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Back to Podcast EpisodesPancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution (Part One)
Of the many political figures involved in Mexico’s 1910 Revolution, Pancho Villa remains the most famous and charismatic.
Like the history of Mexico itself, Villa’s early life and biography is obscured or disputed. Much of the information about Pancho Villa came from his own self-serving autobiography or biased journalism and glorifying newsreels from the time period. What is generally accepted is that Villa was born Doroteo Arango to a sharecropper father and domestic mother on June 5, 1878, in San Juan Del Rio, in the Mexican state of Durango.
In 1910, Mexican President Porfirio Diaz was re-elected to his seventh term as the political leader of the Mexican government. Diaz had served as President for 30 of the previous 34 years, so politically powerful that this entire time period is referred to historically as the Porfiriato. Although Mexico’s economy experienced expansion and prosperity during Diaz’s reign, much of the increased international trade, railroad construction and economic infrastructure was financed with European and American capital and benefited foreign entities and individuals and a small group of Mexican elites to the detriment of most of the Mexican population, who barely survived in squalor and deprivation.
Madero had no choice but to employ the reactionary general Victoriano Huerta as the head of the column that headed north to Chihuahua to challenge Orozco. He also personally requested that Villa join the general to oppose Orozco, an overture that Villa accepted. In command of 4800 federales, General Huerta accepted Villa’s men into his fighting force strictl
Published on 3 years, 9 months ago