Villa, Pancho

Villa, Pancho (1878–1923) a Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader. He was given the birth name Doroteo Arango (also called Francisco). Having killed the owner of the estate where he worked because he had assaulted Villa's sister, Villa was forced to flee to the mountains, spending his adolescence as a fugitive. He fought in the revolts against two dictators, Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta, and fled Mexico in 1912, but returned in 1913 and formed a military group of several thousand men, the famous División del Norte. In 1914, joining his force with that of Venustiano Carranza, they won a decisive victory over Huerta and entered Mexico City as the victorious leaders of a revolution. His relationship with Carranza was short-lived, however, and, after being defeated in several battles, Villa and Emiliano Zapata fled to the northern mountains of Mexico, where he engaged in rebellion and guerilla activities. In 1916, after he executed sixteen U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel, President Woodrow Wilson sent Gen. John J. Pershing after Villa. But the willingness of his comrades to help him and his knowledge of the geography of northern Mexico, in addition to the fact that Mexico didn't want Pershing on its soil, made it impossible to catch him. When Carranza's government was toppled in 1920, Villa was pardoned and given a ranch in Chihuahua after he promised to retire from political activities. He was assassinated on his ranch in 1923.