25 Facts About Villistas

Villistas was a key figure in the revolutionary movement that forced out President Porfirio Diaz and brought Francisco I Madero to power in 1911.

Villistas was celebrated during the Revolution and long afterward by corridos, films about his life, and novels by prominent writers.

Villistas's father was a sharecropper named Agustin Arango, and his mother was Micaela Arambula.

Villistas grew up at the Rancho de la Coyotada, one of the largest haciendas in the state of Durango.

Villistas quit school to help his mother after his father died, and worked as a sharecropper, muleskinner, butcher, bricklayer, and foreman for a U S railway company.

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Villistas went on to beat the Federal Army in Naica, Camargo, and Pilar de Conchos, but lost at Tecolote.

Villistas had Abraham Gonzalez, governor of Chihuahua, Madero's ally and Villa's mentor, murdered in March 1913.

Villistas proclaimed the Plan of Guadalupe to oust Huerta as an unconstitutional usurper.

Villistas had even at some point kept a butcher's shop for the purpose of distributing to the poor the proceeds of his innumerable cattle raids.

Villistas printed his own currency and decreed that it could be traded and accepted at par with gold Mexican pesos.

Villistas forced the wealthy to give loans to fund the revolutionary war machinery.

Villistas confiscated gold from several banks, and in the case of the Banco Minero he held a member of the bank's owning family, the wealthy Terrazas clan, as a hostage until the location of the bank's hidden gold reserves was revealed.

Villistas appropriated land owned by the hacendados and redistributed the money generated by the haciendas to fund military efforts and the pensions of citizens who had lost family members in the revolution.

Villistas recruited fighters from Chihuahua and Durango and created a large army known as the Division del Norte, the most powerful and feared military unit in all of Mexico.

Villistas threatened to cut off Villa's coal supply, immobilizing his supply trains, if he did not comply.

Villistas's fighting force had shrunk significantly, no longer an army.

Villistas decided to split his remaining forces into independent bands under his authority, ban soldaderas, and take to the hills as guerrillas.

Villistas had loyal followers from western Chihuahua and northern Durango.

In January 1916, a group of Villistas attacked a train on the Mexico North Western Railway, near Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, and killed a number of U S nationals employed by the American Smelting and Refining Company.

Villistas was repulsed at Columbus by a small cavalry detachment, albeit after doing a lot of damage.

Villistas was persona non grata with Mexico's ruling Carranza constitutionalists and was the subject of an embargo by the U S, so communication or further shipments of arms between the Germans and Villa would have been difficult.

Villistas frequently made trips from his ranch to Parral for banking and other errands, where he generally felt secure.

Villistas went to pick up a consignment of gold from the local bank with which to pay his Canutillo ranch staff.

Villistas's remains were reburied in the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in 1976.

Villistas emphasizes Villa's bandit past, for whom the Revolution provided a change of title, not of occupation.

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