Vivid Memories of Pancho Villa : 4 Veterans of Mexican Revolution Are Reunited

He was a brilliant military leader and hero of the people. Or he was a menacing, murdering bandit. The judgment depends on who does the assessing.

But by all accounts Pancho Villa was the best known and most visible leader of the Mexican Revolution, which spanned the first decades of this century.

“Whether he was good or bad depends on who you talk to,” said Dona Alicia Villa, 72, youngest daughter of the revolutionary. Even her mother had mixed feelings, she said. “He kidnaped her, and she was upset to be kidnaped. But she felt bad when he died.”

Villa joined the revolution on the side of Francisco Madero, who in 1910 managed to topple the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Diaz--a self-declared president for life. Madero assumed the presidency, but his victory was short-lived. A year later Victoriana Huerta, a Diaz general, staged a coup, assassinated Madero and took over.

Huerta’s reign was hardly longer than Madero’s. Villa’s troops ran Huerta out of the country and rival factions led by Villa, Venustiana Carranza, Emiliano Zapata and Alvara Obregon began a long, bloody battle for control.

The events of the revolution are so steeped in Mexican and U.S. history and folklore that it seems an astonishing distortion of time that veterans survive. Four of them gathered here recently to remember and embrace one another at what was billed as the only event of its kind: the national reunion of veterans of the Mexican Revolution.

“We were fighting for a very just cause, however tumultuous or bloody,” said 89-year-old Leo Reynosa, who as a teen-ager rode with Pancho Villa and served as his bookkeeper. Reynosa sat next to his one-time enemy, Teodoro Garcia, 100, one of the federales who fought with Diaz and was defeated by Villa’s troops.

“Naturally we hated the enemy,” Garcia said. “But how beautiful it is now to be friends and sit together for dinner.”

Holds No Grudge

“That is what happens in life,” Reynosa agreed. “First you are enemies, then you are friends. I hold no grudge.”

For Manuel Urbina, professor of Latin American history at the College of the Mainland and host of the event, the reunion was the happy culmination of a decade’s search.

He said he began the research “mostly as a hobby.” It led him to 11 veterans of the Mexican revolution living in the United States.

Urbina’s vision of a reunion of Mexican revolutionaries came to him while he was writing his doctoral dissertation. “I was writing about the Mexican side of the Texas revolution and there was no one alive to interview. I decided when I got through that I would gather the survivors of the Mexican Revolution.”

11 Veterans When He Began

Urbina interviewed each veteran and further documented their authenticity through the National Archives. Four of the 11 veterans have since died and another three were too ill to attend the reunion. Jesus Gonzalez Moya was expected to attend, but hours before the reunion he suffered a stroke.

Obviously enjoying the day that was planned in their honor and attended by about 300 people, the four veterans, immaculate in dark suits and starched white shirts, sang with a mariachi band and cheered folk dancers. Then sitting side by side, they watched as images of the revolution flashed across a screen, recounting their personal histories.

Reynosa joined the federal troops when he was 15 to fight U.S. intervention in Mexico, but was captured by Villa. The Mexican leader offered him a choice: death by firing squad or ride with Villa. Reynosa, a captain, joined Villa’s forces. He came to Texas in 1918 and, with four sons, still operates Leo’s Mexican restaurant in Houston.

“Today he won’t ever talk about joining the federal forces to fight the U.S.,” said his son Fisher Reynosa. “He’s so proud to be a U.S. citizen.”

Maj. Rafael Lorenzana Reyna, 89, joined the Carranza forces and was also captured by Villa. He too rode with Villa rather than face a firing squad. He moved to Texas in 1920 to be a farmer.

Garcia, a former captain whose most vivid memory is Villa’s victory over the federales , came to Texas City in 1914 and has outlived five of his six children.

Miguel Contreras, 87, spent six years with Carranza. The corporal left for the U.S. in 1919, determined to work and never fight again. For 37 years he worked for Exxon Corp.

After the four veterans, Pancho Villa was the uncontested hero of the day.

The United States became militarily involved in the Mexican Revolution in 1916, after it gave diplomatic support to Villa’s revolutionary rival, Carranza. An angry Villa retaliated. He and his forces massacred U.S. citizens in Santa Ysabel, Mexico, then crossed into the United States and killed 17 Americans in Columbus, N.M.

President Woodrow Wilson sent Gen. John J. Pershing after the bandits in a chase that lasted 11 months. Villa eluded capture. The threat of U.S. entry into World War I brought the troops back home and Villa became a folk hero in Mexico.