The General and the Jaguar (9 page)

With the third defeat, Villa vented his fearsome rage on the army he had nurtured and loved, spewing out bitterness. “Oh,
yes,” he would say, “but those fellows are not what they used to be. They run now if you but shake a bell!” And victory did
not lessen Obregón’s vindictiveness. From the dusty green trees that lined the plaza in Aguascalientes, he hanged more than
eighty musicians from Villa’s glorious band—guitarists, trombonists, drummers, and trumpet players. “And such was the instantaneous
fall of the man who had climbed so fast and so high,” Hopper reported. “The rest is simply a vertiginous slide downhill. The
shattered remnants of Villa’s army fled north, on foot, on horses, on mules, along the railroad track, soldiers, camp followers,
men, women, and children all mixed up.”

V
ILLA DECIDED TO MARCH
to Sonora to recuperate and rebuild his forces. There, his agents could slip over the border to buy needed arms and ammunition
and he could avail himself of the rich haciendas that had been relatively untouched by the revolution. One of his tasks would
be to take Agua Prieta, the town of “dark water,” which is located across the border from Douglas, Arizona. Once fortified
with the garrison’s arms and supplies, Villa planned to move south and attack Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora.

Before departing, he went to Juárez to raise funds for his troops. There, a reporter for the
El Paso Morning Times
happened to interview him and Villa spoke frankly of his terrible defeats: “I am thoroughly exhausted. My physical powers
have been taxed to the limit. The last month has been the most fatiguing of my life, but I have never doubted the justice
of our cause.” He continued:

I am here in Juárez, but this is as far as I shall go—north! Mexico is my country. I shall not run away from it. Here I have
lived and here I have fought. Here I shall fight and here I shall live. Here maybe I shall die, and that probably soon, but
I am content. They may kill me in battle; they may murder me on the highway; they may assassinate me while asleep in my bed,
but the cause I have fought for 22 years will live. It is the cause of liberty; the cause of human freedom; the cause of justice—long
delayed and long denied to my suffering countrymen.

Soon after the interview, Villa left the civilized comforts of Juárez and began the arduous march across the Sierra Madre.
It took his men twenty-five days to get through the mountains with their horses, forty-two cannons, and pack mules. Men and
horses perished when they lost their footing on the narrow passes and plunged headlong into the deep canyons. Especially treacherous
was the Cañón del Púlpito, a name taken from a towering rock shaped like a church pulpit.

When the Villistas had exited the mountains and were toiling toward Agua Prieta, Villa learned that President Wilson had recognized
Venustiano Carranza as the de facto leader of Mexico. To Villa, who had professed himself a friend of the Americans early
on, Wilson’s decision was an unthinkable betrayal.

F
OR WILSON,
the decision had as much to do with the deteriorating geopolitical conditions as it did with Villa. In Berlin, the German
high command had continued to watch with interest the tension between the United States and Mexico, hoping against hope that
war might break out between the two countries. Such a conflict, they theorized, would slow the U.S. supplies going to Great
Britain and discourage the United States from entering the European war. An even more delicious scenario involved manipulating
Japan, which had allied itself with Great Britain, into joining Mexico in a war against the United States, thereby diverting
resources from that potential enemy as well.

The Germans had hoped to use Victoriano Huerta as their catalyst and had offered to supply him with arms and money to return
to Mexico, regain control of the country, and attack the United States. Huerta accepted the German offer and arrived in New
York City on April 13, 1915, almost a year to the day after the Veracruz invasion. Two months later, he boarded a train for
the border and was arrested a few miles west of El Paso. By then, Huerta was extremely ill from cirrhosis of the liver, and
was eventually allowed to spend his remaining days with family members, who were now living in El Paso. He died on January
13, 1916, his bed facing his convulsed country and his parlor filled with old generals who wept openly and smoked corn-husk
cigarettes. Thousands attended his funeral, where he lay in a coffin covered with flowers, wearing his full-dress uniform.
Worried about further German attempts to destabilize Mexico, the United States decided to recognize the bellicose Carranza.
The War Department’s chief of staff, Hugh Scott, had gotten wind of the administration’s plan and did everything he could
to stop it. “The recognition of Carranza had the effect of solidifying the power of the man who had rewarded us with kicks
on every occasion and of making an outlaw of the man who had helped us.” But the American decision was a pragmatic one. Carranza
had the upper hand, Villa’s fortunes were in decline, and stability in Mexico mattered most.

The United States had even gone beyond simply recognizing Carranza as Mexico’s legitimate leader. The government allowed Carranza’s
troops to travel by train through the border states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to reinforce Agua Prieta. On the thirty-first
of October, as the yellow plume of dust signaling the advance guard of Villa’s army appeared on the horizon, three infantry
brigades consisting of five thousand Carrancistas arrived in the little town.

Agua Prieta sits on a small rise with its north side running along the U.S. border. Anticipating Villa’s arrival, the Carrancistas
had dug trenches along the remaining three sides of the town and covered each sector with barbed wire and land mines constructed
from dynamite. Stocked with ammunition, food, and water, the Carrancistas waited confidently. Many of these soldiers were
veterans of Celaya and had no doubts they could again defeat Villa. General Plutarco Elías Calles, a tough Carrancista officer
who was in charge of defending Agua Prieta and someday would become president of Mexico, estimated on the eve of the battle
that even if he were to lose a thousand men, Villa’s casualties could easily be five or six times as high. “An enemy weakened
in those proportions would have to withdraw, a prey to terror,” he said.

En route to Agua Prieta, Villa learned that the little town had been reinforced with additional Carrancista troops. Still,
he vowed to press on with the attack. “This is the way the United States repays me for the treatment and protection I have
given foreigners in Mexico. Hereafter I don’t give a —— what happens to foreigners in Mexico or in my territory,” he told
reporters. “I can whip Carranza and his entire army, but it is asking a great deal to whip the United States also, but I suppose
I can do that, too.”

Alarmed by the size of the foreign armies massing on its southern flank, the U.S. Army had stationed hundreds of troops in
seven-foot-deep trenches on the other side of the border at Douglas, Arizona. One of those soldiers was a young recruit named
Chant Branham, who remembered watching the Villistas pouring out of the mountains: “Finally the hour came, a high broken dust
indicating horse cavalry coming through the Pass. . . . This continued two to three hours, then a solid stream of low heavy
dust appeared indicating infantry, which continued throughout the night and part of next day.”

Villa himself, accompanied by four officers, rode up to the border fence separating the United States from Mexico.

“Do you expect to take Agua Prieta today?” a U.S. Army officer asked him.

“Sure, Mike,” Villa responded, smiling broadly.

Reverting to Spanish, Villa then asked if the U.S. troops planned to help Calles and was told the United States would remain
neutral. Villa was strongly warned not to fire into U.S. territory. The Mexican leader said he had no intention of doing so
and rode back to his troops.

At 1:37 on the afternoon of November 1, the battle began. Villa’s artillery pounded the Carrancista trenches and the enemy
answered with its own well-placed shells. Despite the efforts of the two Mexican armies, shell fragments and machine-gun bullets
crossed into the United States, killing and wounding soldiers and civilians.

By about six thirty that evening, the Villistas were within a mile of Calles’s fortified trenches. When darkness fell, Villa
hurled his troops at the barricades. As his soldiers crawled on their bellies through the minefields and barbed-wire fences,
powerful searchlights illuminated the battlefield. Villa watched helplessly as machine-gun and rifle fire poured down on the
wriggling forms, killing the men where they lay. The searchlights, which had undoubtedly come from the United States, marked
a third betrayal by the Wilson administration.

When morning came, the silence reminded the young Branham of a huge factory mill shutting down. “It was horrifying to look
over the battlefield of dead bodies, they were thick as flies on a sticky paper.” Villa’s medical corps retrieved 376 wounded.
Another 223 soldiers lay dead on the battlefield.

Villa’s agents crossed the border and purchased emergency medical supplies that spoke sadly of casualties: twenty pounds of
cotton, twenty yards of gauze, ten pounds of peroxide, iodine, painkillers, quinine caps, carbolic soap, alcohol, chloroform,
zinc oxide, and syringes. From other stores, they purchased forty quilts and four tons of hay, and picked up five thousand
undershirts, underpants, and shirts that had been sent by special express from El Paso.

On November 3, the remains of Villa’s army withdrew and began moving west, toward the border town of Naco, where Villa hoped
to rest and procure food and water for his famished troops. Members of Calles’s cavalry rode out to harass the retreating
forces but were driven back by small-arms fire and machine guns. Villa decided to split his forces, leaving roughly five thousand
men to protect his rear while he moved south to take the city of Hermosillo. Upon arriving in that city, he once again launched
suicidal assaults against well-fortified positions and destroyed what was left of his army.

Filled with a rage that bordered on dementia, Villa and his remaining followers eventually turned back east toward home. As
they approached the remote mountain settlement of San Pedro de la Cueva, the villagers fired upon the soldiers, thinking they
were marauders, and killed several Villistas. Despite their profuse apologies, Villa subsequently ordered every able-bodied
man in the village executed. Seventy-seven villagers were killed, including Father Andrés Abelino Flores, who had gone to
Villa begging for mercy. Villa had twice warned the priest to go away and when he returned for the third time, he pulled out
his own pistol and shot him in the head.

Back in Douglas, Arizona, the U.S. troops were ordered to remain for another two weeks on the off chance that Villa might
return. While they waited, Branham watched the preparation for the great funeral pyres. Corpses were picked up by donkey carts
and dumped into numerous piles. Brush and debris were placed on top and barrels of oil and kerosene were poured over the mounds.
More wood was added. Finally, he wrote, “they got all the human heaps to burning.”

The odor wafted over the U.S. troops, and officers sent repeated requests to their superiors, begging for permission to withdraw.
At last, the orders came, and the U.S. soldiers slipped away, leaving Agua Prieta and its sister city of Douglas to deal with
the bones and ashes.

V
ILLA WAS CONVINCED
that Venustiano Carranza had cut a deal with the Americans that would make Mexico little more than a protectorate. On the
evening of December 21, in Chihuahua City, Villa delivered a public address in which he claimed that Don Venustiano had sold
the Mexican people into bondage and that the Americans would soon invade their beloved homeland. Villa also was convinced
that Carranza, in exchange for a loan of five hundred million dollars, had agreed to cede Magdalena Bay, located on the Baja
peninsula, to the United States for a term of ninety-nine years, had also given the United States a financial stake in Mexico’s
rich oil fields and railroads, and had offered the Americans a voice in the appointment of two top ministers of the federal
government.

The following day, Villa went by train to Hacienda de Bustillos for a meeting of his most trusted advisers. (The surroundings
must have held bittersweet memories for him; this was the hacienda where he had first met the little fellow—Francisco Madero.)
The gathering, which became known as the Conference of Twenty-seven Generals, was called in order to decide whether the struggle
should continue. Villa listened to the debate only a short time and then he announced that the generals could do whatever
they wanted but that he—General Villa—would never seek amnesty from his hated rival. He then left in a carriage for the town
of Rubio, taking with him a mistress and the wife of Colonel Nicolás Fernández. Over Christmas, Villa recuperated and reflected
upon his defeats. On January 8, 1916, he penned a lengthy letter to Emiliano Zapata, whose troops for the most part had remained
in their home state of Morelos, suggesting that the Zapatistas march north and join him in his fight against the Americans.
“We decided not to fire a bullet more against the Mexicans, our brothers,” he wrote, “and to prepare and organize ourselves
to attack the Americans in their own dens and make them know that Mexico is a land for the free and tomb for thrones, crowns
and traitors.” Whether Zapata joined him or not, Villa had found his new target.

A
S
M
AUD
W
RIGHT
and the column of guerrilla fighters struggled north, moving with the ungainly shamble of an arthritic animal,
Pancho Villa may have thought longingly of his once great army and noisy troop trains. Temperatures still plunged below freezing
at night and daytime brought a hot spring sun. Villa had lived as a hunted coyote for so long that he knew how to read the
land. Water, for example, lent a certain heft to the air, infused the distant scrub with a tender greenness. The soldiers
rested mostly in the afternoons, for three or four hours, and then pushed on in the zigzagging pattern that was designed to
confuse anyone who might be observing them. Seen from above by the
zopilotes
—the buzzards—the column resembled a palsied black scrawl being written across the brown parchment of earth.