Today he is a hero for the regime as he was for the old PRI. President López Obrador has declared 2023 as the year of Francisco Villa. The image appears in the background at mornings and other events, as well as on official stationery. The government website states: “His fame as ‘the people’s revolutionary’ was a consequence of having expropriated the oligarchs of Chihuahua to create schools.” On July 16, the presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum pointed out on Twitter from Durango that, according to Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Villa founded “50 schools for the poor” when he was interim governor of Chihuahua. But it is false.
For starters, villa He was governor for only one month. Reidizel Mendoza Soriano points out in The myth of the 50 schools: public education in the city of Chihuahua during the Villista regime. 1913-1915 that the American journalist John Reed was the one who released this information, but he first stated in an article that there were 100 schools in the city of Chihuahua and later reduced the number to 50 in his book México insurgente. The information was taken up without confirmation by Taibo in Villa: a novel biography.
Taibo wanted to praise the revolutionary who “barely knew how to read and write, but when he was governor of the state of Chihuahua he founded 50 schools in one month.” Official records, however, document the same number of schools in the city and state before and after Villa’s brief internship. In fact, According to Mendoza: “The Villista regime ended up destroying the great advances made during the Porfiriatoespecially in educational and economic matters, mainly due to the looting and misuse of state public resources.”
Doroteo Arango, better known as Francisco or Pancho Villa, was assassinated 100 years ago today, on July 20, 1923, in an ambush in which he received 16 shots. His body was decapitated in 1926. “He who kills iron with iron dies,” people said, but in 1966 President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered that his name be inscribed in gold letters on the wall of honor of the Chamber of Deputies.
Díaz Ordaz and López Obrador have offered tributes to a murderer and rapist. On December 5, 1915, Villa ordered the massacre of all adult men in San Pedro de la Cueva, Sonora. The priest tried to stop him, but Villa “pulled out his gun and killed him right there,” according to Friedrich Katz. “Seventy-nine inhabitants of the town were shot.” In 1916, in Camargo, Chihuahua, he murdered a paymaster and his wife claimed him. Juan María Jaurrieta, Villa’s secretary, narrated how the general blew his brains out, but he did not relent and ordered the murder of 90 Carrancista soldaderas. A 2-year-old boy was sitting on the body of his dead mother, with his hands covered in blood, as Héctor Aguilar Camín has narrated. In 1917 Villa and his troops arrived in Namiquipa, Chihuahua, to recruit soldiers; As the men had fled, he ordered his troops to take the women, 110, aged 16 and up. Roberto Merino described: “And then he grabbed what he could and handed the rest over to the soldiers!” They raped everyone.
Díaz Ordaz is no longer president, but AMLO will lead today a new tribute to this “hero” who so easily killed and raped. He became famous in a revolution in which cruelty was commonplace. However, just as politicians remember his victories, they should also talk about his defeats, like the one in Celaya in 1915, when he sent wave after wave of his troops to the slaughterhouse against the solid defenses of Álvaro Obregón. Above all, we should remember the victims of his crimes against humanity.
It’s not me
AMLO has already announced that he will now violate the law that prevents rulers from intervening in electoral processes with a new section in the morning: “I’m not saying it.” It will put others to say what you want to divulge.
In case you missed it:
- AMLO vs. Xóchitl Gálvez: Turns the INE upside down and creates a section ‘I don’t say it’ in La Mañanera
- Law prevents AMLO’s new proposal for the foreign vote
- INE Commission approves draft to create the Broad Front for Mexico
#honor #criminal