Pancho Villa

For the Filipino boxing champion Pancho Villa, see Francisco Guilledo.

Doroteo Arango Arámbula
Francisco "Pancho" Villa in cavalry fighting form with the Division Del Norte
Allegiance	Mexico (antireeleccionista revolutionary forces)
Rank	General
Commands	División del norte

Doroteo Arango Arámbula (June 5, 1878 – July 23, 1923) — better known as Francisco Villa or, by the nickname for Francisco "Pancho". Pancho Villa — was one of the foremost leaders of the Mexican Revolution, between 1911 and 1920, and provisional governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914. Villa mostly operated in the northern theatre of the war, centering on Chihuahua, in the north of Mexico. Villa is often referred to as El centauro del norte (The Centaur of the North), due to his celebrated cavalry attacks as a general. Numerous streets and neighborhoods in Mexico are named for Villa. In the United States, Villa is principally remembered for his 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico, that provoked the Punitive Expedition commanded by General John J. Pershing, although the raid itself was a fairly minor event in Villa's military campaign history.

Villa and his supporters, known as Villistas, employed tactics such as propaganda and firing squads against enemies, expropriated hacienda land for distribution to peasants and villista soldiers, and robbed trains and printed fiat money to finance Villa's cause. Villa's generalship was noted for its speed of movement of his forces by railroad, use of cavalry and artillery attacks, and recruitment of enlisted soldiers of enemy units he defeated. Many of Villa's tactics and strategies were adopted by later 20th century revolutionaries.

Villa's troops were collectively known as the División del norte (Division Of The North). His elite cavalry troops and bodyguards were known as Los dorados (The Golden Ones).

As one of the major (and most colorful) figures of the first successful popular revolution of the 20th century, Villa's notoriety attracted journalists, photographers, and military freebooters of both idealistic and opportunistic stripe, from far and wide.

Villa's revolutionary aims (other than military goals), unlike those of Emiliano Zapata's Plan de Ayala, were never clearly defined. Villa spoke vaguely of creating communal military colonies for his ex-soldiers, and he subscribed to Venustiano Carranza's Plan of Guadalupe.

Despite extensive research by Mexican and foreign scholars, many of the details of Villa's life are in dispute.

Pre-revolutionary life

Birth and parentage

Little can be said with certainty of Doroteo Arango's early life. Most records claim he was born near San Juan del Río, Durango, on June 5, 1878, the son of Agustín Arango and María Micaela Arámbula. Doroteo was an uneducated peasant, the little schooling he received was provided by the local church-run village school. When his father died, Doroteo began to work as a sharecropper to help support his mother and four siblings. The generally accepted story states that Doroteo moved to Chihuahua at the age of 16, but promptly returned to his village after learning that his 12-year-old sister had been raped by a hacienda owner. Doroteo confronted the man, whose name was Agustín Negrete, and shot him dead. He quickly stole a horse and dashed towards the rugged Sierra Madre mountains one step ahead of the approaching police. His career as a bandit was about to begin.

Life as a bandit

For several years Villa spent most of his time in the mountains running from the law. Villa had an intimate knowledge of the mountainous terrain and knew how to survive on his own in the wilderness, but by 1896 he had joined some other bandits under the control of a man named Ignacio Parra. When Parra was killed in a police ambush, Doroteo led the charge back into the wilderness where it was agreed that Doroteo would now lead. Doroteo's name, Francisco Villa, was borrowed from a well-known Mexican bandit who, according to legend, stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

The revolt against Díaz

Villa underwent a transformation after meeting Abraham González, the political representative (and future governor of the state) in Chihuahua of Francisco Madero, who was opposing the continuing and lengthy presidency of Porfirio Díaz. González saw Villa's potential as a military ally, and helped open Villa's eyes to the political world. Villa then believed that he was fighting for the people, to break the power of the hacienda owners (hacendados in Spanish) over the poverty stricken peones and campesinos (farmers and sharecroppers). At the time, Chihuahua was dominated by hacendados and mine owners. The Terrazas clan alone controlled haciendas covering 7,000,000 acres (28,000 km²), an area larger than some countries.

On November 20, 1910, as proclaimed by Madero's Plan of San Luis Potosí, the Mexican Revolution was begun to oust the Díaz dictatorship. After nearly 35 years of rule which the Mexican people were thoroughly tired of, Díaz's political situation was untenable, and his poorly paid conscript troops were no match for the motivated antirreeleccionista volunteers fighting for libertad and Maderismo. The antirreeleccionistas booted Diaz from office in a few months of fighting. Villa helped defeat the federal army of Díaz in favor of Madero in 1911, most famously in the first Battle of Ciudad Juárez, which was viewed by Americans sitting on the top of railroad boxcars in El Paso, Texas. Díaz left Mexico for exile and after an interim presidency, Madero became president. On May 29, 1911, Villa married María Luz Corral, who became Villa's only legal widow after his death in 1923.

Most people at that time assumed that the new, idealistic President Madero would lead Mexico into a new era of true democracy, and Villa would fade back into obscurity. But Villa's greatest days of fame were yet to come, and democracy in Mexico was further off than most people living in 1911 could have imagined.

Orozco's counterrevolution against Madero

A counter-rebellion led by Pascual Orozco, nicknamed Pashuato or Chipi, started against Madero, so Villa gathered his mounted cavalry troops, Los dorados, and fought along with General Victoriano Huerta to support Madero. However, Huerta viewed Villa as an ambitious competitor against his own self-interest, and later accused Villa of stealing a horse and had Villa sentenced to execution, in an attempt to dispose of him. Reportedly, Villa was standing in front of a firing squad waiting to be shot when a telegraph from President Madero was received commuting his sentence to imprisonment. Villa later escaped. During Villa's imprisonment, he worked to improve his poor reading and writing skills, which would serve him well in the future during his service as provisional governor of the state of Chihuahua.

Fight against Huerta's usurpation

10 centavo paper fiat money note issued by the Chihuahua state government during the anti-Huerta Constitutionalist rebellion in 1913.

After crushing the Orozco rebellion, Victoriano Huerta, with the federal army he commanded, held the majority of military power in Mexico. Huerta saw an opportunity to make himself dictator and began to conspire with people such as Bernardo Reyes, Félix Díaz (nephew of Porfirio Diaz) and US ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, which resulted in the La decena trágica ("Ten Tragic Days") and the murder of President Madero.

Main article: La decena trágica

A long time after Madero's murder, Huerta proclaimed himself as provisional president. Venustiano Carranza then proclaimed the Plan of Guadalupe to oust Huerta from office as an unconstitutional usurper. The new group of politicians and generals (which included Pablo González, Álvaro Obregón, Emiliano Zapata and Villa) who joined to support Carranza's plan, were collectively styled as the Ejército Constitucionalista de México (Constitutionalist Army of Mexico), the constitucionalista adjective added to stress the point that Huerta had not obtained power via methods prescribed in the Constitution of Mexico.

Villa's hatred of Huerta became more personal and intense after March 7, 1913, when Huerta ordered the murder of Villa's political mentor, Abraham González. Villa later recovered González's remains and gave his friend a hero's funeral in Chihuahua.

Villa joined the rebellion against Huerta, crossing the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) into Ciudad Juárez with a mere 8 men, 2 pounds of coffee, 2 pounds of sugar, and 500 rounds of rifle ammunition. The new United States president Woodrow Wilson dismissed Ambassador Wilson, and began to support Carranza's cause. Villa's remarkable generalship and recruiting appeal, combined with ingenious fundraising methods to support his rebellion, would be a key factor in forcing Huerta from office a little over a year later, on July 15,1914.

This was the time of Villa's greatest fame and success. He recruited soldiers and able subordinates (both Mexican and mercenary) such as Felipe Ángeles, Sam Dreben and Ivor Thord-Gray, and raised money via methods such as forced assessments on hostile hacienda owners (such as William Benton, who was killed in the Benton affair), and train robberies. In one notable escapade, he held 122 bars of silver ingot from a train robbery (and a Wells Fargo employee) hostage and forced Wells Fargo to help him fence the bars for spendable cash. A rapid, hard fought series of victories at Ciudad Juárez, Tierra Blanca, Chihuahua and Ojinaga followed. Villa then became provisional governor of the state of Chihuahua.

As governor of Chihuahua, Villa raised more money for a drive to the south by printing fiat money. He decreed his paper money to be traded and accepted at par with gold Mexican pesos, under penalty of execution, then forced the wealthy to trade their gold for his paper pesos by decreeing gold to be counterfeit money. He also confiscated the gold of banks, in the case of the Banco Minero, by holding hostage a member of the bank's owning family, the wealthy and famous Terrazas clan, until the location of the bank's gold was revealed.

Villa's political stature at that time was so high that banks in El Paso, Texas, accepted his paper pesos at face value. His generalship drew enough admiration from the US military that he and Álvaro Obregón were invited to Fort Bliss to meet General John J. Pershing.

Generals John J Pershing, Pancho Villa, and Alvaro Obregon pose for a photo at Fort Bliss, TX, 1913. Immediately behind Gen. Pershing and to the left is his aide-de-camp, 1Lt. George Patton

The new pile of loot was used to purchase draft animals, cavalry horses, arms, ammunition, mobile hospital facilities (railroad cars and horse ambulances staffed with Mexican and American volunteer doctors, known as Servicio sanitario), and food, and to rebuild the railroad south of Chihuahua City. The rebuilt railroad transported Villa's troops and artillery south, where he defeated Federal forces at Gómez Palacio, Torreón, and Zacatecas. Map of Constitutionalist Army Battles

Carranza tries to halt the Villa advance, the fall of Zacatecas

After Torreón, Carranza issued a puzzling order for Villa to break off action south of Torreon and instead ordered him to divert to attack Saltillo, and threatened to cut off Villa's coal supply if he did not comply. (Coal was needed for railroad locomotives to pull trains transporting soldiers and supplies, and was therefore necessary for any general.) This was widely seen as an attempt by Carranza to divert Villa from a direct assault on Mexico City, so as to allow Carranza's forces under Álvaro Obregón, driving in from the west via Guadalajara, to take the capital first, and Obregon and Carranza did enter Mexico City ahead of Villa. This was an expensive and disruptive diversion for the División del norte, since Villa's enlisted men were paid the then enormous sum of a peso per day, and each day of delay cost thousands of pesos. Villa did attack Saltillo as ordered, winning that battle.

Villa, disgusted by what he saw as egoism, tendered his resignation. Felipe Ángeles and Villa's officer staff argued for Villa to withdraw his resignation, defy Carranza's orders, and proceed to attack Zacatecas, a strategic mountainous city considered nearly impregnable. Zacatecas was the source of much of Mexico's silver, and thus a supply of funds for whomever held it. Victory in Zacatecas would mean that Huerta's chances of holding the remainder of the country would be slim. Villa accepted Ángeles' advice, cancelled his resignation, and the Division del norte defeated the Federals in the Toma de Zacatecas (Taking of Zacatecas), the single bloodiest battle of the Revolution, with the military forces counting approximately 7,000 dead and 5,000 wounded, and unknown numbers of civilian casualties. (A memorial to and museum of the Toma de Zacatecas is on the Cerro de la Bufa, one of the key defense points in the battle of Zacatecas. Tourists use a teleférico (aerial tramway) to reach it, due to the steep approaches. From the top, tourists may appreciate the difficulties Villa's troops had trying to dislodge Federal troops from the peak.) The loss of Zacatecas in June 1914 broke the back of the Huerta regime, and Huerta left for exile on July 14, 1914.

This was the beginning of the split between Villa and the constitutionalistas of Carranza, which would eventually doom Villa as a military and political power. Carranza's egoismo would eventually become self-destructive, alienating most of the people he needed to hold power, and doom him as well.

Villa as media star

Villa's colorful personality and success in battle during this period made him a celebrated media figure in the United States and the subject of several movies. Villa's keen eye for publicity and offers of money (Villa signed an exclusive contract with the Mutual Film Corporation for $25,000 payable in gold specie), led to some movie scenes being filmed on location with Villa's troops. US journalists and photographers such as John Reed followed Villa and filed reports and images from the battlefront for publication in US newspapers and magazines. IMDB list of movies Villa appeared in

There was much speculation in the US press in 1913 and 1914, that Villa would become President of Mexico. Villa always denied such speculation, claiming that he was not educated well enough to assume the responsibility.

Zapata and Villa's entry to Mexico City

File:Villa-zapata.gif

Photo of Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata in the Presidential chambers of the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City, 1914. Villa occupies the Presidential throne, Zapata to his left.

Villa had a long-distance and somewhat tenuous relationship with Emiliano Zapata, another peasant who was fighting in the south of Mexico, mostly in the states of Morelos, Guerrero, and Puebla. While Zapata could hold his own against the Federals, he was constrained by tight finances and lack of a direct path to the United States for arms imports. Lack of a land connection, during most of the Revolution, between Zapata's region and areas Villa controlled, limited the amount of contact and cooperation between the two.

After the interim presidency of Francisco S. Carvajal, who succeeded Huerta, Carranza and the Constitutionalist Army entered Mexico City in August 1914. Meanwhile, Villa and Zapata refused to join Carranza, claiming that Carranza was attempting to set himself up as a caudillo, and was not intending to carry out the aims of the revolution. The Convention of Aguascalientes, which Carranza refused to attend, met between October 10 and November 13, 1914. The Convention deposed Carranza as primer jefe (Number One Chief) of the Revolution and installed Eulalio Gutiérrez as President. In November, 1914, Carranza left Mexico City for Veracruz, and repudiated the Convention.

After Carranza's exit, Villa and Zapata entered and occupied Mexico City in early December, 1914. They had their first face to face meeting in Xochimilco, south of the capital city, on December 4, 1914. Villa's and Zapata's troops marched to the Zócalo in the center of Mexico City, where Villa and Zapata together visited the Palacio Nacional together for a photo op (see above right).

Period newsreel footage of Zapata and Villa's troops entering Mexico City Zapata's troops are in white, carrying banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Zapata and Villa attended a banquet with Gildardo Magaña and José Vasconcelos, then visited a memorial to assassinated President Francisco Madero.

Revolt against Carranza and Obregon

Villa was forced out of Mexico City in 1915, following a number of incidents between himself, his troops and the citizens of the city, and the humiliation of President Eulalio Gutiérrez. The return of Carranza and the Constitutionalists to Mexico City from Veracruz followed. Villa then rebelled against Carranza and Carranza's chief general, Álvaro Obregón. Villa and Zapata styled themselves as convencionistas, supporters of the Convention of Aguascalientes.

Unfortunately, Villa's talent for generalship began to fail him in 1915. When Villa faced General Obregón in the Battle of Celaya on April 15, repeated charges of Villa's vaunted cavalry proved to be no match for Obregón's entrenchments and modern machine guns, and the villista advance was first checked, then repulsed. In a later engagement, Obregon lost one of his arms to villista artillery.

Villa retrenched to Chihuahua and attempted to refinance his revolt by having a firm in San Antonio, Texas, crank out more paper fiat money. (Most Villa money seen today dates from this period) But the effort met with limited success, and the value of Villa's paper pesos dropped to a fraction of their former value as doubts grew about Villa's political viability. Villa began ignoring the counsel of the most valuable member of his military staff, Felipe Ángeles, and eventually Ángeles left for exile in Texas. Despite Carranza's unpopularity, Carranza had an able general in Obregón and most of Mexico's military power, and unlike Huerta, was not being hampered by interference from the United States.

Split with the United States and the Punitive Expedition

The United States, following the diplomatic policies of Woodrow Wilson, who believed that supporting Carranza was the best way to expedite establishment of a stable Mexican government, refused to allow more arms to be supplied to Villa, and allowed Mexican constitutionalist troops to be relocated via US railroads. Villa felt betrayed by these actions and began to attack Americans. He was further enraged by Obregón's use of searchlights, powered by American electricity, to help repel a Villista night attack on the border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, on November 1,1915. In January 1916, a group of villistas attacked a train on the Mexico North Western Railway, near Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, and massacred 18 American employees of the ASARCO company.

Cross-border attack on New Mexico

On March 9, 1916, Villa ordered 1,500 (disputed, one official US Army report stated "500 to 700") Mexican raiders, reportedly led by villista general Ramon Banda Quesada, to make a cross-border attack against Columbus, New Mexico, in response to the U.S. government's official recognition of the Carranza regime and for the loss of lives in battle due to defective bullets purchased from the United States. They attacked a detachment of the 13th US Cavalry, seized 100 horses and mules, burned the town, killed 10 soldiers and 8 of its residents, and took much ammunition and weaponry. Villa's forces suffered the loss of 80 dead or mortally wounded and 5 captured, mostly from US machine gun emplacements.

The Hunt for Pancho Villa (The Punitive Expedition)

Main article: Pancho Villa Expedition

United States' President Woodrow Wilson responded to the Columbus raid by sending 6,000 troops under General John J. Pershing to Mexico to pursue Villa. (Wilson also dispatched several divisions of Army and National Guard troops to protect the southern US border against further raids and counterattacks.) In the U.S., this was known as the Punitive or Pancho Villa Expedition. During the search, the United States launched its first air combat mission with eight airplanes. At the same time Villa was also being sought by Carranza's army. The U.S. expedition was eventually called off after failing to find Villa, and Villa successfully escaped from both armies.

Later life and assassination

After the Punitive Expedition, Villa remained at large but never regained his former stature or military power. Carranza's loss of Obregon as chief general in 1917, and his preoccupation with the continuing rebellion of the Zapatista and Felicista forces in the south (much closer to Mexico City and perceived as the greater threat), prevented him from applying sufficient military pressure to extinguish the Villa nuisance. Few of the Chihuahuans who could have informed on Villa were inclined to cooperate with the Carranza regime. Villa's last major raid was on Ciudad Juárez in 1919.

In 1920, Villa negotiated peace with new President Adolfo de la Huerta and ended his revolutionary activity. He went into semi-retirement, with a detachment of 50 of los dorados for protection, at the hacienda of El Canutillo. He was assassinated three years later (1923) in Parral, Chihuahua, in his car. The assassins were never arrested, although a Durango politician, Jesús Salas Barraza, publicly claimed credit. While there is some circumstantial evidence that Obregón or Plutarco Elías Calles was behind the killing, Villa made many enemies over his lifetime, who would have had motives to murder him. Today Villa is remembered by many Mexicans as a folk hero.

In 1926 grave robbers decapitated his corpse. His skull has yet to be found.

Villa's original death mask was hidden at the Radford School in El Paso, Texas, until the 1970s, when it was sent to the National Museum of the Revolution in Chihuahua; other museums have ceramic and bronze copies.

The location of the remainder of Villa's corpse is in dispute. It may be in the city cemetery of Parral, Chihuahua, or in Chihuahua City, or in the Monument of the Revolution in Mexico City. Tombstones for Villa exist in both places. A pawn shop in El Paso, Texas, claims to be in possession of Villa's preserved trigger finger.

His final words were reported as: "No permitas que ésto acabe así. Cuentales que he dicho algo." This translates as: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

Period newsreel showing views of the assassination location in Hidalgo del Parrral, Chihuahua, news reporters at the scene, and Villa's bullet riddled corpse and auto. Warning Contains possibly disturbing images of Villa's corpse.

Villa's battles and military actions

• Battle of Ciudad Juárez (twice, in 1911 and 1913, won both times)
• Battle of Tierra Blanca (1913 won)
• Battle of Chihuahua (1913 won)
• Battle of Ojinaga (1913 won)[1]
• Battle of Torreón and Battle of Gómez Palacio (1914 won)
• Battle of Saltillo (1914 won)
• Battle of Zacatecas (1914 won)
• Battle of Celaya (1915 lost)
• Attack on Agua Prieta (1915 lost)
• Attack on Columbus, New Mexico (1916 lost)

Villa's personality, eccentricities and habits, trivia and legends about Villa

File:Pancho villa small.gif

Recent Artistic Vision of General Pancho Villa

As noted in the introduction, the tumultuous times of the Mexican revolution in which Villa lived means that many details of Villa's life will never be completely verifiable. Even contemporary press and eyewitness accounts often conflict, each side of the conflict had a propaganda machine churning out its own spin on events. However, listing some of the legends and stories is important for explaining Villa's political mystique.

John Reed's book Insurgent Mexico relates many tales of Villa, and has stories of Reed's personal encounters with the general. John Eisenhower's book Intervention! details the US interventions in Tampico and Chihuahua during the Revolution. Freidrich Katz's Life and Times of Pancho Villa is the most thorough scholarly English language treatment of Villa's life.

• Villa was noted as a school builder, proposing schools in Chihuahua wherever he saw children gathered.
• He was a lover of ice cream. One corrido song of the revolution states that Villa made a point of stopping for ice cream before gunning down a betrayer on the streets of Chihuahua.
• He was a lifelong teetotaler, and supposedly gagged on a toast of brandy offered to him by Emiliano Zapata.
• He was a dancer of legendary stamina. Reed claims Villa arrived late for the Battle of Torreón, after an all-night dancing stint. Reed may have cleaned up the account a bit to avoid having his book or writings comstocked by the Post Office.
• Villa was a ladies' man and a polygamist. Numbers on how many women Villa married vary, but it has been speculated as many as 24.
• Villa supposedly escaped the Punitive Expedition by having himself sewn up inside the body of a dead horse.
• Some of Villa's soldiers, in mufti, reportedly attended a movie along with Pershing's men, during the Punitive Expedition.
• Villa may have been involved in the demise of Ambrose Bierce.
• Villa's legal widow, Luz Corral, operated Villa's former mansion, Quinta Luz as the Museo de la Revolución in Chihuahua until her death in 1981. The museum is still in operation, and Villa's death car is on display.
• There are unconfirmed rumors that the Skull and Bones club at Yale University is in possession of Villa's skull.
• The song La Cucaracha was modified and popularized by Villa's troops to mock Venustiano Carranza. Multiple theories exist over exactly who or what the oblique reference to the cockroach, was meant to refer to (possibly Villa's car or Villa's army). However, common usage of the term "cucaracha" also refers to an old vehicle, or jalopy. As with other corridos, the song was an oral tradition and verses were frequently made up or modified impromptu by whoever sang it.
• The son of Giuseppe Garibaldi, noted Italian patriot, was a colonel on Villa's military staff. Garibaldi, Jr. was sacked by Villa for claiming too much credit in the press for Villa's 1911 victory in Ciudad Juárez.
• Rodolfo Fierro, Villa's sidekick and noted cold-blooded killer, reportedly once killed a random passerby in the streets of Chihuahua, to settle a bet on whether a dying man fell forwards or backwards. (He fell backwards - so Fierro won the bet). Fierro also reportedly had condemned men line up single file, so as to dispatch multiple victims with a single bullet.
• At the Battle of Tierra Blanca, Chihuahua, Villa (or possibly Rodolfo Fierro) invented the tactic of máquina loca (Crazy Locomotive), namely hijacking a locomotive behind enemy lines, packing it with explosives, then sending it with the throttle tied down into the rows of railroad cars at the enemy's rear.
• In the Benton affair, Villa and Mexican revolutionaries in general earned the lifelong enmity of Winston Churchill, by executing William Benton, an obstinate English hacienda owner.
• In 1913, Villa employed a railroad coal train as a Trojan horse, packing it with his troops and backing it into the railroad station in Ciudad Juárez, to surprise and defeat the federal troops there.
• The Division del norte had no foot infantry per se, Villa attempted to supply a horse for each of his soldiers.
• Photos showing General Villa posing with a robot are a modern day hoax. Robotic technology did not exist in Villa's day, and Villa's military did not employ robots. See: Boilerplate (robot).
• Some Treasure magazines, such as Lost Treasure regularly report that he has buried loot worth Billions of US dollars all over Mexico and the US.

German involvement in Villa's later campaigns

Prior to the Villa-Carranza split in 1915, there is no credible evidence that Villa co-operated with or accepted any help from the German government or agents. Villa was supplied arms from the USA, employed American mercenaries and doctors, portrayed as a hero in the US media, and did not object to the 1914 US naval occupation of Veracruz (Villa's observation was that the occupation merely hurt Huerta). 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, this offer was rejected by Villa.

Germans and German agents did attempt to interfere, unsuccessfully, in the Mexican Revolution. Germans attempted to plot with Victoriano Huerta to assist him to retake 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. Prinicipally this was in the person of Felix A. Sommerfeld, (noted in Katz's book), who in 1915 funneled $340,000 of German money to the Western Cartridge Company to purchase ammunition. However, the actions of Sommerfeld indicate he was likely acting in his own self interest (he supposedly was paid a $5,000 per month stipend for supplying dynamite and arms to Villa, a fortune in 1915, and acted as a double agent for Carranza). Villa's actions were hardly that of a German catspaw, rather, it appears that Villa only resorted to German assistance after other sources of money and arms were cut off.

At the time of Villa's attack on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, Villa's military power had been marginalized and was mostly an impotent nuisance (he was repulsed at Columbus by a small cavalry detachment, albeit after doing a lot of damage), his theatre of operations was mainly limited to western Chihuahua, he was persona non grata with Mexico's ruling Carranza constitutionalists, and the subject of an embargo by the United States, so communication or further shipments of arms between the Germans and Villa would have been difficult. A plausible explanation of any Villa-German contacts after 1915 would be that they were a futile extension of increasingly desperate German diplomatic efforts and villista pipe dreams of victory as 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 weighing claims of Villa conspiring with Germans, one should take into account that at the time, portraying Villa as a German sympathizer served the propaganda ends of both Carranza and Wilson.

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

Pancho Villa in films

Villa represented in films by himself in 1912, 1913, and 1914. Many other actors have represented him, such as:

• Antonio Aguilar (1993)
• Pedro Armendáriz (1950, 1957, 1960 twice)
• Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. (1989)
• Antonio Banderas (2003) And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003) (TV)
• Wallace Beery (1934) Viva Villa!
• Maurice Black (1937)
• Gaithor Brownne (1985)
• Yul Brynner (1968)
• Peter Butler (2000)
• Leo Carrillo (1949)
• Phillip Cooper (1934)
• Hector Elizondo (1976)
• Freddy Fender (1977)
• Rodolfo Hoyos, Jr. (1958)
• George Humbert (1918)
• Carlos Roberto Majul (1999)
• José Elías Moreno (1967)
• Mike Moroff (1999)
• Jesús Ochoa (1995), Entre Pancho Villa y una mujer desnuda
• Ricardo Palacios (1967)
• Alan Reed (1952) Viva Zapata!
• Telly Savalas (1971)
• Domingo Soler (1936), ¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa!
• Juan F. Triana (1935)
• Raoul Walsh (1912, 1914)

References

• Guadalupe Villa y Rosa Helia Villa (eds.), Retrato autobiográfico, 1894-1914, Mexico City, Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: Taurus: Santillana Ediciones Generales, c2003 (2004 printing). ISBN 968-19-1311-6.
• Friedrich Katz, Life and Times of Pancho Villa, Stanford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8047-3046-6
• Jeff Howell, Pancho Villa, Outlaw, Hero, Patriot, Cutthroat: Evaluating the Many Faces of Historical Text Archive

External links

• Statue of Pancho Villa, the Mexican Revolutionary Leader in Tucson, Arizona, United States
• Encyclopedia Britannica, Pancho Villa
• Photos of Villa and the Mexican Revolution - Warning Some disturbing images. Some of these photos are also in the book The Wind That Swept Mexico.