Pancho Villa
Doroteo Arango Arámbula (
June 5,
1878 –
July 23,
1923) — better known as
Francisco Villa or, in its
diminutive form,
Pancho Villa — was one of the foremost leaders and best known generals of the
Mexican Revolution, between 1911 and 1920, and provisional
governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914.
[All information in this article, unless otherwised sourced, comes from one of the following three sources:]
* Guadalupe Villa y Rosa Helia Villa (eds.), Retrato autobiográfico, 1894-1914, Mexico City, Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: Taurus: Santillana Ediciones Generales, c2003 (2004 printing). ISBN 9681913116.
* Friedrich Katz, Life and Times of Pancho Villa, Stanford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0804730466
* Jeff Howell, Pancho Villa, Outlaw, Hero, Patriot, Cutthroat: Evaluating the Many Faces of Historical Text Archive Villa mostly operated in the northern theatre of the war, centering on
Chihuahua, in the north of
Mexico. Villa is often referred to as
El centauro del norte (The
Centaur of the North), due to his celebrated
cavalry attacks as a general. Numerous streets and neighborhoods in
Mexico are named for Villa.
Villa and Villa's ardent supporters, known as
Villistas, employed tactics such as
propaganda and
firing squads against enemies,
expropriated hacienda land for distribution to peasants and
villista soldiers, and printed
fiat money to finance Villa's cause. Many of Villa's tactics and strategies were adopted by later 20th century revolutionaries.
Villa's troops were collectively known as the
División del norte (Division Of The North). His elite
cavalry troops and bodyguards were known as
Los dorados (The Golden Ones).
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 stripe, from far and wide.
Villa's revolutionary aims (other than military goals), unlike those of
Emiliano Zapata's
Plan de Ayala, were never clearly defined. Villa spoke vaguely of creating communal military colonies for his ex-soldiers, and he subscribed to
Venustiano Carranza's
Plan of Guadalupe.
Despite extensive research by Mexican and foreign scholars, many of the details of Villa's life are in dispute, and probably will always be.
Birth and parentage
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. Doroteo was an uneducated peasant, the little schooling he received was provided by the local church run village school. When his father died, Villa began to work as a
sharecropper to help support his mother and four siblings. Many people who admire Villa claim that he came home one day to find that his sister had been raped by an hacendado's son, his detractors claim that this is a fabricated story and that Villa was nothing more than a criminal who used the revolution (and the alleged rape of his sister) as an excuse for murder. Both of these stories are severe exaggerations and are used mutually in a propagandistic manner by each side. The generally accepted story states that Doroteo moved to Chihuahua at the age of 16, but promptly returned to his village after learning that his younger sister had been seduced then abandoned by an hacienda owner's son. Arango confronted the man and shot him dead. He quickly 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.
[Mexican Military Might, an article on Pancho Villa by Gary Brecher from The eXile]Life as a bandit
For several years Villa spent most of his time in the mountains running from the law. Villa had an intimate knowledge of the mountainous terrain and knew how to survive on his own in the wilderness, but by 1896 he had joined some other bandits under the control of a man named Ignacio Parra. When Parra was killed in a police ambush, Doroteo led the charge back into the wilderness were it was agreed that Doroteo would now lead. Doroteo's name, Francisco Villa, was borrowed from a well-known Mexican bandit who, according to legend, stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
Villa underwent a transformation after meeting
Abraham González, the political representative in Chihuahua of
Francisco Madero. González opened 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 7,000,000 acres (28,000 km²), larger than the state of
Maryland.
On
November 20,
1910, the
Mexican Revolution, led by Francisco Madero, began to overthrow the dictatorship of
Porfirio Diaz. After nearly 35 years of rule which the
Mexican people were thoroughly tired of, Diaz's political situation was untenable, and his poorly paid
conscript troops were no match for the motivated
antireeleccionista volunteers fighting for
libertad and
Maderismo. The
antireeleccionistas booted Diaz from office in 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
Juarez, which was viewed by
Americans sitting on the top of
railroad boxcars in
El Paso, Texas. Madero became president of Mexico. On
May 29,
1911, Villa married
Maria Luz Corral.
Most people at that time assumed that the
idealist 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 democracy in Mexico was further off than most people living in
1911 could have imagined.
A rebellion led by
Pascual Orozco started against Madero, so Villa gathered his mounted
cavalry troops, known as
Los dorados, and worked with General
Victoriano Huerta to support Madero. However, Huerta saw in Villa a powerful enemy for his own interests and later accused Villa of stealing a horse and sentenced him to execution trying to get rid of him. Villa was actually standing in front of a firing squad waiting to be shot when a telegraph from Madero was received reducing his sentence to prison. Villa was imprisoned but later escaped. During Villa's imprisonment, he improved his poor reading and writing skills a talent that would serve him well during his service as provisional
governor of the state of
Chihuahua.
After crushing the Orozco rebellion,
Victoriano Huerta with the
Mexican 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 cronies such as
Bernardo Reyes,
Félix Díaz (nephew of
Porfirio Diaz) and US ambassador
Henry Lane Wilson, which resulted in the
decena tragica ("Ten Tragic Days").
[ Usurper: The Dark Shadow of Victoriano Huerta by Jim Tuck ©1999] This began
February 9,
1913, and was a faux battle between Reyes and Diaz, occupying the Citadel
(La Ciudadela) building [
1] , against Madero, holed up in the
Palacio Nacional, in downtown
Mexico City. Huerta tricked Madero into accepting his "protection", then betrayed him, ordering his assassination and that of Vice President
Pino Suarez, and proclaimed himself as 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,
Alvaro Obregon,
Emiliano Zapata and Villa) who joined to support Carranza's plan, were collectively styled as the
Ejercito Constitutionalista de México (
Constitutionalist Army of Mexico), the
constitutionalista adjective added to stress the point that Huerta had not obtained power via methods prescribed in the
Constitution of Mexico.
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 Gonzalez's remains and gave his friend a hero's funeral in Chihuahua.
Villa joined the rebellion against Huerta, crossing the
Rio Grande into
Ciudad Juarez 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 such as
Felipe Angeles and
Sam Dreben 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.
* Statue of Pancho Villa, the Mexican Revolutionary Leader in Tucson, Arizona, United States
* Photos of Villa and the Mexican Revolution - Warning Some disturbing images. Some of these photos are also in the book The Wind That Swept Mexico.
