You know, usually when we sit down to talk about
revolutionaries, the mental image is pretty consistent.
Right. We picture guys hiding in, I don't know,
damp caves, writing these furious manifestos
by candlelight. Starving in the mountains, dreaming
of a better world, that kind of thing. Exactly.
We don't typically picture them signing contracts
with Hollywood studios. No, that is definitely
not the standard revolutionary archetype. Usually
the revolution comes before the movie deal. But
today's subject, he literally signed a deal with
the Mutual Film Corporation in 1914. That's right.
They paid him $25 ,000, which was just a staggering
fortune back then, to film his battles. And the
contract, this is the part that honestly just
breaks my brain every time I think about it.
The lighting clause? The lighting clause. It
actually stipulated that he had to fight his
battles during the day so the lighting would
be good for the cameras. It is one of the most
surreal moments in modern history. It really
is. You have this. real, gritty, incredibly bloody
revolution happening. People are dying in the
thousands. And right in the middle of it, you
have a director essentially telling a general,
hey, Poncho, can you retake that cavalry charge?
The sun wasn't quite hitting your good side.
It sounds like fiction, but it's just the tip
of the iceberg. Welcome back to The Deep Dive.
Today we are looking at the man, the myth, the
movie star, and, you know, the murderer. Francisco
Pancho Villa. A man who was effectively two completely
different people, depending on which side of
the Rio Grande or even which side of the Mexican
political spectrum you were standing on. Exactly.
To some, especially in northern Mexico, he is
the centaur of the north, this absolute Robin
Hood figure who stood up to the superpowers of
the world. But to others? To others, he's a sociopath,
a bandit, a villain who dragged Mexico into chaos.
And our mission today is to try and figure out
how both of those things can be true at the same
time. Yeah. We've combed through the biographies,
the military archives of his famous Division
del Norte, and even the accounts of the American
soldiers who spent a year chasing him through
the desert. We want to figure out how an illiterate
sharecropper managed to build a modern army,
run a state government, invade the United States,
and become, for a time, the biggest global celebrity
of 1914. And to do that... We have to strip away
the caricature. You have to. You know the image,
the big sombrero, the heavy mustache, the bandoliers
crossed over the chest. Right. We need to look
at the mind of Dorteo Arango, that was his real
name, and understand the rage that really fueled
him. So let's go back to the beginning. Durango,
1878. He is born Jose Dorteo Arango Arambula.
And the sources all emphasize this sharecropper
background. But I think for a modern audience,
we hear sharecropper and we just think. Poor
farmer. We might miss the severity of what that
actually meant in Porfirio Diaz's Mexico. Yeah,
we absolutely need to correct that immediately.
In late 19th century Mexico, sharecropper was
essentially a euphemism for feudal serf. So you're
not just poor. You're not just poor. You were,
for all intents and purposes, property. Walk
us through the mechanics of that life. What did
a day look like? Well, you lived on a hacienda,
which is this massive estate owned by a single
family, the hacendado. You didn't own the land
you worked. You didn't own your tools. You bought
your food and clothes from the tienda de raya,
the company store, at wildly inflated prices.
Ah, the company store. And you were paid in scrip,
not real money. So you were always in debt to
the owner. And here's the kicker. In Mexico at
that time, debt was hereditary. Wait, what? Yeah.
So if your father died, Owing the Hassan the
doll money, you, as the son, inherited that debt.
Correct. You were legally bound to that land
until the debt was paid, which, of course, it
never was. The numbers were designed so it was
impossible. It was a trap. That is terrifying.
It's slavery with extra steps. Precisely. And
in that environment, the Hassan Dado, the owner,
had absolute power. He was the judge, the jury,
and the police. And he often felt he had, what,
the droidus senior. The right of the Lord. Exactly.
The right to do whatever he wanted with the people
and especially the women on his land. And that
brings us to the inciting incident. This is the
moment Doroteo Arango dies and the outlaw begins.
This is the pivot point for his entire life.
The date is September 22, 1894. Doroteo is just
16 years old. 16. He comes home to his family's
little hut and finds the hacienda owner, a man
named Agustin Lopez Negrete, harassing his younger
sister. Harassing how? I mean, do the sources
get specific? They vary on the details. Some
imply an assault was in progress. Others say
Doroteo got there just in time to stop it. But
what's consistent across all accounts is Doroteo's
reaction. It was immediate. He didn't try to
talk him down or plead with him? No. There was
no hesitation. He grabbed a pistol and he shot
the owner. He shot the Hacendado? He did. Historically,
it seems he only shot him in the foot, but the
physical damage wasn't the point. No. The symbolism
was nuclear. Absolutely. A peon shedding the
blood of a Hacendado. That was an automatic death
sentence. There was no trial. There was no calling
the police. Negrita was the police. So at 16
years old, he has one option. He has to run.
He flees into the Sierra Madre Occidental. And
these are rugged, unforgiving mountains. And
that is where his real education begins. He joins
a bandit gang and spends the next several years
living as a fugitive. And this is where he gets
that famous nickname, but one I don't think people
really think about. La Cucaracha. The cockroach.
Which, to our modern ears, sounds like an insult.
Why would your friends call you a cockroach?
Because in the context of the Sierra Madre bandit
world, being a cockroach was the highest compliment.
How so? It meant you were unkillable. You could
scurry into the cracks and canyons where the
federal police couldn't find you. You could survive
on almost nothing. It implies this incredible
resilience. And during this time, he's not just
sitting around a campfire. He's learning a specific
set of skills that are going to be absolutely
crucial later on. Crucial. He is learning the
terrain. of Chihuahua and Durango like the back
of his hand. Every cave, every water source,
every hidden trail. The ultimate home field advantage.
Right. He's learning how to stage an ambush,
how to ride for days without sleep, and maybe
most importantly, how to inspire loyalty in very
rough men. And he's also living this kind of
double life, right? He's not a full -time bandit.
Not always. He would alternate. He'd work as
a butcher or a miner or a bricklayer when the
heat died down, then go back on the run when
the law got too close. He even got forcibly inducted
into the federal army at one point, didn't he?
Yes, which was a standard punishment for troublemakers
back then. The army was basically a penal colony.
How did that work out for them? About as well
as you'd expect. He deserted, of course, killed
an officer, stole his horse, and went right back
to the mountains. Wow. And it's after this, around
1903, that he officially changes his name to
Francisco Villa. Some say he took the name of
his paternal grandfather. Others say a famous
bandit from Coahuila. But the transformation
is complete. He is a career outlaw. But, you
know, bandits don't usually overthrow governments.
They usually just steal cows. So how do we get
from cattle rustler to revolutionary general?
That's a huge leap. That leap happens in 1910.
Villa has a fateful meeting with a man named
Abraham Gonzalez. And who is he? Gonzalez was
the local representative for Francisco Madero,
who was the wealthy, idealistic politician trying
to oust the longtime dictator Porfirio Diaz.
And Gonzalez looks at Vila and he sees something.
He realizes this guy isn't just a criminal. He's
a resource. He has skills. He has followers.
He has a legitimate grievance. So it's basically
a rebranding exercise. It is. Gonzalez sits Villa
down and he essentially gives him a new narrative.
He tells him, look, you aren't a bandit because
you're a bad person. You're a bandit because
the system is broken. You're a victim of class
warfare. Why steal for yourself when you can
steal for the people? That is a very powerful
sales pitch to a guy who's been on the run for
15 years. It gave him legitimacy. It gave him
a cause. For Villa, the revolution was famously
described as a change of time. title, not of
occupation. So he could keep raiding and fighting,
but now he was a colonel in the revolutionary
army, not a fugitive. Exactly. The game was the
same, but the stakes were suddenly much, much
higher. And this brings us to the rise of the
Division del Norte, because Villa isn't just
leading a gang anymore. He builds this massive
modern military force. And here's the part I
really struggle with. You have a guy who is,
no offense, Great at stealing cows and hiding
in mountains, suddenly, just three years later,
he is commanding the División del Norte, which
becomes the most powerful and feared army in
the history of Latin America up to that point.
How does a bandit learn to run in modern war?
That is the genius of Villa. And it's something
historians often overlook because they get so
focused on the wild man image. Villa was an intuitive
logistician. He was a natural organizer. So he
realized before anyone else in Mexico that the
revolution would be won or lost on the rails.
He understood that the horse was for fighting,
but the train was for winning. The railroads.
The railroads were everything. The Dibijon del
Norte wasn't just an army. It was a rolling city.
Villa seized and controlled the main rail lines
running from the U .S. border down in... to central
Mexico. And he wasn't just using them to move
guys from point A to point B. No, no, no. He
used them to industrialize his warfare. He'd
capture a town, his men would strip the armory,
and the guns would be on a train heading south
that afternoon. He moved troops, cattle, artillery,
supplies, everything. I was reading about the
hospital cars. This just blew my mind. Isn't
it incredible? This is 1913 in rural Mexico.
He gets his hands on 40 boxcars and has them
completely refitted as a state -of -the -art
mobile hospital. State -of -the -art how? He
hired a brilliant doctor, Andres Villarreal,
to run it. They had dedicated operating theaters,
sterilization equipment, x -ray machines, all
on wheels. So Ulster gets shot in the leg on
the front line. Right. They throw him on a train
and he's getting surgery from a top doctor 10
miles back while the train is moving north to
safety. Exactly. And you have to think about
the morale impact of that. It must have been
massive. In the federal army, if you got seriously
wounded, you were often just left to rot in the
sun. In Villa's army, you knew me general had
a white train waiting to take care of you. It
created this fanatical, unbreakable loyalty.
And he fueled this whole machine with American
coal and American guns. Yep. But to pay for it.
Well, let's talk about his economic policies,
because when he takes over the state of Chihuahua
and becomes governor in late 1913, he basically
creates his own central bank out of thin air.
The Villa Bills. This is another one of those
moments where. His lack of formal education actually
helped him because he didn't know what he supposedly
couldn't do. So what's the situation when he
takes power? He takes power in Chihuahua and
the state is completely bankrupt. The wealthy
elites, the powerful Terrazas and Creole families
have fled to the U .S. and taken all the silver
and gold with them. So there's no hard currency,
nothing to pay the soldiers with. Nothing. The
economy has seized up. So Villa just says, OK,
fine, I'm printing my own paper money. And he
prints millions and millions of pesos. Which
historically is a great way to cause hyperinflation
and destroy an economy in about a week. If people
don't trust the paper, it's just worthless. Usually,
yes. It's a recipe for disaster. But Villa backed
his currency with two things. First, he had just
confiscated the massive estates of the oligarchs
who fled. Millions of acres of land, thousands
of cattle. He announced... This paper money is
officially backed by these assets. So it was
technically asset backed currency. And the second
thing. The second thing was a firing squad. Lafus,
the lead standard. Basically, he issued a decree.
Any merchant, any banker, any foreigner who refused
to accept villa currency at par with gold would
be immediately jailed or executed. And it worked.
And guess what? It worked. Suddenly, everyone
trusted the Villa Peso. The economy of Chihuahua
boomed because money was moving again. He understood
the velocity of money intuitively better than
the formerly trained bankers did. And he wasn't
just hoarding this new wealth. This is where
that first welfare state concept comes in. Yes,
that's a term from the historian Friedrich Katz.
Villa used the proceeds from these confiscated
estates to fund pensions for the widows and orphans
of his soldiers. That's amazing. He slashed the
price of meat so the poor could eat. He literally
had his soldiers butchering the confiscated cattle
and just handing out steaks in the plaza. It
completely validates that Robin Hood image. He
wasn't just a destroyer. He was a redistributor.
He absolutely was. He had a vision. He was obsessed
with building schools. For a man who only learned
to read properly while he was in prison, he had
this deep, profound belief that education was
the only way to permanently break the cycle of
peonage. But of course, he couldn't stay a governor
forever. The war against the usurper president,
Victoriano Huerta, was still raging. It was.
And that leads us to the Battle of Zacatecas
in June of 1914. The big one. The bloodiest and
most decisive battle of the entire revolution.
But to understand Zacatecas, you have to understand
the friction that was building within the revolutionary
camp itself. Right. Villa was nominally fighting
under the command of Venustiano Carranza, the
first chief of the revolution. But they were
oil and water. Complete opposites. Describe Carranza
for us. Carranza was a wealthy landowner, a civilian,
a stiff, formal politician with a big beard.
He looked down on Villa as an uncouth bandit,
a savage. And frankly, he was terrified of him.
Terrified why? Because he was so popular. Because
he was popular and he was winning. Carranza knew
that if Villa's army took the strategic city
of Zacatecas, the path to Mexico City would be
wide open and Villanot Carranza would likely
take the presidency. So Carranza tries to sabotage
his own top general. He does. It's a classic
power play. He orders Villa to divert his troops
to attack a strategically meaningless target,
Saltillo. Then he cuts off Villa's coal supply
to immobilize those famous trains. What does
Villa do? He's furious. He actually sends a telegram
resigning his command in protest. He quits the
revolution. He tries to, for about a day. But
his generals, the other senior leaders of the
division in El Norte, refuse to accept it. They
send a telegram back saying essentially, we don't
work for Carranza, we work for you. They rallied
around him. So Vila unresigns, tells Carranza
where he can stick his orders, fires up the trains
with firewood or whatever they could find, and
marches on Zacatecas. And the battle itself,
from what I've read, it sounds just... Horrifying.
It was brutal. Zacatecas is a city built in a
bowl, surrounded by these very steep mountains.
The federal army had 12 ,000 men with machine
guns and artillery dug in on all the peaks. It
was a fortress. So Ville had to send his men
charging up those slopes. Uphill into machine
gun fire. But they did it. Wave after wave. They
overran the positions in a single day of ferocious
fighting. The numbers are staggering. We're talking
7 ,000 dead on the federal side, 5 ,000 wounded.
They completely broke the back of the word. regime.
It did. Huerta fled the country a few weeks later.
But instead of a huge victory party, this victory
cemented the split between Villa and Carranza.
The common enemy was gone. So the allies immediately
turned on each other. Immediately. And this is
where the revolution turns into a civil war between
the winners. And you have these two clear factions,
right? You do. You have Carranza and his brilliant,
pragmatic general, Alvaro Obregón, representing
the interests of the middle class and the landowners.
And on the other side you have Villa in the north
and the great Emiliano Zapata in the south representing
the peasants and the cry for land reform. And
for a brief shining moment Villas and Zapata
actually meet. They take Mexico City. They do.
And there's that famous, famous photograph of
them at the National Palace. Paint that picture
for us. It's so iconic. It really is. You have
Villa, this big, barrel -chested man, and he's
sitting in the ornate, gilded presidential chair.
Slumped down in it, really. He's leaning back,
legs crossed, looking huge and jovial, like he
completely owns the place. And Zapata. And next
to him is Zapata. He's smaller, darker, holding
this giant sombrero in his lap. And he looks
so uncomfortable, so out of place. He's staring
at the camera with these suspicious eyes like
he doesn't trust it. Like he wants to be back
in his home state of Morelos. It captures their
personalities perfectly. Villa, the expansive
showman. Zapata, the suspicious, guarded localist.
Absolutely. But here's the thing. While they
controlled the presidential chair, they didn't
really control the government. They didn't have
the bureaucrats, the administrators. Right. They
were warriors, not politicians. And meanwhile,
Carranza and Obregón had retreated to the port
of Veracruz. They controlled the ports, they
collected all the customs revenue, and they methodically
rebuilt their army with new European weapons.
And then came 1915, the turning point. The Battle
of Salaya. If you are a fan of military history,
this is just a fascinating, tragic moment. This
is where the 19th century crashes headfirst into
the 20th century, and the 19th century loses
badly. That is a fascinating way to frame it.
Because Ville is still fighting the Romantic
War, isn't he? He is. He believes in the power
of the heroic calorie charge, speed, shock, momentum.
He thinks if he just hits the enemy hard enough
and fast enough, they'll break and run like they
always have. But his opponent, Alvaro Obregón,
has been doing his homework. He's been doing
his reading. He's been getting reports from Europe
where World War I has just started. And he's
paying attention. So Obregón is looking at the
Western Front. Yeah, trench warfare. He is. He
sees barbed wire. He sees interlocking fields
of machine gun fire. He sees trenches and artillery.
And he realizes that for the first time in modern
history, defense is now much, much stronger than
offense. So Obregón finds a flat, open field
at Celaya, tells his men to dig in, and just...
He lays a trap. And Valai, he just couldn't adapt.
His ego or perhaps his lack of formal training
just wouldn't let him see the new reality. He
ordered his Dorados, his elite cavalry, the Golden
Ones, to charge those machine gun nests. I know.
Not once, but dozens of times over several days.
It must have been an absolute meat grinder. It
was suicide. It was brave. It was glorious. And
it was pointless. Horses against Maxim guns.
Villa lost thousands of his best men. The Division
del Norte effectively ceased to exist as a conventional
army, and that defeat, it broke something in
Villa's psyche. This is where the narrative really
shifts, isn't it? He stops being the centaur
of the north, this great general, and he goes
back to being the wolf in the mountains. Exactly.
He's angry, he's humiliated, he feels betrayed,
and he starts looking for someone to blame. And
the person he decides to blame is the United
States. He does. Which seems like a big jump.
Why the U .S.? Well, there were a few reasons.
First, the U .S. government, under Woodrow Wilson,
had just officially recognized Carranza's government.
They had picked a side in the Civil War, and
they picked against him. Okay, that's a diplomatic
slap in the face. It's more than that. The U
.S. then allowed Carranza's army to use American
railroads in Texas to move his troops from one
part of Mexico to another to outflank Villa's
forces. Oh, that's a direct betrayal. Villa had
spent years courting the Americans, giving interviews,
protecting American property in Chihuahua. Exactly.
He felt stabbed in the back. And as his army
shrank from thousands to just a few hundred men,
his methods got darker. We have to acknowledge
this part of this story. The Robin Hood image
cracks here. It shatters. We start seeing credible
stories of atrocities, the mass rape of women
in the town of Namakipa, the execution of civilians
he suspected of collaborating with Carranza.
He was lashing out like a wounded animal. And
then he decides to do the unthinkable. He decides
to attack the United States directly. The raid
on Columbus, New Mexico. March 9th, 1916. Now,
was this just a rage -fueled tantrum? Or was
there a strategy behind it? It looks like a tantrum,
but it was actually 4D chess. Villa wasn't stupid.
He knew he couldn't conquer the U .S. with 500
guys. Right. But he knew that if he attacked
a U .S. town and killed American citizens on
American soil, the U .S. government would have
to retaliate. They would have to invade Mexico
to hunt him down. And if the gringos invade Mexico...
Then Carranza looks weak. Carranza becomes the
president who let the foreigners violate Mexican
national sovereignty. Villa hoped that a massive
American invasion would rally the Mexican people
away from Carranza and back to his side to fight
the common enemy. That is an incredibly risky
but also a weirdly brilliant strategy. It's a
Hail Mary pass. So he attacks. what actually
happens in Columbus. He sends his men into the
small border town before dawn. They burn part
of the town. They seize about 100 horses and
mules, which they desperately needed, and they
kill 18 Americans, mostly civilians. And his
own losses. He actually lost about 80 of his
own men in the fighting. The American garrison
fought back harder than he expected, so militarily
it wasn't a huge success, but politically the
impact was exactly what he wanted. President
Woodrow Wilson must have been absolutely furious.
Furious is an understatement. The American public
was screaming for blood, so he ordered the punitive
expedition. He sent one of his best generals,
John J. Blackjack Pershing, with an initial force
of 5 ,000 U .S. troops into Mexico with one mission,
capture Villa dead or alive. And this is a massive
operation. This is where we see the debut of
a lot of modern American military tech. We really
do. A young lieutenant named George S. Patton
is there. making a name for himself. It's the
first time the U .S. Army used trucks for logistics
on a large scale. And airplanes, right? It's
the first time they used airplanes for reconnaissance,
these flimsy little Curtis JN -3 Jennys. So you
literally have American airplanes flying over
the desert, hunting for a guy on a horse. And
they still couldn't catch him. For 11 months,
the U .S. Army, the most modern military force
in the hemisphere, wandered around the deserts
and mountains of Chihuahua. I just played them.
He played them like a fiddle. He led them on
wild goose chases into canyons. He doubled back.
He used his deep knowledge of the terrain. And
the local population who saw him as a hero fighting
the invaders, they covered for him constantly.
It must have been deeply humiliating for Pershing
and the U .S. Army. It was a complete disaster.
The trucks break down in the desert. The airplanes
crashed in the mountains. And Villa's legend
grew even bigger. He was the one man who had
tweaked the eagle's beak and gotten away with
it. Eventually, with World War I heating up in
Europe, the U .S. just quietly declared victory
and went home empty -handed. Speaking of World
War I, there's that weird little subplot here
involving Germany, right? There is. You have
to remember the timing. This is 1916, 1917. German
agents were actively trying to stir up trouble
for the U .S. to keep them distracted. They wanted
to keep the U .S. tied down in Mexico so they
wouldn't send troops to France. Precisely. So
German agents did make contact with Villa. They
wanted to use him as a proxy. So was Villa actually
working for the Kaiser? It was purely transactional.
Villa wasn't an ideological ally of Imperial
Germany. He just needed guns and money. The U
.S. had embargoed him. So when German agents
offered to funnel him cash and ammo, he took
it. But he didn't become their puppet. Not at
all. When they suggested he start sabotaging
American -owned oil fields in Mexico, he ignored
them. He was using them just as much as they
were using him. Okay, so let's fast forward to
1920. The revolution has been grinding on for
a full decade. The country is exhausted. And
then? The political landscape changes again.
It does. Carranza Villa's arch nemesis is assassinated.
Not by Villa. No, ironically, he was killed by
his own former allies, the Sonoran generals,
led by Alvaro Obregón. With Carranza dead, the
new interim government realized that the country
desperately needed peace. And you couldn't have
lasting peace with Pancho Villa still roaming
the hills with an armed following. So they decide
to make a deal with him. They do. The new president,
Adolfo de la Huerta, reaches out, and it's an
incredible deal that Villa negotiates. What are
the terms? Villa agrees to lay down his arms
and retire from public life. In exchange, the
government gives him the Canotillo Hacienda,
a massive 25 ,000 -acre estate in Durango. They
give a full pension to him and his men, and crucially,
they allow him to keep a personal bodyguard of
50 armed men. Wait, hold on. The government gave
a 25 ,000 -acre estate. to the guy who started
his entire career by shooting a hacienda owner
for abusing his family. The irony is rich, isn't
it? The great agrarian revolutionary, the man
who hated the haciendados, becomes one himself.
The ultimate poacher turned gamekeeper. What
was his life like at Canutillo? Was he just sitting
on the porch drinking tequila and getting fat?
Not at all. He couldn't sit still. He ran the
hacienda like a military unit, but also like
a kind of utopian community. He finally built
that school he always talked about for the children
of his veterans. He experimented with new crops.
But his personal life was... let's say, complicated.
The source material says he never bothered with
conventional arrangements, which is a very polite
way of putting it. What does that mean? It means
Villa married many, many women. He often didn't
bother divorcing the previous one before marrying
the next. At Canotillo, he had Ostroberto Renteria
living with him as his wife, even though his
legal wife, Luz Corral, was still alive and well
in Chihuahua City. Sounds like a soap opera.
It was. But despite this comfortable retirement,
Villa was restless. And more importantly, he
was loose -lipped. He started giving interviews
to journalists. What was he saying? He started
talking about how he might re -enter politics
for the 1924 election. He even told one journalist,
Oh, that is not what the new government in Mexico
City wanted to hear. No. By this point, Obregón
was president, and his hand -picked successor,
Putarco Elias Calles, was set to take over. They
were trying to consolidate power and stabilize
the country. A resurrected Pancho Villa with
an army of 40 ,000 men was their absolute worst
nightmare. So we move to the final act, the assassination.
July 20, 1923. The town of Corral in Chihuahua.
Villa felt very safe in Perel. He had a mistress
there. He owned property. On this particular
day, he was driving his car, a big black 1919
Dodge Touring Carback from town to his ranch.
And he didn't have his full security detail with
him. No, and that was the fatal mistake. He had
become complacent. He had only a few bodyguards
in the car with him and his personal secretary.
And what happened? As he drove past a schoolhouse,
a man standing on the corner, a pumpkin seed
vendor, shouted, Viva Villa! A salute from a
supporter. It was a signal. He shouted it, and
as Villa's car slowed to turn the corner, seven
riflemen stepped out of a house into the street.
In ambush. A perfectly planned ambush. They unleashed
a fusillade. They pumped over 40 rounds into
the car in a matter of seconds. And these weren't
standard bullets, were they? No. The autopsy
showed they were using dum -dum bullets, expanding
bullets, the kind you use for big game hunting.
Brutal. They wanted to make absolutely sure.
They did. Villa was hit nine times in the head
and chest. He died instantly. His hand was reportedly
reaching for his pistol on the seat next to him,
but he never even got a shot off. about his last
words isn't there something like don't let it
end like this tell them i said something yes
that's a famous story but it's almost certainly
fiction given the massive trauma from those expanding
bullets to his head and heart he wouldn't have
been able to speak a word he was dead before
the car even rolled to a stop against a tree
so who did it i mean we know who pulled the triggers
but who paid for the bullets Well, the man who
publicly claimed responsibility was a local politician
named Jesus Salas Barraza, who apparently had
a personal grudge against Villa. He claimed he
did it to rid humanity of a monster. But nobody
believes that. No serious historian believes
he acted alone. The conspiracy points directly
to the top. To President Obregón and President
-elect Callas. Almost certainly. Villa was a
political threat they could not afford. They
needed him gone before the election. The assassins
were very likely paid and protected by the federal
government. Barraza, the supposed mastermind,
spent a few months in a comfortable jail and
was then quietly pardoned and released. Incredible.
And even in death. Villa couldn't seem to catch
a break. His body was buried in Peral, but then
something very weird happened to his head. Yes,
this is the final ghoulish chapter. Three years
later, in 1926, his grave was violated. Someone
dug up his coffin, opened it, and sawed off his
head. Who steals a head? Why? That is one of
the great unsolved mysteries of Mexican history.
The theories are wild. There are rumors that
an American treasure hunter stole it to sell
to an eccentric millionaire. I've heard the Yale
University story. The persistent legend is that
it ended up in the possession of the Skull and
Bone Society at Yale. They, of course, deny it.
But to this day, Pancho Villa's skull has never
been found. That is just gruesome. But eventually,
his body, or what was left of it, was moved to
a place of honor, right? Yes, decades later.
In 1976, the Mexican government exhumed his remains
and moved them to the monument to the revolution
in Mexico City. And this really brings us to
the legacy part of our deep dive. Because for
a long, long time, he wasn't officially considered
a national hero. No, not at all. For decades,
while the Sonoran dynasty, the political lineage
of Obregón and Calles ruled Mexico, Villo was
officially a villain. He was the bandit, the
traitor, the problem. It wasn't until those generations
of politicians had passed from the scene. that
the government started to slowly reincorporate
him into the national story. And now, he's everywhere.
Statues, street names on banknotes. He is a full
-blown folk hero. He represents the uncrushable,
rebellious spirit of the North. He's the man
who stood up to the Hacendados, and more importantly,
the man who stood up to the gringos and got away
with it. The brutality, the atrocities, that's
often forgotten, or at least minimized, in favor
of the more romantic legend. It's a power of
myth. The man of two faces ultimately became
one face in the public memory. The hero. And
that leads to a final and I think very provocative
thought for you to consider. What's that? Think
about that monument to the revolution in Mexico
City. It's this massive, solemn mausoleum. Inside,
Pancho Villa's remains are interred in a place
of high honor. But do you know who is right there
in the tomb with him? Who? The Nustiano Carranza,
the man who tried to sabotage him, who cut off
his coal, who betrayed him, and Plutarco Elias
Caius, the man who almost certainly ordered his
murder. They are all buried together as equals
in the same monument. Wait, really? They're roommates
for eternity. It's the ultimate historical irony.
The state took these mortal enemies, men who
killed each other's families, who hated everything
the other stood for, and it lumped them all together
into one unified revolutionary family. It erases
the real, bloody personal conflicts in favor
of a nice, tidy national myth. So the question
is? The question is, does remembering them together
like that actually honor history, or does it
sanitize it? Does it erase the very things that
made the revolution what it was? Wow. That is
something to chew on. In the end, the revolution
swallowed them all whole. Indeed. We'll leave
you with that image. The bandit and the bureaucrats
resting together for all time. Thanks for listening
to the deep dive into the life of Pancho Villa.
We'll catch you on the next one.