At the beginning of 1923, the Canutillo hacienda was moving ahead on its little wheels which Villa continued improving along the way. It was a model farm with around 4,000 acres of cultivated land on the edge of the Florido River. The wheat harvest was looking good, and they hoped to bring in 35,000 hectoliters of corn. There was farm equipment for sowing and harvesting and the other Villista colonies were mechanized as well. Villa had become such an important buyer of farm equipment that the governor of Texas, Pat Neff, promised to pardon him for past crimes if he bought from his state.
The cattle were prospering, too. Villa purchased cows from the United States via one George Hunt, a Gringo smuggler for whom Villa had once financed a ranch in La Isleta, right on the border with El Paso.
They built more than twenty wagons in the workshops to transport wool and merchandise, operated an electrical plant, the store sold goods at wholesale prices, there was an electrical repair shop, an auto shop, the blacksmiths, a workshop to make saddles, looms for processing wool produced on the hacienda, a corn mill, and a carpentry shop. They also had a post office at Canutillo that delivered mail from Rosario station to Indé as well as a telegraph service to Parral and telephone connections to Rosario and Indé.
Ernest Ríos, the commander of Villa’s guard, reflected, “Villa’s idea was not to create a nice property for himself, it was to colonize that hacienda on behalf of the workers.” Basically, Canutillo was a combination of different producers: previous property owners, who worked their own land; the fifty guards, teachers, mechanics, artisans, and cooks who earned a salary; and the sharecroppers who worked land on the hacienda. The latter kept two-thirds of what they harvested and the remaining third was reinvested in improvements and general development.
In the first semester of 1923, a typical family (five people) received $4,000 pesos between goods, services, and money. If one considers that an average laborer’s wage in the region was $30 pesos per month, $45 if they were lucky, and that a family could earn between 7$5 and $100 pesos per month as a unit, then the 650 pesos the families earned each month at Canutillo, including salaries, stands out. Villa never tired of saying, “We’re going to pay good salaries.”
And there were many projects in store for 1923: breeding sheep, a train running between Indé and Tepehuanes, a wheat mill, telephone lines connecting the ranches with Canutillo, and the construction of a “peace bridge” over the Nazas River in Gómez Palacio.
Piñón recalled that “it was prohibited to have or sell alcohol in Canutillo” and that one time Villa stopped a sotol trafficker, destroyed the alcohol, and whipped him with a rope in public. Puente wrote that Villa used to say that “Mexico’s ills are: alcoholism in those at the top, and alcoholism in those below” and that he hated “pulque that stupefied and mezcal that made people argumentative.”
In the early days of 1923, Villa was in fine health, aside from aches from his old knee wound. He woke up at four o’clock in the morning and enjoyed his country chores, working from one side of Canutillo to the other. Yet, his friend Ramón Puente said that “his spirits had sagged a little.” Pancho had tried to sort out his conflicts with the governors of Durango and Chihuahua in the previous months, while maintaining cordial relations with the Obregón government. And he did his best to avoid the traps that had been set for him during the presidential succession; yet a good many shadows were growing all around.
The question of the bank had been shelved the previous October after his exchange of letters with De la Huerta, who kept up a conversation about it with Obregón. However, in January, Villa referred to it anew in an interview with Excélsior in which he commented that he was thinking of founding a bank to provide credit to farmers.
In another sign of trouble, on January 5, he wrote a letter to Popular Dry Goods in which he pointed out that his businesses and those of Hipólito were separate. He had already written to Obregón in the same vein, “With all due respect, I request that you do not extend any loans to my brother Hipólito [. . .] who is in arrears with all his other lenders.” The president replied the next day succinctly, “So noted.” The distance growing between Villa and his siblings was becoming absolute; Martina had gone to live with Luz Corral in Chihuahua and Mariana died on February 22.
In March, Pancho was busy conducting business with the government. De la Huerta had authorized him to use 50 percent of the money designated for his banking venture for setting up his sheep farming project while directing him to return the other half to the government to help pay for the garrisons in La Laguna and Durango. Those funds were normally drawn from oil taxes, but given the reduced production by the petroleum companies, they were no longer sufficient. Antonio Islas Bravo commented that Villa got a loan for $50,000 and repaid it while all of “Obregón’s honorable friends [also got loans] and never paid them back.”
The relative peace was soon disrupted. In the middle of March, the conflict with Jesús Herrera blew up again when Gen. José García and Col. Rosario Jiménez were detained in Parral, having been accused of intending to carry out an assassination. When Villa learned of their arrest, he asked Eugenio Martínez for two railway cars to go to Parral and rescue them with his guard. Martínez managed to stop Villa from making the attempt and the Villista officers were released soon after.
But now his feud with Herrera went public. On March 17, Villa wrote to the Chamber of Senators. “For a year and a half I have been suffering from shadows cast on me by order of Jesús Herrera and I have been resigned to stay on the defensive [. . .] many boys have perished, seduced by Jesús Herrera’s money to assassinate me [. . .] that is how Primitivo Escárcega and the others perished, one of them in a brothel, a victim of profligacy [. . .] and the other surely at the hands of his supporters [. . .]. Herrera possesses approximately a million pesos obtained in the shadows [. . .] from his brothers [. . .]. Herrera has been keeping a gang of at least fifteen men to do me harm.” A letter along the same lines was sent to El Universal in Mexico City.
On March 24, Jesús Herrera replied in the Torreón press, saying that the charges from “my family’s killer” were the product of frustrations after a plan by Villa to murder him had failed. He insinuated that Villa only made the charges to win over public opinion and ended with a harsh assertion that, if Villa should die, “not even his bastard children would suffer morally or materially from his eternal absence.”
Obregón ordered five pairs of agents from the Secretary of Government be sent to keep watch over Canutillo. The vigilance cost $4,000 pesos per month and the agents were under the orders of the region’s military commander, Martínez. Villa detected the agents’ movements and communicated this to De la Huerta. Martínez assured Villa that it was not a move against him.
On April 8, Villa wrote to Obregón, noting that he was “Here, dedicated entirely to agricultural pursuits in a little corner of the world.” He took the opportunity to tell the president about his run-ins with Herrera and sent him press clippings. Soon after, on April 18, he sent a similar letter to Plutarco Elías Calles; however, he also pointed out that Herrera (ever since Calles had passed through Torreón) had gone on the offensive. But Villa was very subtle, making no suggestions, simply narrating the story. On April 24, he wrote to Eugenio Martínez, “. . . my little compadre, so you are taking care of me, too.” The matter had apparently been resolved when Obregón wrote to Villa on May 9, “I very much appreciate your prudence in this matter.”
That same month, De la Huerta, who was returning from Ciudad Juárez, set up a meeting in Jiménez with Villa to talk. Pancho arrived with his guard of fifty men. There are two versions of the meeting, one by De la Huerta given in his Memorias, and one by Luis León in a letter to Calles in which he reported on the meeting to him. Those present included De la Huerta with his wife and sons as well as Eugenio Martínez, Trillo, Villa, and León. Villa suggested to De la Huerta that he run for president. “I think it’s going to happen, chief, I’m here for you. Because the people are calling you for the presidency.” De la Huerta replied that he was not considering it and that Calles was the chosen candidate. “I am one of Calles’s men,” he said. Until this point, the versions coincide; however, in León’s version, “Villa offered congratulations for the union between Calles and De la Huerta, which he understood perfectly [. . .] and told them to tell Calles that when he returned to San Francisco to let him know so he could see him in Jiménez.” Whereas in Adolfo’s version Villa replied that no one loved Calles, that he was an ill-fated man. De la Huerta told Villa he was wrong. Villa concluded with “You don’t appreciate me, but who knows if Pancho Villa will be useful to you on a dark night.”
León also added some assessments, affirming that he was certain that Villa would not rise up against the government again. “I think he is a little tired of being a guerrilla [. . .]. Villa is interested in supporting the current administration [. . .]. He seems somewhat bourgeoisified, and he’s not thinking about new rebellious adventures.”
De la Huerta said that Villa was crying when he bid farewell and said to him, “You’re the only one I trust.” Curiously, Villa’s ideal candidate was not De la Huerta, but Raúl Madero, something he had told his friends. It was also curious that Puente recounted that, during a subsequent visit in Canutillo with a group from the United States, Villa told them that he didn’t want to spill any more blood, but concluded by repeating, “Francisco Villa can still be useful on a dark night.”
Was Pancho anticipating an armed confrontation between Calles and De la Huerta, and had he already chosen sides? Was he foreseeing the next rebellion? On June 4, he wrote to De la Huerta, “The work is overwhelming because it’s time to cut and harvest the wheat [. . .]. We must take care against the intrigues of reactionaries [. . .]. I will always be prepared and ready in your rearguard.”
And all the while he was reading Thiers’s History of the Consulate and the Empire and admiring Napoleon’s exploits, he knew all Napoleon’s battles by heart. He combined this with volume IX of El Tesoro de la Juventud. Shortly before, he had confessed to a reporter named Esperanza Velázquez that he had discovered a certain Buddha in that latter book, whose teachings he found very surprising.
In early July, accompanied by Austreberta, Panchito, and his guard, Villa left Canutillo in two automobiles on his way to Valle de Allende, where he would fulfill his promise to baptize María del Carmen, Sabás Loyoza’s daughter. They spent several days on the Concepción hacienda in Valle de Allende and returned to Canutillo without passing through Parral.
Between July 9 and 12, Villa dedicated himself to his correspondence and work on the hacienda. He published a letter in an El Paso daily declaring that he would no longer take part in politics, “I have retired completely to private life.” Trillo headed back to meet with Obregón under instructions from Villa, bringing complaints about espionage and demanding guarantees for his safety. Trillo returned with very positive impressions, believing that the president’s doubts about Villa had vanished and that he was willing to extend guarantees with respect to his protection.
They say—although these might be stories constructed after the fact to explain future events in the memories of witnesses and participants—that Dr. Coello had warned him a conspiracy was underway in Parral, but Villa merely replied, “I like Parral, enough to die there.” But it can’t be true. It was an old phrase and he had said it more than once. They also say that Enrique C. Llorente, his man in New York during the glory days of the Division of the North, had visited the hacienda to warn him that an attempt on his life was being hatched.
Someone recalled that the only time that he had ever raised his voice to Soledad Seáñez in Canutillo was when he came home to find some lights on in the house; “How the hell can they do that when they’re looking to kill him,” he shouted, referring to himself in third person.
The old epoch of fear and mistrust had returned, back to the time when, upon leaving a house after a conversation, he had asked the owner to turn out the hall and entryway lights so he wouldn’t stand out against the light.