by Frank McLynn
At this secret meeting land reform was scarcely mentioned. The two leaders concentrated on the coming campaign against Carranza, and Villa promised to let Zapata have the artillery and equipment he needed for his operations. Remembering Angeles's advice, Villa tried to get Zapata's agreement that he, Villa, should be supreme commander of the allied forces, but Zapata brusquely dismissed the suggestion. `I don't go north,' he said, `and you don't go south. That way we respect each other.' `But, General,' Villa protested, `keep in mind that these people are very strong.' Zapata said he would deal with Carranza and could guarantee it. Villa shrugged. `Well, if you can guarantee it,' he said lamely. Thus did he carry out Angeles's advice.
The sessions on 4 December ended with dinner and speeches; everyone seemed to think the meeting had been a great success. Two days later 35,000 khaki-clad veterans of the Division of the North, wearing stetsons, entered Mexico City to be greeted by 20,000 men of Zapata's army, dressed in loose white cotton and broad sombreros. The two leaders rode side by side, both superb horsemen with different riding styles. At one point in the procession Villa's military cap fell off. Without slowing his horse's pace, Zapata swung down his mount's side, scooped up the cap and returned it to a grinning Villa. Together the two armies paraded through the streets of the capital to the enthusiastic cheering of vast crowds. At the Zocalo the entire army was reviewed by Eulalio Gutierrez, but Villa and Zapata themselves treated Gutierrez with contempt and swept past him into the presidential palace. There, as a joke, Villa sat in the presidential chair, then motioned to Zapata to take his turn. Humour was never Zapata's strong point, and his response was po-faced: `I didn't fight for that. I fought to get the lands back. I don't care about politics. We should burn that chair to end all ambitions.' However, Villa did persuade his comrade to pose for a photograph with him. The famous image shows a euphoric Villa alongside a surly Zapata. As Enrique Krauze remarks, Zapata is on edge, `always wary of a bullet, perhaps springing out of the camera instead of the flash of a bulb'.
The photograph of Villa in the presidential chair, flashed around the world, convinced foreign observers that Villa was the new ruler of Mexico. However, he was so far from possessing the necessary administrative ability that he did not even plan further follow-up talks with Zapata. Villa and Zapata never met again. Zapata could not wait to shake the dust of Mexico City from him, but Villa stayed on in the capital, touring the fleshpots and chasing women. Having achieved supreme power, both seemed bemused by what to do with it. Because neither wanted the presidency, their meeting to discuss the consequences of victory can be seen in hindsight as setting the seal on their eventual defeat. They wanted to find people who would be loyal to the Revolution, so that they could retire to their provinces, but if they themselves were not prepared to play a national role, who could such people be?
Villa said he was not interested in who would be in a future Cabinet; his only mission was to fight, fight and fight again. The word pelear (to fight) was used by Villa no less than nine times in the verbatim transcript of the Xochimilco meeting and seems to reveal a `permanent revolution' mentality, with everything forever in a state of flux. He made the telling admission that he would submit to a president and Cabinet provided they did not bother him; Zapata felt the same way. This was the reductio ad absurdum of the patria chica mentality, for no credible chief executive would be content to rule nominally from Mexico City, with large swathes of the country in a state of de facto independence.
Why was Villa so reluctant to assume supreme power himself? Maybe it was lack of self-esteem, stemming from his uneducated ignorance, as he said. More likely, he realised only too well that Zapata would not tolerate him in the presidential chair, that he would then have war with the zapatistas on his hands before he had finished off Carranza and Obregon. Since no politician, and certainly not Eulalio Gutierrez, could be entrusted with the Revolution, as Villa saw it, his only option was to fight on until the issue with Carranza was resolved, by which time there might have been a `second coming' and a new Madero might have emerged.
Even if Villa had decided to bite the bullet and instal himself as president, the resulting presidency would have been centrifugal, with a weak Mexico City depending on strong caudillos at the periphery. Villa would have ruled like Tiberius, with Chihuahua as his Capri, possibly with Angeles as the real power in the capital. The result would have been highly unsatisfactory, with Villa and his caudillos as dogs in the manger, unwilling to rule but unwilling to give up their power and privileges so that someone else could rule. But at least Villa would have confronted the problems of power. Zapata could plead his ideology of village anarchism as the reason for his refusal to assume power at the centre, but in Villa's case it was laziness, lack of willpower and the taking of the line of least resistance. By his renunciation Villa ensured that however many battles he won, Carranza and Obregon were bound to win in the long run. As Octavio Paz wrote of the opportunity missed by Villa and Zapata in December 1914: `He who refuses power, through a fatal process of reversion will be destroyed by power. The episode of Zapata's visit to the National Palace illustrates the nature of the peasant movement and its later fate.'
Where Villa's weakness was that he had a truly professional army and could campaign anywhere yet had no national plans nor even interests outside his own region, Zapata's weakness was almost the opposite: the Plan of Ayala had national implications yet his army was too weak and amateurish to campaign nationwide. Zapata's armies never became professionalised like Villa's, and in this respect the contrast between the brown khaki uniforms of the villistas and the white pyjamas of the zapatistas was truly symbolic. Zapata's armies were geographically isolated and peasant-based, reluctant to campaign outside the patria chica, and Zapata was unable to generate the surplus that would enable him to professionalise them, for his warlords preferred to grow subsistence crops rather than sugar cane for profit. By contrast, Villa's armies had many salient advantages: the social composition was not dependent on peasants tied to the agricultural cycle but rested on an elite group of mobile horsemen recruited from a variety of backgrounds; the proximity of the USA meant they were much better armed and equipped; there was a martial tradition of fighting Apaches and Americans in the north that had no equivalent in Morelos; and, most obviously, the terrain in the north was more suitable for the disposition of large armies.
The multifarious `contradictions' between the zapatista and villista movements - contradictions that appeared at every level - to say nothing of the wary distrust of the two leaders, meant that the Zapata-Villa alliance was stillborn. Zapata was not encouraged by what he learned from his spies and from Villa's actual military cooperation. On 9 December one of his secret agents filed a report that Villa and Angeles were simply stringing him along until they achieved their own aims, at which point they intended eliminating Zapata. That might have been speculation, but it was hard fact that Zapata had to send repeated requests to Villa before he could get the promised artillery support. Even then, the zapatistas had to manhaul cannon through the pass between the volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Ixtacchuatl because Villa provided no trains to transport the artillery. Villa meanwhile was increasingly irritated at Zapata's complaisant attitude towards former foes. In Mexico City the zapatistas had been universally popular and cooperated effectively with the porfirista old guard, in contrast to the chaos that began to manifest itself once the villistas entered the city. The continuing presence of so many orozquistas under Zapata's banner continued to rankle with Villa.
For a while Zapata, at least, kept the faith. With the aid of the big guns from Villa, he was able to occupy Puebla City on 15 December; after one look at the cannon being wheeled into position, the defenders did not even stay to try conclusions. On 16 December, testing the waters, Zapata wrote warily to Villa to say there was abundant evidence that their joint enemies were trying to drive a wedge between them.
Zapata finally became disillusioned when Villa murdered his aide Paulino Martinez and ins
tituted a reign of terror in Mexico City. On 13 December villista officers gunned down Martinez, who had long been Villa's bite noire, both because he had joined Orozco in 1912 and because he continually denigrated Madero in his articles for the press. It has to be conceded that Martinez was verbally audacious, exactly the kind of man who made bad enemies with his tongue. At the Aguascalientes conference Obregon had asked sarcastically how it was that Zapata, supposedly commanding 6o,ooo men, had been unable to take Mexico City, when he himself took it with just 23,000 after a march of 2,500 miles. Martinez riposted that Obregon entered the capital so easily only because he had made a secret deal with the federals - something Zapata would never do.
Zapata grieved at the loss of Martinez and was angry with Villa for his treachery, but it seems there was misunderstanding on both sides. At the secret conference at Xochimilco, they had agreed to compromise on eliminating egregious personal enemies, but Zapata always understood there would be executions following purge trials; Villa, however, preferred to eliminate his enemies by hit squads or individual killers like Fierro. Accordingly, Zapata executed an old enemy, Guillermo Garcia Aragon, who had fought with Zapata against Diaz but had refused to join him in the revolt against Madero. Zapata never forgave this `treachery' and bore a deep grudge. In open contempt of acting president Eulalio Gutierrez, who had appointed Garcia Aragon governor of the National Palace, Zapata seized the `traitor', tried him before a kangaroo court and consigned him to the firing squad. Since Zapata had mentioned this man in his secret conclave with Villa, and Villa had mentioned his own animus towards Paulino Martinez, Villa took the view that his elimination of Martinez was a tit-for-tat execution of the kind tacitly agreed at Xochimilco. Zapata did not see the matter at all in the same light.
Villa's murder of Martinez was simply the harbinger of a reign of terror in Mexico City in which zapatistas were frequently targets. For their first few days in the capital Villa's men behaved well, but they soon degenerated. Part of the problem was that the middle-class villistas - especially Felipe Angeles - who had kept their less refined brethren in line, were away in the north, so there was no steadying hand. Faced by the temptations of Mexico City, the villista soldiery largely regressed to their earlier mode of banditry. They took their example from the top, not just from the lecherous Centaur himself, but from the villista high-ups, who all seemed simultaneously on their worst behaviour: Tomas Urbina distinguished himself by trying to rape the wife of the manager of an oil company; Juan Banderas shot a general dead and then trashed the Hotel Cosmos, doing i,5oo pesos worth of damage to the windows and furniture. Banderas was a notable hoodlum: two months later, in Tepepan, he picked a fight with a zapatista heavy, which degenerated into farce when his opponent brought an 8omm field gun to the duel.
An orgy of ravishing and murder swept through Mexico City. All told, there were more than Zoo murders by villistas in a month and thousands of cases of rape. A host of private scores and vendettas was settled under the guise of weeding out porfiristas and huertistas, and among those killed in the nightly gunfights were zapatistas. The difference between Villa's men and Zapata's was clear for all to see: the zapatistas were ruthless in using execution for raison d'etat, but Villa's thugs killed for private vengeance and then dishonestly claimed their victims were enemies of the people; when they started killing zapatistas, the transparency of the plea was palpable. The behaviour of Villa's troops blew the cover off the dark face of Villismo, showing the deep levels of banditry in the movement. The middle classes, foreigners and the Catholic Church were massively alienated. Villa's intellectuals had argued for socialism and land distribution, but what they got when Villa was ensconced in the capital was chaos.
In this maelstrom of anarchy and mayhem it almost goes without saying that one of the worst offenders was the egregious Fierro. When a young man named David Berlanga, already a prominent Conventionist, dared to criticise the behaviour of villistas and impugned the leader himself, Villa sent his one-man factory of death in pursuit. Fierro engineered a confrontation in Sylvain's, one of Mexico City's finest restaurants. Choosing a time when Berlanga was dining there, Fierro took in a gang of his roughnecks and, after a deliberately noisy repast, refused to pay the bill. Berlanga fell into the trap and upbraided the rioters. Fierro told him he had thereby signed his own death warrant and took him outside at gunpoint. The young man was so fearless that even as Fierro drew a bead on him he smoked a cigar with such a steady hand that the ash did not fall until after he was shot. Villa dismissed the murder as a matter of no consequence, attempting to placate public opinion by rounding up street urchins and dispatching them north to his special schools in Chihuahua.
However, the middle classes were not interested in Villa's would-be status as an educational benefactor, nor in his histrionics when he shed tears at Madero's grave and renamed the Calle de Plateos after the dead hero. The sycophantic corridos, especially the famous `La Cucaracha' with its toadying verses -'With the beard of Carranza I will make a scarf to be worn on the sombrero of his father Pancho Villa' - moved them not at all. They wanted swift action on the atrocities, now. Jose Vasconcelos went to see Villa to protest, but was turned away with the excuse that the general was sleeping; Villa's guards then taunted him, to add insult to injury. Vasconcelos then fell foul of Villa's powerful enforcer Juan Banderas, known as El Agachado (the hunchback). Threatened with death, Vasconcelos appealed to Villa who simply advised him to leave the capital on the first train; for Villa one intellectual more or less scarcely mattered, especially if it meant antagonising the powerful Banderas.
The Madero ceremony was another occasion when Villa publicly insulted Eulalio Gutierrez. Villa had Madero's body dug up and then publicly reburied with full ceremony, and ordered all the capital's shops and businesses closed for the day, without even consulting Gutierrez. Everything Villa did inculcated the message that Gutierrez's presidential status was meaningless. The worst affront was when Gutierrez asked Villa to stop Tomas Urbina extorting money from the rich by kidnapping: Urbina was well known to torture wealthy oligarchs to death until they revealed the whereabouts of their money. To Villa this was part of the normal course of events. He had done the same himself many times before, and chafed at having to extort money secretly now, to avoid an open breach with Gutierrez.
Eulalio Gutierrez now started detaching himself from Villa, with the aim of founding a new party and staunching the haemorrhage whereby hundreds of disenchanted former villistas deserted the cause and went over to Carranza. He openly protested at villista excesses and atrocities, and proclaimed a `third way' for the many disgusted by both Villa and Carranza. Alerted by his spies that Gutierrez was starting to put out feelers to Carranza, Villa descended on the provisional president's house and a notable confrontation ensued. Villa informed Gutierrez he would be shot if he resigned, and informed him that all train services out of Mexico City had been suspended. Gutierrez remained calm and protested that both Villa and Zapata were making him a laughing stock by so openly snubbing his authority. He even dared to bring up the subject of Berlanga's murder. Villa raged at him angrily: `I ordered Berlanga killed because he was a lapdog who was always yapping at me. I got tired of so much noise and finally took care of him.'
Despite his threats, Villa hesitated to execute Gutierrez. Apart from having no concrete proof of treachery, he feared the impact on international opinion and the loss of his reputation in the USA. He decided to patch up a compromise: Gutierrez would be allowed to issue orders to Villa's troops, provided he did not try to flee from the capital. However, intercepted post soon revealed Gutierrez as a master intriguer, not only negotiating with Carranza but scheming with Obregon to double-cross Carranza. Villa issued orders for Gutierrez's immediate execution, but unfortunately for him, he chose to give the order to the very man who had already refused an order to execute Obregon: none other than Jose Isabel Robles, the villista general currently serving as Gutierrez's minister of war. Robles tipped off Gutierrez, who made immediate pl
ans to leave Mexico City. After assembling a cadre of io,ooo loyal troops, Gutierrez fought his way out of the capital, taking Villa by surprise.
Once at large, Gutierrez issued a manifesto, vehemently excoriating both Villa and Zapata for their reign of terror, their inability to discipline their officers and men, their printing of worthless paper money, and for their incoherent foreign policy. Villa's response was to order Gutierrez shot on sight, and to declare that all adherents of the `third way' would be executed. Many leading Conventionists were rounded up, but others were forewarned and made their escape - taking with them several thousand troops and the contents of the National Treasury - leaving behind city walls flyposted with anti-Villa slogans. Gutierrez fled to San Luis Potosi. Villa sent his men in pursuit but Gutierrez had chosen a `hot' state, for San Luis was currently being terrorised by Urbina in the authentic Villa style.
Gutierrez's first step was to try to persuade the Madero family to join him; this would be a great propaganda coup and destroy Villa's claim to be the inheritor of the mantle of Maderito. Raul Madero was tempted, but stayed loyal to Villa on the advice of his brother Emilio. Gutierrez's ally General Eugenio Aguirre Benavides made similar overtures to Angeles, who rejected them contemptuously. Finally, Benavides, with no great opinion of Urbina's military skills, tried to defeat him in battle. He was routed after most of his troops deserted him, then captured by the carrancistas and executed as a rebel. The `third way' was now in terminal disarray. Another of its leading figures, Lucio Blanco, fled to the USA; later, in 1922, he was killed in action during a revolt against Obregon. Gutierrez himself fled to Nuevo Leon, realised his position was hopeless, renounced the phantom presidency and went over to Carranza. Henceforth Villa regarded all Conventionists as enemies and ordered them shot on sight. The Convention was finished as an executive body, although as a legislature it lingered on in Mexico City as a spectral entity, still absurdly regarding itself as a sovereign institution.