The General and the Jaguar (44 page)

Although the U.S. Army was eager to close the books on the Columbus raid, civilian authorities were not yet finished. On February
6, 1917, a federal agent arrived in Columbus and interrogated the captives. The agent seemed most interested in finding out
where, exactly, Pancho Villa was stationed during the raid. But if he had hoped to come away with a definite answer, he was
sorely disappointed. Villa seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. Some prisoners said they saw him with the advance
guard, others reported him in the rear with the horse holders, and a few said they never saw him at all.

Once again, the Villistas were turned over to local authorities in Luna County for punishment. Nineteen were indicted for
the murders of John Moore, James Dean, Charles DeWitt Miller, and Paul Simon. Afterward, probably due to the horrendous conditions
in the Deming jail, they were transferred to a jail in Silver City, where they languished for eight months. On August 27,
1917, seventeen of the prisoners appeared before District Judge Raymond Ryan and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in
a plea bargain arranged by J. S. Vaught, the same prosecutor who tried the first group of prisoners. No defense attorney was
on hand to represent them. In exchange, they escaped the hangman’s noose and were sentenced to from seventy to eighty years
in the state penitentiary. As for the other prisoners, their fates are unclear. One of those men, Guadalupe Chávez, decided
at the last minute to rescind his guilty plea. Later, in a letter to the governor, J. S. Vaught expressed great frustration
with the defendant, saying that he had not been able to set the case for trial because “most of the witnesses in this case
are somewhere in France with the American Army.”

Following the sentencing hearing, the seventeen men were transported to the penitentiary in Santa Fe, where they joined José
Rodríguez, whose death sentence had been commuted by Governor McDonald. Sentiment was still against the Villistas and the
Santa Fe New Mexican
railed against the “worthless pelados” who now had to be fed and housed at the taxpayers’ expense. “It seems to us that hereafter
bandits from another country invading the United States and slaughtering its citizens ought to be dealt with by the military
forces of the United States.”

On November 22, 1920, in one of his last acts as a lame-duck governor, New Mexico’s Octaviano Larrazolo granted a “full, complete
and unconditional pardon” to José Rodríguez and the fifteen remaining inmates who were sentenced to life. (Prison records
state a sixteenth, Silvino Vargas, had been pardoned earlier and a seventeenth, Enrique Adame, had escaped.) In a lengthy
executive order, Larrazolo laid out his reasons for the pardons, focusing on the question of whether the attack on Columbus
was the work of bandits or an act of war by an organized army. This was the same issue that Buel Wood, the hapless defense
attorney, had tried to emphasize in the first trial and the issue that Judge Medler denigrated in his instructions to the
jury.

Governor Larrazolo believed strongly that the prisoners were not free agents but common soldiers in the ranks of the army
commanded by Pancho Villa. Whether the convicts were voluntary recruits or conscripts didn’t make any difference, he said,
because the bottom line was that they had to obey orders or face death:

. . . there must be malice, that is, ill will, meaning a willful deliberate and perverse intention and desire to do wrong.
Can we say that such motives were in the hearts of these men who did not know where they were going, what they were going
to do, or why; but who, on the other hand, were simply carrying out the instructions, orders and commands of their superiors,
when they well knew that a failure to comply therewith and disobedience to such orders might mean their death? It is perfectly
plain to me that under the circumstances, these men were not guilty of murder.

To buttress his argument, the governor then referred to a similar incident in Texas in which Carrancista soldiers crossed
the border and fought with U.S. troops. A number of men were killed and six of the Mexican soldiers were charged with murder
and sentenced to death. But the state appeals court reversed the decision, arguing that the defendants were clearly soldiers
following orders and that the state courts didn’t have jurisdiction to try the cases. Larrazolo said it was also clear to
him that the Villistas had no understanding of the difference “between murder in the first degree or any other degree.” Once
the pleas were entered, he pointed out, Judge Ryan had no choice but to pass sentence. Had the cases gone to trial, he added,
Ryan would have directed them to be acquitted because he “told me personally that in his opinion these men should be pardoned.”

The prisoners were scheduled to be released on Thanksgiving Day, but an attorney for the American Legion secured a temporary
injunction from a Santa Fe district judge, arguing that the pardons were illegal because they had not been sanctioned by the
Board of Penitentiary Commissioners. The injunction was soon made permanent and the question was referred to the state supreme
court.

Intent upon keeping the Villistas in prison, representatives of various civil organizations approached officials in Luna County
and asked them if they would be willing to reindict the prisoners on additional murder charges growing out of the raid. The
county wasn’t eager to expend twenty-five thousand dollars for another trial but eventually bowed to public pressure and ordered
the sheriff to go to Santa Fe and rearrest the men. Now a second legal issue had been raised: could the county reindict the
convicts on new murder charges stemming from the same incident for which they had already been convicted? This question, too,
was referred to the state supreme court.

On December 28, the state high court issued a ruling that satisfied no one: the governor did indeed have the authority to
pardon the prisoners without the consent of anyone, the justices wrote, and Luna County officials also had the authority to
rearrest the prisoners on additional charges.

The stage was now set for one more trial. Dressed in clean clothes and wearing leg irons and handcuffs, the sixteen Villistas
were returned to the Deming jail by train on February 11, 1921. Two months later the trial opened. Five years had passed since
the Columbus raid and this time the state planned to put on a much more comprehensive case. The new prosecutor was a young
man named Forest Fielder, who was aided by his father, J. H. Fielder, one of the state’s most experienced trial lawyers. The
court-appointed defense attorney was R. F. Hamilton, Deming’s mayor. Presiding over the trial was Judge Raymond Ryan, who
had taken the guilty pleas in August of 1917.

No transcript has survived of the trial but several newspaper reporters were in the courtroom and wrote about it. The
El Paso Herald
reported that picking a jury had proved difficult because almost every potential juror questioned had formed an opinion about
the case. Eventually a panel was seated that included three farmers, a plasterer, a painter, a carpenter, a jeweler, a garage
owner, a hotel owner, a railroad worker, and a laborer. The father of one of the jurors, George Maisel, had served on the
jury that had convicted the first group of raiders. And as a sign of the changing times, Frank Torres, a man of “Spanish-American”
blood, had also been selected.

María Rodríguez, whose husband and brother were sitting among the double row of defendants in the front of the courtroom,
had come from Mexico to watch the trial. She wore a long black coat, blue dress, black silk mantilla, and soft, leather shoes
with French heels. “Mother of God,” she exclaimed through an interpreter. “How I wish there had never been a Villa and a revolution!
We were so happy in the old days, though we were quite poor and greatly oppressed.”

“Spectators in the court room commented on the improved appearance of the prisoners and the contrast they present to their
former appearance in court here,” wrote the
Albuquerque Morning Journal.
The newspaper also reported that the defendants had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on the advice of a Silver City
deputy sheriff, who assured them that they would be sentenced to only three or four years.

The most dramatic witness for the prosecution was Laura Ritchie, who described how the invaders battered down the hotel door
and dragged her husband from her, shot him on the sidewalk, and left him to die. Also taking the stand were Major N. W. Campanole,
who interrogated the prisoners in Mexico, and Colonel E. C. Abbott, who had commanded the New Mexico infantry of the National
Guard. Their testimony was designed to rebut the notion that the defendants were ignorant conscripts who didn’t know they
were in the United States. Campanole pointed out that a train had passed through town fifteen to thirty minutes before the
raid and would have alerted the men they were on U.S. soil. Colonel Abbott also testified that at least one Villista—Juan
Muñoz—had told him that he knew he was in the United States. Nevertheless, Campanole may have inadvertently buttressed the
defense’s case when he confirmed that defendants had been forcibly conscripted. “I did not see the recruiting order, but according
to information I received, it called on all former followers of Villa to again take up arms under penalty of death.”

The testimony continued for two days. When it was concluded, the attorneys gave their closing arguments and then retired to
the judge’s chambers to draw up instructions to the jury. The panel initially had four verdicts to choose from: first-degree
murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, or acquittal. Taking a gamble, the defense asked that the second-degree murder
and manslaughter verdicts be stricken from the instructions. Ryan agreed and the jury retired to deliberate. Their choices
were stark: a guilty verdict would result in the death of the defendants and a not-guilty verdict would give them their freedom.
The jury was out for only thirty-five minutes—about the same length of time that jurors in the earlier trial had spent in
deliberations. When they filed back into the jury box, Judge Ryan asked the foreman, Hugh Ramsay, if they had reached a verdict.

We have, Your Honor.

The verdict was passed to the clerk, who read it in English and then passed it to the interpreter, who translated it into
Spanish:

Inocente.

Stunned, the defendants at first showed no change in their facial expression. “Like men drawing back from the brink of the
grave they neither spoke nor smiled, but as one man they rose in their places while one of their number, Mariano Jiménez,
thanked the jury,” the
Deming Graphic
wrote.

As spectators rushed up to shake hands with them, the men became visibly affected. David Rodríguez broke down in tears. Francisco
Solís thanked them again. “Señores, we are most grateful. On behalf of my comrades, I wish to express our gratitude. You have
been most gracious to us and we were constantly sustained during this trial by our faith in your justice and your desire to
be fair to us poor men. We will be most happy to again return to our families and enjoy freedom in our country. We assure
you we were innocent.”

The following day, the prisoners were delivered to Mexican authorities on the international bridge leading to Juárez. Writing
of the trial several days later, the
Deming Graphic,
which had thundered and railed against the prisoners, mused that the verdict was evidence once again that Americans didn’t
like to take life, even in a legal setting. “Perhaps this inability of Americans to nurse hate through the years is a weakness,
yet it has proved to be the salvation of the nation.”

W
HEN
G
ENERAL
P
ERSHING
returned from World War I, Congress passed a special law re-creating the rank of general of the armies
of the United States and bestowed it upon him, along with a sixth star. Only one other man in U.S. history had ever held that
title: George Washington. There was talk of a bright political future, but Pershing curtly put the speculation to rest, stating
emphatically that he had no interest. He became chief of staff of the army in 1921 and retired three years later when he turned
sixty-four. He lived quietly and without fanfare for the next two and a half decades, surviving long enough to see the world
convulsed in a second global war and the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. Though he had a closet filled with medals
and ribbons, he often wore only one in public: the Victory medal awarded to every man who served in any capacity in the armed
forces. He died in 1948 at Walter Reed Hospital after a long illness. He was just two months shy of his eighty-eighth birthday.

Many of the men who served under Pershing went on to great distinction in World War I and World War II. The most famous was
his gawky aide, George Patton, who had occasionally shared a blanket with him during the Mexican campaign. Patton was assigned
to the U.S. Tank Corps during World War I and was wounded by machine-gun fire while trying to get assistance for tanks mired
in the mud. But his greatest military victories would come in World War II when he led troops in successful campaigns in North
Africa, Italy, and Europe.

Major Frank Tompkins was given command of an infantry division and sailed for Europe on July 8, 1918. Six months later, he
was gassed and received severe burns. He retired in 1920 with the rank of colonel. Herbert Slocum nominated him for a Medal
of Honor, but he received instead a Distinguished Service Cross for his pursuit of the Mexican troops and a presidential citation.
He taught at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, the nation’s first private military college, and went on to serve
two years in the Vermont legislature.

The people of Columbus considered Lieutenant Castleman their true savior, but his career was probably hurt by the fact that
he had taken his troopers into town to check on his wife instead of first helping to secure the army camp, violating one of
the basic rules of military engagement. Once he and his soldiers were positioned at the intersection near the Hoover Hotel,
however, they fought bravely, running dangerously low on ammunition as they drove the invaders west into the machine-gun fire
of Lieutenant Lucas. Castleman, who also received a Distinguished Service Cross for his part in the Columbus raid, was promoted
to captain in July of 1916 and a year later transferred to the Fourteenth Cavalry. During World War I, he went to France,
where he served as assistant to the quartermaster general and roamed all over Europe, looking for food and supplies for the
American Expeditionary Forces. He remained in the army until 1932, retiring after thirty years of service.