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Pre-revolutionary life
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, Doroteo began to work as a sharecropper to help support his mother and four siblings. 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 12-year-old sister had been raped by a hacienda owner. Doroteo confronted the man, whose name was Agustín Negrete, 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. Villa underwent a transformation after meeting Abraham González, the political representative (and future governor of the state) in Chihuahua of Francisco Madero, who was opposing the continuing and lengthy presidency of Porfirio Díaz. González saw Villa's potential as a military ally, and helped open 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), an area larger than some countries.
On November 20, 1910, as proclaimed by Madero's Plan of San Luis Potosí, the Mexican Revolution was begun to oust the Díaz dictatorship. After nearly 35 years of rule which the Mexican people were thoroughly tired of, Díaz's political situation was untenable, and his poorly paid conscript troops were no match for the motivated antirreeleccionista volunteers fighting for libertad and Maderismo. The antirreeleccionistas 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 Ciudad Juárez, which was viewed by Americans sitting on the top of railroad boxcars in El Paso, Texas. Díaz left Mexico for exile and after an interim presidency, Madero became president. On May 29, 1911, Villa married María Luz Corral, who became Villa's only legal wife until his death in 1923.
Most people at that time assumed that the new, idealistic President 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.
[edit] Orozco's counterrevolution against Madero
A counter-rebellion led by Pascual Orozco, nicknamed Pashuato or Chipi, started against Madero, so Villa gathered his mounted cavalry troops, Los dorados, and fought along with General Victoriano Huerta to support Madero. However, Huerta viewed Villa as an ambitious competitor against his own self-interest, and later accused Villa of stealing a horse and had Villa sentenced to execution, in an attempt to dispose of him. Reportedly, Villa was standing in front of a firing squad waiting to be shot when a telegram from President Madero was received commuting his sentence to imprisonment. Villa later escaped. During Villa's imprisonment, he worked to improve his poor reading and writing skills, which would serve him well in the future during his service as provisional governor of the state of Chihuahua.
Fight against Huerta's usurpation
After crushing the Orozco rebellion, Victoriano Huerta, with the 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 people such as Bernardo Reyes, Félix Díaz (nephew of Porfirio Diaz) and US ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, which resulted in the La decena trágica ("Ten Tragic Days")[2] and the murder of President Madero.
Main article: La decena trágica
After Madero's murder, Huerta proclaimed himself as provisional 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, Álvaro Obregón, Emiliano Zapata and Villa) who joined to support Carranza's plan, were collectively styled as the Ejército Constitucionalista de México (Constitutionalist Army of Mexico), the constitucionalista 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 González's remains and gave his friend a hero's funeral in Chihuahua.
Villa joined the rebellion against Huerta, crossing the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) into Ciudad Juárez 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 (both Mexican and mercenary) such as Felipe Ángeles, Sam Dreben and Ivor Thord-Gray, 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.[3] A rapid, hard fought series of victories at Ciudad Juárez, Tierra Blanca, Chihuahua and Ojinaga followed. Villa then became provisional governor of the state of Chihuahua.
As governor of Chihuahua, Villa raised more money for a drive to the south by printing fiat money. He decreed his paper money to be traded and accepted at par with gold Mexican pesos, under penalty of execution, then forced the wealthy to trade their gold for his paper pesos by decreeing gold to be counterfeit money. He also confiscated the gold of banks, in the case of the Banco Minero, by holding hostage a member of the bank's owning family, the wealthy and famous Terrazas clan, until the location of the bank's gold was revealed.
Villa's political stature at that time was so high that banks in El Paso, Texas, accepted his paper pesos at face value. His generalship drew enough admiration from the US military that he and Álvaro Obregón were invited to Fort Bliss to meet General John J. Pershing.
The new pile of loot was used to purchase draft animals, cavalry horses, arms, ammunition, mobile hospital facilities (railroad cars and horse ambulances staffed with Mexican and American volunteer doctors, known as Servicio sanitario), and food, and to rebuild the railroad south of Chihuahua City. The rebuilt railroad transported Villa's troops and artillery south, where he defeated Federal forces at Gómez Palacio, Torreón, and Zacatecas. Map of Constitutionalist Army Battles
[edit] Carranza tries to halt the Villa advance, the fall of Zacatecas
After Torreón, Carranza issued a puzzling order for Villa to break off action south of Torreon and instead ordered him to divert to attack Saltillo, and threatened to cut off Villa's coal supply if he did not comply. (Coal was needed for railroad locomotives to pull trains transporting soldiers and supplies, and was therefore necessary for any general.) This was widely seen as an attempt by Carranza to divert Villa from a direct assault on Mexico City, so as to allow Carranza's forces under Álvaro Obregón, driving in from the west via Guadalajara, to take the capital first, and Obregon and Carranza did enter Mexico City ahead of Villa. This was an expensive and disruptive diversion for the División del norte, since Villa's enlisted men were paid the then enormous sum of a peso per day, and each day of delay cost thousands of pesos. Villa did attack Saltillo as ordered, winning that battle.
Villa, disgusted by what he saw as egoism, tendered his resignation. Felipe Ángeles and Villa's officer staff argued for Villa to withdraw his resignation, defy Carranza's orders, and proceed to attack Zacatecas, a strategic mountainous city considered nearly impregnable. Zacatecas was the source of much of Mexico's silver, and thus a supply of funds for whomever held it. Victory in Zacatecas would mean that Huerta's chances of holding the remainder of the country would be slim. Villa accepted Ángeles' advice, cancelled his resignation, and the Division del norte defeated the Federals in the Toma de Zacatecas (Taking of Zacatecas), the single bloodiest battle of the Revolution, with the military forces counting approximately 7,000 dead and 5,000 wounded, and unknown numbers of civilian casualties. (A memorial to and museum of the Toma de Zacatecas is on the Cerro de la Bufa, one of the key defense points in the battle of Zacatecas. Tourists use a teleférico (aerial tramway) to reach it, due to the steep approaches. From the top, tourists may appreciate the difficulties Villa's troops had trying to dislodge Federal troops from the peak.) The loss of Zacatecas in June 1914 broke the back of the Huerta regime, and Huerta left for exile on July 14, 1914.
This was the beginning of the split between Villa and the constitutionalistas of Carranza, which would eventually doom Villa as a military and political power. Carranza's egoismo would eventually become self-destructive, alienating most of the people he needed to hold power, and doom him as well.
[edit] Villa as media star
Villa's colorful personality and success in battle during this period made him a celebrated media figure in the United States and the subject of several movies. Villa's keen eye for publicity and offers of money (Villa signed an exclusive contract with the Mutual Film Corporation for $25,000 payable in gold specie), led to some movie scenes being filmed on location with Villa's troops.[4] US journalists and photographers such as John Reed followed Villa and filed reports and images from the battlefront for publication in US newspapers and magazines. IMDB list of movies Villa appeared in
There was much speculation in the US press in 1913 and 1914, that Villa would become President of Mexico. Villa always denied such speculation, claiming that he was not educated well enough to assume the responsibility.
Zapata and Villa's entry to Mexico City
Villa had a long-distance and somewhat tenuous relationship with Emiliano Zapata, another peasant who was fighting in the south of Mexico, mostly in the states of Morelos, Guerrero, and Puebla. While Zapata could hold his own against the Federals, he was constrained by tight finances and lack of a direct path to the United States for arms imports. Lack of a land connection, during most of the Revolution, between Zapata's region and areas Villa controlled, limited the amount of contact and cooperation between the two.
After the interim presidency of Francisco S. Carvajal, who succeeded Huerta, Carranza and the Constitutionalist Army entered Mexico City in August 1914. Meanwhile, Villa and Zapata refused to join Carranza, claiming that Carranza was attempting to set himself up as a caudillo, and was not intending to carry out the aims of the revolution. The Convention of Aguascalientes, which Carranza refused to attend, met between October 10 and November 13, 1914. The Convention deposed Carranza as primer jefe (Number One Chief) of the Revolution and installed Eulalio Gutiérrez as President. In November, 1914, Carranza left Mexico City for Veracruz, and repudiated the Convention.[5]
After Carranza's exit, Villa and Zapata entered and occupied Mexico City in early December, 1914. They had their first face to face meeting in Xochimilco, south of the capital city, on December 4, 1914. Villa's and Zapata's troops marched to the Zócalo in the center of Mexico City, where Villa and Zapata together visited the Palacio Nacional together for a photo op (see above right).
Period newsreel footage of Zapata and Villa's troops entering Mexico City Zapata's troops are in white, carrying banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Zapata and Villa attended a banquet with Gildardo Magaña and José Vasconcelos, then visited a memorial to assassinated President Francisco Madero.
[edit] Revolt against Carranza and Obregon
Villa was forced out of Mexico City in 1915, following a number of incidents between himself, his troops and the citizens of the city, and the humiliation of President Eulalio Gutiérrez. The return of Carranza and the Constitutionalists to Mexico City from Veracruz followed. Villa then rebelled against Carranza and Carranza's chief general, Álvaro Obregón. Villa and Zapata styled themselves as convencionistas, supporters of the Convention of Aguascalientes.
Unfortunately, Villa's talent for generalship began to fail him in 1915. When Villa faced General Obregón in the Battle of Celaya on April 15, repeated charges of Villa's vaunted cavalry proved to be no match for Obregón's entrenchments and modern machine guns, and the villista advance was first checked, then repulsed. In a later engagement, Obregon lost one of his arms to villista artillery.
Villa retrenched to Chihuahua and attempted to refinance his revolt by having a firm in San Antonio, Texas, crank out more paper fiat money.[6] (Most Villa money seen today dates from this period) But the effort met with limited success, and the value of Villa's paper pesos dropped to a fraction of their former value as doubts grew about Villa's political viability. Villa began ignoring the counsel of the most valuable member of his military staff, Felipe Ángeles, and eventually Ángeles left for exile in Texas. Despite Carranza's unpopularity, Carranza had an able general in Obregón and most of Mexico's military power, and unlike Huerta, was not being hampered by interference from the United States.
[edit] Split with the United States and the Punitive Expedition
The United States, following the diplomatic policies of Woodrow Wilson, who believed that supporting Carranza was the best way to expedite establishment of a stable Mexican government, refused to allow more arms to be supplied to Villa, and allowed Mexican constitutionalist troops to be relocated via US railroads. Villa felt betrayed by these actions and began to attack Americans. He was further enraged by Obregón's use of searchlights, powered by American electricity, to help repel a Villista night attack on the border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, on November 1, 1915. In January 1916, a group of villistas attacked a train on the Mexico North Western Railway, near Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, and massacred 18 American employees of the ASARCO company.
[edit] Cross-border attack on New Mexico
On March 9, 1916, Villa ordered 1,500 (disputed, one official US Army report stated "500 to 700") Mexican raiders, reportedly led by villista general Ramon Banda Quesada, to make a cross-border attack against Columbus, New Mexico, in response to the U.S. government's official recognition of the Carranza regime and for the loss of lives in battle due to defective bullets purchased from the United States.[7] They attacked a detachment of the 13th US Cavalry, seized 100 horses and mules, burned the town, killed 10 soldiers and 8 of its residents, and took much ammunition and weaponry. Villa's forces suffered the loss of 80 dead or mortally wounded and 5 captured,[8] mostly from US machine gun emplacements.[9]
[edit] The Hunt for Pancho Villa (The Punitive Expedition)
Main article: Pancho Villa Expedition
United States' President Woodrow Wilson responded to the Columbus raid by sending 6,000 troops under General John J. Pershing to Mexico to pursue Villa. (Wilson also dispatched several divisions of Army and National Guard troops to protect the southern US border against further raids and counterattacks.) In the U.S., this was known as the Punitive or Pancho Villa Expedition. During the search, the United States launched its first air combat mission with eight airplanes.[10][11] At the same time Villa was also being sought by Carranza's army. The U.S. expedition was eventually called off after failing to find Villa, and Villa successfully escaped from both armies.
[edit] Later life and assassination
After the Punitive Expedition, Villa remained at large but never regained his former stature or military power. Carranza's loss of Obregon as chief general in 1917, and his preoccupation with the continuing rebellion of the Zapatista and Felicista forces in the south (much closer to Mexico City and perceived as the greater threat), prevented him from applying sufficient military pressure to extinguish the Villa nuisance. Few of the Chihuahuans who could have informed on Villa were inclined to cooperate with the Carranza regime. Villa's last major raid was on Ciudad Juárez in 1919.
In 1920, Villa negotiated peace with new President Adolfo de la Huerta and ended his revolutionary activity. He went into semi-retirement, with a detachment of 50 of los dorados for protection, at the hacienda of El Canutillo.[12] He was assassinated three years later (1923) in Parral, Chihuahua, in his car. The assassins were never arrested, although a Durango politician, Jesús Salas Barraza, publicly claimed credit. While there is some circumstantial evidence that Obregón or Plutarco Elías Calles was behind the killing, Villa made many enemies over his lifetime, who would have had motives to murder him.[13] Today Villa is remembered by many Mexicans as a folk hero.
In 1926 grave robbers decapitated his corpse.[14] His skull has yet to be found.
Villa's original death mask was hidden at the Radford School in El Paso, Texas, until the 1970s, when it was sent to the National Museum of the Revolution in Chihuahua; other museums have ceramic and bronze copies.[15]
The location of the remainder of Villa's corpse is in dispute. It may be in the city cemetery of Parral, Chihuahua,[16] or in Chihuahua City, or in the Monument of the Revolution in Mexico City.[17] Tombstones for Villa exist in both places. A pawn shop in El Paso, Texas, claims to be in possession of Villa's preserved trigger finger.[18][19]
His final words were reported as: "No permitas que esto acabe así. Cuentales que he dicho algo." This translates as: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
Period newsreel showing views of the assassination location in Hidalgo del Parrral, Chihuahua, news reporters at the scene, and Villa's bullet riddled corpse and auto. Warning Contains possibly disturbing images of Villa's corpse.
Villa's battles and military actions
Battle of Ciudad Juárez (twice, in 1911 and 1913, won both times)
Battle of Tierra Blanca (1913 won)
Battle of Chihuahua (1913 won)
Battle of Ojinaga (1913 won)[1]
Battle of Torreón and Battle of Gómez Palacio (1914 won)
Battle of Saltillo (1914 won)
Battle of Zacatecas (1914 won)
Battle of Celaya (1915 lost)
Attack on Agua Prieta (1915 lost)
Attack on Columbus, New Mexico (1916 lost)
Villa's personality, eccentricities and habits, trivia and legends about Villa
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