Some Still See Decaying Display as Piece of Revolutionary History : Farewell to Arm? Controversy Grows Over a Hero in Mexico

Gen. Alvaro Obregon’s right arm, severed in battle in 1915, stored in his doctor’s safe for 20 years and displayed in a marble monument for another half a century, today is the centerpiece of a modern Mexican controversy.

Although preserved in a jar of formaldehyde, the former President of Mexico’s legendary arm has disintegrated over the decades to little more than a wrist and hand. The remains are undignified, say friends and family members, and should be destroyed.

But other patriots see the general’s arm as a piece of revolutionary history that belongs to Mexico. After all, Obregon lost his limb in battle against his famous rival, Francisco (Pancho) Villa.

‘Not Very Presentable’

“It is not very presentable,” said Mayo Obregon, the general’s 71-year-old son. “Some people think it should remain as a symbol because it was the arm that gave orders. Some people say it’s the arm that defeated Villa. But I look at it as his son. That is the arm of my ancestor.”

Ramon Ayar Garcia, 82, the bespectacled caretaker of the Obregon Monument for the last 30 years, is among those who believe that the general’s arm should stay right where it is.

“It has become a part of history and to take it away would be to change history a little bit,” Ayar said tearfully.

Each day, he said, scores of tourists visit the tomb in southern Mexico City; on Sundays the visitors number in the hundreds.

“They come from the United States and other countries. What is clear is that people come to see the hand,” Ayar said.

The visitors last Monday included two university students studying Mexican history, a businessman from the state of Michoacan and a housewife with her vacationing brothers from Los Angeles.

‘Looks Pretty Gross’

“It looks pretty gross to me,” said Rafael Retana, 25, who was, nonetheless, headed down the block to see the mummies of friars at the Convent del Carmen. He insisted his whole trip was not a tour of the dead .

“Oh no, on the way back home we’ll go to the Grand Canyon,” he said.

Retana’s nephew, Jason, 8 1/2, was unimpressed by the general’s preserved hand.

“It just looks like a regular hand,” he said with a shrug.

The monument that houses the general’s arm, however, is unquestionably impressive. A three-story obelisk with oversize pewter doors, it is built on the site of La Bombilla restaurant where Obregon was assassinated in 1928 by a religious fanatic posing as a sketch artist.

Bullet Holes Remain

At the entrance, the massive, one-armed bronze statue of Obregon stares into a marbled pit that marks the place where he was shot. A piece of the original cement floor remains with bullet holes from the assassin’s gun. A bronze eagle spreads its wings overhead.

The walls are covered in pink, gray and black marble from Italy and Mexico. A circular stairway, with a low overhang so visitors must bow their heads, leads downstairs to the general’s arm. Under lock and key and behind a brass grate, the rubbery-looking hand sits in a jar of yellow formaldehyde that shines under a spotlight.

“It’s marvelous. It is proof there was a revolution,” said Crecencio Rodriguez, 43, from Morelia in Michoacan state. But he was somewhat disappointed to discover that “the arm is white (due to time and the formaldehyde) and we are brown.”

The youngest of 18 children in a family from Sonora, Obregon was a rancher and factory mechanic before he became a general in the revolutionary army under President Venustiano Carranza, which fought and eventually defeated the more radical forces of Pancho Villa.

Mexico’s Greatest Battles

In the state of Celaya, Obregon and Villa’s troops fought what are considered the greatest battles of Mexican history. Mayo Obregon said his father had 12,000 soldiers on foot to Villa’s 30,000 cavalry. He said the general neutralized Villa’s army by hiding his men in foxholes on a battlefield crisscrossed by stone fences that were obstacles to the horses.

“He told his men to fire at the horses. He told them they were each worth three of Villa’s men on foot,” Mayo Obregon said.

Gen. Obregon won the Celaya battles, but Villa’s men regrouped to attack again in Leon in Guanajuato state. There, at the Hacienda Santana del Conde, the general lost his right arm to a blast from one of Villa’s cannons.

“About a quarter of his arm, three inches above the elbow and three inches below were blown away. The lower arm was hanging on by a tendon,” Obregon said.

The general whipped out a pistol to kill himself, but an aide took it away, his son recounted. The soldier put a tourniquet on the ruptured arm and carried the general on a stretcher through plowed fields to his headquarters in a railroad car.

Named His Replacement

There, before surgery, Mayo Obregon said, the general dictated a telegram to President Carranza explaining that he expected to die and asking him to name Benjamin Hill to lead the troops in his place.

“I die blessing the revolution,” the telegram said.

But Obregon lived through the surgery and went on to become president himself. A reputedly corrupt leader, the general liked to say that he was less of a thief than other leaders because he only had one arm with which to steal.

There are many tales in Mexican folklore about how Obregon’s lost arm was recovered. The most famous, Obregon told himself.

According to one account based on an interview that Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibanez had with Obregon, the general laughingly tells of searching for his “hand with the broken arm,” when an aide offers a solution.

The trusty aide pulled a gold coin out of his pocket and tossed it in the air.

‘Devastating Impulse’

“Immediately from the ground rose a species of bird with five wings. It was my hand that, upon feeling the nearness of a gold coin, abandoned its hiding place to grab it with a devastating impulse,” Obregon allegedly said.

According to his son Mayo, it was Obregon’s doctor, Enrique Osornio, who saved the severed limb, stuck it in formaldehyde and locked it in a strongbox at his hacienda in Aguascalientes state for the next two decades.

Before he died, the doctor turned the arm over to Aaron Saenz, an Obregon aide who later served the general’s successors, Presidents Elias Calles and Lazaro Cardenas.

When the Obregon Monument was inaugurated in 1935, Saenz had the arm installed there, where it has remained ever since.

But when the arm started to deteriorate a few years ago, the Alvaro Obregon Civic Assn., friends and family members of Obregon’s revolutionary army, began to press for its removal. Mayo Obregon said the general’s seven surviving children have given the green light to cremate the arm and would like the ashes sent to Sonora, where the general is buried next to the remains of his mother.

Fate Is Unclear

Mexico City officials are unclear on the future of the arm. Monica Burrillo, delegate for the Alvaro Obregon neighborhood of the capital, said the arm will soon be cremated with military honors in a ceremony conducted by the Defense Ministry. However, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said that was not so.

Mayo Obregon says his father wouldn’t have wanted a “pompous” ceremony. He knows not when the arm will meet its maker.

“We agreed five years ago that it should be incinerated,” he said. “In Mexico, things take a long time.”