VIVA MEXICO! VIVA LA REVOLUCION! November 20th is
Mexican Revolution Day
The Mexican Revolution took
place from 1910 to 1920. It was a "constitutionalist war", basically a
fight between the have's and the have not's. Pretty much everyone has
heard of its most famous hero, Pancho Villa. Well - here's the story
behind this holiday.
Pancho Villa was born Doroteo Arango in 1877 in San Juan del Río,
Durango, in north-central Mexico. He lived there until the age of 16,
when he murdered a man who had raped his younger sister and was forced
to flee for his life. Not much is known about how he spent the next few
years of his life, other than that he changed his name to Francisco "Pancho"
Villa to elude the law.
By the time he was 20, Pancho Villa had moved northward and was living
in Chihuahua, working first as a miner and then as a cattle rustler.
Official government biographies list his occupation then as "wholesale
meat-seller." In 1899 he returned to mining, this time in Santa Eulalia
near Chihuahua. However, he soon tired of the laborer's life and began
robbing banks, adding that to the list of crimes he was wanted for by
the Mexican government.
In order to avoid capture, Pancho Villa took off with his group of
bandit followers into the Sierra mountains of central Mexico in 1900.
Over the next decade he became a legendary hero-a Robin Hood to the poor
in his country, robbing the rich and sharing with the hungry masses-all
the while skillfully evading the government's troops.
On November 20, 1910, the war to overthrow General Porfirio Díaz
officially began when Francisco Madero escaped from prison in San Luis
Potosí and declared the electoral process in Mexico invalid. General
Díaz had been in power since 1876. During those 34 years, Mexico's
political stability had improved. Its economy had grown. New industries
were established, railroads were built and foreign investment increased.
Yet, none of this made any difference in the lives of the vast majority
of Mexicans. Peasants and laborers, they were poorer than ever. They
were also seriously fed up with their government.
Thus, soon after Francisco I. Madero's declaration of war, Pancho Villa
led his men down from the hills to join the revolutionary forces-making
the historical transition from bandito to revolucionario.
The charismatic Pancho was able
to recruit an army of thousands, including a substantial number of
Americans, some of whom were made captains in the División del Norte.
Madero's forces were successful. Díaz was overthrown and Madero elected
president of Mexico in 1911. However, he was captured and assassinated
by one of his own generals-a traitor named Victoriano Huerta soon after.
Following Madero's short-lived victory and assassination, Villa remained
in command of his División del Norte army in resistance-along with
Coahuila's Venustiano Carranza and Sonora's Alvaro Obregon. Together
they fought in 1913 and 1914 against the Huerta dictatorship. About this
time, Villa also became a folk hero north of the border, in the United
States. Hollywood filmmakers and newspaper photographers flocked to
Northern Mexico to record his battle exploits-plenty of which were
staged for the benefit of the cameras.
Villa's forces were based in Chihuahua, and he ruled over northern
Mexico like a medieval warlord. Financing his army by stealing from the
seemingly endless cattle herds in northern Mexico, he sold the beef
north of the border, where he found plenty of Norteamericano merchants
willing to sell him guns and ammunition. In true Robin Hood style, he
broke up the vast land holdings of local hacendados and parceled them
out to the widows and orphans of his fallen soldiers. Rather
than use the government's
despised peso, he produced his own money, and any merchant who refused
to accept this "new" currency faced the risk of being shot.
Executions-often ordered on a whim-weren't often carried out by Pancho
himself. Instead, they were carried out by his friend Rodolfo Fierro,
best known by his nickname El Carnicero, or The Butcher.
Fighting continued in Mexico until 1920, even though in 1917 a new
constitution was adopted. When the U.S. government came out openly in
support of the new Carranza presidency, Villa was incensed. He
retaliated by raiding U.S border towns-most significantly, Columbus, New
Mexico. North of the border, Villa's image plummeted. However, many in
Mexico saw him as the avenger of decades of yanqui (Yankee) oppression.
Despite his popularity, the combined forces of Carranza and Obregón
defeated his army in battle after battle. After two U.S. Army "punitive
expeditions" into Mexico in 1916 and 1919 failed to
capture and conquer the "Villistas,"
the Mexican government accepted Villa's surrender and retired him on a
general's salary to Canutillo, Durango. He was assassinated near there
in 1923.
Pancho Villa is remembered with pride and respect by most people in
Mexico. He led the most important military campaigns of the
constitutionalist revolution. His troops were victorious as far south as
Zacatecas and Mexico City, as far east as Tampico, and as far west as
Casas Grandes. Because of Villa's raid into Columbus, New Mexico, and
his subsequent evasion of U.S. troops, he also has the added notoriety
of being the only foreign military personage ever to have successfully
invaded continental U.S. territory!
