army. The U.S.
expedition was eventually called off after failing to find Villa, and Villa successfully escaped from both armies.
Later life and assassination
After the Punitive Expedition, Villa remained at large but never regained his
former stature or military power. Carranza's loss of Obregon as chief general in 1917, and his
preoccupation with the continuing rebellion of the Zapatista and
Felicista forces in the south (much closer to Mexico
City and perceived as the greater threat), prevented him from applying sufficient military pressure to extinguish the
Villa nuisance. Few of the Chihuahuans who could have informed on Villa were inclined to cooperate with the Carranza regime.
Villa's last major raid was on Ciudad Juárez in 1919.
In 1920, Villa negotiated peace with new President Adolfo de la Huerta and ended
his revolutionary activity. He went into semi-retirement, with a detachment of 50 of dorados for protection, at the
hacienda of El Canutillo.[12] He was assassinated three years later (1923) in Parral,
Chihuahua, in his car. The assassins were never arrested, although a Durango politician, Jesús Salas Barraza, publicly
claimed credit. While there is some circumstantial evidence that Obregón or
Plutarco Elías Calles was behind the killing, Villa made many enemies over his
lifetime, who would have had motives to murder him.[13]
Today Villa is remembered by many Mexicans as a folk hero.
According to Western folklore, grave robbers
decapitated his corpse In 1926.[14]
Villa's original death mask was hidden at the Radford School in El Paso, Texas, until
the 1970s, when it was sent to the National Museum of the
Revolution in Chihuahua; other museums have ceramic and bronze copies.[15]
The location of the remainder of Villa's corpse is in dispute. It may be in the city cemetery of Parral, Chihuahua,[16] or in
Chihuahua City, or in the Monument of the Revolution in Mexico
City.[17] Tombstones for Villa exist in both
places. A pawn shop in El Paso, Texas, claims to be
in possession of Villa's preserved trigger finger.[18][19]
His final words were reported as: "No permitas que esto acabe así. Cuentales que he dicho algo." This translates as: "Don't
let it end like this. Tell them I have said something."
Period newsreel showing views of
the assassination location in Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua, news reporters at the scene, and Villa's bullet riddled corpse
and auto. Warning Contains possibly disturbing images of Villa's corpse.
Villa's battles and military actions
Villa's personality, eccentricities and habits, trivia and legends about Villa
As noted in the introduction, the tumultuous times of the Mexican revolution in
which Villa lived means that many details of Villa's life will never be completely verifiable. Even contemporary press and
eyewitness accounts often conflict, each side of the conflict had a propaganda machine
churning out its own spin on events. However, listing some of the legends and stories is important for explaining Villa's
political mystique.
John Reed's book Insurgent Mexico relates many tales of Villa, and has
stories of Reed's personal encounters with the general. John Eisenhower's book
Intervention! details the US interventions in Tampico and Chihuahua during the Revolution. Freidrich Katz's Life and Times of Pancho Villa is the most thorough
scholarly English language treatment of Villa's life.
- Villa was noted as a school builder, proposing schools in Chihuahua wherever he saw
children gathered.
- He was a lover of ice cream. One corrido song of
the revolution states that Villa made a point of stopping for ice cream before gunning down a betrayer on the streets of
Chihuahua.
- He was a lifelong teetotaler, and supposedly gagged on a toast of brandy offered to him
by Emiliano Zapata.
- As a fact, Villa prohibited his soliders and leaders from consuming alcoholic beverages. Anyone caught drinking alcohol or
intoxicated would be considered a first and last offense-the punishment is being gunned down on the spot without warning. Villa
required that his soldiers are alert, sober and ready to fight, if needed, at an instant.
- He was a dancer of legendary stamina. Reed claims Villa arrived late for the Battle of
Torreón, after an all-night dancing stint. Reed may have cleaned up the account a bit to avoid
having his book or writings comstocked by the Post Office.
- Villa was a ladies' man and a
polygamist. Numbers on how many women Villa married vary, but it has been speculated as many as
26.
- Villa supposedly escaped the Punitive Expedition by having himself sewn up
inside the body of a dead horse.
- Some of Villa's soldiers, in mufti, reportedly attended a movie along with Pershing's
men, during the Punitive Expedition.
- Villa may have been involved in the demise of Ambrose Bierce.
- Villa's legal widow, Luz Corral, operated Villa's former mansion, Quinta Luz as the
Museo de la Revolución in Chihuahua until her death in 1981. The museum is still in operation, and Villa's death car is on display.[21][22]
- There are unconfirmed rumors that the Skull and Bones club at Yale University is in possession of Villa's skull.[23]
- The song La Cucaracha was modified and popularized by Villa's troops to mock
Venustiano Carranza. Multiple theories exist over exactly who or what the oblique
reference to the cockroach, was meant to refer to (possibly Villa's car or Villa's army).[24] As with other corridos, the song was an
oral tradition and verses were frequently made up or modified impromptu by whoever sang it.
- The son of Giuseppe Garibaldi, noted Italian
patriot, was a colonel on Villa's military staff. Garibaldi, Jr. was sacked by Villa for claiming too much credit in the press
for Villa's 1911 victory in Ciudad Juárez.
- Rodolfo Fierro, Villa's sidekick and noted cold-blooded killer, reportedly once killed a
random passerby in the streets of Chihuahua, to settle a bet on whether a dying man
fell forwards or backwards. (He fell backwards - so Fierro won the bet). Fierro also reportedly had condemned men line up single
file, so as to dispatch multiple victims with a single bullet.
- At the Battle of Tierra Blanca, Chihuahua,
Villa (or possibly Rodolfo Fierro) invented the tactic of máquina
loca (Crazy Locomotive), namely hijacking a locomotive behind enemy lines, packing
it with explosives, then sending it with the throttle tied down into the rows of railroad cars at the enemy's rear.
- In the Benton affair, Villa and Mexican revolutionaries in general earned the lifelong enmity
of Winston Churchill, by executing William Benton, an obstinate English
hacienda owner.
- In 1913, Villa employed a railroad coal train as a Trojan horse,
packing it with his troops and backing it into the railroad station in Ciudad Juárez, to
surprise and defeat the federal troops there.[25]
- The Division del norte had no foot infantry per se, Villa attempted to supply a horse for each of his soldiers.
- Photos showing General Villa posing with a robot are a modern day hoax.[26] Robotic technology did not exist
in Villa's day, and Villa's military did not employ robots. See: Boilerplate
(robot).
- Some Treasure magazines, such as Lost Treasure regularly report that he has
buried loot worth Billions of US dollars all over Mexico and the US.
- A French synth pop group Magazine 60 titled a synth pop song called "Pancho Villa" in
1987.
German involvement in Villa's later campaigns
Prior to the Villa-Carranza split in 1915, there is no credible evidence that Villa co-operated with or accepted any help from
the German government or agents. Villa was supplied arms from the USA, employed American mercenaries and doctors, portrayed as a hero in the US media, and did not object to the 1914 US naval occupation of Veracruz (Villa's observation was that the occupation merely
hurt Huerta). The German consul in Torreón made entreaties to Villa, offering him arms and money to occupy the port and oil
fields of Tampico to enable German ships to dock there, this offer was rejected by Villa.
Germans and German agents did attempt to interfere, unsuccessfully, in the Mexican Revolution. Germans attempted to plot with Victoriano Huerta to assist him to retake the
country, and in the infamous Zimmermann Telegram to the Mexican government, proposed
an alliance with the government of Venustiano Carranza.
There were documented contacts between Villa and the Germans, after Villa's split with the Constitutionalists. Prinicipally
this was in the person of Felix A. Sommerfeld, (noted in Katz's book), who in 1915 funneled
$340,000 of German money to the Western Cartridge Company to purchase
ammunition. However, the actions of Sommerfeld indicate he was likely acting in his own self interest (he supposedly was paid a
$5,000 per month stipend for supplying dynamite and arms to Villa, a fortune in 1915, and acted as
a double agent for Carranza). Villa's actions were hardly that of a German catspaw, rather, it appears that Villa only resorted
to German assistance after other sources of money and arms were cut off.[27]
At the time of Villa's attack on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, Villa's military power had been marginalized and was mostly an impotent nuisance (he was repulsed at Columbus
by a small cavalry detachment, albeit after doing a lot of damage), his theatre of operations was mainly limited to western
Chihuahua, he was persona non grata with
Mexico's ruling Carranza constitutionalists, and the subject of an embargo by the
United States, so communication or further shipments of arms between the Germans and Villa
would have been difficult. A plausible explanation of any Villa-German contacts after 1915 would be that they were a futile
extension of increasingly desperate German diplomatic efforts and villista pipe dreams
of victory as progress of their respective wars bogged down. Villa effectively did not have anything useful to offer in exchange
for German help at that point.
When weighing claims of Villa conspiring with Germans, one should take into account that at the time, portraying Villa as a
German sympathizer served the propaganda ends of both Carranza and Wilson.
The use of Mauser rifles and carbines by Villa's forces does not necessarily indicate any German connection, these were widely used by all
parties in the Mexican Revolution, Mauser longarms being enormously popular weapons
and having been standard issue in the Mexican Army, which had begun adopting 7 mm Mauser
system arms as early as 1895.[28]
Pancho Villa in films, video, and television
Villa represented in films by himself in 1912, 1913, and
1914. Many other actors have represented him, such as:
Footnotes
