The Life and Times of Pancho Villa 9780804765176

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The Life and Times of Pancho Villa

The Life and Times

ofPancho Villa

Friedrich Katz

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©1998 by the Board ofTrustees of the

Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America CIP

data are at the end of the book

To Jana,Jackie, and Leo

Acknowledgments

I

n the course of the many years during which I have worked on this book, I have had the generous help of many institutions, as well as of friends, colleagues, students, and members of my family. These acknowledgments are therefore unusually long. I am deeply grateful to the institutions that helped to finance this undertaking: the University of Chicago, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the American Philosophical Society. I would also like to thank the many archives and libraries in many parts of the world that have helped me so enormously in my research. In Mexico City, I thank the Archivo General de la Naci6n, the lnstituto Mora, the Hemeroteca Nacional, the Archivo de la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, the Archivo de la Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional, the Archivo de la Secretaria de la Reforma Agraria, the Archivo Porfirio Diaz at the Universidad Iberoamericana, the Archivo de la Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico, the Archivo del lnstituto Nacional de la Revoluci6n Mexicana, the Biblioteca Nacional, the Biblioteca del lnstituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, and the Colegio de Mexico. In addition, I wish to thank the owners of private archives in Mexico City who allowed me to consult their holdings. These include the Archivo CallesTorreblanca, and especially its director, Norma Mereles de Ogarrio, the archives of Roque Gonzalez Garza, Martin Luis Guzman, and Martinez del Rio, the family of Elias Torres for allowing me to see his papers, and the Centro de Estudios de Historia de Mexico (CONDUMEX). In Chihuahua, I thank the Archivo de Ciudad Guerrero, Archivo Municipal de Ciudad Juarez, the Centro de Investigaciones y Documentaci6n del Estado

viii :::: Acknowledgments

de Chihuhua (CIDECH), and Dr. Ruben Osorio, for allowing me to consult his private archive. In Durango, I thank the Archivo del Estado de Durango and the Archivo de San Juan del Rio. In Nuevo Leon, I thank Mario Cerruti for informing me of the whereabouts of the private archives of Juan F. Brittingham, and Juan Ignacio Barragan, the owner of the archive, who allowed me to consult its holdings. An equally large number of archives and libraries in the United States have been of great help to me. These include the University of Chicago Library, the Newberry Library at Chicago, the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, the special collection room at Claremont College in Pomona, the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, the Sterling Library ofYale University, the special collections section of the Library of the University oflllinois at Carbondale, the Lilly Library of Indiana University at Bloomington, the Widener and Houghton Libraries of Harvard University, the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, which allowed me to consult the microfilms of the Papers of Senator Albert Bacon Fall, the Historical Museum at Columbus, the Deming Courthouse, which sent me transcripts of proceedings against the Villistas captured at Columbus, the New York Public Library, the Nettie Lee Benson Library at the University ofTexas at Austin, the special collections department at the Library of the University ofTexas at El Paso, the Museum of the Daughters of the American Revolution in San Antonio, and the National Archives and Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. In Germany, I thank the Foreign Office Archives in Bonn, the German Central Archives in Potsdam, and the German Central Archive in Merseburg. In France1 I thank the Archives Nationales and the Archives du Ministere des Mfaires Etrangeres in Paris. In Great Britain, I thank the Public Record Office, the British Science Museum, and the private archive that contains the papers of the Tlahualilo Company. In Spain, I thank the Archives of the Foreign Ministry, and in Austria, the Haus Hof und Staats Archiv in Vienna. Over the many years during which I have worked on this book, a remarkable number of friends, colleagues, and students have helped me along, many by putting new sources at my disposal, others through stimulating discussions about some of my ideas as well as theirs, and still others by reading parts or all of the manuscript and making extremely valuable suggestions. I thank Eugenia Meyer, who for so many years has helped me in every respect: the Programa de Historia Oral that she headed has carried out extremely important and valuable interviews with surviving Villistas in the 1970s. She has thus established a major source for the history ofVillismo, and for this alone I am extremely grateful to her. In addition, she has shown me innumerable marks of friendship by helping me to gain access to the archives of the Defense Ministry in Mexico, by putting new sources at my disposal, by discussing some of the most important ideas of the book with me, and by her constant encouragement. I also thank Alicia Olivera de Bonfll and Laura Espejel for allowing me to consult their important interviews with former revolutionaries. I also want to thank Villa's granddaughter, Guadalupe Villa, who provided me with some very valuable information. A number of friends and colleagues have shown great generosity in putting

Acknowledgments :::::: tx

their personal archives at my disposal. Ruben Osorio allowed me to see the numerous materials that he had collected, both from written and oral sources, on the history ofVillismo and of Chihuahua. Russell Chace ofYork University, who has done research on Chihuahua for many years, allowed me to copy whatever materials in his archives I found of interest. Ana Alonso and Daniel Nugent of the University of Arizona and Maria Teresa Koreck of the University of Michigan were equally generous with their research. Their insights into the history of Chihuahua, both in unpublished manuscripts and in their oral communications, were of enormous help to me. The same is true ofMark Wasserman, thanks to his remarkable work on Chihuahua. Hans Werner Tobler of the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich provided me with interesting and important materials from his research in the papers ofU.S. military intelligence in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. I also thank John Hart of the University of Houston for the materials on U.S. economic interests in Mexico that he put at my disposal. I have profited much from Richard Estrada's work on the Orozco revolution in Chihuahua, and I am extremely grateful to him and to Manuel Gonzalez for allowing me to consult the partly unpublished memoirs of]ose Maria Jaurrieta. I thank William Meyers for helping me to gain access to the papers of Elias Torres. My repeated discussions with Alicia Hernandez about the Mexican Revolution, and especially its military aspects, have been of great help to me, and she also put highly interesting materials at my disposal. I am greatly indebted to the Chihuahuan historians Carlos Gonzalez, Victor Orozco, and Jesus Vargas Valdes, all of whom put both their profound knowledge of Chihuahua and important sources at my disposal. I want to express my gratitude to Marta Rocha Islas, who allowed me to consult her notes on the archive of Governor Ignacio Enriquez. I thank William French for the materials on Parral that he showed me. I am grateful to Rosa Maria Meyer who helped me gain access to the archives of the Martinez del Rio family, and I thank that family for allowing me to consult this very important family archive. I would like to express my gratitude to Michael Desch for drawing my attention to U.S. war plans in connection with Mexico, and to Enrique de la Plasencia for his valuable indications converning important data in the Amaro papers about the assasination ofVilla. I was lucky enough to have first-class research assistants, who greatly helped me in going through the very extensive sources that I needed to consult to complete this book. I thank Richard Estrada, Angeles Garciadiego, William Meyers, Antonio Ruiz, Marta Rocha, Marco Antonio Martinez, Miguel Vallebueno, and Gonzalo Zeballos. I thank Christopher Boyer and James Kalven for helping me to eliminate the linguistic results of having been brought up in languages other than English for many years. I have profited much from the many discussions I have had on the nature of the Mexican Revolution, and on Mexican history in general, with the late Guillermo Bonfu, with Adolfo Gilly, Alan Knight, Enrique Semo, and John Coatsworth. I thank Susan Lundy, Linnea Cameron, and Tonja Hopkins, who wrote and

x ""' Acknowledgments

rewrote the chapters in this book and were thus forced to participate in the adventurous life of Pancho Villa. I thank Maria Teresa Franco, who first drew my attention to a letter of Villa's, written after his imprisonment, that is sharply critical of Madero. I thank David Walker, who put his enormous collection of data on the revolution in Durango at my disposal. Juan Mora was of great help to me in providing data on the revolution in Nuevo Leon. Josefina Moguel helped me in my work in the Condumex archives. I thank the two heads of the archive of Foreign Relations, Jose Maria Muria and Jorge Alvarez, for their great help when I worked in the archives of the Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores de Mexico. Alvaro Matute first drew my attention to and showed me some important materials from the papers of General Amado Aguirre. I would like to thank Fernando Perez Correa for allowing me to consult important files from the archives of the long term governor of Coahuila, Miguel Cardenas. I constantly had to confront my ideas with challenges from my extremely bright students, first at the University ofTexas and then at the University of Chicago. I have learned much from these exchanges, and I hope that they were able to profit from them too. I owe a special debt of thanks to those of my colleagues who read part or the whole of the book to my great benefit. Colin Lucas, Guillermo de la Pefia, and Daniel Nugent read the first part of this book. John Coatsworth, John Womack, Javier Garciadiego, and Claudio Lomnitz read the whole of the book, and my debt to them is enormous. Finally, I wish to thank the members of my family who suffered thorough the many years during which I wrote this book. There has been not one vacation during the past fifteen years of our life that my wife, Jana, did not share with Pancho Villa. My son Leo read some parts of the manuscript, and my daughter Jackie read the whole of it and gave me unstinting and constant encouragement. It is to all of them that I dedicate this book. As this book was going to press, I heard of the tragic death of Daniel Nugent, one of the most remarkable and talented historians of Mexico I have ever known. His advice, his help, and his friendship were of enormous importance to me, and I would like this book to be considered a tribute to his memory.

F.K.

Contents

Preface Prologue

X111 I

PART ONE "" FRoM OuTLAW To REVOLUTIONARY I

From the Frontier to the Border

II

2

The Revolution That Neither Its Supreme Leader Nor Its Opponents Expected The Chihuahuan Revolution, I9IO-I9II, and the Role ofPancho Villa

57

3 4

Disillusion and Counterrevolution Chihuahua, I9I2-I9IJ

!26

An Unrequited Love Villa and Madero, I9I2-I9IJ

I47

PART TWO "" FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO NATIONAL LEADER

5 From Exile to Governor of Chihuahua 6

The Rise of Villa in I9IJ

I9J

Four Weeks That Shook Chihuahua Villa's Briefbut Far-Reaching Governorship

229

xu = Contents

7 The Villista Leaders 8

The Division del Norte

9

Villa's Emergence as a National Leader His Relations with the United States and His Conflict with Ca"anza

309

10

The Elusive Search for Peace

354

11

Villismo in Practice Chihuahua Under Villa, I9IJ-I9IS

397

12

The New Civil War in Mexico Villismo on the Offensive

13

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

PART THREE

14

=

FROM NATIONAL LEADER TO GuERRILLA LEADER

Villa's Two-Front War with Carranza and the United States

545

15

The Resurgence of Villa in 1916-I9I7

583

16

Villa's Darkest Years The Savage and Bloody Gu~lla Struggle in Chihuahua, I9IJ-I920

615

17

Villa and the Outside World

6ss

18

The Attempt to Create Villismo with a Gentler Face The Return ofFelipe Angeles

68o

PART FOUR

=

RECONCILIATION, PEACE, AND DEATH

19

From Guerrilla Leader to Hacendado

719

20

The End and the Survival of Villa

761

Conclusion

795

Appendix: On the Archival Trail of Pancho Villa

821

Abbreviations Notes Archival Sources Bibliography Index

837 839 911 919

ro pages ofphotographsfollow page 486

955

Preface

1\longside Moctezuma and Benito Juarez, Pancho Villa is probably the best-

.1"1.. known Mexican personality throughout the world. Villa legends pervade not only Mexico but the United States as well and have even reached beyond. They exist not only in the popular mind, in popular tradition, and in popular ballads but in movies made both in Mexico and in Hollywood. There are legends ofVilla the Robin Hood, Villa the Napoleon of Mexico, Villa the ruthless killer, Villa the womanizer, and Villa as the only foreigner who has attacked the mainland of the United States since the war of 1812 and gotten away with it. Whether correct or incorrect, exaggerated or true to life, these legends have resulted in Pancho Villa the leader obscuring his movement, and the myths obscuring the leader. So much attention has focused on Villa himself that the characteristics of his movement that in many respects make it unique in Latin America, and in some ways among twentieth-century revolutions, have either been forgotten or neglected. Villa's Division del Norte was probably the largest revolutionary army that Latin America ever produced. The revolution he led was the only social revolution ever to occur along the border of the United States. It was also one of the few genuine revolutions produced by what might best be described as a frontier region on the American continent. Perhaps even more exceptional, this was one of the few revolutionary movements with which a U.S. administration in the twentieth century attempted, not only to come to terms, but even to forge an alliance. Equally remarkable, the Villa movement was part of one of the few twentieth-century revolutions that still enjoy enormous legitimacy in its own people's eyes. In Russia, Leningrad has been renamed St. Petersburg, and in China, students questioned Mao's revolution on

xtv :::::: Preface Tiananmen Square, but no one in Mexico is thinking of renaming the streets that bear the names of Villa or of other revolutionary heroes. In fact, not only the official government party but one of the main opposition parties and a newly emerged guerrilla movement in Chiapas all claim to be the legitimate heirs of the revolutionaries of 1910-20, among whom Villa's movement constituted a decisive force. Finally, both Villa and the leader of the strongest popular movement in southern Mexico, Emiliano Zapata, differed in significant ways from the revolutionary leaders that emerged elsewhere in the twentieth century. In contrast to such men as Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, or Fidel Castro, all of whom were highly educated intellectuals who led well-organized political movements, both Villa and Zapata came from the lower classes of society, had little education, and organized no political parties. It is on these characteristics of the Villa movement and on the personality of its leader that this book focuses. It seeks to examine the social composition of the movement, about which there is as much debate as about the personality of its leader. While for some it was a genuine peasant movement, others saw it as a revolution dominated by the riffraff of the frontier: cattle rustlers, bandits, marginals, men without roots or ideology. The latter interpretation has been greatly strengthened by the personality of a few of its leaders who managed to pass from history into legend, such as Rodolfo Fierro, "the killer," and Tomas Urbina, "the bandit." Were these men in fact characteristic of the leadership of Villa's movement? There are as yet no studies of the vast array of secondary leaders who flocked to Villa's movement, of the social composition of his army, or of the social basis of his support. One of the most important criteria for assessing a revolutionary leader, or any political figure for that matter, is what he or she did while in power. Villa controlled Chihuahua for two years, but little has been done to study either the program he developed for the state or the changes he actually implemented. I faced two major difficulties in writing this book. The first, far less important than the second, is the fact that Villa, unlike the other major revolutionary figures in Mexico such as Zapata, Carranza, and Obregon, left no archive, and the state archives of Chihuahua were destroyed by fire in 1940. What greatly helped me to compensate for this was that when I was completing this book, other archival sources that had long been inaccessible to researchers became available. They included the files of Mexico's Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional, the records of the Secci6n de Terrenos Nacionales in the archives of the Secretaria de la Reforma Agraria, the files of U.S. military intelligence and the FBI, and the papers of a number of Villa's collaborators. The most serious difficulty I had to deal with was to extract the historical truth from the multifaceted layers of legend and myth surrounding Villa. What made this task especially difficult was that, on the one hand, Villa was enamored of his own myths and did his best to embroider them. On the other hand, not one but a whole series of myths surround Villa and his movement: the myths expressed in popular ballads, the myth of the victors, who for many years shaped a hostile official historiography about him, and the Hollywood myths, often very contradictory in nature, to name but a few. These myths colored many of the thousands of articles and memoirs written about Villa. For this reason I have

Preface tried as much as possible to rely on contemporary documents, which are far less tainted and affected by the myths. This book comprises four major parts, ordered chronologically but representing four major phases both in Villa's life and in the history of Mexico. The first part deals with Villa's early life as an oudaw and his emergence as a secondary leader of the Mexican Revolution until early 1913. It also assesses the special conditions that transformed Chihuahua into a leading center of revolution and assesses the unique role that Chihuahua played in both 1910-n and 1912 in the broader history of the Mexican Revolution. The second part deals with the period when Villa emerged as a national leader and Chihuahua once more became a central area of the Mexican Revolution. It begins with Villa's dramatic rise to national prominence in 1913 and ends with his disastrous military defeats at the end of 1915. Part 2 assesses the nature of his revolutionary movement in comparison to the other major movements that emerged at the same time in Mexico. It also attempts to assess the impact of Villismo as an ideology and a social movement, and its impact on the state of Chihuahua, Mexico as a whole, and, last but not least, the United States. This is the period in Villa's life that has been studied most intensely and has given rise to the greatest controversies surrounding his personality and his movement. The third part of the book deals with the years 1915 to 1920: the nature of Villa's guerrilla warfare in that period, his attack on Columbus, New Mexico, and its paradoxical results, his reemergence as a national force in 1916-17, and his subsequent decline. The last part describes Villa's surrender, his life as a hacendado, his assassination and its aftermath, and the evolution of the Villa legend. Finally, an assessment is made of what conclusions can be reached about Villa's personality and the character and impact of his movement. The concluding chapter also tries to show where, in the opinion of this author, unanswered questions, persistent discrepancies, and legitimate grounds for continuing debate remain. This book is by no means the first to have been written about Villa. Outstanding works such as Martin Luis Guzman's Memorias de Pancho Villa already exist (see Bibliography). These works, though, tend to focus on the man rather than on his movement, and many of the sources I was able to utilize were unavailable to their authors. This book pretends neither to give a final answer to the many problems that Villa and his movement have raised nor to resolve the controversies that they have aroused. There is litde doubt that new documents relating to and new interpretations of both Villa and his movement will emerge. In addition, as has been the case with Danton, Robespierre, and other major revolutionary figures {and Villa, whatever one may think of him, was a major revolutionary figure), each generation will look at Villa from a different perspective, so that discussions on this subject will continue for a long time to come. What I hope to have achieved is to help clarify the parameters of that debate

::=

xv

The Life and Times of Pancho Villa

Prologue

I

t was a scene he would have loved. Despite the cold, blustery weather that November day in 1976, throngs of people lined the street in the old city ofParral in the state of Chihuahua. They had heard the news that Pancho Villa's remains, which were buried in Parral, would, as the result of a decree passed by the Mexican president, be transferred to the Monument of the Revolution in Mexico City. This constituted a belated recognition by a Mexican government of his revolutionary merits. As Villa's casket, flanked by members of his family, came into view, masses of people began clapping and cheering. Many burst into the old rallying cry of "Viva Villa!"1 What would have impressed Villa was the fact that practically none of these enthusiastic spectators had ever known him, since more than years had elapsed since his death, and even the parents of many who now stood on the streets of Parral to watch him go to join the remains of his enemies in the mausoleum of revolutionary heroes in Mexico City had never seen, heard, or met him. It was a measure of the influence he still exercised in his adopted state that so many years after his death, thousands came out to cheer him. Another expression of the emotions his memory aroused was the fact that thousands of others are said to have refused to come out, that many sent harsh letters of protest to the newspapers, and some avidly read Rodrigo Alonso Cortes's 1972 book Francisco Villa, el quinto jinete del apocalipsis (Pancho Villa, the Fifth Rider of the Apocalypse), which depicts Villa as a monster, and similar works. 2 Villa might have expected this mixture of love and hate, of respect and contempt in Mexico. He would have been more surprised to find the same mixture manifesting itself north of the border, in a country for which, in the later years of

so

2

= Prologue his life, he had nourished an ever-increasing hatred: the United States. In November 1979, a statue of him was brought to Tucson, Arizona. It aroused emotions that were at least as strong as in Mexico and was greeted with a similar mixture of love and hate, of respect and contempt. 3 These competing reactions reflect the contradictions of the man himself and the contradictions within the many legends about him.

The Early Life of Pancho Villa: The Legends Villa's early life remains shrouded in mystery. This is partly because in contrast to the other main figures of the Mexican Revolution, he had for many years been an oudaw, roaming through vast areas of northern Mexico. That fact alone is a major obstacle to anyone wishing to unravel the story of his early life. The task is made even more difficult by the many legends, forged by both friends and foes, through which researchers have to hew their way. There are three basic versions of Villa's early life, which I shall call the white legend, the black legend, and the epic legend. The first, based largely on Villa's own reminiscences, portrays him as a victim of the social and economic system of Porfirian Mexico: a man the authorities prevented from living a quiet, lawabiding life, although he attempted to do so. The black legend portrays him as an evil murderer, with no redeeming qualities. The epic legend, largely based on popular ballads and traditions that seem to have emerged mainly in the course of the revolution, portrays Villa as a far more important personality in prerevolutionary Chihuahua than do either his own account or the black legend. What all three legends have in common is that they are based, not on contemporary documents, but rather on reminiscences, popular ballads, rumors, memoirs, and hearsay. What they also have in common is that none of the three legends, black, white, or epic, is entirely consistent within itsel£ The white legend is primarily based on an autobiography that Villa dictated to one of his secretaries, Manuel Bauche Alcalde, at the height of his power in 1914. These memoirs came into the possession of one of Mexico's greatest novelists, Martin Luis Guzman, who after some rewriting and editing published part of them as the first part of a 1984 book entided Memorias de Pancho Villa (Memoirs of Pancho Villa). 4 In this book, I have relied on Villa's original memoirs, which the family of Martin Luis Guzman generously allowed me to consult. One of the few aspects of Villa's life about which all agree is that he was born in 1878, on the Rancho de la Coyotada, part of one of the largest haciendas in the state of Durango, owned by the Lopez Negrete family. His parents, Agustin Arango and Micaela Arambula, were sharecroppers on the hacienda. The child who would later be known as Francisco Villa was baptized Doroteo Arango. (Different opinions exist about his real name.) His father died at an early age, and his mother had to support her five children. Beyond this point, the white, black, and epic legends begin to diverge.

Prologue """3

The White Legend "The tragedy of my life begins on September 22, 1894, when I was sixteen years old," Villa recounts in his memoirs. He was working as a sharecropper on the Hacienda de Gogojito. Mter his father died, he had become head of his family, consisting of his mother, his brothers Antonio and Hipolito, and two sisters, Marianita, aged 15, and Martina, who was 12. When he returned home from work that day in 1894, he found Don Agustin Lopez Negrete, "the Master, the owner of the lives and honor of us the poor people," standing in front of his mother, who was telling him: "Go away from my house! Why do you want to take my daughter?" When he heard these words, the young Doroteo Arango became so furious that he ran to the house of his cousin Romualdo Franco, took the latter's gun, and shot Lopez Negrete in the foot. Lopez Negrete began loudly calling for help. Five of his retainers appeared, armed with rifles, and set out to shoot Doroteo. "Don't kill this boy," Lopez Negrete told them, however. "Take me home." Young Arango realized that although the hacendado had prevented him from being killed, he might very well have him arrested, so he quickly mounted his horse and fled: My conscience told me that I had done the right thing. The master, with five armed men, with all the power at his disposal, had tried to impose a forced contribution of our honor. The sweat of his serfs, the work of his serfs, our constant and tiring labor in order to enrich him, the master, was not sufficient for him. He also needed our women, his serfs; his despotism led to the profanation of our home. Seeing that I was still free, I got on my horse and headed for the Sierra de la Silla, opposite Gogojito. 5 From that moment on, Doroteo led the life of an outlaw in the mountains of Durango, relentlessly pursued by the authorities. He tells of how he managed again and again, with almost uncanny skill, to foil or defeat his pursuers as a boy of16 or q. A few months after fleeing into the mountains, he was caught by three men, who jailed him in San Juan del Rio. Arango was convinced that he would soon be shot. ''At m:oo the next day, they took me out of the room where they had locked me up, in order [for me] to grind a barrel of Nixtamal [dough from which tortillas are made]." 6 Hitting the guard nearest him with the pestle of the metate, Arango escaped into the Los Remedios mountains, located near the pnson. A few months later, in October 1895, he was caught again when seven men found him asleep and ordered him to surrender. This time Arango managed to foil his captors even more dramatically. He suggested to his captors that they roast some ears of corn before taking him to prison in town. They were hungry, there were seven of them, and they saw no reason to fear the boy they had captured, so they agreed. What these men did not know was that the boy had a gun hidden under his

4

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Prologue blanket and a horse grazing nearby. When two of them went to cut com stalks, and two others had gone to cut wood, Arango got out his gun, opened fire on his three remaining guards, ran to his horse, and once more managed to escape.7 He tells proudly of how only a few months later he defeated another party of men sent out to capture him, leading them into an ambush and killing three rurales. 8 Arango came to feel that the life he had been leading was too dangerous and decided to take new measures both to elude his pursuers and to ease his life as an oudaw. He first decided to change his name. Since his father, Agustin Arango, had been the illegitimate son of Jesus Villa, he now began calling himself Francisco Villa. He became convinced that surviving alone was too difficult and so decided to join two oudaws who were roaming in the vicinity, Ignacio Parra and Refugio Alvarado. Before they accepted him into their company, the two men told him: "Look, young man, if you want to go with us, you have to do everything that we tell you. We know how to kill and rob. We tell you this so that you should not be afraid." These crude words, clear and precise like the blow of a hammer, did not intimidate me .... men who pompously call themselves honest also kill and rob. In the name of the law that they apply for the benefit and protection of the few in order to threaten and sacrifice the many, the high authorities of the people rob and kill with the greatest impunity. 9 A new and far more agreeable life now began for the newly named Francisco Villa. Instead of being a hunted fugitive, barely managing to survive, he became a successful oudaw, reaping the rewards of banditry. Only one week after joining Parra and Alvarado, his share of the loot came to over J,ooo pesos. This was more than ten times the yearly wage of an agricultural worker in Chihuahua at the time. But it was only the beginning. A short time later, the band robbed a wealthy miner of 15o,ooo pesos, and Villa left the gang for a time with so,ooo pesos in his pocket. It was a fortune by the standards of the time, but within eleven months, Villa had used it all, mainly by giving it away. In his memoirs, Villa proudly states, "I gave it to the poor." His mother received s,ooo pesos, and 4,ooo were given to other members of his family. To an old man named Antonio Retana, who had a large family, could not see well, and was extremely poor, Villa gave the means to establish a tailor shop and hired an employee to run it. "Mter eight or ten months I had returned to the poor the money that the rich had taken from them. "10 Having spent all his money, Villa returned to the gang and resumed his life as an oudaw. He soon fell out with his partners, however, over the wanton killing by one of them of an old man who had refused to sell him bread. Thereafter, he continued to wander through the mountains of Durango, committing a few robberies, finding new partners, and having repeated shoot-outs with the authorities. Finally, he had had enough of life as an oudaw. "One day, I said to Luis Orozco, 'Hombre, we can't live like this. Let's go to Chihuahua and look for work.' One month later we went to Parral."11 There, Villa labored in a variety of occupations, but was again and again forced

Prologue= 5 to give everything up and flee when the authorities discovered his identity. First he worked as a miner, but he had to give this up after bruising his feet. He then worked for a mason, making bricks. When his identity was discovered, he fled, began stealing cattle, and attempted to sell them on the Chihuahua meat market. When this proved unprofitable, because the interests controlling the meat business would not give him access to the slaughterhouse, he became a miner again. This did not last long, and again because of persecution by the authorities, Villa had to resume life as an oudaw. In spite of constant persecution, he bought a house in the town of Chihuahua and decided to settle there. It was there, sometime in 1910, that he met Abraham Gonzalez, the noble martyr for democracy ... who invited me to fight for the revolution for the rights of the people that had been trampled upon by tyranny.... There I understood for the first time that all the suffering, all the hatred, all the rebellions that had accumulated in my soul during so many years of fighting had given me such a strength of conviction and such a clear will that I could offer all this to my country ... to free her from the snakes that were devouring her entrails. 12 Villa describes himself as a victim of both the despotism of the hacendados and the arbitrariness of the Porfirian authorities. A man with a sense of honor and dignity could take no other course than the one he took when he attacked the hacendado who had sought to outrage his sister. Every attempt he made at giving up life as an outlaw was thwarted by ruthless officials linked either to the government ofDurango or to the Creel-Terrazas clan, which dominated Chihuahua. The picture he paints of himself is not altogether flattering. He mainly, although not always, took from the rich, and sometimes, although less frequently, gave to the poor. He quotes his mother as telling him, "My dear son, where did you get so much money? These men are leading you to perdition. You are committing crimes, and it will be on my conscience if I fail to make you understand. "13 By his own description, he was not an entirely unwilling oudaw. Shordy after he joined Ignacio Parra, the gang leader gave him J,ooo pesos to outfit himself and buy a horse. Instead, Villa preferred to keep the money and steal the horse of a passerby. 14 He could have attempted to give up life as an oudaw earlier and with greater ease had he used the so,ooo pesos he obtained from one of his first robberies to settle down and begin a different life. Another aspect of his early life that Villa emphasizes is his prowess as a fighting man. As a boy of 16 or IJ, he outwitted pursuers sent to catch him four times, killing a number of men in the process. He saw his fight against the authorities as linked in some way to the revolution, but he made no claim to have in any way participated in the many uprisings, protests, and political mobilizations that occurred in Chihuahua before the revolution. What Villa did insist on is that although he had killed many men, he was not a coldblooded murderer. His victims had either died when Villa had to defend himself or were men who had betrayed him.

6 "" Prologue

The Black Legend Very different kinds of stories circulated about Villa in Chihuahua. Some of them were picked up in 1914 by U.S. intelligence agents, who attempted to sketch a biographical profile of Villa. One report sent by John Biddle, a colonel on the U.S. general staff, to the chief of the War College Division gave a far more bloodthirsty picture of Villa than the one provided in his autobiography: One story has it that the sheriff of the county eloped with Villa's sister and fled to the mountains. Villa pursued him with some ardent men, caught the couple, forced the man to go through a marriage ceremony, made him dig his own grave, and Villa shot him and rolled his body to the grave. One account is that he was incarcerated when fourteen years of age for cattle stealing and a few months after his release was again confined for homicide at Guanavad[,] Chihuahua. 15 In another report forwarded to U.S. military intelligence, Dr. Carlos Husk, a physician who worked in Mexico for the American Smelting and Refining Company, and who knew Villa well, wrote: "In his bandit days, his notoriety was so widespread that nearly every crime committed and unaccounted for in northern Mexico was charged to him, and while there is no doubt that he participated in many, it was physically impossible for him to have accomplished everything in that line that his enemies accused him of, and he, of course, says that he never committed murder in cold blood, only killing those who were seeking him for the same purpose. "16 The most systematic and comprehensive version of the black legend was written by Celia Herrera, a member of a family who developed a kind of blood feud with Villa, and many of whose members Villa killed. 17 Herrera depicts a vicious killer and murderer without any redeeming qualities. Villa became an outlaw, according to her, not because he had avenged the honor of his sister but because he had murdered another boy, a friend ofhis, with whom he had had an altercation. This was the prelude to a spate of killings that increased in scope, intensity, and gruesomeness from year to year. In 1900, Villa killed Claro Reza, a former companion, a butcher who owed him money and refused to pay up. In 1902, he joined a gang of criminals headed by an outlaw named Jose Beltnin. They attacked the house of a man named Inocencio Chavez and pistolwhipped his wife when she refused to tell them where he had hidden his money. In 1904, they attempted to murder a cattleman named Amaya and plunder his house. When they were prevented from carrying out their planned robbery by the arrival of a policeman, they became so furious that they murdered two of Amaya's cowboys when they encountered them on the street. In 1908, the gang entered the house of Alejandro Munoz in the town of San Isidro. They requested. a large sum of money from him, and when he did not give it to them, they tortured him, cutting off parts of his feet. Then they knifed him to death. On October 13, 1910, they attacked the hacienda ofTalamantes, where they found only the owner's youngest daughter, Josefa Sota. When she refused to hand over her money, they buried her alive. According to this account, Abraham Gonzalez never asked Villa to partici-

Prologue == 7 pate in the revolution. In fact, he got involved only by coincidence: he was visiting a girlfriend at a small ranch when a federal force, believing that some revolutionaries were hidden there, attacked it. Thinking that they were pursuing him, Villa shot back and fled. He then decided to join Pascual Orozco, together with his gang. Orozco at first refused, since he considered Villa nothing more than a bandit. While negotiations were going on, federal troops attacked Orozco, Villa joined in responding to the attack, and Orozco reluctandy accepted the bandit into his army. He was to regret this decision, since Villa later stole the pay destined for the revolutionary troops. Needless to say, according to Herrera, Villa never attempted to setde down and lead a more peaceful and law-abiding life in Chihuahua.

The Epic Legend What the white and the black legends have in common is that they do not attribute any great political or social importance to Villa prior to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. The epic legend, by contrast, states that in his years as an oudaw, Villa became the idol of Chihuahua's peasantry and the scourge of the Terrazas. No one has better described the epic legend than the U.S. correspondent John Reed:

An immense body of popular legend grew up among the peons around his name. There are many traditional songs and ballads, celebrating his exploits-you can hear the shepherds singing them around their fires at night, repeating verses handed down by their fathers or composing others extemporaneously. For instance, they tell the story of how Villa, fired by the story of the misery of the peons at the hacienda of Los Alamos, gathered a small army and descended upon the big house, which he looted and distributed the spoils among the poor people. He drove off thousands of catde from the Terrazas range and ran them across the border. He would suddenly descend upon a prosperous mine and seize the bullion. When he needed corn he captured a granary belonging to some rich man. He recruited almost openly in the villages, far removed from the well traveled roads and railways, organizing the oudaws of the mountains. 18 The epic legend not only painted Villa as a more influential man than he had described himself in his memoirs but as a more generous one as well. One version of this legend reached all the way to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. In a conversation with the British ambassador, Wilson described Villa as "a sort of Robin Hood [who] had spent an eventful life in robbing the rich in order to give to the poor. He had even at one time kept a butcher's shop for the purpose of distributing to the poor the proceeds of his innumerable catde raids."19 It is extremely difficult to separate truth from legend, to determine the veracity of these contradictory accounts, because so few documents exist for this early period of Villa's life. None of Villa's accounts of his own life, the accusations of his enemies, and the ballads that form the basis of the epic legend are corrobo- rated by contemporary documents. Villa's autobiography is based exclusively on his memoirs, while Celia Herrera quotes only one document dealing with Villa's life prior to the outbreak of the revolution-a report by a local jefe politico stat-

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ing that in 1907, Villa and some companions had stolen 22 head of cattle and mules. 20 Extricating fact from fiction and separating truth from legend with regard to Villa's early life requires not only examination of all contemporary documents, including a critical evaluation ofboth Villa's memoirs and those of his contemporaries, but an understanding of the milieu in which he lived prior to the revolution, that ofMexico's northern frontier, and above all the state of Chihuahua. It was in many respects a region with a history far different from that of the rest of Mexico, a place where heroism and bloodthirstiness had come together in an inextricable and violent mix.

PART ONE

From Oudaw to Revolutionary

CHAPTER ONE

From the Frontier to the Border

There is enormous animosity against the hacienda for which I have no explanation, and which would have seemed incredible to me, ifl did not feel it every moment. Many of the servants whom we considered loyal have greatly disappointed us; they have been captivated by the promises made by the revolutionaries that the lands would be divided among them, and right now all they think about is the realization of such a beautiful dream. Many of them have received great benefits from the hacienda and they are the ones who demand land with the greatest eagerness, not because we have caused them any harm, but because of their desire for their own profit. -The administrator of the hacienda of Santa Catalina to its owner 1

O

n the eve of the Spanish Conquest, what is today the state of Chihuahua had been part neither of the Aztec empire nor of the complex civilization known as Mesoamerica, which included the inhabitants of central and southern Mexico. In contrast to Mesoamerica, Chihuahua had no large cities, no dense population living on intensive agriculture, and no highly stratified social groups. Instead, it was thinly populated by groups of hunters, gatherers, and some agriculturists, loosely organized into different tribes. The Aztecs had shown no interest in conquering this nomadic population, to which they collectively referred in the most derisive way as chichimecas, the sons of dogs. The Aztecs' lack of interest is not surprising. The vast state of Chihuahua consists mostly of deserts and inhospitable mountain ranges. Large parts of central Chihuahua are taken up by the sand dunes of Samalayuca, while the even more arid Bolson de Mapimi is located in the southeastern part of the state. The huge Sierra Madre, in western Chihuahua, are mosdy just as inhospitable. Agriculture could be practiced only in limited regions, irrigated by rivers and lakes, mainly in the northwestern part of the state and to a lesser degree in eastern Chihuahua near the Conchos River. Some of the most important resources of Chihuahua were of no interest to the Aztecs. There were no catde to graze on the

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fertile pastureland in the central part of the state, and the Aztecs lacked the technology to extract its rich mineral ores. They had no use either for its huge timber resources. Initially, the Spaniards, too, showed little interest in the region. Their attitude changed at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, when large silver mines were discovered near the present cities 'Of Chihuahua and Parral. Spanish settlements were soon established, and haciendas sprang up around them to supply the miners with food and to profit from the mining boom. Since it was difficult to attract laborers or immigrants from central Mexico or from Spain to this vast, undeveloped, and dangerous region, the Spaniards attempted to enslave the local population, most of whom were Tarahumara, whose way of life was predominantly nomadic. When Indian slavery proved to be both unsuccessful (many slaves fled into the Sierra Madre) and illegal (the Spanish Crown soon banned Indian slavery), new methods of influencing the Indians were attempted. The Jesuits and Franciscans tried to settle them in missions. Although temporarily subdued, the Tarahumara staged a number of uprisings, however, and the majority of them finally faded into the Sierra Madre, where the Spaniards had great difficulty in locating them, and where they resumed their nomadic way oflife.2 Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the population of Chihuahua gradually expanded as more mines were developed, new haciendas were set up, and migrants decided to settle there. That expansion abruptly halted in the mid eighteenth century, when Apache raiders began to make their presence felt in Chihuahua. Until then, the Apaches had lived far to the north of Chihuahua, but in the eighteenth century, they were pushed southward by the far more powerful Comanches, and they began raiding Spanish settlements. The few hundred soldiers that Spain had stationed on the frontier were unable to put up an effective resistance, and many of Spain's hacendados as well as its miners fled southward or into a few large towns. 3 Faced with the possible loss of this potentially rich province, the Spanish crown decided to set up a series of fortified settlements inhabited by armed peasant freeholders. Extraordinary benefits were given to migrants from Spain and from central Mexico, as well as to local Indians, who were willing to settle in these military colonies. They were granted large amounts of land and exempted from paying taxes for ten years. Indian military colonists, in contrast to the Indian peasants of central Mexico, who were considered wards of the crown, were given full rights of Spanish citizenship.4 By the end of the eighteenth century, these colonists began to be a fighting force able effectively to resist the Apache raiders. When the crown held out not only a stick in the shape of these military colonies but a carrot as well, offering to supply all Apaches who settled near Spanish towns with food, clothing, and alcohol, many of the nomadic raiders settled down. Although it was never completely pacified, the region was more peaceful than ever before. For the first time, the peasant freeholders were able to fully enjoy the fruits of their land and labor, for which they gave credit to the Spanish crown. As a result, when the Mexican war of independence broke out in 1810, not only did the military colonists

From the Frontier to the Border ::::: IJ

along New Spain's northern frontier not join the revolutionaries in central and southern Mexico, but many of them decided to fight on the side of Spain. 5 A century later, in 1910, after the Mexican government had again pacified the frontier, the descendants of these military colonists took a completely different attitude and fought in the forefront of the Mexican Revolution. The reason for that change in attitude can be found in the development of Chihuahua in the nineteenth century. The peace the Spanish crown brought to the frontier did not survive Spanish colonial rule. By I8Jo, the Apaches were raiding again. Weak Mexican governments, generally toppled after one or two years by military coups or by rival political factions, had neither the means nor the will to fight the Apaches. The payments in food and in kind that had kept them peaceful were canceled just as the Apaches began to sense the military weakness of the new Mexican government. The Mexican army was far more adept at staging coups in Mexico City than at fighting Apache raiders. Attacks on haciendas increased to such a degree that by the mid nineteenth century, most hacendados had abandoned their estates. By contrast, the military colonists stayed and fought, since they had nowhere else to go. 6 Describing this period, the inhabitants of the old military colony of Namiquipa proudly wrote in a petition they drafted at the end of the nineteenth century, "all neighboring haciendas had been abandoned because of the constant danger of aggression by the barbarians between 1832 and 186o and only Namiquipa remained to fight the barbarians and to constitute a lonely bastion of civilization in this remote region." 7 This was true not only of Namiquipa but of many other military colonies and free villages in large parts of Chihuahua. In these years, they created what was in many respects a unique kind of society in Mexico, limited to northern Chihuahua and a few other regions that were prey to Apache attacks. It was a society that embodied a unique combination of savagery and democracy. Savagery was characteristic of both sides in the conflict. The Apaches frequently killed and tortured their prisoners, including women and children, and the Mexican authorities offered bounties for Apache scalps, also including those of women and children. The savagery at times extended to Tarahumara Indians, who did not raid Mexican settlements but frequently lost their lands and their properties to white and mestizo settlers. 8 On the other hand, this Chihuahuan society of free rancheros perhaps most closely corresponded to the kind of U.S. frontier society painted in vivid colors by Frederick Jackson Turner. His hypothesis, which captured the minds of generations of Americans, was that the U.S. frontier created a unique kind of selfreliant, autonomous, independent farmer. These farmers, according to Turner, were unencumbered by the class differences and power structures of the eastern United States. The state was weak, the traditional wealthy families did not go west, and so a kind of egalitarian, self-reliant society was created in the west of the United States, which largely shaped the mentality of that country. In recent years, this hypothesis has aroused much controversy in U.S. historiography.9 Some historians argue that land speculators, wealthy landowners, and bankers were very much present in the settlement of what is generally considered the U.S. frontier-as was the state in the shape of the U.S. Army. In much of

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Chihuahua and some other parts of northern Mexico, the contrary was the case in the period from about 1830 to the 186os. The state, which in the shape of Spanish colonial authorities, the army, wealthy landowners, and the Catholic church had been present at the genesis of the northern Mexican frontier in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, had largely disappeared in northwestern Chihuahua by the 183os. Many of the missions that the Jesuits had established vanished toward the end of the colonial period after the order was expelled from New Spain in q6r, the remaining missions were largely abandoned when Spanish rule ended in Mexico in 1821. Wealthy miners and hacendados fled as the Apaches advanced, and bankers and land speculators saw no value in lands that were constandy prey to nomadic attacks. The Mexican federal government and the federal army were far too weak and riven by internal dissension to have any significant presence in Chihuahua and northern Mexico, so the free rancheros were left to their own devices. The society they developed was poor but largely egalitarian. Chihuahuans were self-reliant and self-confident, with a fierce sense of pride in being able to maintain themselves in the face of such adversity. From the 186os onward, that society would once again be transformed by the return ofboth the state and the hacendados to Chihuahua. The man who did most to engineer that return was one of the state's most important, flamboyant, and memorable figures, Luis Terrazas.

The Rise of Luis Terrazas In the 186os, after Mexico defeated the French invaders and put an end to Maximilian's empire, a more stable administration was established. Fearing that Chihuahua would be annexed by the United States if it was not brought firmly under Mexican control, the central government did everything in its power to fight the Apaches. New military colonies were established; setders were given land if they were ready to fight against the Indian raiders; and, above all, the hacendados were induced to return. The man who was largely responsible for this new policy was Luis Terrazas. The son of a well-to-do butcher, Terrazas did not come from one of Chihuahua's ruling families, although he soon married into one of them. He joined the Liberal party in Chihuahua, became one of its leaders, and, in the course of the civil wars between Liberals and Conservatives, became Liberal governor of the state in 1859. Being more adept than his predecessors at fighting off the Apache raiders, he quickly became popular. 10 Terrazas's organizational talents were not the sole reason for his success. His chief innovation was to divert tax revenues earmarked for the federal government in Mexico City to setting up militias to fight the Indians. While this approach was unpopular in Mexico's capital, it gained Terrazas prestige and support among many segments of Chihuahua's population, including its military colonists, who regarded the central authorities as useless exploiters and parasites. Terrazas did not devote all of his energies to fighting the Apaches. He also used the governorship to acquire some of the largest haciendas in the state. He acquired his largest estate by expropriating the property of another hacendado,

From the Frontier to the Border Pablo Martinez del Rio, who had the misfortune to choose the wrong side in the war between the French and Mexico. He obtained other estates by buying them cheap from hacendados who had abandoned them and saw no way of settling them again. Since he was governor of the state, Terrazas controlled the militia and was able to attract many laborers who had fled the countryside to work on his estates, because he was able to offer them a greater degree of protection than other hacendados. There is no evidence that when he began forming his empire in the 186os, Terrazas expropriated any of the lands of the peasant freeholders in the military colonies. There were sufficient abandoned estate lands to meet his ambitions, and he needed the fighting power of the military colonists. While Terrazas was governor of the state, his cousin Joaquin Terrazas commanded militia units composed of peasant freeholders who were far more effective in fighting the Apaches than the few federal troops stationed in Chihuahua. The activities of this cousin reflected to the credit ofTerrazas, and he gained a large measure of popularity in his native state. In 1876, the situations ofTerrazas and of Mexico profoundly changed when General Porfirio Diaz, one of the heroes of Mexico's struggle for independence against Napoleon III, carried out a successful military coup and assumed power in Mexico. It was the beginning of the longest dictatorship in the history of Mexico. With the exception of four years from 188o to 1884 when an ally of Diaz's, Manuel Gonzalez, assumed the country's presidency, Diaz would rule Mexico until 1911, when he was overthrown by a popular uprising. In many respects, the Diaz regime met the fondest hopes of Mexico's wealthiest men, such as Luis Terrazas. In economic terms, Mexico underwent unprecedented economic growth. Newly constructed railroads linked Mexico to the United States, as well as to port cities in Mexico. The result was a tremendous increase in foreign investment in Mexico, as well as spectacular economic growth. Between 1884 and 1900, about S1,2oo,ooo,ooo worth of foreign investment :Hooded into the country, and the gross national product rose at an annual rate of 8 percent. Mexico now enjoyed an unprecedented era of political stability. Uprisings by members of the elite and the military, which had been the hallmark of Mexico's history since independence, practically ceased. This was owing not only to the power of the state, whose revenues increased significantly thanks to economic growth and foreign investment, but also to the fact that members of the elite became intermediaries for foreign investors and thus had a major stake in maintaining the political stability that was a precondition for foreign investment. The increasing power of the state and the existence of railroads that greatly increased the mobility of government military forces allowed the regime to crush popular and middle-class uprisings wherever they occurred. Possibilities of political instability were drastically reduced by falsified elections, which led to a rubber-stamp congress that Diaz completely controlled. The result of political growth and economic stability was that Mexico's upper class were now able to accumulate enormous wealth. They did so not only by becoming intermediaries for foreign investors but also because they were able, thanks to the communication revolution that had taken place in Mexico, to export large amounts of goods both to the United States and to Europe. Diaz's policies of keeping down popular protest,