Born-
Doroteo Arango in San Juan del Río, Durango, in 1877
bio-
A mexican folk hero/ bandit. spend most of his life avoiding the law. Villa’s Robin Hood story began after he established himself and his bandit followers in the sierras in 1900. Officially, the years 1900-09 are “unaccounted for,” but it was during this period that he became a legendary hero to the poor for skillfully evading the Porfiriato’s oppressive rurales. In 1910 Villa and his men came down from the hills to join Francisco I. Madero’s revolutionary forces, thereby making a historical transition from bandidos to revolucionarios. The charismatic figure was able to recruit an army of thousands, including a substantial number of Americans, some of whom were made captains in the División del Norte. Villa even created one squadron made up entirely of Americans under the leadership of Capt. Tracey Richardson, a man who apparently fought with many different insurgent armies around the world at that time.
Villa’s forces were based in Chihuahua, where Villa ruled over northern Mexico like a medieval warlord. Villa financed his army by stealing from the endless cattle herds in northern Mexico and selling beeves north of the border, where he found plenty of U.S. merchants willing to sell him guns and ammunition. Faced with a stagnant economy, he issued his own money; if merchants refused to take it, they risked being shot. Executions, which Villa often ordered on a whim, were usually left to his friend Rodolfo Fierro, best known by his nickname “El Carnicero” (“the Butcher”). In true Robin Hood style, he broke up the vast land holdings of local hacendados and parceled them out to the widows and orphans of his fallen soldiers.
Today Villa is remembered with pride by most Mexicans for having led the most important military campaigns of the constitutionalist revolution, in which his troops were victorious as far south as Zacatecas and Mexico City, east as far as Tampico, and west as far as Casas Grandes. Because of Villa’s Columbus escapade and subsequent evasion of U.S. troops, he is also often cited as the only foreign military personage ever to have “successfully” invaded continental U.S. territory
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