A hero of the Mexican social struggle, or a bandit capable of committing the worst murders.
Definitions can be extreme when talking about José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, better known as Pancho Villa, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution, who was assassinated on July 20, 1923, 100 years ago now.
Born into poverty on a ranch in the northern state of Durango, Pancho Villa became involved in illegal activities as a teenager, either to get money or to take justice into his own hand.
“A revolutionary with a bank robbery mentality”, is defined by the writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II, author of one of the most extensive documentary investigations on the life of the leader of 30,000 men who dared to invade the United States (the only foreign intervention that has experienced that country in the last two centuries).
“A man they hated so much that to kill him they fired 150 bullets at the car in which he was traveling; whose head was stolen three years after his murder, ”adds Taibo II in his work“ Pancho Villa: a narrative biography ”.
But as the author himself acknowledges, so much is said about such a figure in the history of Mexico “that sometimes it seems impossible” to unravel their stories.
Some moments, however, define who Doroteo Arango was and how he came to be the legendary Pancho Villa.
At BBC Mundo we select 6.
1. The day that marked his life
Doroteo Arango was born in June 1878 into a poor family that lived in a hamlet in La Coyotada, in the state of Durango (in the north of the country, which for him “was the whole of life”).
Since he was a teenager he became a card player, and as such, the hands were not always in his favor, so he became involved in cattle rustling to pay off debts.
“There are too many stories that make us think that before September 1894, the young Doroteo Arango had his run-ins with the law and order of the landowners,” explains Taibo II.
But the 22nd of that month of September is key due to an incident that has been recounted in various ways: one of the heads of the Gogorito hacienda of the López Negrete family (it is not clear if it was Laureano, or one of his sons, Agustín ) tried to abuse Martina, Arango’s sister.
When Doroteo Arango, 16, arrived home, he found that farmer and, without thinking too much about it, he went to look for a weapon and shot him: “I put bullets in him, three of which hit him,” Pancho Villa recounted years later.
Although it did not kill him, the attack in defense of his sister condemned him to be an enemy of the powerful man of the place. He fled to the Sierra de La Silla to save his life.
This is considered a key moment in the life of the young Arango and one that marked him in his personality for the rest of his life.
Some writers of the time, such as Luis Aguirre Benavides or Jesús Vargas, question the idea that that adolescent could have evaded the people in the service of the landowner. Benavides says that it could have been a story to hide his “stormy past”.
Francisco I. Madero, the politician who years later would launch the call for the Mexican Revolution, to which Villa would join, also came to speak about this episode of defense of the honor of Villa’s sister, who was only 12 years old.
“The fact is that history has too many parallel sources that tend to confirm that in 1894 Doroteo Arango definitively confronted the power of the hacienda,” says Taibo II.
2. The rise of “Pancho Villa”
Before joining the Mexican Revolution, Doroteo Arango’s adventures in different parts of Durango and Chihuahua are related to cattle theft and other outrages alone or in groups.
“His history before the revolution is vulgar, full of cruelty and infamy. What is picturesque is the landscape. What is mitigating is the sentimentality with which he acts in many of his acts, ”wrote the essayist Ramón Puente in one of his reviews of the Revolution of that time.
“When I moved to Chihuahua wanting my footprint to be lost I changed my name to Francisco Villa [en México, a los Francisco se les suele decir Pancho]”, he once recounted, according to Taibo II, who found a dozen versions of who he took his name from: his godfather, a brave soldier or even a feared deceased thief.
“Whoever gave him the name, what is clear is that at this stage of his life he used it at times, and at times he used other names and nicknames, because one is and is not, is called and stops being called, depending on wherever I go”, explains Taibo II.
He joined the armed struggle, already being known in the northern region of Mexico for his ability as a good strategist when leading men. He led several triumphs of the Madero movement, one of the first of the revolution, with his feared Division of the North, which came to be made up of some 30,000 elements.
The capture of Ciudad Juárez with the “Trojan Train”, with which he stormed the border city by surprise, showed his ingenuity.
3. The invasion of the United States.
One of the episodes surrounding Villa as a revolutionary legend was an unthinkable audacity: undertaking a military intervention in United States territory, a country that had not experienced foreign armed presence since the British tried to reconquer it in 1812.
The “thorny” mission, as Villa described it, was given as a kind of revenge against the US government, for supporting the war campaign of its enemy, Venustiano Carranza, but also to locate an arms supplier, Sam Ravel, who sold them defective material.
In March 1916, hundreds of Villistas (the numbers vary around 500) crossed the border in the direction of the town of Columbus, New Mexico. On the 9th they attacked the town, where the US 13th Cavalry Brigade had a garrison.
“Long live Villa!”, “Long live Mexico!”, “Yankee sons of la chin****!”, were some shouts that broke the dawn. The Villistas razed the place, particularly Ravel’s properties, whom they did not find, but they did find one of his brothers, Louis, who took him prisoner.
After seizing arms and other valuables in Columbus, and seeing that the US brigade that came out to defend the city was more numerous than they thought, the Villistas retreated to Mexico. The combat between sides lasted about three hours.
Historians debate Villa’s intentions: whether he was planning simple revenge for feeling betrayed by Washington, which had given him concessions in the past; or a great provocation to the US to intervene in the armed conflict that was taking place in Mexico, as the Austrian historian Friedrich Katz theorizes.
Without ruling out the latter, Taibo II considers: “The attack was intended as an incursion and, if money and ammunition were obtained in passing and Ravel’s head was brought to Mexico, so much the better.”
What did trigger the attack on Columbus was the entry of the US army into northern Mexico and the search for Villa for 11 months, in the Punitive Expedition under the command of General John J. Pershing and in which young soldiers such as future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as George Patton, a noted World War II general.
But with his elusive ability, Villa was never caught.
In 1961, in Columbus, the Pancho Villa State Park was erected, a space to remember that episode of that small town in New Mexico. “As if in a display of historical forgetfulness the Americans (…) wanted to pay homage to the man who led the last invasion of their territory,” says Taibo II.
4. The San Pedro massacre
One of the darkest and cruelest episodes in Pancho Villa’s armed career was the execution of some 80 men in the town of San Pedro de la Cueva, Sonora, which occurred shortly after his defeat in Piedras Negras (which led to the intervention in Columbus). ).
In the campaign against Carranza’s forces in Sonora, an outpost of Villa’s forces was attacked on December 1, 1915 in San Pedro de la Cueva, presumably by the villagers themselves. Villa was furious when he learned that six of his men were killed and while seeking explanations for the attack, his nephew Manuel Martínez was shot and also fell.
“What has happened here? What are they up to here?” Villa asked and, without further ado, “he ordered the men of the town to be shot,” according to Taibo II. Children and women were separated, while the men were taken to the wall early the next day. There are testimonies that indicate that some minors were executed.
The scene was bloody, with dozens of deaths (there are counts of more than 100 men) in front of their families. The fact led to the place being called “the town of widows”.
The priest Andrés Avelino Flores wanted to intervene so that Villa spared the lives of the men, including his father. But according to various testimonies, Villa ended up killing that parish priest as well.
The chronicler Alberto Calzadíaz shared a photograph taken some time later with the women and their children in front of the wall, where there were crosses and bloodstains were still visible.
5. Killed with more than 150 bullets
By 1920 Villa ended his battles and with the signing of a pact with the government he laid down his arms. He was granted possession of a farm, El Canutillo, where the Centauro del Norte undertook his productive and educational projects.
“I’m done fighting. Now I just want to live and die here in peace,” he told journalist Frazier Hunt.
The social influence that Villa continued to wield, partly due to the good development of El Canutillo, made the rulers of Durango, Chihuahua and the federal Executive branch nervous, who feared that he would seek a pretext for an uprising or to launch himself into politics.
By 1923 there were various plans to attempt against him. “Persecutions in the shadows”, said Villa, aware that he did not have the affection of politicians, powerful or military in the region.
A conspiracy of characters with pending accounts with Villa, headed by businessman Jesús Herrera, progressed to execution by a man named Melitón Lozoya. He assembled a group of men who planned to ambush Villa on one of his regular visits to the city of Parral, Chihuahua.
On July 20, 1923, Villa was behind the wheel of his Dodge car when a shootout broke out against him on a street in Parral. More than 150 shots against the car.
The North Centaur received 14 shots, dying instantly on the spot.
“The country was shaken and moved,” says Taibo II when reviewing the reactions caused by the assassination of the legendary Pancho Villa in Parral. “The government of Álvaro Obregón promised an investigation. But the investigation was never done.”
6. The theft of his head
Villa was buried in the Parral cemetery, but he did not have eternal rest.
Three years later, as part of an alleged bet between the military, or for an alleged reward, according to Taibo II, Colonel Francisco Durazo Ruiz, Parral’s military chief, organized a night operation to decapitate Villa’s body and steal his head.
“It was not yet three years since the assassination. The front pages of all the country’s newspapers reported on the event. The scandal put the nation in tension. The surviving military men from Villismo threatened to march in arms on Parral,” Taibo II recounts.
Versions and suspects began to emerge, such as that Americans offered rewards as revenge, or that scientists from that country wanted to study it. But also that the military chiefs in Mexico had made an agreement to remove her.
“The popular imagination was overflowing. In Parral everything was rumors,” continues Taibo II. Colonel Durazo himself was in charge of the investigation, which never offered a result.
Of the different testimonies and interviews that emerged in the following months and years, “almost all of them incriminated Colonel Durazo.” He allegedly had her buried at her ranch, El Cairo, outside Parral, after he did not make any profit from doing the dirty work.
Be that as it may, until today the whereabouts of the head of General Francisco Villa remain unknown.
Much later, in 1961, the Mexican government transferred the remains of Pancho Villa to the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City, where he has rested far from the north of the country he loved so much.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC News World. Download the latest version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cql4qjnnzzyo, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-02 04:10:07
#moments #explain #legend #Pancho #Villa #leader #Mexican #Revolution