Viva Villa! (1934)
Director: Jack Conway.
Cast: Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo, Fay Wray, Donald Cook, Stuart Erwin, George E. Stone, Henry B. Walthall, Joseph Schildkraut, Katherine DeMille.
Historical Background:
1877-1911 -- the dictator General Porfirio Diaz was President during most of the period between 1877 and 1911.
1878 -- Doroteo Arango (later Pancho Villa) was born into poverty on a large hacienda in San Juan del Río, Durango, Northern Mexico.
1894 -- at the age of 16 he killed the owner of the hacienda who had raped his 12 year-old sister. He fled to the mountains and became a cattle rustler.
1910-1920 -- Mexico's severe social and economic problems erupted in a revolution that lasted from 1910-20.
1910 -- Villa supports the politician Madero. Leads a guerrilla army against the government of Porfirio Diaz. He was in charge of La División del Norte and was always at the front of his troops on his surprise attacks consisting of cavalry charges.
1911 --- Francisco Madero becomes president.
1912 (June 3) -- Villa sends a cable to Huerta that his Division of the North would no longer come under his command. Huerta is so mad that he sends Colonel Guillermo Rubio Navarrete to exterminate the villistas. But the Colonel actually saves Villa's life three times: his failure to attack immediately upon surrounding Villa; after Villa's arrest, his informing Madero's brothers as to what was going on, which led to a stay of execution; and his halting the firing squad when it was presenting arms in the act of execution. Huerta was so mad that he threatened the Colonel with execution.
1913 -- Fancisco Madero assassinated by treacherous Army generals supported by USA. The country then fell into another four years of war and chaos as various warlords vied to fill the power vacuum. Victoriano Huerta assumes power. Villa joins the opposition under the revolutionary Venustiano Carranza.
1914 -- by this time Villa controlled most of Northern Mexico. Together with Carranza, he leads a successful revolt against the regime of Victoriano Huerta (1914), but the two leaders became rivals, and Villa was forced to flee to the mountains. When Carranza seizes power, Villa leads the rebellion against him.
1915 -- Villa tries to destroy Carranzista forces in the Battle of Celaya, but loses. Villa suffered 4,000 dead and a loss of 1,000 horses, 5,000 rifles, and 32 cannons. Approximately 6,000 taken prisoner. And 120 of Villa's officers were executed. He never recovered from these losses. The U.S. recognizes Carranza as President of Mexico.
1916 -- Pancho Villa attacks the New Mexico border town of Columbus because the United States gave aid to his rival Carranza. The U.S. invades North Mexico with troops under General John J. Pershing. Villa was chased back to Mexico by the US Army which over the next couple of years was unable to catch him.
1919 -- Emiliano Zapata was ambushed and assassinated by government agents while attending peace talks. Obregón overthrows Carranza.
1920 (July 28) -- Villa signed an agreement with provisional president Adolfo de la Huerta to retire from politics. Villa accepted amnesty and became a private citizen. In return he got a 25,000 acre ranch in Canutillo, Durango (just across the border from Parral, Chihuahua). He also got a pension and could keep his elite guard of 50 dorados ("golden ones") (his cavalry) for protection, at the hacienda of El Canutillo.
1920-24 --Obregón becomes president of Mexico from 1920 to 1924.
1923 -- Pancho Villa assassinated in Parral, Chihuahua, in his car. The assassins were never arrested. Some think that Obregón or Plutarco Elías Calles was behind the killing.
See also La muerte de Pancho Villa (The Death of Pancho Villa) (1974).
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