CIUDAD CHIHUAHUA, Mexico – The vintage Dodge roadster riddled with
assassins’ bullets that sits in the courtyard of Pancho Villa’s
mansion here is a painful reminder of how Mexico’s famous
revolutionary lived and died by the gun.
An arsenal of assorted weaponry fills the colonnaded, French
palace, now the Museum of the Mexican Revolution. If any
confirmation were needed of Villa’s violent legacy, these pistols,
carbines and machine guns are stark evidence. Other artifacts of
war help make the point: the bandoliers and canteens from forgotten
campaigns, musty combat photos and haunting portraits of other
guerrilla leaders.
I had come to Villa’s home, Quinta Luz, on a tranquil side street
in this workaday capital of the north, looking for answers and
explanations about one of the most adored and reviled figures in
Mexican history. Like many, I was puzzled that this cattle rustler
and small-time bandit could become the stuff of legends and leader
of one of Latin America’s largest revolutionary armies.
Indeed, much of his renown stems from launching the only foreign
invasion of the contiguous United States and getting away with it.
His 1916 attack at Columbus, N.M., killed 18 Americans and then saw
Villa evade Gen. George Pershing’s pursuing troops.
Lately, interest has been rekindled by a spate of books, papers and
films, notably a tome by University of Chicago researcher Friedrich
Katz that casts Villa in a gentler light as one firmly dedicated to
land reform and social betterment.
I set forth across the high desert expanse of northern Mexico that
was his stomping ground and where he went to war against his
government, setting in motion with his Division del Norte a string
of notable battlefield victories, the Mexican revolution of
1910-20.
It was here, amid the craggy hillocks and parched arroyos, that
Gen. Franciso “Pancho” Villa’s legacy was writ large – in the
bustling cattle towns and remote backcountry of Chihuahua state,
Mexico’s largest and also its least populated region.
“Interest is growing as new truths reveal that he was a better
man, who doesn’t fit the perceptions,” Ruben Beltran, a longtime
Chihuahuan, told me.
Indeed, more tourists and others are seeking out Villa’s homes, the
assassination site and other landmarks now that most are accessible
by a modern, four-lane toll road from El Paso, just a few hours
away.
What better place to begin than Quinta Luz, the grand, pink, stucco
mansion where Villa lived and worked as Chihuahua governor in his
ascent to power.
This palace was quite a home office, with Italianate floors,
scalloped wall designs and marble fixtures – all bespeaking a man
of outsized ego and vision, who seemed to relish ostentation. Here
were the trappings of luxury that violence had brought.
I was both appalled and amazed at the contrasts. With money to burn
from his cattle thieving and the “taxes” he extorted from U.S.
interests, the warlord poured bundles into the house, which he
named for his second wife, Luz Corral. Villa had only two wives, I
was assured, and not the 26 that some have ascribed. Halls brimmed
with French furniture that Doa Luz picked up on shopping trips to
El Paso. While her husband was bartering beef for guns and ammo in
Texas, she was browsing for settees and sofas.
This opulence was not unusual for Villa. A few minutes from Quinta
Luz, on Chihuahua’s convenient tourist trolley, is an equally
imposing art nouveau manse, Quinta Gameros, where Villa also worked
and headquartered for a time.
As I prowled the anterooms and hallways of Villa’s home, what
kindled my interest were his weapons of banditry and war, not the
excesses of luxury.
There were Belgian and Austrian arms, vintage U.S. carbines, a
machine gun and cannon, all variously bought, bartered or seized on
the battlefield from the government federales, whom he usually
defeated so handily. Other mementos were taken off Pershing’s
fallen men.
The collective arsenal was a chilling reminder of the primitive
state of warfare a century ago. Amid Villa’s saddle, chaps and
uniforms were rudimentary syringes and other surgical tools, as
well as photos of the train that functioned as a mobile hospital
for the division.
The armaments told of Villa the plunderer and warrior, but I sought
evidence of his benevolence, as well. What could inspire such
loyalty among his troops, and such devotion among campesinos that
they would fight off pursuing U.S. attackers with rocks?
“The revolution was like a religious conversion for Villa – he
went from bandit to land reformer,” said Ruben Osorio, a retired
Chihuahua physician whose recently published Villa letters seek to
confirm the newfound obsession for social betterment. “He dreamed
of a better life for all.”
The warrior as governor created a department of confiscated
property and used it to disburse land to empower the poor.
Osorio pointed to a manifest, scripted at his “retirement,” in
which the warlord decreed that, “It is time to work for the
nation, no more war.” Other manifestos, papers and posters
scattered through the ornate rooms bore testament to his rise from
the grimy depths of thieving.
The black sedan in which Villa died 185 miles away in the town of
Parral was a riveting reminder of how far and fast Mexico’s hero
fell after internal fighting eroded the revolutionary movement.
Villa was decisively beaten in battle by another guerrilla fighter,
Alvaro Obregon, who went on to become president. Villa managed to
negotiate a treaty that assured his retirement to Parral, south of
Chihuahua. But on July 23, 1923, his bucolic life as a farmer and
hotel keeper was ended by assassins.
The seven killers were brought to justice, but mystery lingers as
to who ordered the revolutionary’s death. Osorio and others are
convinced there was U.S. involvement of some kind to get him out of
the way.
In Parral, an erstwhile mining hamlet now a thriving commercial
hub, the center of town still is defined by a yellow marker where
Villa was cut down outside his stone house, now also a museum.
Inside, the bare, boxlike rooms where the war hero lived in
self-imposed exile are grisly reminders of his murder: autopsy
photos, the funeral carriage, a molded mask of his face after death
and a replica of the bedroom where he lay in state.
Curator Don Adolfo Carrasco confided his belief that the murder was
commissioned by President Warren Harding to win from Mexico
oil-drilling rights along the Texas border.
Somehow I came away less impressed by Villa’s legacy of violence
and battlefield heroics than by the tales and totems of his
occasional, good deeds.
A faded oil portrait of Elisa Griensen, a Villa firebrand, stuck in
my mind as I left the museum into the blazing, afternoon sun.
Locals to this day salute the housewife as a heroine for organizing
a makeshift army of youths that pelted Pershing’s troops with rocks
as they entered the town searching for Villa.
Whatever his bad side, that same esteem and hero worship for Villa
burns strongly among many ordinary Mexicans to this day.
Dick Woodbury is a freelance writer who lives in Denver.
If you go
For more information on Chihuahua, Mexico, contact the Mexico
Tourism Board at 800-446-3942 or go to www.visitmexico.com.
