by Frank McLynn
Villa's samurai-like long march to Coahuila took Obregon by surprise. Anxiously he conferred with de la Huerta. It was clear that the government was about to suffer huge economic losses and to be embarrassed in its relations with the USA; at the limit Washington might finally tire of the unpredictability of Mexico and send a quarter of a million troops across the border. De la Huerta decided the only way through the impasse was to isolate Obregon on this issue. He got Hill and Calles to agree to an improved deal for Villa: Canutillo hacienda and the bodyguards as before, and additionally 8oo demobilised villistas to be given pay and land. Obregon was almost apoplectic with rage when he read the deal. De la Huerta tipped Villa off on the best way to play his cards. Having previously said he would sign only if Obregon put in his countersignature, Villa signed anyway. This put Obregon on the spot. If he refused to sign, he would be branded a warmonger and perhaps would even be the cause of US intervention, which would probably trigger his own downfall. Still smarting at the humiliation, Obregon refused to sign, but told de la Huerta he would not oppose the deal.
On 29 July Villa sent Obregon a friendly and even deferential letter, asking for his friendship and citing their mutual contacts with Raul Madero. It took Obregon two months to compose a grudging reply, in which he confirmed that when he took over the presidency in December, Villa would enjoy the same terms granted by de la Huerta. On all sides could be heard a collective sigh of relief. Villa flung his arms round Martinez, hugged him and said: `You can say that the war is over; that now honest men and bandits walk together.' Even Washington, tired of the never-ending strife south of the border, agreed to draw a line under the Columbus incident. Almost the only unregenerate and implacable public enemy left for Villa was Winston Churchill in England, who continued to fulminate about the Benton affair.
Villa and his last 759 men laid down their arms, and were given the promised mustering-out pay and lands. For Villa the march back from Sabinas to Tlahualilo was more like a Roman triumph than the prelude to retirement. In Tlahualilo he was greeted by Raul Madero and observed at close quarters by his old enemy Patrick O'Hea, who described him rather spitefully as having put on weight. Villa told Madero he had four ambitions now: to stay on good terms with the government, develop his hacienda, live on good terms with his women and safeguard himself from assassination. The death of Carranza and the surrender of Villa effectively ended the Mexican Revolution. Carranza and Zapata had been struck down by assassins, but Villa and Obregon, protagonist and antagonist in that mighty conflict, seemed to have survived.
EPILOGUE
In retirement in his hacienda at Canutillo Villa tried to achieve the aforementioned four ambitions: to stay on good terms with Obregon and the government, to turn Canutillo into a showpiece military colony, to sort out his tangled private life, and to protect himself against assassination by one of his numerous enemies, especially Calles, Ignacio Enriquez and Obregon himself. The fourth was the easiest aim to achieve. Apart from his fifty heavily armed bodyguards, Villa could count on his other employees and the many ex-dorados settled on neighbouring estates. Additionally, Villa turned Canutillo into an impregnable fortress, limited the number of visitors to the estate and posted a trusted officer at the nearest railway station to report on every arrival and departure.
Villa ran his estate on military lines; within its gates he was the only law. Canutillo consisted of 163,ooo acres, 4,400 of which were rich, irrigated land. Before the Revolution the hacienda could boast 24,000 sheep, 4,000 goats, 4,000 horses and 3,000 head of cattle, but in the ten years of the Revolution most of the animals had disappeared: sold, stolen or requisitioned. Villa's first task was to build up these herds and to lease out the remaining lands to sharecroppers. He was an improving landlord, who installed telephone lines, a post office, telegraph bureau, flour mill and even a school for 200 pupils, but Canutillo was never an egalitarian utopia, if only because most of its peons and workers had been bequeathed from the old paternalistic era. Villa's own men - the nucleus with which he had hoped to found the new military colony - were settled on two adjoining estates.
Villa's most tricky task was to retain good relations with Obregon, whose massive victory in the presidential election of September 1920 signalled the end of the Mexican Revolution. Unlike Carranza, whose Achilles' heel was his mania for control, Obregon was a natural politician and fixer, a deal-maker who, by co-optation, cajolery and bribery restored the country to a peace it had not known since 1910. His basic approach was to freeze the status quo, leaving a patchwork picture, a political mosaic: in some states the old elites were still in charge, while in others village communes and agrarian reformers were dominant. He offered all rebels attractive amnesty terms, which they accepted; much of this stabilisation had been achieved in the interim period when de la Huerta was provisional president. Felix Diaz went into exile in the USA, and the felicistas laid down their arms. Pablo Gonzalez was arrested for sedition in Nuevo Leon, tried for treason, found guilty and sentenced to be shot; to appease American opinion de la Huerta pardoned him, and Gonzalez joined the other anti-Obregon exiles in the USA. The one comfort for Zapata's heirs was that Jesus Guajardo was taken out and shot by the Nuevo Leon authorities, without the complication of a trial.
Obregon's greatest triumph of pacific transformation came in Morelos, where the zapatistas were co-opted, partly by Obregon's grudging acceptance of the agrarian programme, partly by his winning them over with places and positions. Gildardo Magana, expressly designated by Zapata as his successor, had long since proved his pro-Obregon credentials by intriguing with him behind Carranza's back in 1918-i9. He took advantage of the upheaval and turmoil of 1920 to conclude a very favourable deal with Obregon and soon the zapatistas were no longer revolutionaries but an integral part of the obregonista system. So great was the swing to the Right in some cases that Zapata's nephew allied himself to a coterie of reactionary generals and tried to eject the possessors of ejidos (communal land) in Anenecuilco and get it for himself. Zapata's son, who had famously slept through the meeting with Villa at Xochimilco, became a landowner, got himself elected mayor of Cuautla, sold out to the old elites and ended up a client of the Morelos plantocracy.
Obregon was always a capitalist who believed that the true business of the Revolution was business. He disliked landowners not for ideological reasons but because they were incompetent as entrepreneurs. So keen was he on improving capitalism that he watered down the 1917 Constitution's provisions on subsoil rights, granting the US oil and mining companies far greater privileges than they had had under Carranza, and winning himself a dubious reputation for `selling out' and truckling to the yanquis. He announced that Article 27 of the Constitution would not apply to mineral rights acquired by foreigners before 1917 and, through his treasury secretary de la Huerta, negotiated a deal with Washington whereby the taxes levied on US oil companies would be earmarked to pay foreign (mainly US) bondholders, after nine years in default. With Wall Street now on his side, Washington was nudged into a reluctant recognition of the Obregon government in 1923.
During the four years of his presidency Obregon gained the reputation of being both ruthless and as slippery as an eel. At one moment he would appear anti-American and at another almost obsequious towards Washington; in one state he would distribute land to the peasants, in another he would repress them with a heavy hand; in one city he would support the workers against the bosses, and in another use troops to break strikes. Always a dedicated anticlerical, he continued to persecute the Catholic Church and, partly to try to break its grip on hearts and minds, devoted great resources to education. He brought back the exiled Jose Vasconcelos as rector of the National University, and encouraged ioo flowers to bloom: it was during the Obregon presidency that the great geniuses of the Mexican realist movement in painting - Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros - first made their mark. However, towards opposition, no matter how inchoate, Obregon was ruthless. Benjamin Hill started forming an opposition party at the end of 1920 and, in
his capacity as minister of war, prepared to prosecute Rodolfo Herrero for the murder of Carranza. This did not please Obregon; on 14 December Hill mysteriously died, allegedly after food-poisoning at a banquet.
Villa was well aware that Obregon was a man you crossed at your peril and was effusively affable, and even sycophantic, in the letters and cables he sent him. In 1922 Villa's old enemy Murguia raised the standard of revolt against Obregon and crossed the Rio Grande from the USA with thirty men, hoping to do what Villa had done in 1913. He failed hopelessly and sought refuge at Canutillo. Villa knew where he was and could easily have killed or betrayed him but, perhaps in a rare mood of empathy, did not do so. Murguia was betrayed by someone else without Villa's knowledge or consent, tried and executed. Obregon, who imagined Villa had delivered up this enemy, started to warm to him and began writing cordial letters to Canutillo; he made a point of answering in person every missive that came from an increasingly sophisticated Villa, who now read voraciously and liked to display the results of his autodidacticism. Such was their eventual entente that Obregon bought Canutillo outright and presented Villa with the deeds; between 1921 and 1923 he also paid him an additional sum of US$ioo,ooo for `improvements' or as `compensation'.
As he got older, Villa more and more revealed himself as a man of the Right. There was a widespread perception, both in Mexico and the USA, that Villa was now simply another big hacendado, that he was not interested in agrarian reform but only in distributing land to his soldiers. All the evidence suggests that this perception was correct. Detesting Bolshevism, with which minister of the interior Calles was known to be in sympathy, by 1922 political conservatives more and more identified Villa as `their' man. His own utterances allowed little doubt in the matter: `The leaders of Bolshevism ... in Mexico and outside it advocate an equality of classes that cannot be attained. Equality does not exist and cannot exist. It is a lie that we can all be equal ... For me society is a big stair with some people at its lower end, some people in the middle, some rising and some very high ... it is a stair clearly determined by nature. One cannot proceed against nature. What would happen to the world if all of us were generals or capitalists, or all of us were poor? There must be people of all kinds. The world, my friend, is like a big store where there are owners, employees, consumers, and manufacturers ... I would never fight for the equality of the social classes.'
Nevertheless there were sometimes flashes of the old, more radical, Villa. In 1922 he wrote to Obregon asking him to back the peasants of the agricultural colony of Bosque de Aldama against Ignacio Enriquez, the state governor of Chihuahua. Enriquez, whose loathing of Villa was so over-the-top that Obregon discounted his ritual denunciations of his bete noire, was in league with the Terrazas family and attempted to put into operation a scam whereby an American proxy would reacquire the confiscated lands for them, thus avoiding all taxes on the expropriated territories.
In March Villa wrote to Obregon, exposing the scandal and expressing his strong opposition to the bogus surrogate sale, and alleging that it was part of a conspiracy by his three greatest enemies: the Terrazas, Enriquez and the gringos. Obregon decreed the distribution of the Terrazas lands and halted the sale to the American proxy. Faced with an outcry about `Bolshevism' in the American press, Obregon agreed to compensation: the American proxy, A. J. McQuatters received one million dollars while the Terrazas got US$13 million. The affair seemed to have ended well, but in fact it denoted a major failure of communication between Obregon and Villa. Obregon construed Villa's letter as an implied threat that he would rebel if the sale went ahead; Villa, unaware that Obregon was also under intense pressure from his right-hand man Calles not to approve the sale, misread Obregon's `capitulation', overrated his own influence and became arrogant and overconfident.
Yet for his first two years in Canutillo Villa was less concerned with matters of high politics and more with his tangled private life. Probably of most concern to him was his brother Hipolito who, if not quite the headache Eufemio Zapata had been to Emiliano, was certainly a sibling he could well have done without. For most of the guerrilla war period of 1916-20 Villa saw nothing of Hipolito. In 1916-17 he was based in Havana, ostensibly as Villa's agent, but in reality an impotent spendthrift under constant surveillance by US secret agents. Some scholars speculate that Villa simply tried to keep his brother out of harm's way, but if that was the intention, it failed. Hipolito was arrested, imprisoned and held for extradition to the USA on charges of blowing up railway tracks on US territory.
From his prison cell Hipolito whinged to Villa that he was only in this mess because he had been about his brother's business. His head was full of chimerical schemes for opening a second front in Yucatan and allying villista forces with the reactionary hacendados who were struggling with Carranza's proconsuls for mastery of the state. Villa ignored all the quixotry but managed to get Hipolito out of jail through the good offices of his friend George Holmes, who then took Hipolito back to his Texas ranch. There he was soon spotted by American agents, who again put him under tight surveillance. Lacking proof of his involvement in Columbus - or anywhere else for that matter - they could not arrest him, but tailed, pestered and harassed him; they even managed to hold him in jail for a short while on a charge of having entered Florida under a false name. Shortly before the deal with Obregon, Hipolito returned to fight beside his brother and was thus given an honoured place in the hierarchy at Canutillo.
Any problem Villa had with his brother was a bagatelle alongside the twisted skein of his relationships with a host of women, some designated as `wives', others more blatantly mistresses and concubines. When he took to the sierras in late 1915, Villa sent Luz Corral and his official family away to safety. Then he promoted a woman named Soledad Seanez as `first wife' and she was queen of the harem until 1917. Shortly afterwards Villa began the most passionate relationship of his life, with a pretty young middle-class Chihuahuan girl named Austreberta Renteria. She was initially noticed, then kidnapped, by `earcutter' Bandelio Uribe, who knew Villa's taste in women and guessed the patron would be delighted with her. Uribe proved a good judge. Villa was smitten with coup de foudre and, when a terrified Austreberta would not submit to his far from subtle overtures, simply raped her. He then went through another of his bogus marriage ceremonies in front of a tame judge and kept her a prisoner in a safe house in Ciudad Juarez.
When the villistas evacuated Juarez. Austreberta's father fled with her to sanctuary in the USA, abandoning his bourgeois life in Chihuahua to do menial work in America - anything so long as the ogre could no longer lay hands on his daughter. However, at some point Austreberta decided that she was, after all, in love with Villa and slipped away from her father's protection to rejoin the Centaur. By this time Villa was at Canutillo, with Luz Corral and Soledad Seanez in an uneasy menage. The unexpected arrival of Austreberta put a new wheel on Villa's polygamous wagon. He solved the impossibility of entertaining a female troika by humiliating Luz Corral and sending her away in disgrace. Not even permitted to show her face on the neighbouring haciendas, Luz survived for a while on handouts from Hipolito.
Austreberta proved amenable to the bizarre creche-like kindergarten Villa had assembled at Canutillo. Always passionately fond of children, Villa had at last achieved his ambition of collecting his various offspring and siting them all on a single hacienda. At Canutillo were three sons (Agustin, Octavio and Samuel) and four daughters (Micaela, Celia, Sara and Juana Maria), all allegedly born to different women. Additionally Austreberta bore him a further two sons, Francisco and Hipolito (the latter born after Villa's death). Although Austreberta was the undisputed queen of Canutillo, and addressed with great tenderness by Villa as `Betita', eyewitnesses always said she looked like an unhappy woman. Perhaps she was made miserable by the continued presence of the other `wife' Soledad Seanez and Villa's chief mistress, Manuela Casas, but she toed Villa's line. His rules were clear: he would not tolerate rows between women in his presence, and the females in his harem w
ere expected not to ask questions or otherwise make trouble.
Villa could command his women, but from his brother and his sister Martina he received the usual familiar contempt meted out by all siblings. On one occasion there was a huge family row with Villa on one side and Hipolito and Martina on the other. Villa accused Hipolito of meddling in business that did not concern him. Perhaps this was because Hipolito had helped Luz Corral and had advised her to write to Obregon; more likely it was simply the fall-out from one of Hipolito's shady financial deals. Villa feared that Hipolito was meddling in politics in a way that might end by bringing Obregon's wrath down on Canutillo, on the assumption that Hipolito acted on Villa's orders. In 1922 Villa actually wrote to Obregon, asking him not to make any more loans or entrust any more funds to the useless Hipolito. Presumably by this time nothing about the happenings at Canutillo surprised Obregon. Luz Corral also wrote to him, reminding him of the favour she had done him in 1914 when Villa had wanted to execute him. After mulling over her request for financial aid for a couple of months, Obregon paid her a pension.
Obregon soon had more worrying things to concern him than Luz Corral's request for handouts. There would be a new president in 1924 and Obregon was already concerned about the succession. The main contenders, Calles and de la Huerta, represented the interests of Left and Right respectively. Obregon favoured Calles and allegedly said, when he, Calles and de la Huerta were driving together in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, that since de la Huerta was a talented musician, Calles should have the succession. `You and I, Plutarco,' he said in his wellknown mock-buffoonish manner, `cannot leave politics because we would die of hunger; on the other hand Adolfo knows how to sing and give classes in voice and music.'
