Pancho Villa Research Articles

Body Politics and the figure of Pancho Villa: From National Exclusion to Regional Resurrection

Long excluded from the official pantheon of national heroes, Pancho Villa’s remains were finally moved to the Monumento a la Revolucion in 1976. However, in 1994 the state of Chihuahua began an annual celebration, las Jornadas Villistas , which place Parral, Chihuahua as the center of Villa’s death cult. This study examines the regional reappropriation of Villa’s body and legacy through popular celebration and the placement of las Jornadas Villistas within the larger context of the politics surrounding the treatment of the general’s remains since the time of his 1923 assassination.

Body Politics and the figure of Pancho Villa: From National Exclusion to Regional Resurrection

Body Politics and the figure of Pancho Villa: From National Exclusion to Regional Resurrection

American cars, trucks and motorcycles of World War I: illustrated histories of 225 manufacturers

World War I had an enormous impact on American civilian motor vehicle manufacturers, contributing to the success of some and the failure of others. Beginning with the 1916 Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa, this history shows how over 200 manufacturers contributed to the war effort, many benefiting strongly from government contracts to produce vehicles for military use. It examines how military mechanization and the automotive industry developed symbiotically, each affecting the other in profound ways. Industrialized warfare didn't necessarily mean efficient production - standardization and mass production techniques were still in their infancy, and some manufacturers were better positioned to take advantage of the crucible of war.

La rivoluzione messicana: la strada dell'amnesia

At the approach of its centenary, the Mexican Revolution begun in 1910 is the place of a public memory in trouble. Named half-heartedly, it finds badly its place in weak remembrances almost completely refugiees in the bicentenary of the revolution of Independence (1810-1821). Coincidence, nevertheless, of anniversaries, which feeds at some the expectation of 2010 so revolutionary: the Revolution would be One, it would reappear depths of the Nation every hundred years. Registered among the big movements of masses of the XXth century, this revolution inspired programs of agrarian reform in diverse latitudes and exported the emblems of its political and social demands under the names of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. As commemorative site, the Mexican Revolution makes the expenses of its instrumentalisation prolonged by the State, an appropriation which associated it to the party of State during of long decades, «to nationalize» it then.

Use of soil water content in deciding the sowing time in dry land agriculture

Precipitation is the most important issue under dry land condition agriculture. However, soil water amount is the best parameter to decide the hydraulic stress level in crops. The main objective of this study was to determine a statistical model in deciding whether to plant or not under dry land condition. This model used soil water amount condition as the most important parameter. Two experiments were established in the summer of 2006 and 2007, respectively at the Francisco Villa community, in the estate of Durango, Mexico. The two corn genotypes used in this experiment were White Hualahuises and H-412, soil water amounts were measured since the beginning in each plot. Also, grain yields were weighed for statistical analysis, which consisted of 2*2 contingency tables and X2 interaction usage to estimate soil water amount for planting. The results indicated that the optimum soil water range for planting varies from 6.5 to 8.2 cm, for Blanco Hualahuises and 6.5 to 8.0 cm for H-412, in 2006; and 6.5 to 7.7 cm for Blanco Hualahuises in 2007. The main conclusion is that the X2 interaction is a good tool to determine soil water ranges at the beginning of corn planting. Thus, farmer can decide whether to plant or not. Key words: Genotypes, X2 interaction, grain yield.

The Kaiser and the Cameraman: W.H. Durborough on the Eastern Front, 1915

Wilbur H. Durborough was an American press photographer employed by the Newspaper Enterprise Association, an agency which supplied feature news stories to the members of its syndicate, providing both pictures and text. After photographing Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1914, Durborough arranged with German authorities to travel to Berlin, eventually gaining permission to record the aftermath of German successes on the eastern front. Durborough returned to the United States and toured with the film in 1915–16. Apparently released under various titles, it proved most popular in the traditionally German-American regions of the mid-west. The National Archives received thirty-three reels of Durborough War Pictures in 1985. The paper examines the history of Durborough’s film project, and raises various questions concerning the relationship of the surviving material to the version seen by audiences at the time of the film’s release.

Nikki Sawada Bridges Flynn and What Comes Naturally

Nikki Sawada Bridges Flynn and What Comes Naturally Valerie J. Matsumoto (bio) When I got a copy of What Comes Naturally, I felt a pang upon seeing the cover: there was Nikki Bridges, also known as Noriko Sawada Bridges Flynn, captured by a press photographer in 1958, standing beside her soon-to-be husband Harry Bridges, the well-known leader of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). Nikki—warmhearted, witty, a spirited civil rights activist and writer—was a dear friend. I met her as a graduate student at Stanford when her organization, the Center for Japanese American Studies in San Francisco, invited me to give a talk about my research. She would have gotten a kick out of being on the cover of Peggy Pascoe's book. One of the many things I appreciate about What Comes Naturally is Pascoe's resistance to portraying interracial couples as one-dimensional champions of justice. In this essay I aim to add more dimension to the history of the Nisei (U.S.-born second-generation) woman on the cover. I also briefly consider how Asian American families have responded to the issue of interracial marriage and how Japanese Americans—the Asian Pacific American group I know best—have been affected by the changes illuminated in What Comes Naturally. Nikki Sawada Bridges Flynn Noriko Sawada Bridges Flynn was born in southern California on February 11, 1923, the only child of a Japanese immigrant farmer and his picture-bride wife. In 1901 her father, who had a third-grade education, had come to the United States seeking economic opportunity at the age of twenty-six. He left behind in Japan a wife who, after not hearing from him for eight years, divorced him. Nikki wrote, "For nearly ten years my father labored on railroads as far East as Colorado, returned to California to farm, and saved enough money by 1918 to [End Page 31] sponsor a wife."1 A neighbor in Santa Barbara, himself returning to Japan to marry, provided an introduction to his cousin Ura, with whom Nikki's father began to correspond. Her parents' courtship illustrates the lengths to which desperate Issei (first-generation immigrant) men might go to attract a wife. Like some other uneducated bachelors Nikki's father enlisted the services of a professional letter writer to woo his prospective bride; Ura was impressed by "his" eloquent letters and poems. She was not alone in being fooled—some men sought to improve their chances of securing a wife by sending touched-up photos or photos taken when they were much younger; others exaggerated the degree of their success in the United States, conveying the impression that they were farm operators rather than field hands, or prosperous merchants rather than small shopkeepers.2 The photo Nikki's father sent showed "a balding man with a Pancho Villa mustache and piercing black eyes," someone who seemed "affluent and urbane." Noted Nikki, "The picture does not show that he was self-effacing and gentle, with neither the drive nor the powerful will possessed by my mother."3 Ura, the daughter of a scholarly rice merchant, arrived in San Francisco as a picture bride, carrying the photo of a man whom she would meet for the first time at the dock. A majority of the Japanese wives who came to the United States during the peak of family immigration—1910–20—were picture brides.4 While Nikki's father had misrepresented himself, Ura had kept silent about her own checkered past: the third daughter of eight children, she could never gain the affection or approval of her father, who favored his three sons. At age sixteen she became pregnant by a neighbor's son, bringing shame to her family; her son died at age two. Shunned and bitter, she "had resigned herself to a life of spinsterhood" for twenty years—until the opportunity of marriage abroad offered a fresh start. Nikki recounted, "At dockside she blurted out the story of her life. She promised that she would cause him no regret and be faithful forever if he would permit her to stay. My father was touched by her candor and courage...

Living the Politics of teatro in Los Angeles: An Interview with Diane Rodriguez

FALL 2009 143 Living the Politics of teatro in Los Angeles: An Interview with Diane Rodriguez Chantal Rodríguez On June 23 2009, I met Diane Rodriguez in her office at the Music CenterAnnex in downtown LosAngeles to discuss her impressive career.An OBIE Award winning actor and multi-disciplinary teatrista, Diane’s work is distinguished for its deeply political bend and use of humor to confront oppression. A founding company member of El Teatro de la Esperanza, El Teatro Campesino and Latins Anonymous, Diane has become an expert in activist performance and ensemble work. Committed to diversity and equal access, Diane was appointed Co-Director of the Latino Theater Initiative at the Center Theatre Group (Mark Taper Forum) along with Luis Alfaro in 1995. A self proclaimed “theater geek,” Diane is currently an Associate Producer at Center Theater Group. I have followed her career with great interest as she continues to produce, direct, and write new work whose reach extends far beyond U.S. stages. How did you get started in teatro? I come from a performing family; my father was a singer and sang in a Baptist church. My mother was the church pianist. That sanctuary, holy place, was where I learned how to be in front of people and perform in plays. In the late 60’s my cousins were members of El Teatro Campesino and I saw them perform in The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa, which was the first time I saw the teatro. Then my uncle and aunt sold their house and moved to Delano, CA, worked on the paper “El Malcriado” and belonged to the farm workers’ union. So, the notion of church and a social consciousness was in my family before there was really a Chicano Movement. But I think the real seminal moment was going to UC Santa Barbara and studying theater with Jorge Huerta.1 144 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW When did you begin working with El Teatro Campesino (ETC)? How did your experience there shape your artistic perspective? I performed with ETC during my summers in college and then became an ensemble member after graduation. When I went into ETC, I basically learned the concept of activism in terms of both social and theater activism: using theater to inspire and move a people to social action but also as a way of making choices as an actor. You have to make artistic choices and commit to them to make the moment work, and so in that way you are an activist, you activate a moment. It’s also a metaphor for being an activist in life. That’s the main concept that I took away and always carried with me. The other was building a foundation for our work. We used to do exercises based on the steps of the Mayan Pyramid that would build some part of your character as you climbed each step of the pyramid. You would listen to your heart, or simply your breathing. These rigorous exercises made me look inside and learn to follow my heart and listen to my instincts. It was instrumental in shaping my rostro, the Nahuatl concept of face or character. When did you leave ETC and why? Honestly, the resources began to change in the 80s with Reagan and it just felt like it was time to move on. The money wasn’t there to support a full time ensemble so we had to think about what we were going to do. It was a natural evolution and so we packed up our stuff and left, it always makes me sad to think about it though. I wrote a testimonial about it called “Searching for Sanctuaries: Cruising through Town in a Red Convertible.”2 It was very hard and traumatic, I came of age in the ETC and I learned how to create work on my own which was very empowering because I had to create the work, no one was going to create it for me and I’ve carried that through my whole career. When you left ETC for Los Angeles what did you hope to do? I was going to be an actor. I was very...

Whose Country to Defend?: The Chicano Soldier on Stage

As the debate on the role of Mexicans in the US persists, and while the number of Chicanos serving and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan escalates, Chicana/os must expose the hegemonic erasure of their role in defining and defending "America." Chicanos/as have a long history of sacrificing their lives in service to the US only to suffer their contribution erased from the historical narrative. However, five Chicano plays, Luis Valdez's The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa and Dark Root of a Scream , El Teatro Campesino's Vietnam Campesino and Soldado razo , and Culture Clash's Chavez Ravine , foreground the figure of the soldier to dramatize the hypocrisy wherein "America" is defined against Chicanos who in turn are rejected as only Mexican -American.

La frontera que vino del norte (review)

2009Book Reviews12g Lafrontera que vino del norte. By Carlos González Herrera. (Mexico City: Editorial Taurus/El Colegio de Chihuahua, 2008. Pp. 295, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9789705804885, 179 pesos, paper.) The title of Carlos González Herrera's book can be translated as The Frontier that Camefrom the North. His overarching thesis can be summed up as the U.S.Mexico border served as a way for the United States, which was in the process of becoming a nation-empire at the end of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, to define itself, culturally, racially, and hygienically against the Mexican "other." The first chapter examines the historiography of both the frontier and the border in American history, particularly dealing with Frederick Jackson Turner. The second chapter, "the slow construction of the border," examines how the U.S. attitude toward the border developed at the turn of the century, and how this project was aimed first not at Mexicans but at other "undesirable" ethnicities who used Mexico as an entry point into the United States. Other chapters describe the use of the theories of eugenics, the concept of public health, and the construction of a legal apparatus along the border, all with the end of defining the cultural and social boundary of the United States as well as its physical border. The fifth chapter, "the indispensable enemy," details the duality of U.S. immigration policy, alternating between "big economic interests (railroad companies , mines, agribusiness) [and] big ideological-cultural projects (nativist, racist, eugenist)" (120). The last two chapters are particularly noteworthy. Chapter seven, "an Anglo society on the border," analyzes a process what the author calls "the racialization of El Paso" (202). By the beginning of the twentieth century, "the Anglo population in El Paso ceased being a white enclave in the area and became a majority, not only demographically, but also as the masters, almost absolute, of the means of obtaining wealth" (167). Chapter eight examines the impact of the Mexican Revolution on both the Mexican population in El Paso and of the treatment of Mexicans there. Returning to the theme of the medicalization of the border, it makes good use of oral history sources to describe die humiliation of being subjected to "sanitation" while crossing the border. This chapter deals with nationalism born out of the tragic explosion of March 6, 1 9 1 6, at an El Paso jail. As the mainly Mexican inmates were being deloused with gasoline, somebody lit a match and at least two dozen people, mainly Mexican inmates, burned alive. Three days later, Pancho Villa's forces invaded Columbus, New Mexico. Residents of El Paso "saw a cause and effect relationship between the explosion and the attack" that was "read in nationalist terms by both groups" (243). Despite the author's pleas for the centrality of the Mexican border in the construction of U.S. imperial-national identity, the book often depicts El Paso as much more marginal. For example, the reader is informed that "the political establishment in Washington continued to conceive immigration as a phenomenon taking place in the ports of San Francisco and New York," while the Southwest "remained a marginal region peripheral to political and cultural center of the nation" (148). The medicalization and ethnic discrimination aimed at 1 30Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly Mexicans, though real, were also directed against various other immigrant groups. And much of the reforms of the Progressive Era were arguably directed against these other ethnic groups. González Herrera does not deny this, but he does not connect the discrimination against Mexican immigrants to the broader trends in the United States as a whole. Overall, this book is interesting and useful, especially considering that it has aimed to tell a particular story (of Mexicans in El Paso) to a particular audience (in Mexico) with the implicit goal of shedding light on the current issues of Mexican migration and the treatment of Mexicans in the United States. At the same time, it is weaker in addressing issues in United States, as well as Mexican, history and historiography. City College ofNew YorkJ. A. Zumoff Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race. By...

Max Parra, Writing Pancho Villa’s Revolution: rebels in the literary imagination of Mexico

Reseña

The Mexican Revolution

Adolfo Gilly is a native of Argentina who became a political prisoner in 1966 at Lecumberri Prison and remained there until the Mexican Supreme Court revoked his conviction for “subversion” six years later. While detained, Gilly wrote the Spanish language edition of this book, which became a legendary hit after its 1971 release, eventually reaching an eighth edition by January 1977. Like a breath of fresh air after the harsh repression of Tlatelolco, and responding to widespread disgust with the ruling system, Gilly’s book passionately disputed the official history of the revolution in a leftist and even postmodern framework. The new edition, a smooth page-turner, retains its strong Marxist analysis of the 1910 – 20 civil war and benefits from a fine translation by Patrick Camiller as well as a foreword by Friedrich Katz. Gilly makes several solid conclusions, such as pointing out that U.S. influence did not become the decisive factor in determining the outcome of the revolution. Although he criticizes Venustiano Carranza consistently, Gilly reiterates frequently the powerful appeal of carrancista nationalism in terms of its strident international policy. The author points out correctly that Carranza opposed the Pershing Expedition “from the very beginning” (p. 224). The chapter on Mexico City in 1914 is the most interesting portion of this book because of Gilly’s illuminating discussion concerning the decline of the Convention government. Although he favors Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa throughout his study, Gilly is not reluctant to point out their errors as well as castigate their bureaucratic supporters in the muddled Convention experiment.Despite the author’s determination to analyze the outcome of the revolution, his lack of interest in current or past scholarship leads him to state such mistakes as asserting that once Porfirio Díaz consolidated his power in 1884, “it became the norm to repress any form of labor organization”(p. 35). It is a shame that Gilly did not read the late David Walker’s study of labor organizations during the Porfiriato, but Gilly is not much of a researcher. There are few endnotes, a great many of which are devoted to Katz or John Womack, and no bibliography. There are frequent factual errors, such as stating that the Madero family came from San Luis Potosí and that a revolution broke out in Portugal in 1909 (actually 1910), and that Morelos was the most modern industrial region in Mexico by 1910 when, as Bill Meyers has shown, the Laguna region actually enjoyed that honor. Furthermore, Gilly states that Zapata controlled the southern portion of Mexico, overlooking the southeast. Despite Gilly’s assertion that Carranza never ceased labeling Zapata as a bandit, there is not a single reference to such a statement in the Carranza archive. Gilly also makes it appear that there was a love feast between the northern masses and Villa’s army, when in fact commoners often feared Villa. Despite what Gilly claims, Villa did not oppose the U.S. invasion of Veracruz. Gilly’s discussion of the 1914 Carranza-Zapata negotiations is muddled; the Carranza land reform decree of January 6, 1915, did not reflect the disastrous Ley Lerdo legislation that the juaristas unveiled earlier.Several modifications could have improved this study. The author overuses the term peasant, which should have been defined carefully. To characterize Villa’s army as a peasant force is an oversimplification; Gilly does not seem to understand that many rural inhabitants wanted to own their own land rather than work ejidos (communally owned lands). He should have developed the rise to power of the CROM (Confeder-ación Regional Obrero Mexicana) labor organization instead of constantly emphasizing the Casa del Obrero Mundial. Although Carranza eventually repressed the Casa, Gilly should have put into context Carranza’s opposition to their general strike when the Carrizal battle with the Pershing forces took place only a month earlier. His discussion of the 1917 constitution does not mention Pastor Rouaix and other individuals who were key in formulating Article 27. The role of women during the revolution is virually ignored. Finally, I doubt that Carranza exterminated half the population of Morelos, as Gilly claims.In summary, Gilly’s book fails to contribute much to the history of the Mexican Revolution because of its weak documentary foundation. Although Gilly claims that his new periodization is a fresh approach, emphasizing the 1914 alliance of Villa and Zapata in Mexico City, others have actually done the same thing.

Fauna de escarabajos melolóntidos (coleoptera: scarabaeoidea) en el municipio de Villaflores, Chiapas, México

Como un primer acercamiento al conocimiento de los escarabajos melolóntidos de la región Frailesca de Chiapas, México, caracterizada por un ambiente original de bosque tropical caducifolio, en su mayor parte ahora reemplazado por grandes extensiones con producción agrícola y ganadera, se realizó la presente investigación en los ejidos de Francisco Villa, Cuauhtémoc, El Jardín y la ciudad de Villaflores, pertenecientes al municipio de Villaflores. En parcelas agrícolas se hicieron recolectas sistemáticas, diurnas y nocturnas, de escarabajos adultos durante los meses de mayo a septiembre de 2006. Se obtuvieron 6,780 ejemplares, que representan a cuatro subfamilias, ocho tribus, 17 géneros y 46 especies. Los géneros con mayor número de especies e individuos fueron Phyllophaga, Diplotaxis y Ligyrus; junto con los escarabajos de los géneros Cyclocephala, Anomala y Strigoderma cubren el 88.7 % de la abundancia total. Se incluye una lista actualizada de las 368 especies de Melolonthidae registradas en el estado de Chiapas.

At the Café de los Cachuchas: Frida Kahlo in the 1920s

This essay proposes new readings of two of Frida Kahlo's most important early paintings, done after the bus accident that truncated her studies at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. An unfinished picture of around 1927, erroneously known as Pancho Villa and Adelita, is not fundamentally about the Revolution; rather, seen in context with related images, it is an attempt by Kahlo to imagine herself and her high school classmates (the 'Cachuchas') as members of an avant-garde artistic group performing in an urban café. The essay also closely examines an innovative 1927 portrait of her close friend and fellow 'Cachucha', the poet Miguel N. Lira. Although these experimental works are less famous than her later iconic paintings, they help expand our understanding of how Kahlo found her mature artistic style. The visual innovations of these two works are also contrasted with Kahlo's contemporaneous watercolours showing quaint scenes in Coyoacán, inspired by the children's art programmes of the Education Ministry. In the mid-1920s, Kahlo viewed rural Mexico as a place of melancholic isolation, while the capital was a place for exciting intellectual exchange, a privileging of city over country that she would invert by the early 1930s.

Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910 – 1920

Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910 – 1920

Max Parra, Writing Pancho Villa's revolution. Rebels in the literary imagination of Mexico. University of Texas, Austin, 2005.

Se reseñó el libro: Writing Pancho Villa's revolution. Rebels in the literary imagination of Mexico.

From Agraristas to Guerrilleros: The Jaramillista Movement in Morelos

From Agraristas to Guerrilleros: The Jaramillista Movement in Morelos

The Punitive Expedition Military Reform and Communications Intelligence

In the wake of poor performance in the Spanish-American War, the United States created the basis for a modern military intelligence organization. This included communications intelligence (COMINT). The first major use of the nascent COMINT capability was along the Mexican Border during the Mexican Revolution. When General John Pershing commanded a punitive expedition to chase down Pancho Villa, he took COMINT facilities with him.

Pancho Villa e a Revolução Mexicana

México is preparing for the celebration of the 100th anniversary ofthe Revolution. It was the first great social revolution of the 20thcentury in Latin America. More than one million people out of apopulation of 15 million died but many great victories were won, forinstance with regard to agrarian reform, the writing of a democraticconstitution and the making of a capitalist State.Francisco Villa was the Revolution leader who commanded aprofessional army in the north of the country. During the revolutionhe was feared, and long after his death was considered a bandit.However, from the 1970s onwards this view changed as it wasclaimed that he had been a visionary leader.Paco Ignacio Taibo presents three significant periods of Villa'slife during the Mexican Revolution: 1) 1911-1912: Pancho Villa allieswith I. Madero to overthrow the dictator Porfírio Diaz. 2) 1913-1915:Villa allies with Álvaro Obregón to defend social changes in thecountry. 3) 1916-1920: Villa begins a guerrilla warfare strategy tooppose the established bourgeois regime.Nowadays, Villa is perceived as a great leader who contributedradically to the Mexican Revolution.

Bitter harvest: the social transformation of Morelos, Mexico, and the origins of the Zapatista revolution, 1840-1910

Between 1910 and 1919, Morelos, Mexico, was home to a bloody agrarian revolution that saw government troops burn villages, cities stand abandoned, and two of every five people either flee the fighting or die in it. The region's conflict came in response to a dramatic economic transformation from a peasant economy to the hub of Mexico's sugar industry during the nineteenth century. The volatile nature of the sugar industry in Morelos, and the silver and cattle industries of the North, exacerbated the social problems created by an exclusionary political regime. Soon, displaced peasants, small farmers, disgruntled ranch hands, and unemployed miners joined Francisco Villa in northern Mexico, while peasants, farmers, and sugar workers rallied around the leadership of Emiliano Zapata in Morelos. When President Porfirio Diaz and the revolutionary leaders who succeeded him resisted the call for deep social change, turmoil engulfed much of the nation for the next decade. In the end, the Zapatistas were defeated militarily, yet they still forced major concessions out of the national government, which helped shape Mexican society for the rest of the twentieth century.