Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution

by Frank McLynn

  Obregon considered that the best way to beat Maytorena in Sonora was to make himself a national figure and to be on the winning side when the heirs to Huerta's legacy fought over the spoils. In April i 914 he therefore began proceeding cautiously down the Pacific coast, much assisted by Woodrow Wilson's lifting of the arms embargo two months earlier. The salient feature of his campaign was ingenuity rather than flamboyance. He bypassed the ports of Guaymas and Mazatlan, delegating their reduction to favourite generals. In May he found his advance south threatened on the maritime flank by the federal gunboat General Guerrero based at Guaymas. At first Obregon tried cunning, suborning one of the three federal gunboats to defect. When this renegade was sunk by the other two, Obregon sent an agent to the USA to buy a replacement, but the man vanished with the cash and was never seen again. The quickthinking Obregon instead bought a biplane which attacked the federal gunboats in what some historians have claimed (probably inaccurately) to be the first example of war in the air. Alberto Salinas, a pilot in Obregon's army, attacked the gunboats eleven miles out at sea, diving from an altitude of 3,000 feet, while a second plane bombed Mazatlan.

  In response to urgent cables from Carranza, exhorting him to accelerate the advance, Obregon leapfrogged past Mazatlan (this fell in July when the combined US, British and German navies evacuated the federals), having first engaged Huerta's garrison at Acaponeta to the beat of Yaqui war drums. By cutting the Guadalajara-Colima road, he severed the lifeline of the two Pacific ports of Mazatlan and Tepic. At Tepic Obregon once again displayed his preference for stratagem over frontal assault. After raising a gigantic dust-storm, he sent his vanguard ahead to tell the enemy scouts that his 5,ooo-strong force (in reality only 2,000) was about to descend on the city. The 2,ooo-strong Tepic garrison at once evacuated, leaving behind a huge cache of arms.

  At the beginning of July Obregon sent part of his forces to hook round south of Guadalajara, while with the remainder he routed the federals at Orendain. At last Obregon had a victory worthy to rank with Villa's. Eight thousand federals lay dead on the field, and the survivors left behind them 5,000 rifles, sixteen artillery pieces, eighteen trains and forty locomotives. It was now certain that he would beat Villa in the race for Mexico City.

  The biographer of Obregon, however, is more likely to be fascinated by the subject's state of mind than his military brilliance, for the unconscious thrust of his letters was that he had joined the Revolution not for ideological reasons but for the opportunity to exorcise personal demons. Throughout the campaign, Obregon seemed death-driven: deliberately carrying no sidearms, making dangerous river crossings when he could easily have waited a few hours to cross in calmer waters, smiling almost with pleasure when grenades fell a few yards away. His letters to Carranza and others were full of a morbid fascination with death and blood. Of the huertistas he said: `Let us satisfy their taste for blood until they choke on it' and `A people cannot shed too much blood in defence of their freedoms.' He alarmed Carranza by using the language of vendetta, and particularly by the statement that the prime motive for the Revolution must be revenge for the death of Madero. Carranza thought it self-evident that the prime motive was to park his own bulk in the presidential chair.

  Obregon, however, in his boastful and self-serving memoirs never acknowledged the part Carranza had played in allowing him to get to Mexico City before Villa. Sabotage is not too strong a word to describe Carranza's chicanery after Torreon: Villa's next logical southward step was Zacatecas but Carranza diverted him north-east into Coahuila. Villa's great whirlwind campaign, in which he had torn the heart out of the federal army, had unlocked the north, leaving Pablo Gonzalez to mop up in the north-east. Even a general as mediocre as Gonzalez should have completed the task without difficulty. To be sure, he moved against Monterrey, which the federals evacuated, then advanced on Tampico, whence in turn the enemy retreated to Puebla; soon Nuevo Laredo and Piedras Negras also fell like ripe plums. The next clear objective for Gonzalez was Saltillo, but Carranza suddenly ordered Villa's Division of the North to capture it.

  Carranza claimed that Gonzalez was not strong enough to take Saltillo, but it was quite clear that his real aim was to stop Villa's southward advance and to weaken his strength, as he was bound to sustain huge casualties against a federal army 15,000 strong. Villa at first protested that Saltillo was so obviously in Gonzalez's bailiwick that he should be left to deal with it, but Carranza insisted. Grumblingly acquiescing, Villa did not bother to wait for reinforcements from Gonzalez, which he suspected would be deliberately delayed, but launched another of his blitzkrieg cavalry attacks, entraining his horsemen, then launching them suddenly at the enemy position at Paredon, north of Saltillo. Catching half the federals detached from the garrison at Saltillo, Villa routed them, killing more than Soo, taking 2,500 prisoners and sweeping up 3,000 rifles and ten cannon. The retreating federals spread panic among the garrison at Saltillo and, rather than face Villa again, gutted the city and fled overland to San Luis Potosi.

  Villa entered Saltillo in triumph, then turned Coahuila over to Carranza who, as a native of the state, set up his new capital there. Villa then asked for control of the northern railway network to be turned over to him, so that he could strike south at Zacatecas. Alarmed that even after diverting him so blatantly into Coahuila, the dauntless Villa might still win the race for Mexico City, Carranza tried a fresh stalling tactic. He formed a new army, comprising northerners jealous or resentful of Villa, dubbed it the `Army of the Centre' and gave the command to Panfilo Natera, a former villista underling. After implicitly insulting Villa by giving the nonentity Natera the same rank, Carranza ordered the Army of the Centre to break through at Zacatecas.

  Natera failed dismally at his initial attempt and Carranza now faced a dilemma. He needed the ever-victorious Division of the North to take Zacatecas, but could not stomach the thought of another Villa victory. He therefore ordered Villa to detach 5,000 of his men and assign them to Natera's command. Villa indignantly refused and sent Silvestre Terrazas to Saltillo to explain to Carranza that he was not prepared to allow his elite troops to be used as cannon-fodder by a military ignoramus like Natera. Terrazas ran up against the predictable Carranza brick wall of impenetrable stolidity and returned to Villa without getting the order rescinded. Villa exploded with rage and spoke of going up to Saltillo and hanging Carranza on the spot. When Felipe Angeles talked him out of this idea, he contented himself with firing off an angry cable which read: `Who asked you to stick your nose into my territory?'

  By now Villa was beginning to fathom the depths of Carranza's duplicity. He was enraged that, after he, Villa, had made so many concessions against his better judgement, Carranza had given him nothing in return. He conferred with Angeles and Silvestre Terrazas on how they could best turn the tables on Carranza. They considered stagemanaging a demonstration whereby the Army would expressly refuse to take orders from anyone but Villa, but before any such scheme could be implemented, Carranza alienated his generals by high-handed and autocratic behaviour. He replied to Villa's intemperate cable by refusing to make any concessions at all, Villa threw up his command, and Carranza, presumably choking on his weasel words, replied that he accepted the resignation `with regret'.

  Felipe Angeles called a meeting of senior commanders. All were agreed that if Villa no longer commanded it, the Division of the North would disintegrate and Huerta would be offered an eleventh-hour lifeline. Even as they were discussing the next step, the news came in that Carranza had accepted Villa's resignation. Almost speechless with anger, Angeles and the generals cabled back, asking Carranza to reconsider. The autocrat in Saltillo refused to do so. The high command then petitioned Villa to lead the Division of the North as an independent command, cutting out Carranza altogether. Villa agreed, and a cable was sent to Carranza to notify him of the new situation.

  Still unable quite to accept that the Army would not bend to his will, Carranza, summoned six handpicked generals, choosing the ones most likely t
o do his bidding. To his consternation, they too refused to break rank with Villa and refused even to go to Saltillo to discuss the matter. All eleven of the generals of the Division of the North co-signed a blistering telegram composed by Felipe Angeles, who had his own compelling reasons to loathe and detest Carranza. They informed Carranza that, with or without his approval, they were marching south to Zacatecas forthwith, impugned his good faith and declared they could see right through his knavish schemes to sideline Villa. With his absurd sense of self-importance, Carranza could not have enjoyed reading the cable: `We consider your measure a violation of the laws of politics and war and the duty of patriotism ... We do not accept your decision ... We know well that you were looking for the opportunity to stop General Villa ... because of your ambition to remove from the Revolutionary scene the men who can think without your orders, who do not flatter and praise you.'

  Villa had won a complete victory and for once the haughty Carranza had to eat humble pie. The rift between the two was irreparable, but in order to deal the coup de grdce to Huerta it was necessary to paper over the cracks. At a hasty meeting at Torreon Villa recognised Carranza as First Chief, and Villa was confirmed as unquestioned commander of all armies comprising the Division of the North; he was given the rail network, adequate supplies of coal and ammunition and virtual military carte blanche. It was also agreed that, with the fall of Mexico City, a convention for discussing the political programme of the Revolution, land reform and the date of new elections would be held; this marked a significant concession to the Army as against Carranza's Plan of Guadalupe. Yet, with typical duplicity, Carranza accepted the principle of a convention without committing himself to its make-up or the content of any reforms to be discussed there.

  Villa was now free to lead 20,000 men against the railway junction of Zacatecas, the gateway to Mexico City. For this do-or-die battle the federals had selected their position well, cynically prepared to see a beautiful old mining town blown to pieces. On the left and right of the strong central defensive positions, where 12,000 defenders were dug in, were two hills, El Grillo and La Bufa, which any attacker would have to scale as a prelude to assaulting the town; attacking infantry had to labour slowly up the steep incline, where they could be slaughtered like game, as had happened to Natera's men on his abortive attack. The defenders were reasonably confident: this time Villa would have to deal with seasoned colorados and other elite units, not raw conscripts. The federal strategy was simply to sit back and absorb the attacks, exhausting Villa as he threw wave after wave of assault troops at the impregnable positions. Originally Huerta had hoped to catch him in a pincer movement, using the armies withdrawn from Coahuila for a flanking attack, but the US occupation of Veracruz had ended that dream.

  After conferring with Angeles, Villa decided on a twin-track strategy: surround and assault the town from all sides, while using the superior artillery of the Division of the North to keep up a non-stop barrage on the two hills, leaving the federal gunners not a single second in which to think; meanwhile his best infantry would be working their way to the top. Angeles insisted on meticulous contingency planning: there would be a large villista garrison stationed at the town of Guadalupe to guard the road to Aguascalientes, in case Orozco tried to reinforce the federals that way. On 22 June Villa appeared before his men, riding a `spirited horse', exhorting them to make one last push for victory. Then at io a.m. the first units went in as his army assailed Zacatecas from all sides.

  Angeles's advice proved first-rate and the villista strategy succeeded brilliantly against the hill of El Grillo, where a massive artillery bombardment threw so much dust and debris into the air that it masked the approach of crack units scaling the heights; Villa's commandos took the summit around i p.m. On La Bufa resistance was more stubborn, probably because of the presence there of the federal commander General Medina Barron, but the fall of El Grillo had a knock-on effect on morale. This had been thought impregnable and its capture after just three hours spread panic, especially in Zacatecas itself. From the heights federal soldiers could be seen below, scurrying like ants in a disturbed nest but without the same sense of communal purpose. Knowing their fate if taken, the federals snapped in courage and morale, throwing away their uniforms, guns and cartridge belts. After terrible fighting lasting into the late afternoon, La Bufa also fell.

  Medina Barron ordered his remaining troops to retreat by the Zacatecas-Aguascalientes road, knowing that at Torreon Villa had left his enemy an escape route. However, he had bargained without the new dispositions of Angeles, and as the defeated rabble staggered along the road they found their way barred by the 7,000 villistas at Guadalupe. The result was a massacre, with thousands of men eaten up by the terrible enfilading fire. The most frightful slaughter took place as the panicstricken federals, together with women and children, often with two officers mounted on a single horse, tried to force their way past Guadalupe. Having left Zacatecas under a hail of bullets, they ran into a firestorm at Guadalupe. Witnesses spoke of the hills between the two towns literally running red with blood, the roads strewn with corpses. Some escaped the gunfire only to plunge lemming-like into crevasses formed by disused mineshafts in the mountains around the town.

  Those who elected to stay and fight it out in Zacatecas fared no better. From i p.m. until 4 p.m. that day the town was an inferno, a hell on earth, with no quarter given or expected. Some federal officers tried to disguise their status by ripping off their uniforms and decorations, but were detected anyway and consigned to the firing squad. However, the real slaughter began when there came an ear-shattering explosion, as a federal colonel blew up the arsenal, preferring to kill himself and hundreds of villistas rather than surrender. As a result of this mindless act of sabotage an entire block of buildings lay in ruins and hundreds of bodies mingled with the rubble: some who survived the blast but were cruelly maimed lay groaning in agony; others sustained no direct damage but died anyway, being entombed in the wreckage. In fury at the loss of their comrades, the villistas on the hilltops rained down a fusillade of bullets from the heights. One estimate was that a firestorm of 20,000 rifles opened up simultaneously at about 5 p.m. There was a short lull, then the victorious villistas started mass executions of prisoners. Captives were taken to the cemetery and the officers separated from the rankers; those bearing the hated federal commission were then executed by Villa's special killing squads. The sun was already setting and the insensate killing still going on when Angeles arrived and ordered the guns to be silent.

  Zacatecas was the bloodiest battle of the entire campaign against Huerta. Six thousand federals were slain (including 3,000 on the road to Guadalupe), but the real body count was probably higher, for only 3,000 enemy wounded were officially recorded. Of the entire garrison of 12,000 defenders, less than 300 reached Aguascalientes in one piece. In addition more than i,ooo villistas had died, 2,000 were wounded and vast numbers of civilians killed, maimed or injured. The death toll would have been higher if Angeles had not intervened. Some say he had a nephew serving with the federals whom he was trying to save, but more likely he was trying to conserve manpower, since captured federal rankers invariably agreed to serve with the Division of the North. So great was the slaughter and so pervasive the stench and contamination of rotting corpses that typhus broke out and claimed the lives of dozens of the victors. Once again Angeles thought of the solution: he had all the cadavers soaked in petrol and incinerated.

  The combination of US intervention at Veracruz and the catastrophic defeat at Zacatecas finished Huerta. Whether at Cuernavaca, Zacatecas or Tampico, the story was the same: mass desertions followed by federal generals returning to Mexico City, coming like Johnny Cope in the Burns poem with the news of their own defeat. The officer class was desperate and in an impossible position; they had to sink or swim with Huerta, for to avoid execution they should have changed sides at a much earlier stage. Huerta simply made a bad situation worse by ordering a scorched-earth policy, wantonly destroying public b
uildings and property; the federals in rout were more akin to full-time arsonists than professional soldiers, and the vandalism was particularly marked at Monterrey, Piedras Negras and Nuevo Laredo. Even the hacendado class and the rancheros turned against Huerta as the federals continued their mindless depredations on the retreat; by now the so-called rebels seemed to have greater respect for lives and property than the `guardians of law and order'.

  The wealthy, the propertied and the middle classes by now wanted Huerta ousted as soon as possible. They were prepared to look abroad - to Panama, the USA or even the Vatican City - for suitable mediators to broker a negotiated peace. Argentina, Brazil and Chile - the ABC powers of Latin America - offered their services and Huerta reluctantly agreed. He sent delegates to the peace conference near Niagara Falls in New York State, hoping to conclude a quick peace before the Constitutionalists reached Mexico City, but Woodrow Wilson was determined to eject him. When the ABC powers proposed that there should be an armistice first, then proper negotiations for peace, Wilson refused to accept the deal. He saw clearly enough that this meant commiting the USA to depriving the rebels of the fruits of their victory. In any case, Carranza refused to accept the ABC powers as mediators, so their proposal was stillborn. The best the Niagara conference could do was resolve the Huerta/Wilson dispute over Tampico and Veracruz, scheduling a timetable for the withdrawal of the Marines.