Ángeles, Felipe (1869–1919)

Felipe Ángeles (b. 13 June 1869; d. 26 November 1919), Mexican revolutionary. A well-educated career soldier, Ángeles was in France when the revolution broke out in 1910. He returned to Mexico in 1912. Sharing Francisco Madero's liberalism, Ángeles soon became one of the new president's closest confidants within the military. Ángeles was arrested because of this association after the February 1913 coup that brought Victoriano Huerta to power, but he was soon able to join the Constitutionalists in their fight against the Huerta regime. Within this camp he quickly found his most important revolutionary role as Pancho Villa's close advisor and played a large part in the fighting that would eventually lead to Huerta's downfall. In 1914 Ángeles helped bring the Villistas and the Zapatistas together in an alliance against the followers of Venustiano Carranza. But after Villa lost the big battles of Celaya and León de las Aldamas in 1915—often ignoring the tactical advice of Ángeles in the process—Ángeles fled the country in exile to the United States. Always ambitious, he tried to rejoin the revolutionary struggle by leading a small band of soldiers across the border into Chihuahua. In 1919, he was captured there and executed by forces loyal to Carranza.

See alsoMexico, Wars and Revolutions: Mexican Revolution; Villa, Francisco "Pancho."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Federico Cervantes, Felipe Angeles y la revolución de 1913. Biografía (1869–1919), 2d ed. (1943).

Alvaro Matute, ed., Documentos relativos al General Felipe Angeles (1982).

Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution, 2 vols. (1986).

Additional Bibliography

Guilpain Peuliard, Odile. Felipe Ángeles y los destinos de la Revolución Mexicana. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991.

Katz, Friedrich. The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

                                      Samuel Brunk