sixty-four
canutillo
The Project
If the initial priorities had to do with survival (repairing roofs and fixing up the stables), if he had to think about getting the hacienda to produce food for those living there, if, at first, it was nothing more than a place to retire and rest after ten years of armed struggle, then, little by little, Canutillo was becoming something else in Pancho’s mind. Canutillo was a social project, a way for him and for thousands of campesinos to live differently from on the old Porfirian haciendas where he had suffered, differently from on the northern capitalist haciendas which he had hated and plundered. But what was this new project?
Villa began the new year by congratulating Obregón via telegraph on January 3, 1921, and the new president replied with his “sincere message expressing my hopes for happiness for the year.” How polite they were. Villa began to cultivate his old enemies because he knew he would need them to develop his Canutillo project.
In February, Elías Torres came to visit for six days accompanied by Gustavo Casasola. For just under a week, the photographer recorded the day-to-day workings of the hacienda and its initial transformations: the creation of a new blacksmith’s shop with a forge for making nails and horseshoes; the cleared fields with Villa plowing the soil with a team of mules to prepare a future harvest of wheat. He also took family photos: Trillo, Elías, and Pancho seated in the shade of a tree; Elías’s with Villa on the roof of a recently-constructed house beside the church; Villa on horseback with his son Agustín; and, finally, a compelling photo of Villa shooting target practice under Elías’ attentive gaze. Over the course of the week, the journalist recorded the distribution of money among the widows of Canutillo. Villa seemed to have totally embraced his new role as hacienda coordinator and boss, far from politics, and very far from the armed struggle. Even his violent outbursts seemed to have disappeared.
An Arab salesman complained to Villa that one of his men had stolen a suit. An investigation was conducted, and the suit was discovered. Villa called for the thief and said to him, “You know what I’m going to do with you?”
“You’re going to shoot me,” the man replied.
Luz Corral explained the outcome, “No, that was the Pancho from before, all he did was scold him.” And she seemed to be right. Around this time, Villa came across Ernesto García, who was the last general in Maclovio Herrera’s Juárez brigade. “Of all the people who switched sides on me, you’re the only one who hasn’t sent greetings.” They spent several hours talking. Villa wept as he recalled old stories. But although he was no longer the Villa from before, neither was he the original Villa. Villa told the clerk in charge of letters and telegraphs that letters which arrived at the hacienda addressed to Doroteo Arango should be returned with the message, “Recipient unknown.”
From his arrival in Canutillo, and during the first months of 1921, Villa had to organize the complicated logistics of reuniting his extremely dispersed family: first came the arrival of Luz Corral with Agustín (Asunción Villaescusa’s son), Micaela (Petra Espinoza’s daughter), and the Cuban (who was called Sara and was Martina’s daughter, Villa’s sister). Then he brought Octavio from Chihuahua (Guadalupe Coss’s son). Later, Juana María arrived in the hands of her grandmother (Juana Torres’s daughter) and then his aunt brought Celia (Librada Peña’s daughter), who had been orphaned since she was very young. Additionally, he had adopted Samuel, Gen. Trinidad Rodríguez’s son, and Francisco Piñón, who was already a teenager and who helped him with his administrative work.
With Luz living in the main house and Soledad nearby, he increased his family’s size still further on March 9, when he delivered an 11-month-old Miguelito (María Arreola’s son) to Soledad Seáñez wrapped in a blanket. He told her, “His mother is dead, you are going to be his mother.” And as if this weren’t enough, Villa sent for Tomás Urbina’s son, Ramón Urbina García, who would live in the same room as Villa’s children.
Over these first few months, Villa lived a double married life with Luz and Soledad. Soledad recalled a trip to the Florido River with Villa, remarking that “Villa was a great swimmer, he swam facedown, on his side, and he dove from the tops of the trees. He was a fish!” On another day in the country they ate nuts and oranges. Soledad Seáñez played classical music, which Villa did not like, asking her instead to play “Las Tres Pelonas” and “La Adelita” and other Mexican songs. He also played an addition game with Seáñez, which she usually won, although Villa was good at addition and subtraction. However, he didn’t know how to multiply and didn’t know his times tables.
As if bigamy would keep him young, on February 21, Pancho brought Austreberta Rentería to the hacienda, with whom he had had a relationship in 1917. Villa presented the girl to Luz and told her to employ her as a seamstress since there was a great need for one, so Luz put her to work sewing with Gen. Ornelas’s children. There is a photo that shows Luz looking older, her hair frazzled, sitting on one of Canutillo’s porches with a group of seamstresses, Austreberta is to her left. They appear to be resting after a day of work and Luz looks calm. The storm has not yet burst.
Austreberta returned to Villa’s life after she had fled to Durango with her parents and then to El Paso to avoid Villa carrying her off with him. After returning to Parral, Austreberta snuck out of her house to reunite with Pancho while her father sent telegrams left and right looking for her.
The reconquest had been arduous. Two letters from Villa to Austreberta have been preserved, written (clearly without the aid of his secretaries) prior to her arrival in Canutillo, “Betita, it’s bin very hard to talk you i luked for you for 2 days and then gave up because it’s not good to be so impertinet god knows why you were not at home i didn’t have the strength because they weren’t hiding that the shame was mine really Betita write back to me at Canutillo and put on the envelope it’s for me and tell me what do and if you don’t love me anymoor my love tell me that alsow good bye my life.” The second letter went, “Betita I’m here in town and I don’t know how to talk to you enchant me my love only you can maak me come byhere ask permission to com with the lady [he was referring to Dolores Uribe] to fix us up good my love. Francisco Villa. Don’t let your family know you talking to me.”
During Holy Week 1921, Villa traveled to Chihuahua, creating a big surprise, some shock, and not a few rumors. He arrived in his car with another car full of guards. He first visited a military colony of Villistas on the outskirts of Chihuahua, in El Pueblito, led by Col. Aranda, and then slept overnight in his house on Décima street, where Hipólito was living. A clerk from the Secretary of War appeared because, according to the Sabinas accords, they owed six months to the decommissioned Villistas, and it was necessary to pay the debt. Among other things, Villa was trying to bring some order to the papers pertaining to the El Fresno hacienda, pay his property taxes, and speak with a lawyer named López Hermosa, who had defended Ángeles. In passing, he arranged for Luz and Martina to move into the house on Décima Street, which needed to be put into shape. Villa, surprising friends and enemies alike, returned on a passenger train, the railway providing him and his guard their own car.
In Canutillo, an immense agricultural plan was underway. Pancho directed it personally; photographs show him plowing fields, shoeing horses, and branding cattle. Wheat would be the most important crop in the irrigated zones, and they were hoping to harvest 1,350 tons. As the fields had been idle, they had to leave the fields fallow and couldn’t begin until 1922. The hacienda also produced corn, beans, wool, meat, and firewood. Alongside the working forge, they also constructed a leather shop producing (low-quality) boots and sandals as well as a cornmeal mill.
Canutillo gave Pancho the chance to circle back to one of his passions. Domitilo Mendoza recounted that “he was very good with a lasso. Sometimes he would start twirling his lasso and no one could beat him. ‘I used to get my dinner roping wild cattle,’ he’d say, laughing, before picking up the loop.”
One photo from América, taken on June 17, shows Pancho resting by the smoke-filled forge, his eyes watering, wearing a rough wool jacket and his inevitable hat. One witness stated that Villa worked mowing, plowing, and sowing as well as doing masonry and hammering in the forge. Starting at six o’clock in the morning, he supervised operations from one side of the hacienda to the other, but also doing the work of a common laborer. And he wasn’t the only one to put his back into it, the fifty men in his guard, aside from security duties, actively participated in the collective work. Vilanova described a militarized Canutillo in which “all the men who worked carried pistols,” but the photographs depict a much friendlier Canutillo where even Villa usually went unarmed. However, it is true that they never let down their guard and the fifty men in charge of Villa’s security kept watch over the access points, making it difficult to enter Canutillo, even if Villa complained they had not received their salaries regularly from the government as agreed to in Sabinas.
To provide housing for the growing number of workers, they drew up streets and built houses, constructing three blocks behind the church as well as a small post office, painting everything green, including the cars and all the doors. Towards the end of March, ten tractors arrived on the hacienda, purchased in Texas from Jimmie Caldwell, a Kibb tractor salesman, replacing the iron tipped plows. There’s a photo of Villa and Caldwell, a pale, well-built man in overalls posing in front of the fields, both looking pissed off as if the photographer was distracting them from their work. The salesman arrived in April to train the laborers and the sharecroppers.
And what were the living standards of Canutillo’s increasing number of inhabitants? There were fifty bodyguards (who received a salary from the Secretary of War), some of the property’s original owners (who had come with Villa from Tlahualilo), plus the widows (some of whom earned a pension), and a very important new group of sharecroppers (who worked the hacienda’s land in exchange for half their harvest) as well as a growing number of salaried workers (who ended up becoming sharecroppers).
The store formed an essential part of the project. The church which had first served as living quarters was turned into a bodega and then a communal store, freely distributing what the hacienda produced. Corn, sugar, coffee, butter, matches, and cigarettes (purchased in Parral) were all sold at cost. And while the hacienda was not yet productive, twenty-five people ate at Pancho’s table every day, the food prepared by a cook named Pablo, primarily pork and lamb. Villa, untiring and fascinated by modernity, met with a man who sold Indian motorcycles who wanted to sell him several bikes. He also met with a US sewing machine vendor and an English tractor salesman.
On March 7, Villa initiated what would become a long series of correspondence with Adolfo de la Huerta (now the Minister of Finance for Obregón), which were at once cautious and surprisingly open. There’s no doubt that of the three main cadres who had emerged victorious from the Agua Prieta revolt, De la Huerta was the one who inspired the most confidence in Villa. The letter was very ceremonial (like everything that passed through Trillo’s hand, his most faithful secretary) and he began by placing himself “at your disposal,” clarifying that “. . .I don’t wish to put all my impressions down on paper” pertaining to the dangers of the politicians surrounding him. Surrounding whom? De La Huerta? Or Villa himself? Who were they? Why were they dangerous? De la Huerta answered him in April with a similarly ambiguous “take note of the matter,” while also exchanging pleasantries. Now that the door was open, Villa began in earnest and sent a second letter to the minister asking that losses from his meatpacking plant in Ciudad Juárez be made whole, but, as he understood the situation facing the government, opened negotiations by saying he would accept half the outstanding amount. It seems that De la Huerta had promised Hipólito the debt would be covered. Villa reported that, three days earlier, he had toured the other Villista agricultural colonies, distributing salaries from the funds the government had offered them, minus $5,300 pesos which he kept and which he had not distributed to “those [deserters] who had preferred to pursue a life of disorder and vagrancy.” He next asked about how the government would be paying the $5,000 pesos per month due the widows of the Division of the North. On April 26, De la Huerta answered in a letter delivered by hand from Gómez Morentín informing Villa that he had already asked Obregón to sign the aforementioned agreement and that the Treasury Office in Torreón would be receiving a check for $40,000 dollars to be used as a compensation fund. He asked Villa for a list of widows and disabled combatants who were to receive the famous $5,000 pesos and informed him that he was to keep the $5,300 pesos in undisbursed salary money in his personal account owing to the debt.
Keeping Canutillo afloat economically required large amounts of money, especially until the first harvests. Villa not only appealed to all manner of recourse to extract money from the federal government, he also dipped into his reserves—the famous hideaways and buried treasure. It is difficult, amidst a mountain of rumors, to separate fact from fiction and this theme invites Villismo’s already omnipresent capacity to fantasize to run wild. This author resolved to combine all the stories having to do with “Villa’s treasures” and found detailed sources, documents, and testimonials from serious witnesses (of which there were eleven) for fifty sites, ranging from Durango to Chihuahua city, from Coahuila to Tarahumara and the Sonoran desert. Elías Torres detailed how, with De la Huerta’s permission, he accompanied Villa to dig up a box of wine bottles filled with gold coins on an abandoned hacienda. “Subsequently, Villa asked, either directly or through Trillo, for several passes to go and retrieve deposits of money” to be used to improve Canutillo and to support his men’s widows and orphans. It seems clear that the tractors were paid for out of one of Villa’s deposits, which he went off to search for shortly before the tractors arrived. Brady recorded legends and myths of at least a dozen treasures, including those in which people accompanying Villa never returned. Nieto apparently confirmed this rumor, even though he himself had participated in several digs and nothing ever happened to him.
Among the stories told, there is one that deals with the Canutillo period, but refers to burying money instead of digging it up. They say that one day in Canutillo, Villa called over to the house and gathered up a small expedition that was supposedly to deliver food to Gato Mountain because people there were going hungry. When they arrived with a mule team at an abandoned ranch in the middle of the mountains, Villa sent off his escort and said that only the local people (those who knew him well and treated him with great respect) would remain with him. It seemed obvious that Villa had returned to the mountain to bury a part of what he had dug up over the course of his life within close range of Canutillo.
In the summer of 1921, Frazier Hunt, a well-known US journalist, arrived to interview Villa after having first established contact by post. Hunt had intervened in the cases of the last Villista prisoners to be freed from the Punitive Expedition. Many years later in his memoir, Frazier reviewed his meeting in a chapter filled with platitudes: the hitmen, the fear that Villa inspired, how easy it would be to shoot them, etc. Right off the bat, he compared Villa to Lenin, Sun Yat-sen, and Gandhi. According to Hunt, Villa seemed to know who Lenin was, Gandhi sounded familiar, and he had no idea who Sun Yat-sen could be.
In the interview, Villa reflected on the social revolution’s lag: the leaders had greatly impeded it, but it had helped some people and now the peons were receiving land and the landowners were sharing it out. It had only just begun.
He talked about the transformations in Canutillo, how they were planting wheat, already on six hundred acres, and soon they would multiply this by six. They hoped to raise cattle, there was good pasture, and they could keep up to forty-thousand head. While he rubbed his old knee injury from time to time, he proudly showed off the hacienda to Hunt: everything was open, there were no locked doors. “You could leave a wallet sitting here and it will stay here without anyone touching it.” The tour culminated in the church, which had been turned into a shop. Pointing to the images of the saints, Villa commented, “When I got here these poor souls were skinny and hungry. Look how fat they are now that I’ve brought the corn here.” He showed Hunt the spot where there was to be a school and pronounced a phrase he would repeat dozens of times in the coming months, “I am done with the struggle. Now, all I want to do is to live and die here in peace. . . Nothing could make me pick up the rifle again, except for an invasion.” He added, “Or if the government were to treat my people unjustly.”
Violence, although rare, did occur here and there behind the appearance of tranquility. One of Villa’s assistants, Col. Benjamín Ríos, died under mysterious circumstances in Mexico City in April when he was run down by a car without headlights or license plates. And Villa had been telling Soledad Seáñez, “If they shoot at me, I’ll shoot at them.”
On May 18, Eugenio Martínez informed Obregón that Villa had asked permission to go to Durango with his guard where he wanted to pay his property taxes and work out some contributions to Canutillo. Although Obregón replied that there wasn’t an “issue” with the trip, in the end, Villa sent an envoy who ran into opposition from Gen. José Agustín Castro, the governor of Durango, who replied that Canutillo’s property taxes could not be settled. On July 4, Villa wrote directly to the president, complaining that the authorities in Durango “will not accept anything until the federal government pays off Canutillo’s old debts from years past, [even though] the papers issued by the government on my behalf state that the hacienda was transferred to me free of any encumbrances.” The last thing Obregón wanted was a conflict, so a day later he wrote to Castro, “I will allow you to instruct that contributions to Gen. Villa be accepted from the date upon which he took legal possession of Canutillo hacienda.”
On June 22, (July according to other sources), Villa married Austreberta Rentería in Parral at a civil ceremony witnessed by Gómez Morentín, Nepomuceno Franco, Felipe Santiesteban, and Miguel Trillo. Three months after the ceremony, on October 27, a boy named Panchito was born about whom the general constantly pointed out, “He has my face.”
Life with Austreberta would be very similar to life with Soledad Seáñez. “When we were alone, he really liked to sing. He sang me a song almost every day [. . .] called “La Fiebre.” Aside from that song, he really liked the tune and lyrics to “Las Tres Pelonas.” When he thought that no one could hear him, he played along on the guitar, and he wasn’t bad because he had a good ear and carried the tune very well. Sometimes he sang me so many songs that he would ask, ‘You haven’t gotten tired of listening to me, my little one?’”
Austreberta gave journalist José C Valadés a clear picture of Villa at age forty-three.
Pancho was very white, extremely white, even if his face and hands were browned by the sun. I was once told that his grandfather was Spanish, which I asked him about, but he denied it, telling me that his whole family was Mexican [. . .]. Pancho had a high forehead, large, dark brown eyes with a very penetrating look; he almost always covered his lips, which were a little thick, with whiskers, which were heavy and a little reddish. He was handsome, what we would call a handsome northerner. He was tall and stocky and put on some weight during his last years, which worried him a lot; [he was] constantly telling me, ‘Betita, I’m getting fat.’ I’d reply telling him to exercise every day and as the poor man loved me so much [. . .] he would run around the yard of the hacienda every day. He made me sit and watch to see how he was running better each day. But he didn’t just exercise in the mornings, which he sometimes did for an hour, he also would go riding and then play handball in the afternoon.
The arrival of another journalist put Villa’s patience to the test, pitching him into a bad mood. He ordered that any journalist seeking an interview have his camera smashed. Yet, soon after, a thirty-seven-year-old New York Times reporter named Sophie Anita Treadwell arrived in Canutillo in August 1921 after having made prior arrangements with Villa. She was well known for being the first female war correspondent in Europe and for chronicling the struggle for women’s suffrage. A dramatic writer, she had penned a prominent account of Carranza’s flight in 1920 and it was said that “she sympathized with the Mexicans.”
After traveling for three hours by car from Rosario station to Canutillo hacienda, during which she was struck by the landscape, noting that “its silence and its vastness and its beauty seem that of eternity,” Treadwell finally got her first look at Villa. She described a character who “came in, limping slightly (Pancho said that his old wound tormented him at times during those years). . . . He didn’t look like his photographs. Better looking, somehow. Rather heavy, with a tremendous chest [. . .] extraordinary eyes.”
Villa stood before her. “Here you see me, señorita, a simple farmer who knows nothing of what is going on in the outside world. . . . Anything that such a man could say that would be of any interest to you I cannot imagine.” Then he told her how he had been mistreated by the press: Villa, el bandido, Villa asesino, Villa, enemigo de los americanos. “Señorita, I am not a bandit, and I am not an assassin, and I am not an enemy of the Americans.”
Over the course of their many conversations, Pancho was determined to win over the woman and her readers. He affirmed that he had not been in Columbus, that the attack had been carried out by men who belonged to his troops, but they were no longer with him. He complained about his image in the eyes of the US public: “This injustice weighs on me. I wish your people, instead of judging me through the papers, would actually try me before a tribunal.”
Pancho proudly showed her around Canutillo, but Sophie didn’t seem particularly interested. “This is the school, señorita. Soon it will be done. Now the children go every day in an ordinary little house.” Villa made a surprisingly puritanical declaration, which seemed exaggerated even for him, although only in three out of four of his assertions, “We have no drinking here, señorita. No gambling, no disorderly houses. Not even a baile—puro trabajo.” Although dancing would start up later on.
Pancho spoke about politics very little—“A democracy is a useless thing unless its people are cultured. . . .Worse than useless—dangerous!”—and said almost nothing about his revolutionary past. Althou gh he did estimate that he had been in three hundred battles.
After four days on the hacienda—attested to by a photo of Treadwell accompanied by Trillo (who served as her interpreter) and Villa with a rifle in his hand—she had been completely won over to Villa, concluding her report, “Yes, I believe in Francisco Villa; of the sincerity of his feelings for his country and his people—the poor, the ignorant, the helpless of Mexico. . . . In spite of his ignorance, his profound ignorance, he has great gifts, extraordinary gifts, gifts amounting to genius—for organization.” She ended by suggesting that he be commissioned to lead a mounted police force to watch over his country’s security. The article closed with a surprising, ¡Viva Villa!
Meanwhile, his correspondence with De la Huerta testified to the collaborative relationship they were establishing. On August 23, the minister told Villa not to worry about the property title, that the hacienda’s former owners had already been compensated and that the paperwork would arrive later. Villa was facing significant financial pressures and complained that the $40,000 he was due for half the amount he was owed in Ciudad Juárez compensation had not yet arrived. On September 15, he wrote to De la Huerta telling him that Trillo was going to Mexico City and asking that he be issued $80,000 pesos to cover the other half.
In 1920, movie director Miguel Contreras Torres had shown his film El Caporal to President Álvaro Obregón who offered support for subsequent projects. Contreras Torres visited Adolfo de la Huerta and suggested shooting a film about Pancho Villa. “You’re talking about a struggle that has not yet finished,” replied De la Huerta. Even so, he smoothed the way for the filmmaker to go to Canutillo, giving him a letter for Gov. Eugenio Martínez. Contreras Torres was met by Trillo and also spoke to Austreberta before finally being received by Villa in the library. Contreras had seen Villa in 1916 on the train platform in Irapuato shortly before the Battle of Celaya. “He was a little heavier.” He presented the film’s outline on ten pages and wanted Villa to play himself. Villa quickly replied, “I won’t be your clown. I thought this was something different.” Pancho remained firm, perhaps he could provide a little financial support, but acting? It was out of the question.
It wasn’t the only proposal. Luz Corral sent word from Chihuahua that the Suárez Porras brothers (Contreras says Salas Porras) sought her out to get in touch with Villa. They were serving as intermediaries for a Hollywood studio that wanted to make a movie version of Villa’s life. Villa studied the draft script and, after thinking it over, said he would accept if the Gringos paid for the building of an agricultural school and supported it for five years. The school would then be turned over to the government with a total price tag of $1 million. (In another version, Villa asked for $1 million to build ten hospitals and ten schools in the north of Durango and south of Chihuahua.) It seems that the matter died there. Luz claimed that Obregón blocked the project.
Yet the cinema seemed determined to capture Villa. C. J. Kaho had tagged along during Caldwell’s tractor sales visit, having been assigned by Fox News—a newsreel enterprise not to be confused with its modern namesake—to film Villa at Canutillo. But he was discovered, and Villa exposed the roll. He then flicked a match at Kaho, almost catching his mustache on fire. Kaho claimed that the film had not been exposed and that he had saved it.
At the same time, Francisco Elías stated that he had shot a film of Villa and the Dorados at Canutillo titled Epopeya, financed by a group of businessmen in El Paso. However, De la Huerta didn’t like the results, banning it and destroying the negatives.
On October 4, Villa wrote to Amado Aguirre, Minister of Communications, informing him that he had contracted for four thosand telegraph posts and asking for a franchise over the lines. He received the concession on October 10, and Aguirre congratulated him for improving the region’s communications. The reconstruction of School Number 99 was also going well, with Villa personally mixing the cement. The building was located in the hacienda’s main house, facing the Dorados’ security office. Minister of Education Vasconcelos had sent him (leaving aside old rancor) four boxes of school materials and the school now only lacked benches to begin classes the following year. Villa’s conflict with the governor of Durango had been settled satisfactorily, allowing Villa to settle Canutillo’s property taxes. Soon after, on November 16, he wrote to De la Huerta, describing how the lack of water was causing a crisis in the area, pointing out that the irrigation for the cotton harvest had dried up and this created a “distressing situation” for La Laguna’s “proletarian classes.” In the letter, he related convening a meeting of ranchers in which he proposed hiring local people and paying them one peso per day—more than the $75 pesos they normally received per year—to work on improving irrigation, apparently having taken the floor to speak.
A shadow passed over Canutillo’s tranquility when a certain Miguel Islas, captain of the Chihuahua Rurales, arrived in the area. Pancho heard that the captain, while on a bender, had claimed that he was going to assassinate Villa on orders from Gen. Ignacio Enríquez. Pancho found him in Parral; Islas was armed and Pancho confronted him. Villa found it odd that Islas, whom he did not know, treated him with familiarity, calling him “my general.” Villa took him head-on, warning him that his drunken outburst “was going to cost him dearly.” Then he wrote to De la Huerta, asking him to take note of the situation. De la Huerta replied in a coded message on November 22, and then again on November 30, saying that he did not believe Enríquez had been behind Islas. Regardless, he had communicated with the governor of Chihuahua to remove the captain from the area and had also informed President Obregón.
Villa spent the last month of the year trying to arrange for the prompt payment of the widows’ 5,000-peso pensions in exchange for which he promised to faithfully report on their distribution. Simultaneously, he corresponded with De la Huerta and Obregón asking if the San Ignacio hacienda could be appended to Canutillo and colonized by members of his guard because the property was almost abandoned and “hardly cultivated.” San Ignacio was part of the Rueda hacienda owned by the widow of Gen. Abel Pereyra.
Meanwhile, the harvest was on its way, wheat kernels beginning to dance along the outskirts of Canutillo’s horizon.
