Pancho Villa

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, guerrilla leader, and politician. He was a key figure in the Mexican Revolution, which forced out President and dictator Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero 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. Villa served as provisional governor of Chihuahua from 1913 to 1914.

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 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 summer 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 and 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 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.

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 Parro 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.