Second in a three-part series.
MEXICALI, Mexico — In Douglas, Ariz., a hotel boasts being the home of the ghost of Francisco "Pancho" Villa.
Not so.
Pancho Villa's ghost still haunts the full 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. And in recent months, he has been rattling his cartridge belts.
In Mexicali, Packy's Bookstore has a dozen photographs of Villa pegged to its walls. They're all for sale and are selling briskly, thank you. The store also has the new "revisionist" biography of Villa on order and sells children's books touting the noble deeds of the man known affectionately as La Cucaracha (The Cockroach).
Much of the interest in Villa is because Nov. 20 is the anniversary of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. But more than that, Mexicans have called him back into high relief because of his political stance. When it came to battling the "Yanquis," Villa was a macho among men. At one point he even invaded the United States and challenged the army of Gen. J.J. "Black Jack" Pershing near Columbus, N.M. Today, on the American side, a park and a pavilion mark the site. On the Mexican side, Villa's old home has been painted pink and is a tourist attraction.
"Pancho Villa is popular because he didn't let the United States set limitations for us," says one university student who asked to remain anonymous. "He didn't let the 'Colossus to the North' jerk him around. Here on the border, especially, we feel pressure from the north. Villa would have pushed back."
Today, people's attitude toward Villa is usually a question of latitude. For Americans to the north, Villa will forever be a marauder — a thug in a four-day beard who bedeviled the Mormon colonies near Chihuahua and raised havoc across the Southwest. He is seen as a bandit and — in his worst moments — even a terrorist.
Yet farther south, the man's image quickly changes. There, Pancho Villa is not a devil but an angel — an avenging angel. In a series of schoolbooks called "The Great Mexicans," author Marco Antonio Gomez Perez refers to Villa as the Mexican Napoleon, the Centaur of the North and the Golden Boy of the Mexican Revolution. Was he an outlaw? Yes. But the laws were so corrupt that justice, according to his champions, could only be found outside of the law.
As with so many things on the cutting edge between the two cultures, one side sees white, the other black.
The truth — as is usually the case — is not so clear.
Born Doroteo Arambula in Durango, Mexico, Villa took his name from a mentor and surrogate father with a reputation for standing his ground. When Villa's 13-year-old sister was raped by a prominent landowner, the arc of Villa's life was begun. The goal of the 1910 Revolution was land reform. And Villa turned the pent-up rage over his sister's rape against the lordly "hacenderos" who controlled enormous swaths of territory. Later he would transfer his hate to the biggest landowner and power broker of all: the American government. And he fought that power with a ferocity not seen before or since in Mexico.
In the prologue to his book, author Gomez Perez concludes: "Many attack the senseless and delinquent side of Pancho Villa, but others also recognize that he was an idealist, a man who dreamed of a Mexico filled with peace, equality, a country where everyone feels the dignity that comes with living and working and making progress."
The United States still holds fast to the "dark image" of Villa. Mexico holds to the bright side. For the relationship between the two nations to evolve, the key is not a change of identity. That's not possible. The key is for the nations to see both sides of the man.
Until that happens, the ghost of Pancho Villa will continue to haunt the border. And the ghost will be laid to rest only when people on the north and south sides understand his complicated nature and see him not as a flat character but as a complicated, fully round human being.
Tomorrow: A Friday in Tijuana