[3/4] -- PANCHO VILLA -- Anti-Hero of The SouthWest

Part IV ended much like Part I ended. Pancho Villa was again a Mexican Outlaw on the run, except now fighting on the losing side of the Mexican Revolution while skirmishing with the United States. ( Part II & Part III)

Doroteo "Francisco 'PANCHO' Villa" Arango [(Arambula), mother's maiden name]
Source: Wikimedia

Part V

The Mexican Revolution deposed 3 Presidents on its quest for socio-economic reforms. The leaders of the Revolution were not a truly united front with leaders that were also land barons like Venustiano Carranza. They did not grasp the idea that the People of Mexico wanted self-determination for themselves, and for their children. They would fight until their lives, and the lives of their children belonged to them. They wanted freedom from the rich Hacendados that had continued Spain's enslavement of the Mexican People and fair treatment from the foreign corporate Interests that plundered Mexico of its natural resources under Porfirio Diaz's 33 year rule. Villa and Zapata continued to fight for these ideals.

Land controlled by the different factions of the Revolution
Source: Wikimedia

After the attack on Columbus, New Mexico and other incidents that affected U.S. interest, President Woodrow Wilson called on General Pershing to chase and capture Pancho Villa in March of 1916. Villa spent the rest of the year evading Pershing's Punitive Expedition, while occasionally skirmishing with President Carranza's Constitutionalist Forces. During this time, a young Lt. George S. Patton captured and killed some of Villa's men. Villa was never captured. Instead, Villa's many supporters would help him by misguiding Pershing's troops. On June 21, 1916, Pershing's troops attacked a small town believing Pancho Villa was there, but instead mistakenly fought with Carranza's troops in the Battle of Carrizal. With the advent of WWI approaching, the failed U.S. expedition was called off early in January of 1917.

Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry
- taken prisoner during the attack on Carrizal, Chih., MX.
Source: Wikimedia
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Gen. Obregón in a business suit,
showing that he lost his right arm fighting Pancho Villa in 1915
Source: Wikimedia
Carranza spent 1916 securing his Presidency both through Military action against Villa and Zapata while making some political concessions granting land reform, civil rights and workers' rights. At the end of 1916 Carranza held a Congressional meeting where he declared that the Mexican Constitution of 1857 to be the model for the new constitution of the Mexican Republic with some slight alterations. Carranza's new Constitution and Presidency did not go far enough in civil and workers' rights or land reform for the People. General Obregon was disappointed and stopped supporting Carranza's Presidency. He retired after the ratification of the new Mexican Constitution on February 5, 1917.

Venustiano Carranza was officially elected President of Mexico on May 1, 1917. The burning fire of the Revolution had been extinguished. Villa and Zapata would continue to fight in smaller skirmishes without much success. They both would have to go into hiding from the new Mexican National Army under President Carranza. In 1918, Villa attacked and took over several towns in the northern part of the state of Chihuahua, but his troops and his front was mostly fragmented. Then in June of 1919 he attacked the border town of Juarez. He bypassed the state capital of Chihuahua City due its large force. In Juarez, he was routed by U.S. forces stationed in El Paso, Texas and forced back into the Sierra Madre mountains. In the south of Mexico, Emiliano Zapata was assassinated on April 10, 1919 ending the Zapatista movement.

Presidential elections were held early in 1920, but President Carranza rigged the elections to instill Ignacio Bonillas as his puppet president. The Revolution of Agua Prieta against Carranza started on April 23, 1920 by General Alvaro Obregon. Pancho Villa, sensing his moment, quickly joined the Agua Prieta movement against Carranza and joined General Alvaro Obregon. On May 21, 1920, Venustiano Carranza was assassinated. Then elections where held on December 1, 1920, election Alvaro Obregon the 39th President of Mexico, effectively ending all hostilities toward the government.

Pancho Villa retired to the Hacienda granted to him by the Mexican government with 200 of his closest Dorados as his protection. Villa remained out of politics for the next several years. He remained very popular with the people and in 1922 he gave an interview to a newspaper who was interested in Villa's views on agrarian policy. There was crop-sharing on the lands of his hacienda and other land reforms that piqued the interest of the media. He gave more interviews later that year that made some believe he intended to enter politics or possibly take up arms again. He was quoted as saying I can raise 40,000 men in 40 minutes, possibly sealing his fate. He was assassinated on in the small town of Parral, Chihuahua on 20 July 1923 at the age of 45. Mexico's Revolutionary Anti-Hero lives in History and in Legend.

Orbregon, Villa, Pershing
Friends and later Foes
Source: Wikimedia
----The End---

As I had mentioned in the prologue to Part I on Pancho Villa- Anti-Hero, my Uncle Jose personally knew Villa's wife Doña Luz. Although Villa did have a few wives and spouses, Doña Luz was the one who hung onto Villa the hardest. She wound up living in Villa's estate in the capital city of Chihuahua. It was there that my Uncle, who was married to my Dad's sister, would visit Villa's wife in her later years. But my uncle never took us there or introduced my side of the family to Villa's wife. I found out years later after Doña Luz had passed, that we never were introduced because sadly, one of Villa's known assassins has the same last name as my side of the family. Unfortunately, my last name is not a common last name in Mexico, and it is very likely that one of Villa's assassins was a relative, much to my sadness.

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Villa's Home now a Museum in Chihuahua
Source: Wikimedia