A principal figure in the history of Mexico, and a principal figure in the Mexican Revolution, Francisco “Pancho” Villa was born June 5, 1877, ’78 or ’79 in Grande, or San Juan del Río, Durango as Doroteo Arango (there conflicting sources as to where and when he was born). He became a fugitive when he […]
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Born in Parras, Coahuila on October 30, 1873. Son of a wealthy landowner. Family was devoted to ranching, farming and commerce. Studied commerce and economics in France and agriculture in the U.S. Saw the need to improve conditions in Mexico. Ran for president of Mexico against Díaz. He was arrested and then released, on bail, […]
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Born August 8, 1879, in Anenecuilco, Morelos. Was a mediero (sharecropper) and horse trainer. Conscripted into the army for seven years attaining the rank of sergeant. As president of the village council, he campaigned for the restoration of village lands confiscated by hacendados. His slogan was “Tierra y Libertad.” Zapata sided with Madero. Between 1910 and 1919, Zapata […]
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Born January 28, 1882 near Guerrero, Chihuahua. Attended a rural school, then worked in his father’s store. At the age of 20, was a muleteer guarding ore shipments from the mines to the smelters. Became a successful merchant. Joined the revolutionary movement in October 1910. After Díaz resigned, was named commander of the rurales in […]
Continue ReadingThe transition from military to civilian rule is not always an easy one. High ranking officers become entrenched in top positions of government and — as the 1989 fall of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile demonstrates — these politicized generals and admirals have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a system where the military […]
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Villa broke jail on Christmas Eve and was in El Paso when Huerta engineered the coup that overthrew Madero. In February 1913 Huerta staged a fake 10-day artillery duel with a fake rival, Felix Díaz, nephew of the old dictator. The battle was phony only in the sense that Huerta and Díaz were secretly in […]
Continue ReadingThis is a story that would have been laughed out of a Hollywood studio had it ever been submitted as script material: that a leading figure in the Spanish Conquest of Mexico was a shipwrecked priest who learned a new language but refused to yield to temptations of the flesh. Truth, to parrot a well-worn […]
Continue ReadingThis title has nothing to do with the state of affairs that precedes matrimony. It is intended in the sense of what the French call an homme engagé, literally, a man engaged in a cause or in some important work. From Winston Churchill to Leon Trotsky, from Andrd Malraux to Charles de Gaulle, the writer in […]
Continue ReadingIn history, there are innumerable cases of dynasties toppling because of the weakness of incumbents. The incompetence of do-nothing rulers had much to do with the fall of the late Roman Empire. In France, during the Dark Ages, the feeble Merovingians were completely dominated by mayors of the palace until one of them (Pepin, father […]
Continue ReadingIn 1984, his epic indictment of Stalinism, George Orwell writes that totalitarian man exercises power over others by making them suffer. Arthur Koestler, another great analyst and foe of Soviet communism, has the interrogator in Darkness at Noon declare that previous tyrants erred in failing to sufficiently blacken the character of their victims, thus enabling […]
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