Pancho Villa Part II

 

Attack on New Mexico

On 9 March 1916, General Villa ordered nearly 100 Mexican members of his revolutionary group to make a cross-border attack against Columbus, New Mexico. Some historians believe that Villa attacked Columbus due to his concern for what Villa believed was American imperialistic interference in Mexican internal affairs.

From a purely military standpoint, Villa carried out the raid because he needed more military equipment and supplies to continue his fight against Carranza. Many believed the raid was conducted because of the U.S. government's official recognition of the Carranza regime and for the loss of lives in battle due to defective cartridges purchased from the U.S.

They attacked a detachment of the 13th Cavalry Regiment (United States), burned the town, seized 100 horses and mules, and other military supplies. Eighteen Americans and about 80 Villistas were killed.

Other attacks in U.S. territory allegedly were carried out by Villa, but none of these attacks were confirmed to have been carried out by Villistas. These were:

15 May 1916. Glenn Springs, Texas – one civilian was killed, three American soldiers were wounded, and two Mexicans were estimated killed.

15 June 1916. San Ygnacio, Texas – four soldiers were killed and five soldiers were wounded by bandits, six Mexicans were killed.

31 July 1916. Fort Hancock, Texas – two American soldiers were killed. The two dead soldiers were from the 8th Cavalry Regiment, and Customs Inspector Robert Wood. One American was wounded, three Mexicans were reported killed, and three Mexicans were captured by Mexican government troops.

U.S. Expedition to capture Villa

As a result of Villa's raid on Columbus, President Wilson chose to take action. Publicly, it was announced that General Pershing would be sent to Mexico to capture Villa. In a private order to General Pershing, Pershing was told to cease the search for Villa once Villa's armies had been broken up.

President Wilson sent 5,000 U.S. Army soldiers under the command of General Frederick Funston, who oversaw John Pershing as he pursued Villa through Mexico. Employing aircraft and trucks for the first time in U.S. Army history, Pershing's force fruitlessly pursued Villa until February 1917. Villa eluded them, but some of his senior commanders, including Colonel Candelario Cervantes, General Francisco Beltrán, Beltrán's son, Villa's second-in-command, Julio Cárdenas, and a total of 190 of his men were killed during the expedition.

The Carranza government and the Mexican population were against U.S. troops violating Mexican territory. There were several demonstrations of opposition to the Punitive Expedition. During the expedition, Carranza's forces captured one of Villa's top generals, Pablo López, and executed him on 5 June 1916.

German involvement in Villa's later campaigns

Before the Villa-Carranza irregular forces left for the mountains in 1915, there is no credible evidence that Villa cooperated with or accepted any help from the German government or agents. Villa was supplied arms from the U.S., employed international mercenaries and doctors, including Americans, was portrayed as a hero in the U.S. media, made business arrangements with Hollywood, and did not object to the 1914 U.S. naval occupation of Veracruz. Villa's observation was that the occupation merely hurt Huerta. Villa opposed the armed participation of the United States in Mexico, but he did not act against the Veracruz occupation to maintain the connections in the U.S. that were necessary to buy American cartridges and other supplies. The German consul in Torreón made entreaties to Villa, offering him arms and money to occupy the port and oil fields of Tampico to enable German ships to dock there, but Villa rejected the offer.

German agents tried to interfere in the Mexican Revolution but were unsuccessful. They attempted to plot with Victoriano Huerta to assist him in retaking the country and, in the infamous Zimmermann Telegram to the Mexican government, proposed an alliance with the government of Venustiano Carranza.

There were documented contacts between Villa and the Germans after Villa's split with the Constitutionalists. This was principally in the person of Felix A. Sommerfeld (noted in Katz's book), who allegedly funneled $340,000 of German money to the Western Cartridge Company in 1915, to purchase ammunition. Sommerfeld had been Villa's representative in the United States since 1914 and had close contact with the German naval attaché in Washington, Karl Boy-Ed, as well as other German agents in the United States, including Franz von Rintelen and Horst von der Goltz. In May 1914, Sommerfeld formally entered the employ of Boy-Ed and the German secret service in the United States. However, Villa's actions were hardly those of a German catspaw; rather, it appeared that Villa resorted to German assistance only after other sources of money and arms were cut off.

At the time of Villa's 1916 attack on Columbus, New Mexico, Villa's military power had been marginalized. He was repulsed at Columbus by a small cavalry detachment, albeit after doing a lot of damage. His theater of operations was limited mainly to western Chihuahua. He was persona non grata with Mexico's ruling Carranza constitutionalists and was the subject of an embargo by the U.S., so communication or further shipments of arms between the Germans and Villa would have been difficult.

A plausible explanation for contacts between Villa and the Germans, after 1915, is that they were a futile extension of increasingly desperate German diplomatic efforts and Villista dreams of victory as the progress of their respective wars bogged down. Villa effectively did not have anything useful to offer in exchange for German help at that point. When assessing claims of Villa conspiring with Germans, the portrayal of Villa as a German sympathizer served the propaganda needs of both Carranza and Wilson, and has to be taken into account.

The use of Mauser rifles and carbines by Villa's forces does not necessarily indicate a German connection. These weapons were used widely by all parties in the Mexican Revolution, Mauser longarms being enormously popular. They were standard issue in the Mexican Army, which had begun adopting the 7 mm Mauser system arms as early as 1895.

Final years: leader to hacienda owner, 1920–23

Following his unsuccessful military campaign at Celaya and the 1916 incursion into New Mexico, prompting the unsuccessful U.S. military intervention in Mexico to capture him, Villa ceased to be a national leader and became a leader in Chihuahua. While Villa remained active, Carranza shifted his focus to dealing with the more dangerous threat posed by Zapata in the south. Villa's last major military action was a raid against Ciudad Juárez in 1919. Following the raid, Villa suffered yet another major blow after Felipe Angeles, who had returned to Mexico in 1918 after living in exile for three years as a dairy farmer in Texas, left Villa and his small remaining militia. Angeles was later captured by Carranza's forces and was executed on 26 November 1919.

Villa continued fighting and conducted a small siege in Ascención, Durango, after his failed raid in Ciudad Juárez. The siege failed, and Villa's new second-in-command, his longtime lieutenant Martín López, was killed during the fighting. At this point, Villa agreed that he would cease fighting if it were made worth his while.

On 21 May 1920, a break for Villa came when Carranza, along with his top advisers and supporters,[30] was assassinated by supporters of Álvaro Obregón. With his nemesis dead, Villa was now ready to negotiate a peace settlement and retire. On 22 July 1920, Villa was finally able to send a telegram to Mexican interim President Adolfo de la Huerta, which stated that he recognized De la Huerta's presidency and requested amnesty. Six days later, De la Huerta met with Villa and negotiated a peace settlement.

In exchange for his retirement from hostilities, Villa was granted a 25,000-acre hacienda in Canutillo, just outside Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua, by the national government. This was in addition to the Quinta Luz estate that he owned with his wife, María Luz Corral de Villa, in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. The last remaining 200 guerrillas and veterans of Villa's militia who were still loyal to him would reside with him in his new hacienda as well, and the Mexican government also granted them a pension that totaled 500,000 gold pesos. The 50 guerrillas who remained in Villa's small cavalry would be allowed to serve as Villa's personal bodyguards.

Personal life

As Villa's biographer Friedrich Katz has noted, "During his lifetime, Villa had never bothered with conventional arrangements in his family life", and he contracted several marriages without seeking annulment or divorce. On 29 May 1911, Villa married María Luz Corral, who has been described as "The most articulate of his many wives." Villa met her when she was living with her widowed mother in San Andrés, where Villa for a time had his headquarters. Anti-reelectionists threatened the locals for monetary contributions to their cause, which the two women could not afford. The widow Corral did not want to seem a counter-revolutionary and went to Villa, who allowed her to make a token contribution to the cause. Villa sought Luz Corral as his wife, but her mother was opposed; however, the two were married by a priest "in a great ceremony, attended by his military chiefs and a representative of the governor." A photo of Corral with Villa, dated 1914, has been published in a collection of photos from the Revolution. It shows a sturdy woman with her hair in a bun, wearing a floor-length, embellished skirt and a white blouse, with a rebozo beside a smiling Villa. After Villa's death, Luz Corral's marriage to Villa was challenged in court twice, and both times it was upheld as valid. Together, Villa and Luz Corral had one child, a daughter, who died within a few years after birth.

Villa had long-term relationships with several women. Austreberta Rentería was Villa's "official wife" at his hacienda of Canutillo, and Villa had two sons with her, Francisco and Hipólito.

Others were Soledad Seañez, Juana Torres, whom he wed in 1913, and with whom he had a daughter.

Still another woman in Villa's life was Manuela Casas, with whom Villa had a son named Trinidad Villa. He became John Wayne's double in many movies in the state of Durango. Manuela Casas would be the last woman who saw him alive in Parral, Chihuahua.

At the time of Villa's assassination in 1923, Luz Corral was banished from Canutillo. However, she was recognized by Mexican courts as Villa's legal wife and therefore heir to Villa's estate. President Obregón intervened in the dispute between competing claims to Villa's estate in Luz Corral's favor, perhaps because she had saved his life when Villa threatened to execute him in 1914.

Rentería and Seañez eventually were granted small government pensions decades after Villa's death. Corral inherited Villa's estate and played a key role in maintaining his public memory. All three women were often present at ceremonies at Villa's grave in Parral. When Villa's remains were transferred in 1976 to the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City, Corral refused to attend the huge ceremony. She died at the age of 89 on 6 July 1981.

An alleged son of Pancho Villa was the lieutenant colonel Octavio Villa Coss, born to Guadalupe Cos Dominguez in Rancho de Santiago, Chihuahua, in 1914. He reportedly was killed by Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, a legendary drug lord from the Gulf Cartel, in 1960.

Villa's last living son, Ernesto Nava, died in Castro Valley, California, at the age of 94 on 31 December 2009. Nava appeared yearly in festival events in his hometown of Durango, Mexico, enjoying celebrity status until he became too weak to attend.

Assassination

On 20 July 1923, Villa was shot and killed in an ambush while visiting Parral, most likely on the orders of political enemies Plutarco Elías Calles and President Alvaro Obregón. He frequently made trips from his ranch to Parral, where he generally felt secure, for banking and other errands. Villa usually was accompanied by his large entourage of armed Dorados, or bodyguards, but on that day, he had gone into town without most of them, taking with him only three bodyguards and two other ranch employees. He went to pick up a consignment of gold from the local bank with which to pay his Canutillo ranch staff. While driving back through the city in his black 1919 Dodge touring car, Villa passed by a school, and a pumpkinseed vendor ran toward his car and shouted "Viva Villa!", a signal to a group of seven riflemen who then appeared in the middle of the road and fired more than 40 rounds into the automobile. In the fusillade, nine dumdum bullets, normally used for hunting big game, hit Villa in the head and upper chest, killing him instantly.

Claro Huertado (a bodyguard), Rafael Madreno (Villa's main personal bodyguard), Daniel Tamayo (his personal secretary), and Colonel Miguel Trillo (who also served as his chauffeur) were also killed. One of Villa's bodyguards, Ramon Contreras, was badly wounded but managed to kill at least one of the assassins before he escaped; Contreras was the only survivor. Villa is reported to have died, saying, "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something," but there is no contemporary evidence that he survived his shooting even momentarily. Historian and biographer Friedrich Katz wrote in 1998 that Villa died instantly.  Time also reported in 1951 that both Villa and his aide (Tamayo) were killed instantly.

Telegraph service was interrupted to Villa's hacienda of Canutillo, probably so that Obregón's officials could secure the estate and "to prevent a possible Villista uprising triggered by his assassination."

The next day, Villa's funeral was held, and thousands of his grieving supporters in Parral followed his casket to his burial site while Villa's men and his closest friends remained at the Canutillo hacienda armed and ready for an attack by the government troops. The six surviving assassins hid out in the desert and were soon captured, but only two of them served a few months in jail, and the rest were commissioned into the military.

Villa was likely assassinated because he was talking publicly about re-entering politics as the 1924 elections neared. Obregón could not run again for the presidency, so there was political uncertainty about the presidential succession. Obregón favored fellow Sonoran general Plutarco Elías Calles for the presidency. If Villa did re-enter politics, it would complicate the political situation for Obregón and the Sonoran generals. Assassinating Villa benefited the plans of Obregón, who chose someone who in no way matched his power and charisma, and Calles, who ardently wanted to be president of Mexico at any cost. It has never been proven who was responsible for the assassination, but according to Villa's biographer Friedrich Katz, Jesús Salas Barraza took responsibility to shield Obregón and Calles. Most historians attribute Villa's death to a well-planned conspiracy most likely initiated by Plutarco Elías Calles and his associate, General Joaquín Amaro, with at least tacit approval of Obregón.

At the time, a state legislator from Durango, Jesús Salas Barraza, whom Villa once whipped during a quarrel over a woman, claimed sole responsibility for the plot. Barraza admitted that he told his friend, who worked as a dealer for General Motors, that he would kill Villa if he were paid 50,000 pesos. The friend was not wealthy and did not have 50,000 pesos on hand, so he collected money from enemies of Villa and managed to collect a total of 100,000 pesos for Barraza and his other co-conspirators. Barraza also admitted that he and his co-conspirators watched Villa's daily car rides and paid the pumpkinseed vendor at the scene of Villa's assassination to shout "Viva Villa!" either once if Villa was sitting in the front part of the car or twice if he was sitting in the back.

Obregón gave in to the people's demands and had Barraza detained. Initially sentenced to 20 years in prison, Barraza's sentence was commuted to three months by the governor of Chihuahua, and Salas Barraza eventually became a colonel in the Mexican Army. In a letter to the governor of Durango, Jesús Castro, Salas Barraza agreed to be the "fall guy," and the same arrangement is mentioned in letters exchanged between Castro and Amaro. Others involved in the conspiracy were Félix Lara, the commander of federal troops in Parral, who was paid 50,000 pesos by Calles to remove his soldiers and policemen from the town on the day of the assassination, and Melitón Lozoya, the former owner of Villa's hacienda, from whom Villa was demanding to pay back funds he had embezzled. It was Lozoya who planned the details of the assassination and found the men who carried it out.  It was reported that before Salas Barraza died of a stroke in his Mexico City home in 1951, his last words were "I'm not a murderer. I rid humanity of a monster."

Aftermath of his death

Villa was buried the day after his assassination in the city cemetery of Parral, Chihuahua, rather than in Chihuahua City, where he had built a mausoleum. Villa's skull was stolen from his grave in 1926. According to local folklore, an American treasure hunter, Emil Holmdahl, beheaded him to sell his skull to an eccentric millionaire who collected the heads of historic figures. The skull is rumored to be in the possession of Yale University's Skull and Bones Society, a claim they deny. His remains were reburied in the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in 1976. The Francisco Villa Museum is a museum dedicated to Villa, located at the site of his assassination in Parral.

Villa's purported death mask was hidden at the Radford School in El Paso, Texas, until the 1980s, when it was sent to the Historical Museum of the Mexican Revolution in Chihuahua. Other museums have ceramic and bronze representations that do not match this mask.

Legacy

According to Pancho Villa's major biographer, Friedrich Katz, the revolutionary was perceived as a destroyer, but in Katz's assessment, there were positive aspects to that. Villa played a decisive role not just in the destruction of Huerta's regime, but also in the entire old regime. During Villa's brief time as governor of Chihuahua, he carried out a significant land reform. In his confiscation of landed estates and expulsion of their owners, he weakened that class. In the 1930s, President Lázaro Cárdenas finished the dismantling of the old landed system. Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, destroyed the burgeoning cooperation between the Carranza government and the United States and goaded the U.S. into invading northern Mexico. Banks in the U.S. ceased lending to the Carranza government, blocking its ability to suppress peasant rebellions in Morelos, San Luis Potosí, and Villa's. Katz credits Villa's time as governor as highly effective and economically beneficial to the general populace. "In some ways, it might be called the first welfare state in Mexico."

With his remains now buried in the Monument to the Revolution, Villa was also honored by adding his name to the wall of Mexican heroes in the Chamber of Deputies. In both cases of official recognition, there was considerable controversy. The fact that Villa's image and legacy were not quickly appropriated and manipulated by the ruling party, the way Zapata's was, kept Villa's memory and myth in the hearts of the people. "Popular tastes wanted Villa to be thrilling, not respectable. They were enamored of Villa, the daring Robin Hood, the satyr and monster, the unpredictable deviant, the grimy guerrillero and outlaw with uncanny power over men."

Villa is not universally acclaimed. Historian Alan Knight wrote a massive, two-volume history of the Mexican Revolution, but in a thousand pages of text, Knight has only scattered references to Villa. He emphasizes Villa's bandit past, for whom the Revolution provided a change of title, not of occupation.

Of the major figures of the Revolution, Villa and Zapata are best known to the general public as defenders of the dispossessed. In contrast, those who came to hold political power, Madero, Carranza, and Obregón, are unfamiliar to most outside Mexico. It took decades for Villa to receive official recognition as a hero of the Revolution. As with the others entombed in the Monument to the Revolution, his remains rest near some whom he fought fiercely in life, including Venustiano Carranza. One scholar notes, "In death as in life, Carranza would be eclipsed by Francisco Villa."

The Mexican government declared the year 2023 to be the "Year of Francisco Villa" (Año de Francisco Villa) to honor Villa's legacy in the Mexican Revolution.

Media

Pancho Villa portrays himself in 1914's silent docudrama The Life of General Villa.

Mike Moroff plays a fictional Pancho Villa in George Lucas's Young Indiana Jones in the episode Spring Break Adventure.

Starring: Marty Lagina, Matty Blake, Cindy A. Medina, Gypsy Jewels, Jackson Polk, John Gallegos, and David Acosta. HISTORY CHANNEL. "Pancho Villa's Plunder". Season 2, Episode 7 on Beyond Oak Island. March 2022

PBS El Paso. Show: "Only in El Paso" episode titled "Witnessing a Revolution" featuring Cindy A. Medina, Francisco "Paco" Villa Garcia, and Dr. David Romo, October 2022

Telles, Raymond. The Storm that Swept Mexico PBS Documentary, 15 May 2011

Taibo II, Paco Ignacio. Pancho Villa. History Channel Documentary, 2008

And Starring Pancho Villa as himself, Starring Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa, 2003

Viva Villa!, starring Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa, 1934

Revolución by Arturo Perez-Reverte, 2022

Have Gun Will Travel, Episode 3.6, Pancho, played by Rafael Campos

Villa's battles and military actions

Villa's string of victories from the beginning of the Mexican Revolution was instrumental in bringing about the downfall of Porfirio Díaz, the victory of Francisco Madero, and the ouster of Victoriano Huerta. He remains a heroic figure for many Mexicans. His military actions included:

Battle of San Andrés (1910 victory)

Battle of Santa Isabel (1910 victory)

First Battle of Ciudad Juárez (1911 victory)

Second Battle of Ciudad Juárez (1913 victory)

Battle of Tierra Blanca (1913 victory)

Battle of Chihuahua (1913 victory)

Battle of Ojinaga (1914 victory)

First Battle of Torreón (1913 victory)

Second Battle of Torreón (1914 victory)

Capture of San Pedro de las Colonias [es] (1914 victory)

Battle of Paredón [es] (1914 victory)

Battle of Lerdo (1914 victory)

Batalla de Gómez Palacio (1914 victory)

Battle of Saltillo (1914 victory)

Battle of Zacatecas (1914 victory)

Battle of Celaya (1915 loss)

Battle of Trinidad (1915 loss)

Battle of Agua Prieta (1915 loss)

Battle of Columbus, N.M. (1916 victory)

Battle of Guerrero (1916 victory)

Battle of Chihuahua (1916 victory)

Third Battle of Torreón (1916 victory)

Battle of Parral (1918 victory)

Third Battle of Ciudad Juárez (1919 loss)

Siege of Durango (1919 loss)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa