Protector and Aggressor: Pancho Villa’s Complicated Relationship with the Lower Mimbres Valley
I added this to La Revolución Mexicana for summer 2023, in case you’re interested:
This is the text of the speech that I gave in Columbus, NM, at the commemoration of the 107th anniversary of Pancho Villa’s raid on that town. All of the photos from that day were taken by David Sherman Begg.
On March 8, 1916, the front page of La Prensa, a Spanish-language daily in San Antonio, carried the headline: “Gavira notified Pershing that Villa is closing on Columbus.” Gabriel Gavira was the Carrancista military chief in Ciudad Juárez, so he often informed General John J. Pershing, headquartered at Fort Bliss, of developments in the area.
Although Pershing dispatched a small contingent to investigate, he stated that he didn’t believe that Villa would attempt to cross the border. Other intelligence placed the revolutionary near Carretas, southwest of Ciudad Chihuahua or even on the other side of the Sierra Madre in Sonora. With a near constant onslaught of contradictory intelligence, Pershing took the reports with a grain of salt.
On that same day, March 8, ninety miles west, not far from where we sit, Juan Favela rushed into Colonel Herbert Slocum’s office to warn him that villistas had kidnapped three foremen of the Palomas Land and Cattle Company south of the town of Palomas, and that they were heading northward toward the border. Favela was well-known in Columbus, where he had long made his home. Slocum was the commanding officer of the 13th Cavalry, stationed at Camp Furlong.
Because international conventions prohibited investigation south of the border, Slocum dismissed Favela’s warning out of hand. He informed Favela that he had sent men to the Bailey Ranch to the east and to the Gibson Ranch to the west. If Villa was in fact nearby, “he will come by one or the other. A reception will be waiting for him.”
Of course, we know that at 4:00 on the morning of March 9, villistas cut the barbed wire on the cattle fence about three miles from the border gate and crossed into U.S. territory with a force of nearly 500 men. We are here today to remember those who were killed during the battle that raged for hours thereafter.
Later in life, Favela recounted his shock that Slocum had disregarded his warnings. At the time, he reasoned that Slocum must have additional intelligence that made him so sure an attack was not imminent. But in an oral history recorded in the 1970s he bitterly recalled, “I’ll always think that Colonel Slocum believed me all right, and that he took care of his own skin and that of his family.”
In another oral history, recorded not long thereafter, line rider and cattle inspector Daniel J. “Buck” Chadborn remarked, “I’m one of those who could never figure out why [Slocum] didn’t pay more attention to Juan Favela and his warnings. Favela was well known in the community as an honest man and good citizen.” Both Chadborn and Favela risked their own lives to aid others as the battle raged in Columbus.
In addition to the seventeen Americans killed during the raid, around one-hundred villistas lost their lives on March 9, 1916. This included men killed during the retreat southward, as well as Mexicans summarily executed in the raid’s immediate aftermath. The majority had been forcibly impressed into Villa’s service. Only his closest advisors, including his famed Dorados, continued of their own volition.
Jesús Paez was eleven years old on the day of the attack. A few months previously, his father had fled into the mountains to escape Carrancistas’ extortion attempts. He had been manager at the Quinta Carolina, one of the large ranches of the powerful Luis Terrazas. Jesús escaped into the sierra as well when the Carrancistas threatened to shoot him because he wouldn’t give away his father’s location.
According to his own accounts in the months following the raid, villistas captured Jesús and his father and threatened them with death if they didn’t join their contingent. In 1920, however, during Albert B. Fall’s Senate investigation, Jesús stated that they joined the villistas as a means of getting away from the Carrancista threat. In both accounts Jesús reported that joining the villistas was “the only way we could be safe.”
Jesús recalled that he had no idea they had crossed into the United States on March 9, a fact corroborated by other villistas. Villa himself and advisors like Candelario Cervantes knew, of course. The bulk of the men were kept in the dark in order to prevent mass desertions.
As the attack unfolded, Jesús remained near Cootes Hill with those who guarded the horses. Yet, as the Commercial Hotel went up in flames, lighting up the town and threatening businesses nearby, Jesús’ worries intensified. Why hadn’t his father returned? When the retreat began at around 6:00 am, Jesús left his post to search for him.
He awoke hours later under a pile of shrapnel and debris. He had been shot in the leg, and was taken to the hospital in Deming where his leg was amputated to save his life. Although the nurses took pity on him–he was a child whose life was destroyed by the raid, they also spoke of him in highly condescending terms, regularly deriding his smoking habit and remarking that he “enjoys the distinction among Mexicans of being able to read and write.” They also reported often on his “vitality and cheerful disposition” despite the traumas he had faced. His father was one of the victims of the raid.
After testifying before the Fall Committee in 1920, he moved to Florida where he remained throughout his adult life.
Since the raid occurred, scholars have debated the reasons behind it, and even whether Villa himself was present. At one end of the spectrum are those who suggest he simply went mad due to his fall from prominence and his inability to win battles. On the other hand, some argue that he believed that Venustiano Carranza was about to make Mexico a U.S. protectorate. There is no evidence that such was actually the case, but that’s what Villa believed and so he attacked Columbus to put his rival in an untenable position relative to the United States. Villa was incensed that Woodrow Wilson had recognized Carranza as the de facto president of Mexico in October of 1915, a point of consensus among researchers of the Revolution.
Some scholars argue that there is little evidence to suggest that Villa was present in Columbus during the attack. They reason, justifiedly, that Villa was blamed for virtually every wrongdoing committed along the border and in northern Mexico at the time, when such clearly couldn’t have been the case.
Others place Villa with his men at Columbus, but suggest that he didn’t actually enter town during the chaos. That he stayed near Cootes Hill where Jesús Paez tended his father’s horse while the violence ensued. In fact, Jesús testified as much in 1920. It does seem fairly certain, based on testimony from his Dorados, that he was present whether or not he personally led the charge into town. By one account, Candelario Cervantes had to convince Villa to cut the barbed wire fence and cross the border when he hesitated.
Several eyewitness accounts recorded in oral history interviews decades after the fact place Villa at the heart of the melee. But, as we know, the passage of time causes memories to fade and take on lives of their own. Two women, Maud Wright and Susan Parks, both independently reported Villa’s presence in town in the days immediately following the raid.
Maud had been living near Pearson, today Mata Ortiz, in the Sierra Madre in Chihuahua with her husband, Ed, and toddler, Johnny. She was forced, along with her husband, to accompany a band of villistas who came to their ranch in search of food and supplies. On the march northward, Maud spoke directly with Villa several times and she was present with his army at Columbus on March 9. Ed was executed during the journey. She witnessed the rout of the villistas in town and was later reunited with her son on the international bridge in Juárez with Carranza’s support.
Susan was the 19-year-old telephone operator in Columbus. She awakened to the sounds of the ensuing battle. When she peeked through the blinds, she saw men conferring across the street. Moving quickly, she quietly stowed her baby, Gwen, under the bed and went to the switchboard. As soon as she lit a match to see what she was doing, bullets flew through the window, striking the board. Still, she was able to contact Fort Bliss to report that the town was under attack. Susan believed that the man she witnessed leading the conversation that morning was Pancho Villa.
The people of Columbus, the borderlands, and the United States more broadly, knew Pancho Villa. As part of his campaign to create a larger-than-life image for U.S. audiences, Villa sought to paint himself as a protector of the interests of people in the New Mexico-Chihuahua borderlands. Essential to that public image was his ability to promote himself as a “man of peace,” despite his history of violence.
For a time, he seemed to succeed. Here in Columbus, Villa did emerge as a protector-figure in the context of revolutionary chaos. When the story of the Mexican Revolution and the Villa Raid is considered from the perspective of the history of Lower Mimbres Valley, it becomes clear that Columbus was not mere collateral damage in Villa’s plans to regain a foothold in the revolutionary struggle. Prior to the March 1916 raid, Villa was widely seen as a hero and symbol of justice in the Lower Mimbres Valley, making his attack on Columbus all the more tragic.
Columbus had come into being as a result of development schemes, including ranching and railroad projects, that the government of Porfirio Díaz granted to investors in northwestern Chihuahua in the 1880s. A cross-border nexus of economic, social, and political connections was forged as merchants from Deming supported efforts to build the town of Palomas in 1887 and 1888. For a time, the customs house was located further south at Ascensión. One of the agents of the Palomas colonization company founded Columbus in 1891 due to his desire to build a sister town on the northern side of the international boundary. The corridor between Deming and Ascensión, through Columbus and Palomas, was a thoroughfare for the movement of people and goods, including Mormon colonists, at the turn of the twentieth century. This is the cross border region I refer to as the Lower Mimbres Valley.
Based on oral histories, newspaper reports, and municipal records, Villa made connections with the people of Ascensión and the Mormon colonies early in the Revolution. Various Asencionenses recall friendly relations with Villa even prior to the beginning of hostilities in 1910. The family of Francisco Fernández, in particular, forged a lasting tie with Villa and with Mormon settlers at Colonia Díaz, built on lands that belonged to Ascensión. It was Fernández who introduced Villa to the Díaz colonists early in the revolution.
During Pascual Orozco’s counterrevolution against Francisco Madero in 1912, Villa emerged as a protector of Mormon colonists’ property and lives. His protection against Orozquistas was short-lived, however, as General Victoriano Huerta (head of Mexican federal forces under Díaz and then under Madero) ordered his execution while in Ascensión. Villa did not meet the firing squad at that time, but instead spent the next 6 months imprisoned at Lecumberri in Mexico City.
With Villa imprisoned, Orozquista forces threatened to disarm the Mormon colonists in all of their various Chihuahua settlements in order to take their lands and implements. By July of 1912, the majority fled to sites on the U.S. side of the border. In what the Mormons remember as their Exodus from the colonies, most took refuge in El Paso, while some arrived in Columbus and Hachita. Ernest V. Romney (yes of that family), the former Bishop of Colonia Díaz, resettled permanently in Columbus and opened a mercantile with his partner Peter K. Lemon.
Right about this same time, residents of Columbus petitioned officials at Fort Bliss for the return of military protection. Earlier in 1912, Troop C of the Fourth Cavalry left town as border violence connected to the revolution seemed to be on the decline. The relocation of Orozquista forces to Palomas that August indicated that such was not the case, however.
Famously, on Christmas Day 1912, Villa escaped prison and fled to El Paso. A couple of months later, Madero and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez, fell victim to a coup planned in the office of the U.S. Ambassador and orchestrated by Huerta and Porfirio Díaz’s nephew, Félix. Madero and Pino Suarez were sent to Lecumberri and then assassinated on February 22, 1913, just outside the prison walls as they were purportedly being transferred to another penitentiary. The Revolution now took a turn–the new goal was to unseat the usurper, Huerta.
Villa returned to Ascensión in early June with a contingent of about 700 men to rebuild his army. Refugio Sáenz, the municipal president at the time, was relieved when Villa recognized his leadership and ensured his protection. Instead of taking control of the town of roughly 1200, Villa guaranteed local control over political affairs. From Ascensión, Villa united and organized various Chihuahuense revolutionary bands that had been operating independently forming his famed División del Norte.
After pledging loyalty to the Constitutionalist cause led by Venustiano Carranza–an alliance that was uneasy at best, Villa acted as de facto governor of Chihuahua during the rest of 1913 and half of 1914. At that time, he maintained an office here in Columbus. Although it remains unclear how often he visited, or indeed whether he ever did so personally, the presence of villista officers seemed to provide a sense of calm in the middle of the revolutionary storm.
As “Buck” Chadborn recalled, “To show how cooperative Villa was he gave me a safe conduct pass for my protection, though I didn’t ask for it. It was presented to me in Villa’s Columbus office by two of his right-hand men, Leoncio J. Figueroa and Antonio Moreno.”
The on-again-off-again legality of arms trading across the border during the Revolution meant that not everyone in the Columbus community found the presence of a villista office reassuring. Sam Ravel, proprietor of one of the major mercantile establishments in town, found himself on the wrong side of the villistas in the summer of 1914 when Figueroa and two other captains took him prisoner and held him for two days across the border in Palomas.
The villistas accused Ravel of supplying a rival faction with weapons. Luna County Sheriff D.B. Stephens intervened with Figueroa, who had declared himself to be the Mexican Consular Agent in Columbus. Ravel also leveraged his connections to NM Senator Albert B. Fall to gain his freedom. Whatever his later dealings with Villa and his men, Ravel’s relations with villistas during their occupation of Palomas and their maintenance of a Columbus office turned sour.
Just about a month later, Villa traveled across the American Southwest on the Southern Pacific Railroad, accompanied by General Alvaro Obregón, who was an ally at that moment, a thirty-five member bodyguard, and “an escort of twelve non-commissioned officers of the 6th U.S. Infantry.” The generals had been given special dispensation by border state governors, including NM governor William C. McDonald, to use the railroad en route to a conference with Sonoran Governor José María Maytorena.
You all may be familiar with a photograph of Villa and Obregón with General Pershing, taken at Fort Bliss in August of 1914. The day after the stop in El Paso, the entourage stopped in Deming for breakfast. When news of Villa’s presence circulated, “half the town” reportedly “turned out to see him.” He addressed the gathered crowd in Spanish from his private rail car, assuring them the violence in Mexico would soon come to an end, and he called on Mexicans living in southern NM to return home where they would receive land upon which they could raise their families in peace.
According to the bilingual Deming Graphic, Villa twice addressed the expatriates in attendance, most of whom stood in silence as “the Americans alone raised their voices in ‘vivas’ and responded to his words with handclapping.” While those present commented in detail on Villa’s visit, Obregón’s presence was mentioned only in passing. Despite the fact that he became the most successful general of the Revolution, Obregón at no time sought to build a larger-than-life image for himself, and he did not seek recognition north of the border as the protector of American lives in Mexico or as the general who would bring a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Villa did.
1914 was the peak of Villa’s influence on the national stage of the Mexican Revolution. That December, he and ally Emiliano Zapata triumphantly entered Mexico City. The famous photo of Villa in the president’s chair, with Zapata at his side and other supporters all around, was snapped at that time.
Already at that point, though, his star began to fade. His alliance with Zapata didn’t last, as both returned to focus on their respective regions of strength, Zapata in the south and Villa in the north. With Huerta’s defeat, the uneasy alliances of the Constitutionalist faction transformed into open conflict. Obregón handed Villa staggering defeats at Celaya and León in April and June 1915. Not long after quartering his men at Colonia Dublán where he was still on friendly terms with the Mormons, Villa learned of Wilson’s recognition of Carranza and publicly declared his turn against all Americans at Colonia Morelos in Sonora.
As Villa snatched “defeat from the jaws of victory,” as his most prolific biographer has put it, he returned to the Lower Mimbres Valley. Tactically, his attack on Columbus was a disaster. His forces took little by way of money and munition, instead losing nearly one-fifth of their numbers. The attack returned him to prominence nationally in Mexico for a time, but at great cost to both his own men and to those he had formerly called friends and allies here in Columbus.
Additional photos by David Sherman Bragg, depicting the commemoration at the Columbus Historical Society (train depot) museum in Columbus, NM, 9 March 2023:
