twenty-two
tierra blanca
Victory brought Pancho Villa a multitude of new and different complications, but most of all, it left him with very little time to enjoy the triumph and even still less time to rest. Not even a week had passed since the capture of Juárez when a rancher arrived in town to inform him of the advance of a large column of Federales and Colorados raised from Chihuahua. As usual, the information was more smoke than fire and didn’t fit with Toribio Ortega’s November 13 report that he had clashed with a group of Federales and turned them back. Those were the scouts that had been sent in pursuit of Villa after the fiasco in Chihuahua and did not constitute a serious force. All this spoke to the growing rumors and the anticipated federal offensive.
Gen. Mercado, after the euphoria that overran the capital following his victory in Chihuahua, had to swallow his words in the wake of Villa’s master stroke in Juárez. After a conference with Orozco and José Inés Salazar (both of whom believed he was inept), the general thought that the Colorados’ chiefs estimated their troops had little inclination to fight (“generals Salazar, Mancilla, Caraveo, Orpinel, and Rojas stated that it was impossible to make their troops fight”); nonetheless, Gen. Mercado pressured them into quickly raising a column of some 5,000 men, including a powerful artillery force, and sent them towards Ciudad Juárez.
Gildardo Magaña was with Villa when some El Paso residents asked him not to confront the Federales in Juárez. Villa wasn’t inclined to play defense and he wasn’t going to now. He wasn’t going to be trapped like a rat. Villa called the Associated Press correspondent in El Paso and informed him that he didn’t believe in cowering behind walls and that no stray bullets would fly into US territory as they had on other occasions.
But this wasn’t the real problem; instead, Villa had to deal with an internal crisis. Maclovio Herrera had handed over command of his troops to his brother Luis, sent the money in the brigade’s safe to Villa, and angrily set off to El Paso. He forwarded Villa a letter in which he accused Juan N. Medina of pressuring him, saying “he was imposing restrictions” and demanding papers and receipts, and that Medina held ill will towards him. Villa commissioned Eugenio Aguirre Benavides, the most diplomatic of his colonels, to try to win him back. Medina, who accompanied him, praised Maclovio to the hills. Everything ended with sobs and embraces, very much in the Villa style, and Maclovio returned.
Pancho then sent Fierro ahead to “give me a one-day advantage.” Fierro brought along Martín López and a crane to lift up the tracks outside of Candelaria. Before doing so, he set ten railway cars on fire and sent them off towards the enemy, who had been very close to overtaking them.
Despite the growing internal tension, the appearance of outward tranquility remained undisturbed. On November 20 in Juárez, the Villistas celebrated the anniversary of the Maderista uprising. Two intellectuals who had recently joined the rebels spoke as orators: a Sonoran journalist named Manuel Bauche Alcalde and a Zacatecan medical doctor named Ramón Puente, both of whom would later go on to write biographies of Villa. Lázaro de la Garza was also in Juárez at the time, alongside an exotic German doctor named Rachsbaum, incorporated into the brigade as chief of surgery, taking over for the fallen Navarro. That night, a celebratory dance took place in the Juárez Customs House featuring Helen Marinde, an opera singer married to Bauche. Manuel Bauche Alcalde was a student in the military college and a journalist. After the coup against Madero, he joined the resistance, ending up in Sonora and then the United States where he was detained for purchasing arms in violation of neutrality laws. He returned to Mexico with Villa, accompanied by his brother Joaquín, who joined the army. Villa’s secretary, Pérez Rul, remembered Bauche’s public rhetoric bordering on obsequiousness: “In the presence of the people’s leader, the immortal Francisco Villa, the ladies must rise to their feet and the men must come to their senses and stand in reverence.” Soon after, Villa put him in charge of starting a newspaper, thus was born Vida Nueva (New Life).
On December 21, Villa declared to the El Paso Herald: “The story that I am thinking of evacuating Ciudad Juárez is absolutely false. When I do leave, it will only be because bullets have driven me out, and that is very unlikely.”
During the night, he ordered the troops to be ready for review at sunrise by the station and convened a meeting of the commanders. The reports all agreed: they were very low on ammunition; someone noted that some soldiers had only six cartridges in their belts. More than two thousand volunteers had put themselves forward, but there were no arms to give them. Adrián Aguirre telegraphed Madero’s father in New York and obtained a loan for $10,000 which he handed over to Juan N. Medina. And just in case, they agreed on a meeting spot in the mountains should they lose the coming battle.
Villa charged Medina with guarding Juárez with just fifty soldiers (he couldn’t waste any more, although the El Paso Times would raise the figure to five hundred soldiers) which was an enormous task accompanied by a set of firm recommendations: guard the supplies, obtain munitions, and avoid an international incident no matter the reason. He left Rueda Quijano in charge of the Customs House and the money, and he tasked Medina with securing aid: pasture, water, arms, and ammunition. He did not want to lose Juárez, the first city of the Maderista Revolution, under any circumstances.
At the time, a legal blockade was in place against the import of arms or munitions into Mexico for either of the belligerent parties. Customs agents in El Paso reported a constant flow of small-scale cartridge-smuggling that resulted in some arrests. They say that Villa had succeeded in purchasing six hundred thousand rounds, but his buyers had been detained and the ammunition was impounded by gringo customs. All this, despite the supposed good will of US Customs chief Zachary Cobb who later practically opened the border for Gen. Medina.
Ivor Thord-Gray, an Anglo-Swiss adventurer and mercenary who came to join the rebellion against Huerta by way of China, offered his first impression of Villa: “He was hairy and untidy, vigorous, and stocky with a violent look; he had a large head that was somewhat round, and his face looked a little puffy. His lips were large and strong but expressive. His upper lip was covered by a thick mustache. His eyes were bloodshot as if he hadn’t had much sleep. A hat worn back over his head covered his hair. He wore smooth leather polainas that reached down to his knees.” What Thord-Gray called “polainas” were the famous mitazas or chaparreras (half-chaps) that would be part of the Villa’s distinctive attire for many years, which served to protect his legs from the thorns and needles of Acacia and Mesquite. Ignacio Muñoz described them as “having big, nickel-plated buckles to fasten them to his legs and protect them against chaparral thorns.”
When Thord-Gray first tried to join up, Villa said something about a “gringo spy” and told him to go to hell. However, he was later redeemed when Villa’s men were trying to repair a cannon and Thord-Gray, who knew something about artillery, discovered that the firing pin needles were broken. It was a 70mm Mondragón that they got working. And although the Swiss mercenary insisted that artillery was not his specialty and that he aimed to join the cavalry, Villa just smiled: we have plenty of cavalry, but the cannons aren’t working.
Thord-Gray subsequently recalled: “long before sunup, he quietly woke up the troops [. . .]. Nobody seemed to know what was happening.” Fed, ready to march, and with no women along, at four o’clock in the morning on November 22, the brigades arrived at the designated time in front of the station. Supposedly, they had been assembled for a military review, but “it was definitely not a review. We were going to give orders.” By 7 a.m. the troops were in formation and by 10 a.m. they started to board southbound trains. One last war council. Villa was sick that morning and delayed his departure for the front while waiting for a doctor.
On the opposing side, Gen. Mercado had assembled his column in stages. First, he sent J. I. Salazar and his Colorados towards the north, then he mobilized an infantry column under the command of Gen. José Luis Mancilla. In the end, Pascual Orozco didn’t want to join the march. In all, the Federales numbered some 5,500 men (some sources say 5,250) with eight cannons (which the El Paso Times would inflate to a total of forty) and ten machine guns. They seized the town of Villa Ahumada, and the advance guard soon took a small train station called Tierra Blanca—a region in which creosote bushes grew in salty soil which lent the landscape a whitish color. The general liked the location because it dominated the Juárez valley and would force a face-to-face confrontation. They say that Villa’s supporters could see the last moments of the Federales’ advance from the heights in El Paso.
Who had chosen the terrain? Salazar or Villa? In fact, Villa had mentioned to Dozal during the start of the Chihuahua campaign that he liked the area for a battle. What is clear is that Villa had announced to the press one day prior that he would fight in the “dunes [. . .] to the south of Juárez.” Villa occupied the firm ground, forcing the Federales to advance across unfavorable terrain, where their feet sank into the sand.
Villa’s forces totaled some 6,200 men, slightly more than the enemy. The commanders had not changed much since Chihuahua: José Rodríguez (Morelos brigade), Rosalío Hernández (Camargo Faithful), Toribio Ortega (Villa brigade), Porfirio Ornelas, second-in-command to Toribio (González Ortega brigade), Maclovio Herrera (Juárez brigade), Aguirre Benavides (Zaragoza brigade), and Martiniano Servín’s artillery.
Villa ordered his men to create an eighteen-kilometer front with the railway tracks serving as an axis. It stretched from a point across from Valverde, Texas all the way to the water tanks in Bauche, some thirty kilometers to the south of Ciudad Juárez. To the right of the tracks, there was a small rocky area with a fence where Maclovio Herrera and Eugenio Aguirre Benavides situated themselves while José Rodríguez and the Camargo Faithful positioned themselves to the left. Servín and the cannons held the center, supported by the Villa and González Ortega brigades. The reserve consisted of little more than the general staff including Talamantes and Madinabeytia—who was no longer known as el Muerto (the Dead One) after having survived two wounds, but rather el Japonés (the Japanese). This left Thord-Gray confused when he wrote that “surprisingly, he left no reserves.” The pre-battle orders were very simple: cut the railway lines in front of the first enemy train and behind the last one. Once their engines were dead, finish them off.
There are a series of photographs taken before the Battle of Tierra Blanca shot by Otis Aultman on location. Strangely, the photos record no signs of frenetic preparations, but rather an extraordinary calm. Pancho Villa had his picture taken with a photographer, he accepted interviews with American reporters, and he conversed with his troops. In some photos he is wrapped in a sarape up to his eyebrows as it must have been very cold.
At six in the evening, they took up their positions and, by sunset on November 22, they were set for the fight. Villa rallied his generals. He made them promise they would make the ultimate sacrifice. As usually occurred in such circumstances, some recounted that they heard Pancho say, “Glory awaits us on the battlefield.” Others, more closely connected to reality, remembered him saying, “If we win here, they won’t stop us until we get to the capital.” Then Villa returned to Juárez to check on the supplies and their distribution, returning to the front at night in a train filled with provisions. He brought fifty-seven thousand cartridges with him, requisitioned from Federales who were abandoning their responsibilities and taking flight. A photo caption in the El Paso Times noted that the Villista cavalry was still in the process of leaving the city. The trains kept moving all night long. And rumors persisted that Villa was giving up Juárez to hand it over to the Federales.
During the early hours of the night, the Villista artillery managed to position itself less than two thousand meters from the Federale cannons thanks to cover provided by some sand dunes. Villa considered launching a nighttime assault, to which he was partial because, among other things, enlisted Federale soldiers deserted amidst the chaos. However, at 10 p.m., Villa’s men heard cavalry movements which they believed were moving against them, although they were really only taking up positions. Without knowing what was happening, Villa suspended the attack and ordered only sporadic volleys so as to not waste much ammunition, but to not let the Federales sleep.
On November 23, Villa’s explosives units reported that eleven trains were advancing slowly along the axis of the tracks with infantry and cavalry screens covering their movements. There were no hostilities over the course of the day. Villa recounted, “We saw the enemy’s trains during the afternoon from a distance of four kilometers. Then night fell.” The trains’ lanterns lit up Villa’s lines. Sporadic shooting continued the whole night long. Victorio de Anda, a Villista combatant, remembered that it was very cold, and that Villa went around passing out blankets. “That was as far as we went. Let them come to us. No smoking because we were very close. At dawn, the infantry was about one hundred meters away.”
It wasn’t even five o’clock in the morning of November 24 when the best of the Huertista cavalry, Salazar’s Colorados, moved quickly and attacked Villa’s right wing with great force at the point where Maclovio Herrera was in command. It looked for some moments that his position was at risk as the fighting spread all along the front. José Rodríguez, positioned on Villa’s left wing, was forced to cede ground. However, the Federales encountered problems unloading their artillery from the trains because they became stuck in the sand. Villa ordered a thrust from his center by a line of riflemen commanded by José San Ramón. Villa was walking his horse close by when a grenade fell near him and the animal spooked, “Go for them!” Villa shouted.
The Federales’ intentions were clear: flank Villa’s forces with cavalry and finish them off in the center. The enemy cavalry commanded by Landa, effecting a long arc, tried to turn the left flank over and over until finally forcing Rosalío Hernández and José Rodríguez to retreat. They wanted to get to Bauche’s water tanks but failed and were dispersed by a counterattack. By about eleven in the morning, attacks by the Federales and Colorados had been stopped.
Thord-Gray asserted that Villa “gave the impression of not knowing how to manage his different units.” He seemed to be stuck and lost the initiative. After their attempt to flank the Villistas with their cavalry, the Federales bombarded their right wing to soften them up and then sent the infantry forward, covered by a small hill and machine gun fire. Villa’s right wing held, but the machine guns took a toll. Reinforcements were sent to the center. Villa gave Servín the order to fire. Thord-Gray reported that his two cannons caused no casualties among the Federales, however, they did demonstrate that they were exposed which was enough to stop them; they had not believed that Villa had artillery. The Federales responded with their own artillery, causing many casualties and forcing the Villistas to withdraw. Thord-Gray thought that the Federale general was an idiot or was excessively cautious. They encircled both flanks and then Villa counterattacked in the center. Realizing that they had opened up a hole, Villa sent Porfirio Talamantes and some riders towards the enemy’s trains. Porfirio suffered a serious wound in fighting and died a week later at an improvised hospital in the Tívoli theater in Juárez. Villa simulated a retreat to try to force the Federales out from their protected positions in the dunes, but they didn’t fall for it and continued pounding them with artillery. The Colorados organized another attack in the center, but Villa personally intervened and broke it apart, cutting the enemy in half, and Rosalío’s counterattack left Salazar’s cavalry in very bad shape.
The lack of ammunition put the Villistas at great risk and, as night fell on November 24, many brigades had neither food nor water and had not slept for three days.
Villa sent an initial report to Medina, relating the shortages facing his troops and the difficulty of the situation. Medina succeeded in sending food, water, and munitions which he had been purchasing and smuggling across the border. Several days later, one newspaper reported that all the ammunition from El Paso’s munition’s workshops was gone, having been sold off as contraband. Along with the supplies, Villa’s sole cavalry reserves departed Juárez. Some 280 men headed for the front lines under the command of Villa’s compadre Manuel Ochoa, one of his original supporters, who had just arrived in Juárez after operating in the Ojinaga region without a moment’s rest. These were not the only bits of good news. During the night, Rodolfo Fierro and some dynamiters had blown up the tracks behind the Federales’ backs. The damage was more psychological than material as they were quickly repaired.
The confrontation, which seemed to be lasting forever, continued into November 25. At eight in the morning, Villa personally fought alongside the Camargo Faithful and, under the protection of the cavalry, withdrew part of his infantry “that was a little overwhelmed by the Federales.” At ten in the morning, a train left Juárez carrying water. The El Paso Times came out with no less than nine editions that day which were read on both sides of the border. Fighting grew all along the line. A new assault led by Flores Alotorre’s Colorados on the left was met by José Rodríguez unloading on them. Rodríguez suffered a machine gun wound to the knee. Throughout the day, Villa’s foreign legion also suffered casualties with both Tracy Richardson and Capt. Emil Holmdahl injured, and Capt. Oscar Creighton, “The Dynamite Devil,” destroyer of trains and bridges, killed.
Around 9:40 in the morning, Salazar sent a message to Gen. Mercado reporting that the Villistas were falling back and that they had advanced six kilometers towards Juárez. It seemed that the Division of the North was going to be defeated. Maclovio Herrera and his brigade, who had withstood a real beating, had to take cover behind piles of rocks because it was impossible to dig trenches.
Sargent Domitilo recalled: “Ortega, in the middle of a hail of bullets, ordered us to go and rescue the Morelos and Zaragoza brigades that were taking cover behind some sand dunes, surrounded by those monkeys. He moved straight ahead and soon we were massacring them, and they took off running,” but the pressure on Herrera’s troops continued.
Jeffrey Pitcher, who studied the Villista cavalry from a strictly military point of view, pointed out how surprising the decision Villa took at this point was, given that his cavalry had “played a limited role until the third day of the fighting.” Villa ordered “each soldier to get a horse.” It took a long time to organize, but it was the only thing he could do given the lack of ammunition. Ortega and Ávila, on horseback, spread the word up and down the line. The signal would be two cannon shots, one right after the other.
Maclovio arrived in time to see Villa when everything was set and told him they would get the Colorados by the scruff of the neck. Villa replied that they already had, and Herrera left smiling. (Years later, when the two split with each other, Herrera remarked that Villa was “a coward who left him lying in Tierra Blanca” and that he had had to go after him and force him to return to battle.)
At 3:30 p.m. (2 p.m. according to other sources), Servín gave the cannon signal. Thord-Gray confirmed that they came out of nowhere, 300 men on horseback led by “a splendid youth.” All the brigades assigned to the assault followed. Villa, in command of two brigades from his guard, led the charge from the front with the entire general staff, followed by thousands of riders.
At least five hundred meters separated the lines, and the charge was not intended to wear down the infantry with a series of approaches. Rather, Villa created a whirlwind, it was all or nothing. The Villista brigades charged, along the way shouting, more often than the customary ¡Viva Villa! but also odd cries such as “Stop! Don’t be cowards!” or “Release the brakes!” Perhaps there were a large number of railway workers among the ranks.
Federale Capt. Gaspar Ruiz stated, “all of a sudden, the Villista cavalry was on top of our infantry.” The charge was so brutal that “some ran away, and others buried themselves in the sand to hide; they were then found and killed with pistol shots.”
Aguirre and Maclovio’s forces, taking cover among the rocks, determined the battle’s outcome, raking the Federales with machine gun and rifle fire from the right flank.
This broke the enemy lines apart and the Federales fled towards their trains. Gen. Mercado and Marcelo Caraveo, who arrived too late for the battle (owing to the lack of water and fuel for their trains) attributed the defeat to Orozco’s brigade and Salazar’s cavalry spreading panic: “they turned around and set off a disorganized retreat.” Mercado wrote in his report that the enemy was bolstered by “people arriving from Sonora,” including Gen. Ángeles and “filibusters from the United States.” Notably, he also claimed that Villa’s artillery had a longer range than his own.
Rodolfo Fierro, “audacious to the point of temerity,” (as Luis Aguirre Benavides would say, who had no love lost for him), broke off from the charge at breakneck speed with el Chino, Manuel Banda, and a group of ten men and headed for one of the trains. They reached the train as it was picking up speed and Fierro grabbed the steps on the last car; he jumped from roof to roof along the cars until he got to the first one and pulled the air brake, blocking the tracks. Two trains managed to escape by going backwards down the tracks only to terrifyingly crash into another that had come to reinforce them at the Ranchería station.
As it began to get dark, the Villistas controlled the battlefield. Villa did not order his troops to pursue the enemy because the horses had not had anything to drink or eat in several days.
The ground was littered with cadavers. The raw numbers described the battle’s brutality and bitterness. Of the 11,000 men that clashed during those three days, more than 2,000 lay dead or wounded. The Federales had suffered 1,000 dead and 600 wounded, they lost 7 cannons and more than 1,500 rifles, 5 train engines with their wagons, 350 horses, 7 machine guns, and more than 400,000 cartridges as well as a large number of artillery shells. The Villista casualties were also significant with 300 dead and 200 wounded; however, they were very small compared to the Federales.
More than 700 prisoners were left behind. The order came immediately: shoot the Colorados and the Federale officers. Villa pardoned two of the latter, one because his father was fighting in the Division of the North and the other because he convinced him he had been forced to join the army.
Sgt. Domitilo wrote the epilogue: “I spent something like eight days caked in dust because the white earth was like sand, pure sand, and there was no time to bathe.”
On November 25, the news rang out across Ciudad Juárez announcing the victory. On November 26, the Villistas arrived in eight trains carrying their spoils of war. Villa appeared later with the injured José Rodríguez, who was attended to by Dr. Garza Cárdenas in his El Paso home. He also brought along a twelve-year-old “kid who had been found half buried, his shoulder shot through by a bullet.” He was named Pedro Huerta and Villa ended up adopting him (in the Times’ version, Pedro was ten years old and was holding Villa’s horse when a projectile killed the horse and injured the boy.)
Villa celebrated by parading the captured Colorados’ cannons for the population at eleven in the morning surrounded by an avalanche of people, including caravans of curious people from the neighboring villages and Mexicans who crossed over from El Paso. The owner of a store called Ropa Boston, a Señora Stalorof, presented Villa with a silver sword bearing an inscription that read, “For the victor of Tierra Blanca.” The El Paso Herald published a photograph of Villa on the front page, enveloped in a sea of hats with the caption ¡Viva Villa! Pancho informed the press, “I will send my army towards the capital with no delay.”
After organizing the field hospitals, Villa buried Creighton in El Paso, “paying for the funeral out of his own pocket.” Villa never distinguished very clearly between his own accounts and those of the Division of the North, in either direction. On November 27, Villa attended the opening of the city’s racetrack accompanied by all the generals from all his brigades, lending his military band for the occasion. The cry ¡Viva Villa! resounded all around. “He grabbed the railing and watched the jockeys, hypnotized.” The racetrack broke its record for attendance with five thousand people. Pan Zareta, a colt sired by a horse named Hoover and owned by a Texan named Newman, won the Juárez handicap.
Villa assigned Medina to take on the administration of Ciudad Juárez. Confrontations began almost immediately. The Spanish merchants refused to accept the Constitutionalists’ paper script and Villa threatened to expel them from the city. Thousands of dollars’ worth of provisions crossed over from El Paso. The Spanish shopkeepers relented.
However, the superb relationship between Pancho Villa and Medina broke down in the first days of December. Villa would say: “I saw that he was not acting justly by staffing his administration with honest people but with people to his liking, I ordered him to dismiss two of them. As he had $25,000 or $30,000 pesos in loans that he had obtained in the banks, he decided to not follow my orders and to balance his books by retiring to the United States.” In reality, Medina had been smeared by people in Villa’s inner circle who accused him of stealing $14,000 pesos. He crossed over to El Paso to avoid a firing squad. Villa called the El Paso sheriff and, through an interpreter, corroborated the charges, leading to Medina’s detention; however, he was released on December 5 for lack of evidence. On December 12, Medina met with Carranza in Hermosillo and then returned to El Paso once again on December 23 where he would live a very humble life—thus casting doubt on the robbery charges—declaring that he had retired from the struggle. Villa thus lost one of his most efficient and honest collaborators.
Villa filled Medina’s position with another key figure. As he had done in Torreón, he named Eugenio Aguirre Benavides chief of the city’s garrison. Eugenio had to deal with the rougher style of the Villistas. Luz Corral remembered that on one occasion he called to tell her that Martín López was holed up in a cantina with his friends, among them Luz’s brother José Corral. They were picking fights and carrying on. He asked her to please intervene because he didn’t want to start a confrontation between revolutionaries. Martín López, recently discharged from the hospital, had been named sub-commander of the garrison by Villa. Luz came down from El Paso, with her driver, and presented herself at the door of the cantina. She yelled to Martín—who was like a son to the Villas—who exited and came to attention. When she told him to get in the car, he did so without saying a word. Upon getting the news, Villa gave López a sharp reprimand and sent him back to the army. “I don’t like how devoted you are to drinking.”
If Aguirre Benavides was put in charge of public order, Villa—who was short of money to maintain the Division of the North’s operations—put his brother Hipólito (who was accused on November 26 by the Huertista consul of going around El Paso selling stolen goods) in charge of squeezing Ciudad Juárez. Mexico’s most vice-ridden city had to be organized. There were no industries or hacendados from which to demand forced loans or impose war taxes. John Kenneth Turner leveled the accusation that “Ciudad Juárez is the Montecarlo of America, and Hipólito is its king. Every game of cards, every turn of the roulette wheel must give part of the pot to Hipólito.” He noted that he taxed keno games, lotteries, the races, boxing matches, cock fights, and the houses of ill repute. But he was wrong, this had nothing to do with Hipólito’s personal business, rather it stemmed from the Division of the North’s novel and very efficacious financial system. The Villa brigade, for instance, lived off the profits from the casino from the Viejo Tívoli theater, managed by the very same Hipólito and the arrangement included a squad of soldiers charged with keeping order. They say that Rodolfo Fierro showed up one day inebriated and one of the guard’s corporals confronted him on the spot. The guard told him that under no circumstance could he enter on horseback and slipped a cartridge into his .30-30.
“So, you’re a real tough guy, my little corporal?”
“As tough as you, and I have my orders from my Gen. Villa.”
Upon hearing Villa’s name, Fierro shrank back.
With the city under control and the troops rested, the relationship with El Paso running smoothly, a small stream of money flowing into the Division of the North’s war chest, and the contraband munitions network operating efficiently, Villa took his time before initiating the offensive against Chihuahua. As Col. Carlos Cervantes stated, we stocked up in Juárez because “we needed a lot of things.”
At the end of the month, Villa received word that Chihuahua was being abandoned by Gen. Mercado—the news was published on December 1 in the Morning Times and the Herald. For once, Villa and his army of exhausted men were caught off guard and were left wondering what was happening. Was Gen. Mercado crazy? He still had a large army, Chihuahua was well defended, and it had proven difficult to seize. Could it be a trap? Maybe it wasn’t an evacuation, were they headed for Juárez? Villa took the news in stride and continued with his preparations, ignoring the reports. Finally, on December 3, the announcement was made that the rebel army was heading for Chihuahua. If, instead of advancing on Chihuahua, they had moved towards the southeast and cut off the Chihuahua-Ojinaga route, they would have finished off Orozco and Gen. Mercado.
But Villa seemed confident that everything would go his way. And Chihuahua, the capital, was first on his list.
