Pancho Villa Part I

 

Francisco "Pancho" Villa (UK: /ˈpæntʃoʊ ˈviːə/ PAN-choh VEE-ə, US: /ˈpɑːntʃoʊ ˈviː(j)ə/ PAHN-choh VEE-(y)ə, Spanish: [ˈpantʃo ˈβiʎa]; born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula; 5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923) was a Mexican revolutionary. He was a key figure in the Mexican Revolution, which forced out President and dictator Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero came 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.

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 Mexican Revolution who dared to stand up to the United States. Some American media outlets describe Villa as a villain and a murderer.

In November 1915, civil war broke out when Carranza challenged Villa. Villa was decisively defeated by Constitutionalist general Álvaro Obregón in the summer of 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 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 that he retire from politics. Villa was assassinated in 1923. Although his faction did not prevail in the Revolution, he was one of its most charismatic and 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

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  to the Sierra Madre Occidental region of Durango, where he roamed the hills as a thief. In fact, on September 22, 1894, he shot Negrete in the foot. Eventually, he became a member of a bandit band where he went by the name "Arango". In 1898, he was arrested for gun and mule theft.

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, who allegedly had 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. In 1903, after killing an army officer and stealing his horse, he was no longer known as Arango but Francisco "Pancho" Villa after his paternal grandfather, Jesús Villa.  However, others claim he appropriated the name from a bandit from Coahuila. He was known to his friends as La Cucaracha ("the cockroach").

Until 1910, Villa is said to have alternated episodes of thievery with more legitimate pursuits.  At one point, he was employed as a miner, but that stint did not have a major impact on him. Villa's outlook on banditry changed after he met Abraham González, the local representative for presidential candidate Francisco Madero, a rich hacendado turned politician from the northern state of Coahuila, who opposed the continued rule of Díaz and convinced Villa that, through his banditry, he could fight for the people and hurt the hacienda owners.

At the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Villa was 32 years old.

Madero and Villa in the ouster of Díaz

At the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, for Villa and men like him operating as bandits, the turmoil provided expanded horizons, "a change of title, not of occupation" in one assessment. Villa joined in the armed rebellion that Francisco Madero called for in 1910 to oust incumbent President Porfirio Díaz in the Plan de San Luis Potosí. In Chihuahua, the leader of the anti-re-electionists, Abraham González, reached out to Villa to join the movement. Villa captured a large hacienda, then a train of Federal Army soldiers, and the town of San Andrés. He went on to beat the Federal Army in Naica, Camargo, and Pilar de Conchos, but lost at Tecolote. Villa met in person with Madero in March 1911, as the struggle to oust Díaz was ongoing. Although Madero had created a broad movement against Díaz, he was not sufficiently radical for the anarcho-syndicalists of the Mexican Liberal Party, who challenged his leadership. Madero ordered Villa to deal with the threat, which he did, disarming and arresting them. Madero rewarded Villa by promoting him to colonel in the revolutionary forces.

Much of the fighting was in the north of Mexico, near the border with the United States. Fearful of U.S. intervention, Madero ordered his officers to call off the siege of the strategic border city of Ciudad Juárez. Villa and Pascual Orozco attacked instead, capturing the city after two days of fighting, thus winning the first Battle of Ciudad Juárez in 1911.

Facing a series of defeats in many places, Díaz resigned on 25 May 1911, afterward going into exile. However, Madero signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez with the Díaz regime, under which the same power structure, including the recently defeated Federal Army, was retained.

Villa during the Madero presidency, 1911–1913

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 the 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 has 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).

Once elected president in November 1911, Madero proved to be 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) as his Minister of War. Madero's "refusal personally to accommodate Orozco was a major political blunder." Orozco rebelled in March 1912, both for Madero's continuing failure to enact land reform and because he felt insufficiently rewarded for his role in bringing the new president to power. At the request of Madero's chief political ally in the state, Chihuahua Governor Abraham González, Villa returned to military service under Madero to fight the rebellion led by his former comrade Orozco. Although Orozco appealed to him to join his rebellion, Villa again gave Madero key military victories. With 400 cavalrymen, he captured Parral from the Orozquistas and then joined forces in the strategic city of Torreón with the Federal Army under the command of General Victoriano Huerta.

Huerta initially welcomed the successful Villa and sought to bring him under his control by naming Villa an honorary brigadier general in the Federal Army, but Villa was not flattered or controlled easily. Huerta then sought to discredit and eliminate Villa by accusing him of stealing a fine horse and calling him a bandit. Villa struck Huerta, who then ordered Villa's execution for insubordination and theft. As he was about to be executed by firing squad, he appealed to Generals Emilio Madero and Raul Madero, brothers of President Madero. Their intervention delayed the execution until the president could be contacted by telegraph, and he ordered Huerta to spare Villa's life but imprison him.

Villa was first imprisoned in Belem Prison in Mexico City. While in prison, he was tutored in reading and writing by Gildardo Magaña, a follower of Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary leader in Morelos. Magaña also informed him of Zapata's Plan de Ayala, which repudiated Madero and called for land reform in Mexico. 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. Villa was in the U.S. when the coup occurred. With just seven men, some mules, and scant supplies, he returned to Mexico in April 1913 to fight Madero's usurper and his own would-be executioner, President Victoriano Huerta.

Fighting Huerta, 1913–14

Huerta immediately moved to consolidate power. He had Abraham González, the 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 butt of jokes and pranks. Carranza's political plan gained the support of politicians and generals, including Pablo González, Álvaro Obregón, and Villa. The movement collectively was called the Ejército Constitucionalista de México (Constitutionalist Army of Mexico). The Constitucionalista adjective was added to stress the point that Huerta legally had not obtained power through lawful avenues laid out by Mexico's Constitution of 1857. Until Huerta's ouster, Villa joined with the revolutionary forces in the north under "First Chief" Carranza and his Plan of Guadalupe.

The period 1913–1914 was the time of Villa's greatest international fame and military and political success. Throughout this time, Villa focused on accessing funding from wealthy hacendados and raised money using methods such as forced assessments on hostile hacienda owners and train robberies. 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.

The well-known American journalist and fiction writer Ambrose Bierce, then in his seventies, accompanied Villa's army during this period and witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca. Villa considered Tierra Blanca, fought from 23 to 24 November 1913, his most spectacular victory, although General Talamantes died in the fighting. Bierce vanished on or after December 1913. His disappearance has never been solved. Oral accounts of his execution by firing squad were never verified. U.S. Army Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott charged Villa's American agent, Sommerfeld, with finding out what happened, but the only result of the inquiry was the finding that Bierce most likely survived after Ojinaga and died in Durango.

John Reed, who graduated from Harvard in 1910 and became a leftist journalist, wrote magazine articles that were highly important 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 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

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 against the wishes of First Chief Carranza, who wished to name Manuel Chao instead.  As Governor of Chihuahua, Villa recruited more experienced generals, including Toribio Ortega, Porfirio Talamantes, and Calixto Contreras, to his military staff and achieved more success than ever.  Villa's secretary, Pérez Rul, divided his army into two groups, one led by Ortega, Contreras, and Orestes Pereira, and the other led by Talamantes and Contreras' former deputy, Severianco Ceniceros.

As governor of Chihuahua, Villa raised more money for a drive to the south against Huerta's Federal Army by various methods. He printed his own currency and decreed that it could be traded and accepted at par with gold Mexican pesos. He forced the wealthy to give loans to fund the revolutionary war machinery. 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. These motions, accompanied by gifts and cost reductions for poorer sections of the state, represented large changes from previous revolutionary governments and led to large support for Villa in significant portions of Chihuahua's population. After four weeks as the governor, Villa retired from the position at the suggestion of Carranza, leaving Manuel Chao as governor.

With so many sources of money, Villa expanded and modernized his forces, purchasing draft animals, cavalry horses, arms, ammunition, mobile hospital facilities (railroad cars and horse ambulances staffed with Mexican and foreign volunteer doctors, known as Servicio sanitario), and other supplies, and rebuilt the railroad south of Chihuahua City. He also recruited fighters from Chihuahua and Durango and created a large army known as the Division del Norte (Division of the North), the most powerful and feared military unit in all of Mexico. 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.

Victory at Zacatecas, 1914

After Villa captured the strategic prize of Torreón, Carranza ordered Villa to break off action south of Torreón and instead to divert to attack Saltillo. He threatened to cut off Villa's coal supply, immobilizing his supply trains, if he did not comply. This was seen widely as an attempt by Carranza to divert Villa from a direct assault on Mexico City in order to allow Carranza's forces under Obregón, driving in from the west via Guadalajara, to take the capital first. 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 costs thousands of pesos.

Disgusted but having no practical alternative, Villa complied with Carranza's order and captured the less important city of Saltillo, and proceeded to give control of the land to Carranza in the hope of ending the hostility between the two. 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. Carranza declined to rescind the order as he did not want Villa to receive the credit as the victor of Zacatecas. Upon receiving Carranza's refusal, Villa resigned from his post, which further led to the majority of revolutionary generals rallying behind Villa. Felipe Ángeles and the rest of Villa's staff officers argued for Villa to withdraw his resignation and proceed to attack Zacatecas, a strategic railroad station heavily defended by Federal troops and considered nearly impregnable. Zacatecas was the source of much of Mexico's silver, and thus a supply of funds for whoever held it. Villa accepted his staff's advice and cancelled his resignation, and the División del Norte defied Carranza and attacked Zacatecas. Fighting up steep slopes, the División del Norte defeated a force of 12,000 Federals in the Toma de Zacatecas (Taking of Zacatecas), the single bloodiest battle of the Revolution, with Federal casualties numbering approximately 7,000 dead and 5,000 wounded, and unknown numbers of civilian casualties.

Villa's victory at Zacatecas in June 1914 broke the back of the Huerta regime. Huerta left the country on 14 July 1914. The Federal Army collapsed, ceasing to exist as an institution. As Villa moved towards the capital, his progress was halted due to a lack of coal to fuel the railroad engines, and critically, an embargo placed by the U.S. government on importation to Mexico. 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.

Break with Carranza, 1914

The break between Villa and Carranza had been anticipated. The Pact of Torreón, an agreement between the Division of the Northeast and Villa's Division of the North, was a stopgap to keep the Constitutionalists united before the defeat of the Federal Army. The pact was ostensibly an updating of Carranza's narrow Plan of Guadalupe, adding radical language about land distribution and sanctions for the Roman Catholic Church for its support of Huerta. Neither Villa nor Carranza took the provisions of the pact seriously, one which was for Carranza to renew the flow of ammunition to Villa and supply coal so his troops could be transported by train. 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

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 several 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. Zapata was sympathetic to Villa's hostile views of Carranza and told Villa he feared Carranza's intentions were those of a dictator and not of a democratic president. Fearing that Carranza was intending to impose a dictatorship, Villa and Zapata broke with him. Carranza opposed the agreements of the convention, which rejected his leadership as "first chief" of the revolution. The Army of the Convention was constituted with the alliance of Villa and Zapata, and a civil war of the winners ensued. Although both Villa and Zapata were defeated in their attempt to advance an alternative state power, their social demands were copied (in their way) by their adversaries (Obregón and Carranza).

Carranza and Alvaro Obregón retreated to Veracruz, leaving Villa and Zapata to occupy Mexico City. Although Villa had a more formidable army and had demonstrated his brilliance in battle against the now-defunct Federal Army, Carranza's general Obregón was a better tactician. With Obregón's help, Carranza was able to use the Mexican press to portray Villa as a sociopathic bandit and undermine his standing with the U.S. In late 1914, Villa was dealt an additional blow with the death from typhus of Toribio Ortega, one of his top generals.

While Convention forces occupied Mexico City, Carranza maintained control over two key Mexican states, Veracruz and Tamaulipas, where Mexico's two largest ports were located. Carranza was able to collect more revenue than Villa. 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.

To combat Villa, Carranza sent his ablest general, Obregón, north, who defeated Villa in a series of battles. Meeting at the Battle of Celaya in the Bajío, Villa and Obregón first fought from 6 to 15 April 1915, and Villa's army was badly defeated, suffering 4,000 killed and 6,000 captured. Obregón engaged Villa again at the Battle of Trinidad, which was fought between 29 April and 5 June 1915, where Villa suffered another huge loss. In October 1915, Villa crossed into Sonora, the main stronghold of Obregón and Carranza's armies, where he hoped to crush Carranza's regime. However, Carranza had reinforced Sonora, and Villa again was badly defeated. Rodolfo Fierro, a loyal officer and cruel hatchet man, was killed while Villa's army was crossing into Sonora.

After losing the Battle of Agua Prieta in Sonora, an overwhelming number of Villa's men in the Division del Norte were killed, and 1,500 of the army's surviving members soon turned on him, accepting an amnesty offer from Carranza. "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."

In November 1915, Carranza's forces captured and executed Contreras, Pereyra, and his son.  Severianco Ceniceros also accepted amnesty from Carranza and turned on Villa as well.  Although Villa's secretary Perez Rul also broke with Villa, he refused to become a supporter of Carranza.

Only 200 men in Villa's army remained loyal to him, and he was forced to retreat into the mountains of Chihuahua. However, Villa and his men were determined to keep fighting Carranza's forces. Villa's position was further weakened by the United States' refusal to sell him weapons. By the end of 1915, Villa was on the run, and the United States government recognized Carranza.

From national leader to guerrilla leader, 1915–20

The period after Villa's defeat by Obregón has many dark episodes. His fighting force had shrunk significantly, no longer an army. Villa's opponents believed him finished as a factor in the Revolution. He decided to split his remaining forces into independent bands under his authority, ban soldaderas, and take to the hills as guerrillas. This strategy was effective and one that Villa knew well from his bandit days. He had loyal followers from western Chihuahua and northern Durango. A pattern of towns being under government control and the countryside under guerrilla control reasserted itself. Civilian populations during warfare are often the victims of violence. In Namiquipa, Villa sought to punish civilians who had formed a home guard, but when they learned Villa's men were approaching the village men took to the hills, leaving their families behind. Villa rounded up the wives and allowed his soldiers to rape them. The story of the rapes in Namiquipa was spread throughout Chihuahua. 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. Woodrow Wilson believed that supporting Carranza was the best way to expedite the establishment of a stable Mexican government. Villa was further enraged by Obregón's use of searchlights, powered by U.S.-generated electricity, to help repel a Villista night attack on the border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, on 1 November 1915. In Mexico and U.S.-bordering towns, a vendetta was launched by Villa against Americans, as he blamed Wilson for his defeat against Carranza. In January 1916, a group of Villistas attacked a train on the Mexico North Western Railway, near Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, and killed several U.S. nationals employed by the American Smelting and Refining Company. The passengers included eighteen Americans, 15 of whom worked for American Smelting. There was only one survivor, who gave the details to the press. Villa admitted to ordering the attack, but denied that he had authorized the shedding of blood of U.S. citizens.

After meeting with a Mexican mayor named Juan Muñoz, Villa recruited more men into his guerrilla militia and had 400 men under his command. Villa then met with his lieutenants, Martin Lopez, Pablo Lopez, Francisco Beltran, and Candelario Cervantes, and commissioned an additional 100 men to the command of Joaquin Alvarez, Bernabe Cifuentes, and Ernesto Rios. Pablo Lopez and Cervantes were later killed in the early part of 1916.  Villa and his 500 guerrillas then started planning an attack on U.S. soil.