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Will the Real Pancho Villa Please Stand Up?
I am sure there is not a reader who has not heard of Francisco Villa, also known as Pancho Villa. I recall as a child growing up in Texas of learning that he was a bad bandito. However, there are plenty of Mexicans who came to know him as México’s Robin Hood; still others put him in the category of one of México’s great patriots.
I had not really thought much about this man until a recent trip to Durango on that beautifully designed highway that is having a great positive impact on both Mazatlán and Durango. Of the various things I visited on my trip nothing was more interesting to me than the Museo Franciso Villa. A young man, whose English was very good, led Linda and I through each room of the museum telling us of the life and times of Francisco Villa.
After returning to Mazatlán, I was lucky to run across over a dozen newspaper articles written between 1913 and 1922, concurrently with the events that created this legend. Thanks to Google and these newspaper articles, my interest has grown even more. So much so that I would like to share with you the legends of Pancho Villa - the Robin Hood, the Mexican Napoleon, the ruthless killer, and the only foreigner who has attacked the mainland of the United States since the war of 1812 and actually gotten away with it.
When he was born at the Hacienda Rancho La Coyotada in San Juan del Rio, Durango, in 1878, no one could have suspected that he would ever be anything more than a lowly hacienda hand. He was the son of sharecroppers, Augustine Arango and Micaela Arambula, who named him Doroteo Arango.
When he was a small boy his family moved from Durango to Chihuahua, living in the state capital. At the age of twelve Doroteo’s dad died, leaving him as head of the family with his mother, two younger brothers and two younger sisters to support. According to the El Paso Times, when he was almost 18 a federal army captain took a fancy to Doroteo’s younger sister and attempted to assault her. As the newspaper said, “Being of the so-called lower class, there was no redress by law for the outraged family.”
Young, fearless, and impetuous, her older brother took the law into his own hands. It is said he met the captain one afternoon near the governor’s palace and shot him dead. That single bullet changed him into an outlaw. He fled the capital and headed for the mountain country to the west where he stood a better chance of evading the “rurales” who would be becoming after him. The “rurales,” the Texas Rangers of México, were sent after him time and again, but always returned empty handed and usually bringing back several horses with empty saddles.
CHAPTER 5
Pro-Choice vs. No-Choice
They say the two things you should never discuss are religion and politics. I sometimes think abortion should be added to that list, based upon the heated disputes I have seen and heard over the years. But I am not here as an advocate of “pro-life” or “pro-choice.” As I have said in the past, if we call México our home for either months out of the year or all year long, I believe we have an obligation to know as much as reasonably possible about the culture of and the state of affairs in our second home. The subject of abortion should be no exception.
Some women’s desire to terminate a given pregnancy has been around a long time. The first recorded mention of specific herbs to cause a miscarriage was in 1500 BC. By the Middle Ages there were a variety of herbs and concoctions used to terminate a pregnancy.
In the early history of abortion, it seems that society accepted that there is a time period before which it was acceptable to terminate a pregnancy. This time frame fell between 40 days to 3 months, depending on the culture.
The ancient Greeks were the first to raise the moral issue of abortion. The well-known Greek philosopher Aristotle stated that if the fetus has not moved, a “human” has not been killed, since the soul is what animates the fetus. During the Roman Empire the legal regulation of abortion, to the extent it existed, was designed primarily to protect the rights of fathers rather than rights of embryos, e.g., the right of the fathers to produce an heir.
By the mid-2nd century, however, Christians separated themselves from the pagan Romans and proclaimed that the theological and legal issues with abortion had nothing to do with the father's rights, but with God's view of the sanctity of life itself.
Jump forward to 1931 and in that year, México amended its federal penal code to waive all criminal penalties for abortion after rape where the pregnant woman's life would be endangered by a continued pregnancy. It is important to note that the law did not make an abortion following rape legal, but waived the criminal penalties that would otherwise follow.
CHAPTER 20
The Jesuits in México
It’s hard to read about the history of México without at least one or two priests being included in the story. Too frequently they are present only to enhance the story’s theme or substantiate some allegation. But they really deserve more coverage than generally given. After all, when Hernán Cortés landed on what is now the shores of México he was following a letter of instruction that said, “The first aim of your expedition is to serve God and spread the Christian faith.”
Although the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines played a significant role in spreading the word, I would like to talk about the Jesuits and the role they played in México. As a little bit of history, it was St. Ignatius of Loyola and a small band of followers at the University of Paris who founded the Society of Jesus in an effort to reform the Catholic Church in 1534.
Rather than break off as a separate church, the Jesuits became a distinct order of priests in 1534 and received commendation from Pope Paul III in 1537. Sometimes called “God’s Marines” or “The Company,” Jesuit priests take vows of poverty and chastity, and pledge obedience to the pope.
The first Jesuit priest arrived in México in 1572, long preceded by the Franciscans in 1524, the Dominicans in 1526 and the Augustines in 1533. Although the Jesuit order was not formed until after their brethren had landed in New Spain, what set them apart was their calling to teach. When Ignatius founded the order, he sent his priests throughout Catholic Europe to start schools, colleges and seminaries. By Ignatius’s death in 1556, the Jesuits had already founded 74 colleges on three continents.
So, it was not strange that the Jesuits in New Spain put their emphasis on teaching. However, instead of teaching the indigenous, as did the Franciscans, the highly educated Jesuits were adept at attracting the patronage of elite families whose sons they educated in rigorous newly founded Jesuit colegios (colleges), including Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo, Colegio de San Ildefonso, and the Colegio de San Francisco Javier, Tepozotlán. Those same elite families hoped that a son with a vocation to the priesthood would be accepted as a Jesuit.
CHAPTER 28
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