The Villa Hit

July 20, 1923

They shot the hell out of him.

No time for last words, with nine rifle slugs slamming into him as he sat behind the wheel of his 1919 Dodge Roadster on a dusty street in Parral, Mexico. They say he reached for his pistol as he died. I believe it.

His secretary, Col. Miguel Trillo, tried to climb out through the passenger door, but fell draped over the side of the vehicle, riddled with lead and as dead as his boss. Villa’s personal assistant, Daniel Tamayo, died in the back seat as bullets tore through the Dodge. A couple of bodyguards fell on the street, toppled from the Dodge’s running boards by the storm of rifle fire.

One Villista bodyguard, Ramon Contreras, ran from the scene to a nearby river, pursued by the assassins. Wounded in the gut, he turned on his pursuers, pulled his pistol and shot one of the killers, then staggered away. He would be the lone survivor of the Villa hit. The assassins didn’t hunt too hard for him. Their work was done; the target terminated. The Centaur of the North, survivor of a career as a bandit in the sierra and of a hundred savage battles of the Mexican Revolution, was dead at age 45.

*

General Francisco Villa had surrendered to the federal government of Mexico in 1920, after 10 long years of brutal war. He had risen from guerilla leader to commanding general of the most powerful army in the Western Hemisphere. A series of crushing defeats in 1915 had reduced him back to the status of a guerrilla chief. In 1916, he raided the U.S. border town of Columbus, New Mexico, then evaded the American cavalry sent to run him down. Between 1916 and 1920, he terrorized northern Mexico, occasionally capturing a major city for a time before having to give it up to federal troops. Those troops chased him across the mountains and the deserts where the eagle makes his nest; they could never catch him.

But the Revolution was winding down. With his hated rival Venustunio Carranza dead and his nemesis General Alvaro Obregon — who had defeated him in the massive battles of Celaya and Leon in 1915 — apparently retired, Villa decided it was time to hang up his spurs. In exchange for Villa giving up his struggle, the government of interim president Adolf de la Huerta granted him a hacienda called Canutillo in the state of Durango, and allowed him to keep a small army there for his personal protection.

For three years, Villa lived the life of a progressive hacendado, establishing modern agricultural practices, sending kids to school (a great passion of his), playing pelota (something like racquetball played with a wooden paddle) and enjoying the fruits of a peaceful life.

He still carried a gun everywhere he went, but that was mostly force of habit. His relations with the government and with Obregon, who had since been elected president of Mexico, were cordial— or at least they seemed to be. Obregon sent Villa a pair of machine guns as a gift. What says friendship more than that?

It seemed to Pancho that the biggest stress in his life was dealing with multiple wives and mistresses.

But there was always a looming possibility that some of Villa’s many enemies might take a shot at revenge for some wartime killing or out of the rivalry that poisoned the Revolution from the start. Take for example Jesus Herrera, one of the last surviving male members of the Herrera clan. The Herreras had once been Villistas, though they had always been competitive with their jefe. When they went over to Carranza as the Revolution devolved into a nasty civil war, Villa vowed to exterminate them — and he very nearly did. Betrayal brought out the savage in Pancho Villa.

Jesus Herrera allegedly paid more than one hitman to kill Villa during his retirement, but Villa’s loyal and hardbitten henchmen made that a losing proposition. A life-losing proposition. Two of Villa’s men were arrested in turn for plotting to kill Herrera, though Villa protested their innocence. The men feuded vociferously in the press and Villa demanded that Obregon rein in Herrera.

Though the feud with Herrera was dangerous, it is almost certain that the Villa hit was a conspiracy that involved the highest echelons of the Mexican federal government. Villa was talking to journalists and weighing in on the political situation in Mexico. Given his enduring popularity and his record of militant action, that made some folks in power nervous.  Pancho, as he alway had, disavowed any personal political ambitions, but he made allusions to his support of de la Huerta, the man who had taken his surrender. This did not please Plutarco Elias Calles, the Interior Minister whom Obregon had hand-picked to be his successor (it was the kind of democracy that Vladamir Putin would feel most comfortable in).

Another enemy in government was Minister of War, Gen. Joaquin Amaro, who had chased and fought Villa from 1916 to 1920 when Villa was a guerrilla raider in Cihihuahua. Amaro had never found the idea of amnesty for Villa acceptable and he would be most pleased to see his old enemy’s head on a platter.

When a politician named Jesus Salas Barraza, whose personal hatred for Villa dated back to the Revolution, pitched the officials on an assassination plot (for an appropriate financial consideration), they were more than willing to see it done. It is also possible that Calles and Amaro recruited Barraza. Obregon almost certainly knew of the plot, but turned his head away as long as his government was not implicated.

That there was a conspiracy of those in authority is evidenced by the fact that the commander of the military garrison of Parral, Col. Felix Lara, took his troops out of the city on the day of the assassination — to practice for a parade that was a couple of months away. Yeah, right.

So Barraza and the six-man hit squad he recruited had a free hand as they set put their ambush along an arching curve on a city street in Parral.

*

Villa had left his fortified estate at Canutillo to be The Godfather. Really. Many of his former soldiers asked him to be godfather to their children, and Pancho was only too happy to play the role. He was a patron and he loved it. His secretary Trillo convinced him that traveling with a full escort of 50 Dorados — his faithful cavalry bodyguard — was cost-prohibitive. Besides, Pancho loved to drive his automobile.

So Villa and a small party traveled to the village of Rio Florida and partied for a couple of days. Villa visited with one of his former wives. They headed back through Parral on their way home to Canutillo on the morning of July 20 in a fine mood.

Pancho navigated his beloved Dodge to the intersection of Benito Juarez and Gabino Barrera. A pumpkin-seed vendor on the street raised his hand in salute and cried “Viva Villa!” Pancho’s riders had made that cry a warcry for friends and a tocsin of alarm to his enemies for a decade. This time it was a signal of death. As the car swung through a gentle curve, rifles poked out of an apartment building along the street and a fusillade erupted with a storm of lead. The Dodge was riddled with some 40 shots.

After seeing to it that Villa was dead, slumped in the driver’s seat with his guts blown out, his killers rode on out of town. Col. Lara later said that he couldn’t mount a pursuit when he returned to Parral because he couldn’t find any horses. He also received a 50,000 peso payoff from the government and was promoted to general. Services rendered.

Everybody assumed that the government had Pancho whacked. The Dorados back at Canutillo were set to go to war to avenge their jefe, and Obregon sent an army unit to the hacienda to make sure that didn’t happen. A tense three-day standoff simmered down after Pancho’s brother Hipolito showed up and assured the government that everything was cool. Hipolito knew a losing hand when he held one.

Obregon did nothing for a month to apprehend Villa’s killers. Finally, under pressure, Berrarza confessed to the killing. He took sole responsibility, saying that he had acted simply to rid the world of a monster. That was plausible enough — for many in Mexico, then and now, that’s exactly what Villa was.

The government had nothing to do with it.

Of course not. Barraza was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He served three months and won a pardon. Nobody else did any time at all. The fix was in.

Villa was buried in Parral, but his was an unquiet grave. In 1926, someone broke into his tomb and stole his head.

Most believe the culprit was the American soldier-of-fortune Emil Holmdahl, though nobody knows for sure what he wanted it for. Money, obviously — but whose? Some say the skull ended up an ashtray on Obregon’s or Calles’ desk. Or that it ended up a relic of the Skull & Bones fraternity at Yale (George H. W. Bush, John Kerry, and George W. Bush were members).

So ended the lurid and violent life of General Francisco Villa, in gunsmoke and blood on the street of a Mexican city. It was the kind of death that has become all too familiar in a troubled nation that has never completely recovered from the storm of la Revolucion.