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“What is really not that different,” he said, “is the fact that demographically the northern part of Mexico, particularly, and the southwestern part of the U.S. are joined not only by geography, but by people.”
Dr. Ricardo Romo, president of the University of Texas at San Antonio, whose grandparents fled the revolution to the United States, described Francisco Madero (Mexico’s president from 1911 to 1913) as “the most famous resident of San Antonio in 1910.”
He noted that Madero planned the revolution from San Antonio — a revolution that led to the dislocation of millions and impacted lives on both sides of the border.
One of those who rallied to Madero’s cause was the bandit leader, Pancho Villa.
Dr. Katz related that Villa’s attack on the town of Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, was the result of a complex series of factors, some hidden at the time, that set off its own chain of events with international implications.
Ever since the Spanish American War in 1898, the United States had begun to actively intervene in Latin America when it felt its interests threatened, Katz noted. With Mexico, however, these actions became tangled. “Nothing describes this disarray more clearly than the fact that the U.S. administration supported every revolutionary movement and then turned against it,” he said, ticking off the names of Mexican leaders Madero, Huerta, Villa and Carranza.
The United States government’s hopes were that whomever they helped bring to power would then bow to American interests. “What the American administrations miscalculated was the strength of Mexican revolutionary nationalism,” said Katz. The most dramatic example of this was the case of Pancho Villa.
“Who was Villa?” queried Katz. “Making sense of this man is probably one of the most difficult tasks that I ever confronted.” The darling of Hollywood even in his own time (Villa enlisted cinematographers in filming his actual battles) he has been romanticized in films by the likes of Antonio Banderas, Wallace Beery, Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner. “That legend obviously obscures the real individual,” said Katz, noting the striking difference between Villa and other revolutionaries — Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevera. These were educated men, who led political organizations. Villa did not even have primary schooling.
It is not clear why, at the age of 15 or 16, Villa turned outlaw. Stories abound, but the fact of the matter was that it was not an unusual path for a man of the lower classes in Mexico to be forced into, under the rule of Porfirio Diaz. Judges belonged to the aristocracy and offending an estate owner for any reason could lead to jail, execution or forced recruitment into the Army.
Katz noted that what distinguished Villa was that, after espousing Madero’s cause, “he showed no trace of the life as an outlaw that he had waged before.” In fact, when Villa’s troops occupied a town, bars were immediately closed and guards were placed in front of stores to protect them. By the end of 1913 he had amassed an army of 3,000 men and become governor of Chihuahua. He also confiscated the large land holdings of the aristocracy to finance his army and help the poor. “Large sums of money were spent for schools,” noted Katz. “This semi-illiterate had a tremendous respect for education.”
An intelligence agent for the United States, posing as an American reporter, described Villa as a modern day Robin Hood who was idolized by the Mexican lower classes for his courage, simplicity and generosity — not to mention his prowess with pretty women. Said the agent, “If he had had a Machiavelli for an adviser, he could not have found a truer way to the hearts of his followers.”
Katz described the followers of Villa as “a special kind of peasant farmer,” descendants of Spanish military colonists who, centuries before, were given land by the crown in exchange for fighting off the Apaches and Comanches. “Their situation changed dramatically in 1884, after Porfirio Diaz had become dictator of Mexico,” noted Katz. Due to the end of the Apache wars and construction of a railroad linking the United States, Chihuahua and Central Mexico, land values rose tremendously at the same time the state no longer needed the land owners’ fighting power. Large-scale expropriation of lands by the government took place and Villa promised to return these lands, as well as give land to those who had none.
Villa got off to a good footing with the United States, purposely not expropriating large American holdings or taxing their companies. He needed to buy U.S. arms and cattle and believed Woodrow Wilson supported a “free and independent Mexico.”
Katz related that Villa was accompanied by a carful of American correspondents and “signed an exclusive contract with the Mutual Film Company in Hollywood to film his battles.” He added, “Not only that, but they made a film called The Life of General Villa, where an American played the young Villa and Villa played the mature Villa himself!”
Villa, for a time, was immensely popular in the United States. Things soured when he levied a small tax on American holdings at a time when his army urgently needed funds to fight the federalist forces. Washington protested loudly. “And for the first time,” said Katz, “Villa was beginning to think that perhaps the idea of Mexico for the Mexicans was not a bad idea.”
Adding to this was the machinations of Leon Canova, a special representative of the U.S. Department of State, who led Villa to believe that he spoke for Woodrow Wilson. Canova offered U.S. recognition of Villa’s government in exchange for U.S. approval of Villa’s appointments for secretaries of foreign relations, commerce and the interior. Along with other concessions from Mexico, said Katz, “The U.S. would give his government a credit of 500 million dollars and in return would assume control of the finances of Mexico.”
Needless to say, Villa saw this as an attempt to turn Mexico into a U.S. protectorate. “He did not know,” said Katz, “that Canova was not acting in concert with Wilson. President Wilson knew nothing about this proposal.” Canova was actually in league with high placed officials and business interests. “Above all,” noted Katz, “the American oil companies were involved in this scheme.”
When Wilson ultimately recognized the Mexican government of Venustiano Carranza, Villa believed Carranza had sold out to U.S. interests. The defeated Villa could have taken asylum in the U.S. or elsewhere at this point, doing what many another deposed Latin American leader had done. “Instead,” said Katz, “he felt that if the independence of Mexico was threatened, it was his duty to stay
in Mexico.”
Villa was infuriated that the U.S. government allowed Carranza’s army to pass through American territory following him, but there was more to it than that. “By attacking an American town, provoking an American intervention, Carranza would find himself in a dilemma,” said Katz. “He would either have to support the Americans, and thus unmask himself as an agent of the United States, or oppose the United States and thus bring about the break between the United States and his own government.”
Carranza had made no pact, related Katz. “Whatever one can say about him, he was a committed nationalist. But Villa had every reason to assume that he had. And so he attacked Columbus and what he expected happened. Ten thousand American soldiers entered Mexico chasing Villa.”
Villa became a symbol of Mexican nationalism and his army grew to ten thousand, while the American Punitive Expedition that chased him into Mexico (and never caught him) led to a break between the U.S. and Carranza. Carranza did not have the might to defeat Villa and other revolutionaries, such as Emiliano Zapata. “As a result,” stated Katz, “these men were able to hang on, to survive until 1920, when Carranza was toppled and Obregon made his peace with them by granting them the land they had sought.”
Villa’s actions had several profound affects. In Mexico, it strengthened nationalism during the drafting of the Constitution of 1917, ensuring that oil and mineral rights would revert to Mexico. Indirectly, it brought about America’s entry into World War I. Seeing the American forces unsuccessful in Mexico, Germany took this to mean the United States was a “paper tiger.” As a result, they launched submarine attacks against American ships supplying Britain, France and Russia with arms and ammunition. As they say, the rest is history!
There were also far-reaching consequences in the border states, Katz noted, especially in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Feelings aroused by Villa’s incursion into the United States and the Punitive Expedition would lead to violence and the seizing of Mexican-Americans’ lands here, causing 77,000 Mexican-Americans to flee to Mexico by 1917 — at the same time hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were fleeing to the northern side of the border.
Katz noted that Villa remains a hero to a large part of the Mexican people, despite his being at times “a very cruel and bloodthirsty man.” In the question and answer session that followed, he observed that the student movement in Mexico in 1968 was perhaps a continuation of the revolution their forefathers began. “Unlike other students movements, which were more or less swayed by utopian aims,” he said, “what the Mexican students were demanding from the government was basically the achievement of the Constitution of 1917 — total democracy, free elections, freedom of the press, control of the police. … I would say, in people’s minds, the revolution is very much alive.” |