Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution Read online

  Praise for Frank McLynn's

  VILLA AND ZAPATA

  "Refreshing.... Frank McLynn has plunged into an important episode in the modern Mexican experience-namely, the social and political revolution that rocked the country for some twenty years, cost two million lives and reshaped its institutions."

  -Wall Street Journal

  "A masterful book.... McLynn tells a stirring story and tells it so well that you can hear the strains of the Mexican patriotic standard, `Zacatecas,' as you read it. His is an enthralling work, a page-turner that is sophisticated."

  -Austin American-Statesman

  "In a rare accomplishment, McLynn presents his topic in a logical and understandable manner while also incorporating the latest research. McLynn has produced a judicious analytical account of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20. His narrative is lively and witty, leading the reader into this thoughtful study."

  -Library Journal

  "Exhaustively researched. . . . The author makes this informative, insightful study even more compelling with his witty and fluid prose. McLynn grasps so completely and communicates so deftly the nuances of government and corruption ... that this book feels less like a history than a great story, as exciting as a Saturday serial Western."

  -Publishers Weekly

  "Vivid.... This work has its own charm [and] gives the essence of the period."

  -Choice Magazine

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  VILLA AND ZApATA

  A HISTORY OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION

  FRANK McLYNN

  To Jose Briseno, Compadre

  CONTENTS

  Illustrations

  Preface

  The Mexico of Porfirio Diaz

  The Rise of Zapata

  The Rise of Villa

  The Rise of Madero

  The Fall of Diaz

  Madero and Zapata

  Villa and Madero

  The Revolt Against Huerta

  Villa at his Zenith

  The End of Huerta

  The Convention of Aguascalientes

  The Convergence of the Twain

  Civil War

  The Punitive Expedition

  The Twilight of Zapatismo

  The Decline of Villismo

  Epilogue

  Conclusion

  Sources

  Index

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  First section

  Emiliano Zapata: the dandy as hero

  Porfirio Diaz in 1910

  Francesco Madero

  Francisco Villa

  Pascual Orozco

  A dynamited troop train

  Rebels crossing railway tracks

  General Victoriano Huerta

  Huerta and Orozco

  The Madero family

  Francisco Madero

  Venustiano Carranza

  Alvaro Obregon

  Villa in the revolutionary's `full dress uniform'

  Rodolfo Fierro

  Second section

  Zapatistas in Sanborn's restaurant

  The meeting in the Presidential Palace in 1914

  American forces occupying Veracruz, 1914

  Villa with his enemies, Obregon and General Pershing

  Villa in a happy mood

  Zapata also in a happy mood (for him)

  Felix Diaz

  Orozco

  Venustiano Carranza

  Obregon at the battle of Celaya

  The women of the Revolution

  The last authentic image of Zapata

  Villa putting on a brave face in adversity

  Maps

  Mexico

  Northern Mexico

  Southern Mexico

  Northern Mexico

  Southern Mexico

  PREFACE

  Three outstanding volumes have acted as my lodestar while writing this book: Alan Knight's two-volume The Mexican Revolution; Friedrich Katz's The Life and Times of Pancho Villa and John Womack's Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. I here and now acknowledge my great debt to these peerless scholars. But in recent years all roads have seemed to lead to Mexico City, for all my interests appeared to point in the same direction, whether it was the war reporting of Jack London, the paintings of Diego Rivera or the movies of Sergio Leone. I hope, if nothing else, that I have communicated my enthusiasm for the incredible story of the years 1910-20, which if written as fiction would be dismissed by prospective publishers as `over the top'.

  Any author writing such a book owes a debt to hundreds of unknown writers of monographs and journal articles and even to long-forgotten newspaper reporters. Among those who inhabit the face-to-face world, I cannot fail to mention the `three musketeers' at Jonathan Cape - Will Sulkin, Tony Whittome and Jorg Hensgen - whose enthusiasm and support have been crucial. If I mention an even more salient influence, it is only because my wife Pauline, editor, collaborator and inspiratrice, is the d'Artagnan of the piece. Others who deserve honorific mention are Professor Alan Knight of St Antony's College, Oxford, who made research materials available to me, Dr Malcolm Chapman, whose keen editorial eye was an asset, and Mr Paul Taylor, master of maps, draughtsmanship and the Internet.

  Frank McLynn, Twickenham, March 2000

  THE MEXICO OF PORFIRIO DIAZ

  As the year 1910 moved into autumn, even the most reckless gambler would not have bet on the likelihood that the century's first major revolution (and the fourth-ranking in importance in the entire century) was about to break out. The year had so far been a quiet one. The Chinese had abolished slavery, Portugal was about to jettison its monarchy, and South Africa became an independent nation with Dominion Status within the British Empire. Otherwise the year's most significant developments had been in the arts rather than politics. Rodin, Braque, Matisse, Leger and the dying Henri `Douanier' Rousseau all produced important works, as did Ravel, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams and Mahler in the world of music. England was enjoying a golden period in literature, with Shaw, Barrie, Wells, Forster and Bennett all active, but the major public event that year was the death of Edward VII at sixtyeight and the succession of his son George V. In accordance with the strict protocol governing royal mourning, it was announced that there would be no official British representation at the forthcoming jamboree in Mexico to which representatives of all the nations of the world had been invited, expenses paid.

  Few had heard of the obscure fourth-century Greek saint Porfirio, whose feast day fell on 15 September, but everyone in Mexico knew of the Porfirio, who shared the saint's birthday. Porfirio Diaz was the absolute ruler of Mexico and had been for thirty-four years. Now, on the evening of 15 September i9io, he was about to celebrate his eightieth birthday. The occasion was special in more ways than one, for Mexico itself was also celebrating the centenary of its struggle for independence from Spain. The nation basked in a month-long siesta, and huge sums, equivalent to the co
untry's annual spending on education, had been earmarked for fiestas, banquets and dances.

  On the illuminated balconies of the National Palace in Mexico City, special diplomatic envoys from the four corners of the world and Diaz's own handpicked guests watched a dazzling firework display before retiring inside to a ten-course meal. The sixty guests were already weary with a day of spectacle, during which Diaz bade fair to be a second Moctezuma, king of the Aztecs; io,ooo people had taken part in an historical pageant representing Mexican history from the Aztecs to Diaz. Even as the envoys from Europe, Japan, Latin America and the United States gourmandised their way through the eight savoury courses served on silver plates and the two dessert courses brought in on plates of solid gold, their ears were bombarded by the multiple counterpoint and polyphony of sixteen bands in Mexico City's main square or Zocalo below. Since all sixteen were playing different tunes, the complex mariachi rhythms and the unbarred passages, accelerandos and ritardandos produced the effect of a Charles Ives symphony scored for a 200piece orchestra.

  How much of the real Mexico City the envoys were seeing is more dubious. Out of a total national population of 15 million the capital city had an officially registered 471,000 in igio, but large numbers of these people were either working class, unemployed, underemployed or in various stages of disguised unemployment, all clustered in densely packed slums in the north and east of the city, covered in dust or mud (depending on the season), lacking adequate sanitation, surrounded by piles of garbage and the myriad and ubiquitous pulquerias or grog-shops. A typical Hogarthian slum scene would feature a series of drunken clients of the pulquerias reeling intoxicatedly through streets infested with mangy dogs and half-naked children. Diaz made sure the special emissaries who came to pay him homage saw none of this. Instead, all beggars, raggedtrousered peasants and any who did not obey an unwritten sumptuary code were expelled from the central section of the capital with its paved streets and confined to the outer ghettos. In the streets around the Zocalo Diaz created his own Disneyland avant la lettre, with street cleaning and anti-litter campaigns redolent of a later age and a very different sort of society.

  The distinguished visitors were encouraged to admire Mexico City's heterogeneous and eclectic architecture, symbolised by the Cathedral which, begun in 1573 and completed in 1813, was like a palimpsest or an archaeological site with many strata. Little remained of the Renaissance city of Cortes and the first Spanish viceroys, and even less of Tenochtitlan, the fabled ancient Aztec capital on this site (except that the three great avenues that led to the Zocalo followed the course of ancient Aztec avenues), for fires, floods, earthquake and the sheer ravages of time had done their worst. The last trace of Tenochtitlan was the network of canals, along which Indians still travelled into the centre in their distinctive boats or trajineras, bringing flowers and vegetables to the central market. Although the first automobiles were starting to be seen, Mexico City was scarcely a magnet for the `horseless carriage' because the roads outside the capital were not paved. Transport for the upper classes was still mainly by horse, and for the lower classes by the tramways that spiralled out from the centre to the suburbs.

  Something of the sixteenth century was still there in the form of the grid pattern of the main streets in the centre and the most ancient churches, though most of the architectural showpieces went back no further than the seventeenth century. The baroque churches of the r 6oos, the monasteries of the regular clergy (Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, Augustinians) dating from that century and the religious hospitals, to say nothing of twenty convents, still existed, but this pattern was partly overlaid by the neoclassical building boom of the late eighteenth century. The recent vogue for French styles in housing and design irritated some of the locals and put a dent in the predominantly Spanish colonial ambience, and the new National Theatre was widely considered an eyesore. This heap of white marble, thrown up with no sense of style at all, was across the street from the new central post office, itself a Disneyland version of an Italian palazzo of the Renaissance. Ominously, twentieth-century mainstream architecture's chief contribution so far was in the shape of a new prison and a mental hospital.

  On and on went the celebrations. Some thought the high point was on 23 September, when 2,000 guests attended a sumptuous ball in the National Palace, where rivers of champagne were drunk. Pampered and spoiled as they were, and cribbed and confined to the elegant centre of the capital, few of Diaz's guests would have had any interest in the history of Mexico City and still less in the social reality of Mexico that underlay the glittering facade with which Diaz tried to dazzle them. Some were impressed with the autocrat's recent technical innovations, his improvement of the water supply and street lighting. Interested visitors were shown the railway terminal and the telephone, telegraph and postal offices, which purported to show how Mexico was a modern country with modern communications. Perhaps a couple of reporters took the time to investigate the new seismology station and the elaborate drainage system, designed at once to solve the capital's horrendous sewage problem as well as the perennial threat of flooding. However, most of the envoys who made reports to their governments concentrated on Diaz himself. Who was he, this white-haired dictator of amazing personal and political longevity, and what was the secret of his lifelong power?

  Professional historians notoriously dislike history narrated through biography, and of course no thumbnail sketch can do justice to the complexity of Mexico's social and economic structures in the nineteenth century, but to say that the political history of Mexico during its first hundred years can be summed up by the careers of three dominant personalities is not far short of the truth. The first of the three great autocrats was Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1797-1876), the self-styled `Napoleon of the West'. For nearly forty years, from 1821 onwards, Santa Anna straddled Mexico like the colossus he aspired to be. First, in 1823, he overthrew Agustin de Iturbide who, two years earlier, had set himself up as the first `emperor' of Mexico after expelling the colonial power of Spain. Always the power behind the scenes, Santa Anna turned the first forty years of Mexican history into a kind of opera bouffe, in which he would frequently lose caste and be exiled, only to return and seize power once again. It was said that Santa Anna issued more pronunciamientos than any other figure in Hispanic or Latin American history. President of Mexico in 1833, he pursued the reactionary policy that led to the loss of Texas. It was Santa Anna who entered the Lone Star State at the head of a powerful army in 1836, annihilated Davy Crockett, Travis and Bowie at the Alamo, and was defeated by Sam Houston at San Jacinto.

  Imprisoned for eight months, Santa Anna returned to Mexico to find his star on the wane, but it rose again after he lost a leg during the defence of Veracruz against a French blockade in 1838 and was hailed as a patriotic hero. Returning in a blaze of glory three years later to the presidential chair, he spent another four years as Mexico's master before being exiled again. In 1846 he was recalled to resume office during the hard-fought war with the United States (1846-8), which ended with utter defeat for Mexico and the loss of California, Arizona and New Mexico; Texas, an independent republic for ten years from 1836-46, joined the United States as a fully-fledged state. Exiled once more, Santa Anna was recalled from Jamaica by a revolution in 1853 and appointed president for life, but two years later was again overthrown and banished to Cuba. During the French occupation of Mexico in the 186os, he intrigued shamelessly and attempted a comeback at the age of seventy; captured once more and sentenced to death, he retired to New York but was allowed to return for his final years to Mexico, where he died in poverty.

  If Santa Anna was a character out of a putschist melodrama, and increasingly regarded as an embarrassment by Mexicans trying to build an honourable heritage they could feel proud of, the second great autocrat in the nation's history provided them with an authentic hero. A Zapotec Indian, Benito Juarez (18o6-72) made his mark as a lawyer and then became governor of the southern state of Oaxaca in 1847. By the 185os Mexican p
olitics had become dangerously polarised between a Conservative party led by Santa Anna and the Liberal opposition led by Ignacio Comonfort and Juan Alvarez. Juarez was a leading light in the Liberal party and, as a consequence, he was exiled in 1853 when Santa Anna seized power. On Santa Anna's overthrow two years later, Juarez became minister of justice in Alvarez's government. Proposing fundamental changes, he abolished the fueros (traditional feudal privileges), seized control of Church lands, tried to nudge Mexico towards liberal capitalism and passed the anticlerical constitution of 1857. Alvarez was soon succeeded by Comonfort, who appointed Juarez president of the Supreme Court, but when Comonfort moved to make himself dictator, Juarez declared his action unconstitutional; according to the articles of the constitution Juarez was now the president.

  Taking advantage of Liberal factionalism, the Conservatives raised an armed revolt. The result, once Juarez had dealt with Comonfort and sent him into exile, was a ferocious civil war between Conservatives and Liberals, which lasted from early 1858 to late 186o; all the time Juarez was president de jure. Finally the Liberals were triumphant, but there was scarcely to be a breathing space before Mexico was plunged into warfare once more. Great Britain, France and Spain claimed reparations from Juarez for damage and losses sustained by their nationals during the civil war, but Juarez now ruled a bankrupt country and could not even pay the interest on existing foreign debts. When he suspended payment on all foreign debts for two years, the emperor Napoleon III took advantage of the immersion of the United States in its own civil war and launched a quixotic foreign adventure. He tried to impose the Austrian Hapsburg prince Maximilian as emperor of Mexico. Britain and Spain refused to back Bonaparte in this ill-advised intervention and withdrew their claims, but Juarez was left to deal with the military might of France.