by Frank McLynn
Zapata watched all these events with a mixture of alarm, anger and cynicism. Every day he was deluged with complaints from Palafox and Diaz Soto y Gama in Mexico City over their treatment by the villistas and their clashes with the arrogant Gonzalez Garza, Villa's official deputy and liaison officer for jobs, funds and railways. Zapata took this seriously, for his own spies reported the existence of a clique in Villa's inner circles intent on assassinating all the zapatista advisers, especially Palafox and Soto y Gama. By the end of the year Zapata accepted the inevitable, recalled his advisers and went into retirement at Tlaltizapan in Morelos. His troops went back with him, delighted that they would not have to campaign outside their homelands.
The US diplomat Canova, who had reported the Villa-Zapata meeting so exhaustively, wrote to Washington on 3o December: `The break between (Villa) and Zapata is not remote and when it comes senor Palafox will be one of the first Villa will attend to.' Zapata had already lost interest in Villa's coming trial of strength with Carranza and Obregon. He pulled his veterans out of Puebla, leaving behind the ex-orozquistas and ex-huertistas, who soon degenerated into a lawless rabble, refusing to take orders from Palafox or anyone else at Zapata's headquarters. The carrancistas noted the rift and seized their opportunity: on 4-5 January 1915, after heavy fighting, Obregon crashed into Puebla with his army. Zapata seemed as unconcerned as if the action was taking place on the moon. As far as he was concerned, the clash between Villa and Carranza was no longer his concern. The so-called `war of the winners' would have to be fought without him.
The utter inability of Villa and Zapata to cooperate was one of the great tragedies of the Mexican Revolution and was the principal reason for their ultimate defeat. Perhaps synergy between two such dissimilar personalities and programmes was never really feasible. In one area alone did Villa and Zapata show themselves brothers under the skin: their womanising. Little is known of Zapata's marriage to Josefa Espejo, except that she bore him two children, Felipe and Maria Asuncion, both of whom died in infancy. However, Zapata could console himself with Nicolas - born to an unknown woman in 19o6 - the boy who slept through the Xochimilco conference, and three other children with other women, born in 1913-14: Eugenio, Maria Elena and Ana Maria. Zapata sometimes aped Villa and went through spurious forms of `marriage' with his mistresses. This was the case with the early paramour Juana Mola Mendez and the Suarez girls, Catalina and Pepita, whom he and his brother Eufemio were said to have `married' in a double ceremony. His more spirited gringa mistress Margaret Benton, who used the pseudonym Maggie Murphy, was a genuine adventuress who spurned such absurd niceties. In Tlaltizapan in the 1914-15 period he kept at least one mistress, Maria Escobar, having dallied briefly with another, Josefa Ortega, in Mexico City.
Meanwhile in Mexico City Villa was enjoying one of his periodic outbursts of satyriasis. Among a host of new girls he slept with was the up-and-coming actress Maria Conesa, but his most notorious escapade concerned a female cashier in a store owned by a Frenchwoman, where Villa was shopping. The pretty cashier caught his eye and he made heavy sexual advances to her; he said he hoped when he returned next day she would not insult him by rejecting him. When the terrified cashier asked the owner of the store what to do, she advised her to stay home next day. Villa arrived for his expected conquest and flew into a rage when he found that the bird had flown the coop. Unfortunately, out of the corner of his eye he caught the Frenchwoman laughing at him behind his back. Finding his machismo impugned and his `honour' compromised, he took her hostage. The French consul intervened with a vehement protest, and soon the entire affair had escalated into a Benton-like international incident, which did Villa's global reputation irreparable harm.
Villa was seldom more self-destructive than in December 1914. While his men raped and murdered and he womanised, Carranza and Obregon were making careful preparations to destroy him.
CIVIL WAR
All the campaigns so far in the Mexican Revolution had involved rebel armies ranged against the power of the state, with the federal government in Mexico City seemingly having the drop hand, only to throw away its advantages through military incompetence. In January 1915 there was no federal government and, with the demise of the Convention, no obvious `rebels'. The war that broke out that month was a straight fight to the death between Villa and Carranza, with Obregon and Zapata at first in secondary roles; but where Zapata increasingly became a marginal figure in national politics, Obregon's importance increased monthly. For a brief moment at Aguascalientes he had allowed himself to hope that both Villa and Carranza might resign, but the two of them had never had any intention of handing the laurels of victory to Obregon. Carranza's resignation was always an unreal hypothesis; he was an egotist with massive self-belief, and would never have withdrawn, believing as he did that he was the only man who could `save' Mexico.
Obregon began the war with deep feelings of foreboding. He saw clearly enough that if Villa advanced from Mexico City to Veracruz without delay, Carranza could scarcely survive. He had opted for Carranza reluctantly, since he had no realistic alternative. The middleclass ethos of the carrancistas appealed to him more than the serrano mentality of Villa or the peasant ideology of Zapata. His immediate ambition was to be restored as the premier figure in Sonora and to displace the hated Maytorena, and this ambition dictated an alliance with Carranza. Nor had he forgiven nor forgotten the brutal death threats from Villa a few months before. Finally, and most compellingly, his principal commanders would not have followed him if he had opted for Villa.
Even as they forged an alliance, Obregon and Carranza eyed each other with suspicion. Obregon intended to use the Army against Carranza if they were successful against Villa, but in turn was outflanked by his own ambitious generals - Benjamin Hill, Plutarco Elias Calles and Pablo Gonzalez - who did not fight to elevate Obregon to supreme power. They saw more scope for their ambitions with Carranza as president. Carranza was aware of all these currents and the many backstairs intrigues. A skilful politician, he was able to outscheme Obregon and keep him firmly in his place as a subordinate. He gambled, correctly, that whatever happened Obregon would never throw in his lot with Villa.
Obregon's first great military coup was his seizure of Puebla from the orozquistas Zapata had left behind there. Everyone expected that Villa would now emerge from Mexico City and direct his army towards Veracruz for a final showdown, but to general stupefaction he ordered his army to march north to Torreon. Angeles begged Villa to reconsider and not throw away the chance of an early knockout. Villa, deaf to his pleas, insisted on pulling out of Mexico City. With both Villa and Zapata away from the capital, Obregon saw his chance. He moved in to fill the power vacuum and, to the disgust of the burghers of Mexico City, who remembered his earlier hostility, he remained there from January to March.
Angeles's arguments were so cogent that they would have impressed almost anyone but Villa. From early December he had cautioned against a long sojourn in the fleshpots of Mexico City and, in virtually daily cables, had urged a rapid campaign against Veracruz. He made three main points. First, Veracruz was close enough to Zapata's heartland for the zapatistas to take part. Secondly, Pablo Gonzalez's army of the north-east was a shambles, Obregon had not yet whipped his forces into shape, and Carranza was almost defenceless. Thirdly, if Villa settled in for a protracted campaign, Carranza's greater long-term resources would begin to tell, while Villa would be forced to court the hostility of the USA by expropriating foreign property simply to pay for his army. It was true that Emilio Madero in Torreon had urgently requested Villa to return there, but this should be disregarded. As Angeles said, incontrovertibly: `For us the most important thing is to attack Carranza, who is the head of everything. One has always to attack the head.'
Why, then, did Villa throw away his trump card and not advance on Veracruz? Quite apart from failing to achieve a quick victory, Villa's actions in putting his Division of the North on the march meant that his army wore itself out by three months of camp
aigning while Carranza made careful preparations and built up his strength in Veracruz. Many explanations have been offered. Those most critical of Villa say that he lacked imagination: that he was always ill at ease fighting outside Chihuahua and Durango and did not want to fight in the tropical lowlands of Veracruz, so far from his homeland, where the local population was hostile and he could not recruit more fighting men. Another critical view is that Villa was always narrowly obsessed with the supply lines from Coahuila for his trains. More generous critics say that Villa feared that an attack on Veracruz would be construed by Zapata as an infringement of the agreement on spheres of influence made at Xochimilco. Others say that Villa was willing to attack Veracruz once he got the all-clear from Zapata, but that he never received it. Yet another school of opinion believes Villa wanted Zapata decisively defeated by Carranza and Obregon, preferably in a pyrrhic victory, which would weaken all the combatants, so that he could emerge as tertius gaudens.
Zapata's motives for inactivity have been variously analysed. One view is that he thought he could defeat Carranza on his own (ironically, Villa argued this exact case with Angeles) but that when this proved impossible, he could not call on Villa for help as Villa had already gone north to Torreon. Another is that he was angry with Villa for not supplying him with arms and reinforcements as promised at Xochimilco. A subtler interpretation is that Zapata, knowing of Villa's animus towards the orozquistas, thought the Centaur might divert to settle old scores with the colorado garrison at Puebla, thus ruining allied strategy and letting Carranza off the hook. One thing we can say with certainty: Zapata's inactivity was a colossal blunder. Villa later complained bitterly that Zapata had let him down badly in the south, that he had expected him at the very least to impede rail communications between Carranza in Veracruz and Obregon in Mexico City. Villa's complaint was well founded, but what it really amounted to was that he had not really taken the measure of Zapata's patria chica mentality. As long as whoever was in power in Mexico City did not bother him, Zapata was interested only in achieving peasant utopia in his beloved Morelos.
Villa's decision to march north meant that Mexico was plunged into nearly a year of bloody civil war. As in all civil wars, there is great interest in what the combatants were fighting for and what groups they represented. Did either side have a clear-cut ideological profile or social programme? Or was the entire 1915 war a giant mosaic made up of very different individual power struggles? Some see Carranza versus Villa as the Directory versus the sans-culottes, the middle classes against the peasantry; others see it as the forces of modernity against the forces of backward-looking reaction, with Carranza as the true radical; others again view the entire struggle as merely an aggregate of individual caudillos and leaders struggling against each other and attaching meaningless and adventitious labels to their self-seeking conflicts.
The old idea that Carranza versus Villa represented landowners, the petit-bourgeoisie, the military, professional politicians, apparatchiks and bureaucrats versus frontier horsemen, pioneers, cowboys, the dispossessed, the young and the unattached bachelor will not really wash. There were many educated men and even intellectuals in the Villa movement, of whom Angeles and Silvestre Terrazas were the most notable. In any case, this was a civil war in which it was far from clear what each side was fighting for, hence the large number of trimmers, fence-sitters, don'tknows and people who genuinely could not decide which faction had right on its side. The most ingenious interpetation of the civil war sees it as a northern power struggle projected onto a national stage, with Sonora and Coahuila, representing Carranza and Obregon, ranged against Chihuahua and Durango, representing Villa. Seen thus, it merely becomes one culture and locality in conflict with another locality and culture.
Certainly there was no ideological coherence among the combatants. Local warlords joined in on either side dependent on who their local rivals supported. Typical of a serrano group that for reasons of culture, ideology and interest should have supported Villa but joined the other side was the faction led by the Arrieta brothers in Durango, who commanded 5,000 troops. The Arrietas had long been locked in combat in Durango with Tomas Urbina; since Urbina was Villa's man, the Arrietas signed up with Carranza. There were scores of other chieftains whose culture and interests should have aligned them with Villa but who joined Carranza because of some ancient feud or personal vendetta with a villista chief. In the south-east the plantocracy, who strenuously opposed land reform, joined Villa who advocated it, and were against Carranza who was on their side on this issue, simply because the salient power struggle in Yucatan, Chiapas and Oaxaca was between the local hacendados and the `proconsuls' Carranza had sent south to entrench his regime there and to abolish debt peonage. Another group that briefly allied itself with Villa was Manuel Pelaez and his private army in Tampico. Pelaez was an old-fashioned condottiere who commanded a force paid for by the US oil companies and was particularly despised by Carranza as a tool of the Yankees. Pelaez received his rake-off for making sure all genuine revolutionaries were kept out of oil-producing areas, but he had no more real sympathy for Villa than the Arrieta brothers or the hacendados of the south-east.
Only three issues clearly divided Villa and Carranza: the role of central government, land reform and attitudes to the USA. Carranza was for strong central government and had a ruthless vision of what he wanted; to achieve it he aimed at a near-monopoly of economic power, control of all provincial administrations and an iron grip on the military, which he hoped to achieve by playing off the generals against each other. Proactive in his centralising drive, he contrasted strongly with Villa, who wanted to be left alone operating as a quasi-autonomous state with full power in Chihuahua and Durango. This tendency towards parochialism was always one of Villa's weaknesses.
Villa was only partly committed to land reform. He did not have Zapata's vision of a peasant society based on communalism, but he wanted to use the proceeds of confiscated estates towards his own utopia of military colonies. If he won the civil war, there would be many more confiscations and many more estates would be distributed among his troops. However, on agrarian reform overall he was very cautious, to the disappointment of peasant leaders in the north like Calixto Contreras. Carranza was the only leading figure who wanted to put the brake on all land confiscations and return estates to their original owners. This was why, looked at from a purely economic but not political viewpoint, the conflict between him and the plantation owners of the south-east was so bizarre.
Most striking at this stage were the different attitudes of Villa and Carranza to the United States. Carranza had always been anti-American, and his favourite current project was the nationalisation of the Tampico oil fields. At this stage of his career Villa was notably pro-American. He took Woodrow Wilson's moral posturings seriously and for a time looked on him as a kind of American Madero. Villa's glowing estimate of Wilson derived ultimately from his friend General Hugh Scott, from whose character he wrongly inferred the character of Wilson. Villa was also nudged towards sympathy for the gringo by Felipe Angeles, and by George Carothers and his two agents in the USA, Felix Somerfeld and Lazaro de la Garza, both of whom had personal financial motives for promoting the Villa-Wilson entente.
At the beginning of 1915 Villa was thought sure to win the coming war. Both the British and the Americans were certain that by the end of the year Carranza would be no more. To American observers Villa seemed to have achieved the impossible: he was popular both with the rich and powerful, who looked to him as a future Cromwell, and with the dispossessed, who saw him as their champion. As Alan Knight remarks: `Some Americans ... were capable of seeing Villa as, simultaneously, both the "man on horseback" and the champion of democracy, as Napoleon and Lincoln rolled into one.' Because of Carranza's anticlericalism, Villa was also perceived as the saviour of the Church. No better guardian of liberal, pluralistic democratic principles could be imagined in American eyes than this pragmatic, eclectic and tolerant heir of the mantle of Madero; Carran
za, by contrast, with his obvious dictatorial tendencies and never a word about elections, seemed simply a throwback to Porfirio Diaz.
Certainly those who thought Villa would win seemed on solid ground, for his advantages were several. One single victory by Villa would suffice to see off Carranza, but even if Villa was beaten the first time, he would need to be defeated repeatedly before he could be destroyed. He controlled most of Mexico and had unbroken lines of communication, where Carranza's forces were confined to enclaves, between which communication was by sea. In the states which should have been his power bases, Sonora and Coahuila, Carranza controlled only a small area. In the south-east, where the carrancistas were more firmly in the saddle, they were regarded as alien intruders and were vulnerable to local uprisings. It was widely known and believed that the USA favoured Villa, and the Centaur was unbeaten and seemingly invincible as a warrior, with a string of victories to his credit. Neither Obregon nor Pablo Gonzalez could boast anything as impressive as Torreon and Zacatecas. Finally, and importantly, Carranza lacked Villa's personal appeal and magnetism, had no charismatic hold over his followers, and for the common touch relied on Obregon, whose primary loyalty was to himself.