Pancho Villa

Francisco "Pancho" Villa ( , , ; born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula; 5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923) was a Mexican revolutionary, guerrilla leader, and politician. He was a key figure in the Mexican Revolution, which forced out President and dictator Porfirio Díaz, subsequently ending the Porfiriato, and brought Francisco I. Madero to power in 1911. When Madero was ousted by a coup led by General Victoriano Huerta in February 1913, Villa joined the anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army led by Venustiano Carranza. After the defeat and exile of Huerta in July 1914, Villa broke with Carranza. Villa dominated the meeting of revolutionary generals that excluded Carranza and helped create a coalition government. Emiliano Zapata and Villa became formal allies in this period. Like Zapata, Villa was strongly in favor of land reform, but did not implement it when he had power. Villa served as provisional governor of Chihuahua from 1913 to 1914.

At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, the U.S. considered recognizing Villa as Mexico's legitimate president. In Mexico, Villa is generally regarded as a hero of the Revolution who dared to stand up to the United States. Some American media outlets describe Villa as a villain and a murderer.

In late 1914, civil war broke out when Carranza challenged Villa. Villa was decisively defeated by Constitutionalist general Álvaro Obregón in summer 1915, and the U.S. aided Carranza directly against Villa in the Second Battle of Agua Prieta. Much of Villa's army left after his defeat on the battlefield and because of his lack of resources to buy arms and pay soldiers' salaries. Angered at U.S. support for Carranza, Villa conducted a raid on the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, to goad the U.S. into invading Mexico in 1916. Despite a major contingent of soldiers and superior military technology, the U.S. failed to capture Villa. When Carranza was ousted from power in 1920, Villa negotiated an amnesty with interim president Adolfo de la Huerta and was given a landed estate, on the condition he retire from politics. Villa was assassinated in 1923. Although his faction did not prevail in the Revolution, he was one of its most prominent figures.

In life, Villa helped fashion his own image as an internationally known revolutionary hero, starring as himself in Hollywood films and giving interviews to foreign journalists, most notably John Reed. After his death, he was excluded from the pantheon of revolutionary heroes until the Sonoran generals Obregón and Calles, whom he battled during the Revolution, were gone from the political stage. Villa's exclusion from the official narrative of the Revolution might have contributed to his continued posthumous popular acclaim. He was celebrated during the Revolution and long afterward by corridos, films about his life and novels by prominent writers. In 1976, his remains were reburied in the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in a huge public ceremony.

Early life

thumb|right|upright|General Pancho Villa, 1910.

Villa told a number of conflicting stories about his early life. According to most sources, he was born on 5 June 1878, and named José Doroteo Arango Arámbula at birth. As a child, he received some education from a local church-run school, but was not proficient in more than basic literacy. His father was a sharecropper named Agustín Arango, and his mother was Micaela Arámbula. He grew up at the Rancho de la Coyotada, one of the largest haciendas in the state of Durango. The family's residence now houses the Casa de Pancho Villa historic museum in San Juan del Rio. Doroteo later claimed to be the son of the bandit Agustín Villa, but according to at least one scholar, "the identity of his real father is still unknown." He was the oldest of five children. He quit school to help his mother after his father died, and worked as a sharecropper, muleskinner (arriero), butcher, bricklayer, and foreman for a U.S. railway company.

According to his dictated remembrances, published as Memorias de Pancho Villa, at the age of 16 he moved to Chihuahua, but soon returned to Durango to track down and kill a hacienda owner named Agustín López Negrete who had raped his sister, afterward stealing a horse and fleeing Eventually, he became a member of a bandit band where he went by the name "Arango".

In 1902, the rurales, the crack rural police force of President Porfirio Díaz, arrested Pancho for stealing mules and for assault. Because of his connections with the powerful Pablo Valenzuela, was reported by historians to have been a recipient of goods stolen by Villa/Arango, he was spared the death sentence sometimes imposed on captured bandits. Pancho Villa was forcibly inducted into the Federal Army, a practice often adopted under the Diaz regime to deal with troublemakers. Several months later, he deserted and fled to the neighboring state of Chihuahua. He tried to work as a butcher in Hidalgo del Parral but was forced out of business by the Terrazas-Creel monopoly. He was known to his friends as La Cucaracha ("the cockroach").]]

The rebel forces, including Villa, were demobilized, and Madero called on the men of action to return to civilian life. Orozco and Villa demanded that hacienda land seized during the violence bringing Madero to power be distributed to revolutionary soldiers. Madero refused, saying that the government would buy the properties from their owners and then distribute them to the revolutionaries at some future date. According to a story recounted by Villa, he told Madero at a banquet in Ciudad Juárez after the victory in 1911, "You, sir [Madero], have destroyed the revolution... It's simple: this bunch of dandies have made a fool of you, and this will eventually cost us our necks, yours included." This proved to be the case for Madero, who was murdered during a military coup in February 1913 in a period known as the Ten Tragic Days (Decena Trágica).

alt=|thumb|Villa with his staff in 1913. Villa is in gray suit in center. His aide, Gen. [[Rodolfo Fierro, is to Villa's right. To Villa's left is Gen. Toribio Ortega and far right of photo is Colonel Juan Medina. Villa and Fierro served in the Constitutionalist Army opposing Huerta.]]

Once elected president in November 1911, Madero proved a disastrous politician, dismissing his revolutionary supporters and relying on the existing power structure. Villa strongly disapproved of Madero's decision to name Venustiano Carranza (who previously had been a staunch supporter of Diaz until Diaz refused to appoint him as Governor of Coahuila in 1909 Villa was transferred to the Santiago Tlatelolco Prison on 7 June 1912. There he received further tutelage in civics and history from imprisoned Federal Army general Bernardo Reyes. Villa escaped on Christmas Day 1912, crossing into the United States near Nogales, Arizona on 2 January 1913. Arriving in El Paso, Texas he attempted to convey a message to Madero via Abraham González about the upcoming coup d'état to no avail; Madero was murdered in February 1913, and Huerta became president.]]

thumb|From left to right, the revolutionary generals Candelario Cervantes, Pablo López, Francisco Villa, Francisco Beltrán, Martín López.

Huerta immediately moved to consolidate power. He had Abraham González, governor of Chihuahua, Madero's ally and Villa's mentor, murdered in March 1913. (Villa later recovered González's remains and gave his friend and mentor a proper funeral in Chihuahua.)

The governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, who had been appointed by Madero, also refused to recognize Huerta's authority. He proclaimed the Plan of Guadalupe to oust Huerta as an unconstitutional usurper. Considering Carranza the lesser of two evils, Villa joined him to overthrow his old enemy, Huerta, but he also made him the subject of ridicule. In one notable escapade, after robbing a train he held 122 bars of silver and a Wells Fargo employee hostage, forcing Wells Fargo to help him sell the bars for cash. A rapid, hard-fought series of victories at Ciudad Juárez, Tierra Blanca, Chihuahua, and Ojinaga followed. although General Talamantes died in the fighting.

John Reed, who graduated from Harvard in 1910 and became a leftist journalist, wrote magazine articles that were influential in shaping Villa's epic image for Americans. Reed spent four months embedded with Villa's army and published vivid word portraits of Villa, his fighting men, and the women soldaderas, who were a vital part of the fighting force. Reed's articles were collected as Insurgent Mexico and published in 1914 for an American readership. Reed includes stories of Villa confiscating cattle, corn, and bullion and redistributing them to the poor. President Woodrow Wilson knew some version of Villa's reputation, saying he was "a sort of Robin Hood [who] had spent an eventful life robbing the rich in order to give to the poor. He had even at some point kept a butcher's shop for the purpose of distributing to the poor the proceeds of his innumerable cattle raids."

Governor of Chihuahua

thumb|upright|Pancho Villa (second to left), El Carnicero [[Rodolfo Fierro, and Raúl Madero]]

Villa was a brilliant tactician on the battlefield, which translated to political support. In 1913, local military commanders elected him provisional governor of the state of Chihuahua He confiscated gold from several banks, and in the case of the Banco Minero he held a member of the bank's owning family, the wealthy Terrazas clan, as a hostage until the location of the bank's hidden gold reserves was revealed. He also appropriated land owned by the hacendados (owners of the haciendas) and redistributed the money generated by the haciendas to fund military efforts and the pensions of citizens who had lost family members in the revolution. Villa also decreed that after the completion of the revolution the land would be redistributed, away from the hands of the oligarchy, to revolutionary veterans, former owners of the land from before the hacendados took the land, and the state itself in equal parts. The rebuilt railroad transported Villa's troops and artillery south, where he defeated the Federal Army forces in a series of battles at Gómez Palacio, Torreón, and eventually at the heart of Huerta's regime in Zacatecas. This was an expensive and disruptive diversion for the División del Norte. Villa's enlisted men were not unpaid volunteers but paid soldiers, earning the then enormous sum of one peso per day. Each day of delay cost thousands of pesos.

Disgusted but having no practical alternative, Villa complied with Carranza's order and captured the less important city of Saltillo, Carranza refused to reach any compromise with Villa, and ordered that 5000 members of the División del Norte be sent to Zacatecas to assist in its capture. A Constitutionalist general had recently staged an attack that had failed due to the superior artillery of the federal forces. Villa believed that sending troops to assist would only lead to the same result unless he was to lead the attack himself. and unknown numbers of civilian casualties.

Villa's victory at Zacatecas in June 1914 broke the back of the Huerta regime. Before this Villa had strong relationships with the Wilson administration, due in part to Carranza's distinctly anti-American rhetoric with which Villa publicly disagreed. Although nothing had changed for Villa. Historian Friedrich Katz writes that the exact motives of the U.S. government are hotly contested, it is likely that it was attempting to establish some type of control over Mexico by not allowing any one faction to become powerful enough to not need U.S. assistance. The truce between Villa and Carranza held long enough for the final defeat and dissolution of the Federal Army. In August 1914, Carranza and his revolutionary army entered Mexico City ahead of Villa.

The unity of fighting against Huerta was no longer the underpinnings of the Constitutionalists under Carranza's leadership. Carranza was a wealthy estate owner and governor of Coahuila, and he considered Villa little more than a bandit, despite his military successes. Villa viewed Carranza as a soft civilian, while Villa's Division of the North was the largest and most successful revolutionary army. In August and September, Obregón traveled to meet with and persuade Villa not to fracture the Constitutionalist movement. In their August meeting, the two agreed that Carranza should now take the title of interim president of Mexico, now that Huerta had been ousted. Despite the generals' joint petition, Carranza did not want to do that, since it would have meant being ineligible to run in the expected presidential election. The two also agreed that there should be immediate action on land reform. They also agreed that the military needed to be separated from politics. By the time of Obregón's second meeting with Villa in September, Obregón had given up on coming to an agreement with him, but he hoped to lure soldiers of the Division of the North away from Villa, sensing that some disapproved of Villa's violent tendencies. During the visit, Villa became incensed at Obregón and called for a firing squad to execute him immediately. Obregón soothed him and Villa dismissed the squad. Villa allowed Obregón to leave by train to Mexico City, but then Villa attempted to stop the train and bring Obregón back to Chihuahua. The telegram was not received or was ignored, and Obregón arrived safely in the capital. Even though Obregón had his differences with Carranza, his two visits with Villa convinced him to remain loyal for the moment to the civilian First Chief. Obregón saw Villa "as a bandit who would not keep his promises." Villa broke with Carranza in September 1914 and issued a manifesto.

Alliance with Zapata against Carranza, 1914–15

thumb|Zapata and Villa with their joint forces enter Mexico City on 6 December 1914.

thumb|right|Pancho Villa (left) "commander of the [[División del Norte (North Division)", and Emiliano Zapata "Ejército Libertador del Sur (Liberation Army of the South)" in 1914. Villa is sitting in the presidential chair in the Palacio Nacional.]]

thumb|The generals Villa and Zapata.

Once Huerta was ousted, the power struggle between factions of the revolution came into the open. The revolutionary caudillos convened the Convention of Aguascalientes, attempting to sort out power in the political sphere rather than on the battlefield. This meeting set out a path towards democracy. None of the armed revolutionaries were allowed to be nominated for government positions, and Eulalio Gutiérrez was chosen as interim president. Emiliano Zapata, a military general from southern Mexico also sent a number of delegates to the convention, however these delegates did not participate until they were convinced the convention aimed for true reform, and an alliance was made between Zapata's forces and Villa's.

Carranza and Alvaro Obregón retreated to Veracruz, leaving Villa and Zapata to occupy Mexico City. In 1915, Villa was forced to abandon the capital after a number of incidents involving his troops, which helped pave the way for the return of Carranza and his followers. "Villa's army [was] reduced to the condition to which it had reduced Huerta's in 1914. The celebrated Division of the North thus was eliminated as a capital military force."

thumb|10 peso bill issued in Chihuahua in 1914 known as "two faces" with the portraits of Francisco I. Madero and Abraham González.

In November 1915, Carranza's forces captured and executed Contreras, Pereyra, and son.

Some historians have contended that crimes that he did not commit have been attributed to him; in addition, his enemies always told false stories to increase his status as an "evil person", since there were cases of bandits who were not part of the revolution and committed crimes which were later attributed to Villa.

After years of public and documented support for Villa's fight, the United States refused to allow more arms to be supplied to his army, and allowed Carranza's troops to be relocated over U.S. railroads in the Second Battle of Aguaprieta.

After meeting with a Mexican mayor named Juan Muñoz, Pablo Lopez and Cervantes were later killed in the early part of 1916.

From a purely military standpoint Villa carried out the raid because he needed more military equipment and supplies in order to continue his fight against Carranza.

Other attacks in U.S. territory allegedly were carried out by Villa, but none of these attacks were confirmed to have been carried out by Villistas. These were:

15 May 1916. Glenn Springs, Texas – one civilian was killed, three American soldiers were wounded, and two Mexicans were estimated killed.
15 June 1916. San Ygnacio, Texas – four soldiers were killed and five soldiers were wounded by bandits, six Mexicans were killed. The two dead soldiers were from the 8th Cavalry Regiment and Customs Inspector Robert Wood. One American was wounded, three Mexicans were reported killed, and three Mexicans were captured by Mexican government troops.

U.S. Expedition to capture Villa

thumb|Political cartoon in the U.S. Press. Uncle Sam chases Pancho Villa, saying "I've had about enough of this."

As result of Villa's raid on Columbus, President Wilson chose to take action. Publicly it was announced that General Pershing would be sent to Mexico to capture Villa. In a private order to General Pershing, Pershing was told to cease the search for Villa once Villa's armies had been broken up.

President Wilson sent 5,000 U.S. Army soldiers under the command of General Frederick Funston, who oversaw John Pershing as he pursued Villa through Mexico. Employing aircraft and trucks for the first time in U.S. Army history, Pershing's force fruitlessly pursued Villa until February 1917. Villa eluded them, but some of his senior commanders, including Colonel Candelario Cervantes, General Francisco Beltrán, Beltrán's son, Villa's second-in-command Julio Cárdenas, and a total of 190 of his men were killed during the expedition.

The Carranza government and the Mexican population were against U.S. troops violating Mexican territories. There were several demonstrations of opposition to the Punitive Expedition. During the expedition, Carranza's forces captured one of Villa's top generals, Pablo López, and executed him on 5 June 1916.

German involvement in Villa's later campaigns

Before the Villa-Carranza irregular forces had left to the mountains in 1915, there is no credible evidence that Villa cooperated with or accepted any help from the German government or agents. Villa was supplied arms from the U.S., employed international mercenaries and doctors including Americans, was portrayed as a hero in the U.S. media, made business arrangements with Hollywood, and did not object to the 1914 U.S. naval occupation of Veracruz. Villa's observation was that the occupation merely hurt Huerta. Villa opposed the armed participation of the United States in Mexico, but he did not act against the Veracruz occupation in order to maintain the connections in the U.S. that were necessary to buy American cartridges and other supplies. 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, but Villa rejected the offer.

German agents tried to interfere in the Mexican Revolution but were unsuccessful. They 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. This was principally in the person of Felix A. Sommerfeld (noted in Katz's book), who allegedly funneled $340,000 of German money to the Western Cartridge Company in 1915, to purchase ammunition. Sommerfeld had been Villa's representative in the United States since 1914 and had close contact with the German naval attaché in Washington Karl Boy-Ed, as well as other German agents in the United States including Franz von Rintelen and Horst von der Goltz. In May 1914, Sommerfeld formally entered the employ of Boy-Ed and the German secret service in the United States. However, Villa's actions were hardly that of a German catspaw; rather, it appeared that Villa resorted to German assistance only after other sources of money and arms were cut off.

At the time of Villa's 1916 attack on Columbus, New Mexico, Villa's military power had been marginalized. He was repulsed at Columbus by a small cavalry detachment, albeit after doing a lot of damage. His theater of operations was limited mainly to western Chihuahua. He was persona non grata with Mexico's ruling Carranza constitutionalists and was the subject of an embargo by the U.S., so communication or further shipments of arms between the Germans and Villa would have been difficult.

A plausible explanation for contacts between Villa and the Germans, after 1915, is that they were a futile extension of increasingly desperate German diplomatic efforts and Villista 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 assessing claims of Villa conspiring with Germans, portrayal of Villa as a German sympathizer served the propaganda needs of both Carranza and Wilson and has to be taken into account.

The use of Mauser rifles and carbines by Villa's forces does not necessarily indicate a German connection. These weapons were used widely by all parties in the Mexican Revolution, Mauser longarms being enormously popular. They were standard issue in the Mexican Army, which had begun adopting 7 mm Mauser system arms as early as 1895.

Final years: leader to hacienda owner, 1920–23

thumb|left|The museum. once called [[Historical Museum of the Mexican Revolution|Quinta Luz (Luz's Villa), comprises the estate of General Francisco Villa.]]

Following his unsuccessful military campaign at Celaya and the 1916 incursion into New Mexico, prompting the unsuccessful U.S. military intervention in Mexico to capture him, Villa ceased to be a national leader and became a leader in Chihuahua. While Villa still remained active, Carranza shifted his focus to dealing with the more dangerous threat posed by Zapata in the south. left Villa and his small remaining militia. Angeles later was captured by Carranza's forces and was executed on 26 November 1919.

Villa continued fighting, and conducted a small siege in Ascención, Durango, after his failed raid in Ciudad Juárez. The siege failed, and Villa's new second-in-command, his longtime lieutenant Martín López, was killed during the fighting. Six days later, De la Huerta met with Villa and negotiated a peace settlement. hacienda in Canutillo,

Personal life

thumb|upright|Villa and his wife Luz Corral at his hacienda in 1923, a few months before his assassination.

As Villa's biographer Friedrich Katz has noted, "During his lifetime, Villa had never bothered with conventional arrangements in his family life" and he contracted several marriages without seeking annulment or divorce. On 29 May 1911, Villa married María Luz Corral, Villa met her when she was living with her widowed mother in San Andrés, where Villa for a time had his headquarters. Anti-reelectionists threatened the locals for monetary contributions to their cause, which the two women could not afford. The widow Corral did not want to seem a counter-revolutionary and went to Villa, who allowed her to make a token contribution to the cause. Villa sought Luz Corral as his wife, but her mother was opposed; however, the two were married by a priest "in a great ceremony, attended by his military chiefs and a representative of the governor." A photo of Corral with Villa, dated 1914, has been published in a collection of photos from the Revolution. It shows a sturdy woman with her hair in a bun, wearing a floor-length embellished skirt and a white blouse, with a rebozo beside a smiling Villa. After Villa's death, Luz Corral's marriage to Villa was challenged in court twice, and both times it was upheld as valid. Together, Villa and Luz Corral had one child, a daughter, who died within a few years after birth.

Still another woman in Villa's life was Manuela Casas, with whom Villa had a son named Trinidad Villa. He became John Wayne's double in many movies in the state of Durango. Manuela Casas would be the last woman who saw him alive in Parral, Chihuahua.

At the time of Villa's assassination in 1923, Luz Corral was banished from Canutillo. However, she was recognized by Mexican courts as Villa's legal wife and therefore heir to Villa's estate. President Obregón intervened in the dispute between competing claims to Villa's estate in Luz Corral's favor, perhaps because she had saved his life when Villa threatened to execute him in 1914.

Rentería and Seañez eventually were granted small government pensions decades after Villa's death. Corral inherited Villa's estate and played a key role in maintaining his public memory. All three women were often present at ceremonies at Villa's grave in Parral. When Villa's remains were transferred in 1976 to the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City, born to Guadalupe Cos Dominguez in Rancho de Santiago, Chihuahua in 1914. He reportedly was killed by Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, a legendary drug lord from the Gulf Cartel, in 1960.

Villa's last living son, Ernesto Nava, died in Castro Valley, California, at the age of 94 on 31 December 2009. Nava appeared yearly in festival events in his hometown of Durango, Mexico, enjoying celebrity status until he became too weak to attend. He frequently made trips from his ranch to Parral, where he generally felt secure, for banking and other errands. Villa usually was accompanied by his large entourage of armed Dorados, or bodyguards, but on that day he had gone into town without most of them, taking with him only three bodyguards and two other ranch employees. He went to pick up a consignment of gold from the local bank with which to pay his Canutillo ranch staff. While driving back through the city in his black 1919 Dodge touring car, Villa passed by a school, and a pumpkinseed vendor ran toward his car and shouted "Viva Villa!", a signal to a group of seven riflemen who then appeared in the middle of the road and fired more than 40 rounds into the automobile. In the fusillade, nine dumdum bullets, normally used for hunting big game, hit Villa in the head and upper chest, killing him instantly. Contreras was the only survivor. but there is no contemporary evidence that he survived his shooting even momentarily. Historian and biographer Friedrich Katz wrote in 1998 that Villa died instantly.

The next day, Villa's funeral was held and thousands of his grieving supporters in Parral followed his casket to his burial site

Villa was likely assassinated because he was talking publicly about re-entering politics as the 1924 elections neared. Obregón could not run again for the presidency, so there was political uncertainty about the presidential succession. Obregón favored fellow Sonoran general Plutarco Elías Calles for the presidency. If Villa did re-enter politics, it would complicate the political situation for Obregón and the Sonoran generals. Assassinating Villa benefited the plans of Obregón, who chose someone who in no way matched his power and charisma, and Calles, who ardently wanted to be president of Mexico at any cost. It has never been proven who was responsible for the assassination, but according to Villa's biographer Friedrich Katz, took responsibility to shield Obregón and Calles. Most historians attribute Villa's death to a well-planned conspiracy most likely initiated by Plutarco Elías Calles and his associate, General Joaquín Amaro with at least tacit approval of Obregón. According to local folklore, an American treasure hunter, Emil Holmdahl, beheaded him to sell his skull to an eccentric millionaire who collected the heads of historic figures. The skull is rumored to be in the possession of Yale University's Skull and Bones Society, a claim they deny. His remains were reburied in the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in 1976.

Legacy

According to Pancho Villa's major biographer, Friedrich Katz, the revolutionary was perceived as a destroyer, but in Katz's assessment, there were positive aspects to that. Villa played a decisive role not just in the destruction of Huerta's regime, but also the entire old regime. During Villa's brief time as governor of Chihuahua, . In his confiscation of landed estates and expulsion of their owners, he weakened that class. In the 1930s President Lázaro Cárdenas finished the dismantling of the old landed system. Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico destroyed the burgeoning cooperation between the Carranza government and the United States and goaded the U.S. into invading northern Mexico. Banks in the U.S. ceased lending to the Carranza government, blocking its ability to suppress peasant rebellions in Morelos, San Luis Potosí, and Villa's. Katz credits Villa's time as governor as highly effective and economically beneficial to the general populace. "In some ways, it might be called the first welfare state in Mexico."

With his remains now buried in the Monument to the Revolution, Villa was also honored with adding his name to the wall of Mexican heroes in the Chamber of Deputies. In both cases of official recognition there was considerable controversy. The fact that Villa's image and legacy were not quickly appropriated and manipulated by the ruling party the way Zapata's was kept Villa's memory and myth in the hearts of the people. "Popular tastes wanted Villa to be thrilling, not respectable. They were enamored of Villa the daring Robin Hood, the satyr and monster, the unpredictable deviant, the grimy guerrillero and outlaw with uncanny power over men."

Villa is not universally acclaimed. Historian Alan Knight wrote a massive, two-volume history of the Mexican Revolution, but in a thousand pages of text, Knight has only scattered references to Villa. He emphasizes Villa's bandit past, for whom the Revolution provided a change of title, not of occupation.

Of the major figures of the Revolution, Villa and Zapata are best known to the general public, as defenders of the dispossessed. In contrast, those who came to hold political power, Madero, Carranza, and Obregón are unfamiliar to most outside Mexico. It took decades for Villa to receive official recognition as a hero of the Revolution. As with the others entombed in the Monument to the Revolution, his remains rest near some whom he fought fiercely in life, including Venustiano Carranza. One scholar notes, "In death as in life, Carranza would be eclipsed by Francisco Villa."

The Mexican government declared the year 2023 to be the "Year of Francisco Villa" (Año de Francisco Villa) to honor Villa's legacy in the Mexican Revolution.

File:PanchoVillaLaBufa.jpg|Monument to Pancho Villa in Bufa Zacatecas mountain range

File:Plaza de la Revolucion Chihuahua.jpg|Equestrian bronze of Villa in Chihuahua, Chihuahua

File:Francisco Villa.JPG|Image of Francisco Villa

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Media

Pancho Villa portrays himself in 1914's silent docudrama The Life of General Villa.
Mike Moroff plays a fictional Pancho Villa in George Lucas's Young Indiana Jones in the episode Spring Break Adventure.
Starring: Marty Lagina, Matty Blake, Cindy A. Medina, Gypsy Jewels, Jackson Polk, John Gallegos, David Acosta. HISTORY CHANNEL. "Pancho Villa's Plunder". Season 2, Episode 7 on Beyond Oak Island. March 2022
PBS El Paso. Show: "Only in El Paso" episode titled "Witnessing a Revolution" featuring Cindy A. Medina, Francisco "Paco" Villa Garcia and Dr. David Romo, October 2022
Telles, Raymond. The Storm that Swept Mexico PBS Documentary, 15 May 2011
Taibo II, Paco Ignacio. Pancho Villa. History Channel Documentary, 2008
And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, Starring Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa, 2003
Viva Villa!, Starring Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa, 1934
Revolución by Arturo Perez-Reverte, 2022
Have Gun Will Travel, Episode 3.6, Pancho, played by Rafael Campos

Villa's battles and military actions

Villa's string of victories from the beginning of the Mexican Revolution was instrumental in bringing about the downfall of Porfirio Díaz, the victory of Francisco Madero, and the ouster of Victoriano Huerta. He remains a heroic figure for many Mexicans. His military actions included:

Battle of San Andrés (1910 victory)
Battle of Santa Isabel (1910 victory)
First Battle of Ciudad Juárez (1911 victory)
Second Battle of Ciudad Juárez (1913 victory)
Battle of Tierra Blanca (1913 victory)
Battle of Chihuahua (1913 victory)
Battle of Ojinaga (1914 victory)
First Battle of Torreón (1913 victory)
Second Battle of Torreón (1914 victory)
(1914 victory)
(1914 victory)
Battle of Lerdo (1914 victory)
Batalla de Gómez Palacio (1914 victory)
Battle of Saltillo (1914 victory)
Battle of Zacatecas (1914 victory)
Battle of Celaya (1915 loss)
Battle of Trinidad (1915 loss)
Battle of Agua Prieta (1915 loss)
Battle of Columbus, N.M. (1916 victory)
Battle of Guerrero (1916 victory)
Battle of Chihuahua (1916 victory)
Third Battle of Torreón (1916 victory)
Battle of Parral (1918 victory)
Third Battle of Ciudad Juárez (1919 loss)
Siege of Durango (1919 loss)

References

Sources

External links

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Mexican Revolution." Encyclopedia Britannica, 9 November 2022. Mexican Revolution | Causes, Summary, & Facts | Britannica.
Images of Camp Furlong and Columbus, New Mexico – 1916