The name Pancho Villa still resonates today as one of the most emblematic in Latin American history. A feared revolutionary, bold strategist, and symbol of popular resistance, this man—born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula in San Juan del Río, in the state of Durango, on June 5, 1878—turned the political turmoil of early 20th-century Mexico into the stage for his most daring actions. His life, violently cut short in July 1923, remains a subject of fascination and debate among historians and history enthusiasts.
Doroteo’s childhood was marked by poverty and hard labor in the countryside. Until the age of sixteen, his life revolved around rural work, with no hint of the extraordinary destiny that awaited him. Everything changed when he was accused of killing a landowner who had assaulted his sister. To escape judicial persecution, he enlisted in the Mexican army, beginning a journey that would take him from the fields of Durango to the pages of American newspapers.
At the turn of the 20th century, Mexico lived under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, a regime that concentrated power and wealth in the hands of a few while the vast majority of the population remained marginalized. In 1910, when Francisco Madero began organizing resistance, Pancho Villa— the name he had adopted as his identity—did not hesitate to join the cause. As a garrison leader, he played a decisive role in fighting the dictatorial government, becoming an indispensable figure for Díaz’s opponents.
Victory, however, did not bring stability. In 1911, Villa was exiled, and Madero took power, but the political landscape remained fragile. General Victoriano Huerta, who in 1912 sentenced Villa to death for insubordination, eventually overthrew and replaced Madero himself. With the death of his ally and the establishment of a new dictatorship, Pancho Villa returned to Mexico determined to fight the new regime. He allied with Venustiano Carranza, Álvaro Obregón, and Emiliano Zapata in a coalition that would wage one of the most intense civil wars in the continent’s history.
At the head of a cavalry of over forty thousand men—known as the División del Norte—Villa became the foremost military leader of the resistance. His command was crucial in overthrowing Huerta, but peace proved fleeting once again. After falling out with Carranza, who assumed power, Villa resumed his armed struggle and took control of northern Mexico with an autonomy that defied any central authority.
The battles of Celaya and Agua Prieta, both in 1915, marked the most painful turning point in Villa’s military career. At Celaya, Álvaro Obregón’s forces, equipped with modern machine guns, inflicted devastating losses on Villa’s followers. Estimates suggest over fourteen thousand villistas were killed or wounded, with some historians putting the number as high as thirty thousand. Shortly after, as Villa approached Agua Prieta at night with his remaining men, he fell into an ambush set with flares that exposed his troops to enemy fire without cover. These two setbacks were partly possible because the United States recognized Carranza’s government and supplied him with modern weapons and access to American railroads. For the villistas, their northern neighbors became declared enemies.
Villa’s response was swift. In retaliation for U.S. support of Carranza, he ordered an ambush on a group of seventeen Texan engineers traveling by train toward Santa Isabel in Chihuahua. The incident shocked American public opinion, but President Woodrow Wilson chose not to act immediately. Villa justified the attack as a reaction to the damage caused by American machine guns against Mexicans and as a way to expose Carranza’s alleged betrayal—claiming he had sold Mexico to foreign interests.
The climax of this escalating tension came in the early hours of March 9, 1916, when Villa personally led an attack on the small town of Columbus, New Mexico, where the cavalry fort Camp Furlong was located. Around five hundred mounted men took the fort by surprise, looted the town, and set it ablaze, remaining for five hours before retreating. The Americans responded forcefully: the bodies of seventy to seventy-five Mexicans killed in the attack were burned, and newspaper headlines sensationalized the event. Villa had become the first foreign enemy to invade U.S. territory in modern American history.
Washington’s response was immediate. President Wilson ordered General John Pershing, a veteran of the 1898 wars and Philippine counterinsurgency, to organize a punitive expedition to capture Villa. Pershing assembled a force of nearly five thousand men and advanced about 480 kilometers into Chihuahua, bringing airplanes, trucks, and combat vehicles in one of the largest U.S. military operations since the end of the Spanish-American War. Among the soldiers involved was the future General George Patton, who distinguished himself in this campaign by killing two Mexican fighters, including one of Villa’s bodyguards. Still, Pancho was never captured.
After Carranza’s overthrow, Villa laid down his arms and retired to a ranch in the Mexican countryside. He married several times throughout his life, fathering children with eight women. His end, however, was as violent as much of his existence: on July 20, 1923, he was assassinated in an ambush in Parral, Chihuahua. His death closed the chapter on a man who had defied governments, invaded a powerful nation, and commanded an army of tens of thousands—leaving behind the indelible image of a caudillo who never surrendered.