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 Vallarta Living | November 2007 
Viva México! Viva La Revolución!
 mexgrocer.com
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| | Francisco "Pancho" Villa and 600 raiders invaded Camp Furlong in Columbus, NM on March 9, 1916. The raid has been the only armed invasion of the continental U. S. since 1812. |
The Mexican Revolution took place from 1910 to 1920. It was a "constitutionalist war," basically a fight between the have's and the have not's. Pretty much everyone has heard of its most famous hero, Pancho Villa. Well... here's the story behind this holiday.
Pancho Villa was born Doroteo Arango in 1877 in San Juan del Río, Durango, in north-central Mexico. He lived there until the age of 16, when he murdered a man who had raped his younger sister and was forced to flee for his life. Not much is known about how he spent the next few years of his life, other than that he changed his name to Francisco "Pancho" Villa to elude the law.
By the time he was 20, Pancho Villa had moved northward and was living in Chihuahua, working first as a miner and then as a cattle rustler. Official government biographies list his occupation then as "wholesale meat-seller." In 1899 he returned to mining, this time in Santa Eulalia near Chihuahua. However, he soon tired of the laborer's life and began robbing banks, adding that to the list of crimes he was wanted for by the Mexican government.
In order to avoid capture, Pancho Villa took off with his group of bandit followers into the Sierra mountains of central Mexico in 1900. Over the next decade he became a legendary hero-a Robin Hood to the poor in his country, robbing the rich and sharing with the hungry masses-all the while skillfully evading the government's troops.
On November 20, 1910, the war to overthrow General Porfirio Díaz officially began when Francisco Madero escaped from prison in San Luis Potosí and declared the electoral process in Mexico invalid. General Díaz had been in power since 1876. During those 34 years, Mexico's political stability had improved. Its economy had grown. New industries were established, railroads were built and foreign investment increased.
Yet, none of this made any difference in the lives of the vast majority of Mexicans. Peasants and laborers, they were poorer than ever. They were also seriously fed up with their government.
Thus, soon after Francisco I. Madero's declaration of war, Pancho Villa led his men down from the hills to join the revolutionary forces-making the historical transition from bandito to revolucionario. The charismatic Pancho was able to recruit an army of thousands, including a substantial number of Americans, some of whom were made captains in the División del Norte.
Madero's forces were successful. Díaz was overthrown and Madero elected president of Mexico in 1911. However, he was captured and assassinated by one of his own generals-a traitor named Victoriano Huerta soon after.
Following Madero's short-lived victory and assassination, Villa remained in command of his División del Norte army in resistance-along with Coahuila's Venustiano Carranza and Sonora's Alvaro Obregon. Together they fought in 1913 and 1914 against the Huerta dictatorship.
About this time, Villa also became a folk hero north of the border, in the United States. Hollywood film makers and newspaper photographers flocked to Northern Mexico to record his battle exploits-plenty of which were staged for the benefit of the cameras.
Villa's forces were based in Chihuahua, and he ruled over northern Mexico like a medieval warlord. Financing his army by stealing from the seemingly endless cattle herds in northern Mexico, he sold the beef north of the border, where he found plenty of Norteamericano merchants willing to sell him guns and ammunition.
In true Robin Hood style, he broke up the vast land holdings of local hacendados and parceled them out to the widows and orphans of his fallen soldiers. Rather than use the government's despised peso, he produced his own money, and any merchant who refused to accept this "new" currency faced the risk of being shot.
Executions - often ordered on a whim - weren't often carried out by Pancho himself. Instead, they were carried out by his friend Rodolfo Fierro, best known by his nickname El Carnicero, or The Butcher.
Fighting continued in Mexico until 1920, even though in 1917 a new constitution was adopted. When the U.S. government came out openly in support of the new Carranza presidency, Villa was incensed. He retaliated by raiding U.S border towns-most significantly, Columbus, New Mexico. North of the border, Villa's image plummeted. However, many in Mexico saw him as the avenger of decades of yanqui (Yankee) oppression.
Despite his popularity, the combined forces of Carranza and Obregón defeated his army in battle after battle. After two U.S. Army "punitive expeditions" into Mexico in 1916 and 1919 failed to capture and conquer the "Villistas," the Mexican government accepted Villa's surrender and retired him on a general's salary to Canutillo, Durango. He was assassinated near there in 1923.
Pancho Villa is remembered with pride and respect by most people in Mexico. He led the most important military campaigns of the constitutionalist revolution. His troops were victorious as far south as Zacatecas and Mexico City, as far east as Tampico, and as far west as Casas Grandes. Because of Villa's raid into Columbus, New Mexico, and his subsequent evasion of U.S. troops, he also has the added notoriety of being the only foreign military personage ever to have successfully invaded continental U.S. territory since 1812! |
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