sixty-nine
the investigation
The first news of the death of Pancho Villa reached Mexico City that same day, July 20, and was published on El Universal’s English-language page, using an AP cable from El Paso as a source. Extra editions of the city’s newspapers began circulating around midday with reports about the attack, quickly selling out. New editions, one after the other, poured out until midnight. Upon Villa’s death, Mexico City entered a virtual state of siege, which was absurd in a region with hardly any Villista influence. In Parral, Chihuahua, and Torreón the extra editions ran out. The press printed misinformation amidst the rising tensions, some outlets claiming that three of the assassins had been arrested after a confrontation in which they had been wounded, but the supposed confrontation never happened. Excélsior reported that fifty men had taken part in the assault while Torreón’s El Siglo put the number at fifteen. Another report stated that Villa had been in Parral at a “political” meeting. The country rattled and shook. José Raya, a Villista, put it the most clearly, “The people shuddered right away.” Canutillo was under the threat of military intervention.
Miguel Alessio Robles received word straight from the president’s lips that Villa’s guard had killed him, and he could tell the press, “everyone knew he was happy.” Later, he dined at the Chapultepec Castle with the president and Finance Minister De la Huerta “who was deeply upset.” Obregón cracked jokes, De la Huerta was very quiet.
Obregón’s government promised an investigation. But it never took place. The cadaver of one of the assassins, Román Guerra, which was left in the street, was quietly picked up by Ricaud, one of the conspirators, who also covered the funeral expenses. The death was thought to be a bystander, a casual passerby. No one asked who he was or what he was doing there. Even a minimal investigation would have connected him to his brother, another of the assassins, and his town and from there to the links with Cochinera and Lozoya. Yet no one looked into it.
Nor did anyone investigate who had rented the house or where they kept their horses, which would have at least led to the Gallardo family.
Despite the fact that Villa had accused Herrera of wanting to kill him, and that only a day after El Paso’s La Prensa, edited by Silvestre Terrazas, suggested that he was behind the plot, no one ever questioned him.
The daily papers referred to eight cavalry columns of the army formed to pursue the assassins, but these were only organized much later. In the end, there were only three such columns and they had no one to pursue as the trail had grown cold.
Col. Félix C. Lara, commander of the Parral garrison, never explained why the troops were in Maturana, but he did state that “it was not possible to pursue the individuals as the higher ups wanted” for “lack of cavalry.” However, Lara sent a company of the nonexistent cavalry to Canutillo, which never arrived thanks to the Villistas’ threat to shoot at anyone who approached. Later, the army said it had sent out some patrols, but the Chamber of Deputies investigating committee found that the patrols never left Parral.
Gen. Eugenio Martínez, Villa’s compadre, received an anonymous tip which he passed on to Obregón claiming that one of the assassins was a certain José Vara, whose mother worked in Villa’s house. But this was not investigated. If it had been, it might have led to Ruperto Vara, but no one followed up.
Under the supposition that Parral’s forces of public order might have been involved, it seemed obvious that the government should have sent a commission from the police reserves in Mexico City to investigate. But neither Obregón, nor the Minister of Government, even suggested it.
The presiding judge waited nine days before initiating any action.
Such ineptitude was not possible. If there is no direct evidence linking President Álvaro Obregón to the crime—nor even indications that he received information beforehand about what was going to take place—it is easy to believe that he was a resolute accomplice in providing cover for the assassins. Neither he, nor the governors of Chihuahua and Durango, nor the Secretaries of War or Government had any interest in finding them. At least at first. If, in the eyes of the powerful, as Gen. Rodolfo Casillas put it, Villa “alive would always be a constant threat,” then in death he was condemned to oblivion.
The Chamber of Deputies investigating committee attempted to do what both the federal and state governments of Chihuahua and Durango failed to, and they did so more quickly than the army’s nonexistent horses. Two days after the assassination, Sunday, July 22, a strange story made the rounds in Torreón about a Maj. Zaldívar who, filled with doubts, told his landlady that he would soon have money because he was involved in something to do with Pancho Villa. He disappeared after the assassination. The committee arrived in Parral on July 25. They printed 2,000 flyers which were posted in the streets and on poles around the city and the surrounding areas requesting information and promising confidentiality. No one responded. Fear spread through Parral. Even so, they pulled together some scattered information.
The committee of deputies rendered its opinion on August 1 and 2. They complained about the mistreatment they had received at the hands of the Secretary of Government and reported that Parral authorities waited an hour before sending out patrols, which had not even been sent to catch the assassins, but only to “preserve order.” They noted the high quality of the ammunition used in the assassination, .30-caliber expanding bullets and .45-caliber automatic pistol cartridges—which was not in itself significant, but they were no doubt expensive and not very common—and, above all, they confirmed that the crime had been premeditated and was not an “ordinary” crime, but rather a political one, thus casting the public eye on presidential candidate Plutarco Elías Calles. Gandarilla, one of the deputies on the committee, received an anonymous letter, which he read to the deputies in his bloc, claiming that “Salas B” was the assassin and that after killing Villa he had gone to report to a “well-known person” in Torreón. He then took the train to Terán and met with Calles at his hacienda Soledad de la Mota, and was later seen “changing gold for silver in various locations.” Salas Barraza later publicly denied any such visit with Calles.
Plutarco Elías Calles’ name was on everyone’s lips. The popular conception that Calles was the hidden hand behind the crime expressed itself in jokes and caricatures and it turned up over and over in dozens of testimonials. The US journalist Frazier Hunt was in a hotel in Mexico City some months later when a correspondent from the Hearst chain introduced him to a man who claimed to have killed Villa and that Calles had given him $25,000 pesos to do so. The idea also surfaced in a text by Vasconcelos—who was never characterized by the accuracy of the information he handled—in El Desastre, where he wrote about “fourteen assassins,” one of whom worked as a groom for Calles.
Villa’s adoptive son, Francisco Piñón, asserted that Adolfo de la Huerta had confessed to him that Calles and Amaro had been the crime’s intellectual authors; further, they had pressured Obregón who played the role of Pontius Pilate. Col. Lara told Justino Palomares years later what followed, “Some months prior, I was called to Mexico City by Gen. Calles who, in his first instructions, told me about an agreement to eliminate the new Cincinnatus of Canutillo because he was a danger to the country [. . .]. I returned to Parral and my job was to begin interviewing Villa’s worst enemies, among whom I was to gather a number of sharpshooting officers. Everything was done by word of mouth [. . .]. After the shootout, I put the individuals up in the barracks.” He then, according to instructions from Calles, reported that the assassins were being pursued. Palomares also named another general, Rueda Quijano, from whom Lara received $50,000 pesos, a promotion to the rank of general, and a new posting.
However, while these stories were narrated with the passage of time, in the days after the assassination, a series of events piqued public opinion.
On July 25, Obregón wrote to Calles that “they have wanted to arouse suspicions that I genuinely suppose will not prosper,” assuring him that the accusations were unfounded because Villa had demonstrated his loyalty to the government over the previous months. Calles replied in the same vein. Was it a dialogue between the voluntarily deaf? Each knowing part of the story and pretending that the other didn’t?
On July 29, a letter with an illegible signature arrived in Obregón’s hands. It once again accused Salas Barraza as well as Gov. Agustín Castro’s driver. In a subsequent letter, the anonymous correspondent wrote that Salas had gone around bragging half drunk in Parral’s bars. And he wasn’t the only one to believe it. Vicente Martínez asserted years later that “Salas Barraza agreed with Gov. Castro.”
On August 2, Obregón wrote once more to Calles, “I am pinpointing the intellectual and material author of the plan,” affirming that there were others behind it as well. But he told Calles not to worry since his inquiries would dispel “any shadow of suspicion,” announcing pompously, “I have in my possession concrete information, incontrovertible, however, I want them to remain absolutely unaware.” So? Did he want to make things clear or keep them unknown?
While the six assassins, led by Melitón Lozoya, disappeared, returning to their mediocre private lives with a bit more money than they had before, Salas Barraza began taking on a starring role. Hours after Villa’s death, he sent a telegram to the governor of Durango, his political godfather, “Today, Gen. Villa was assassinated, best regards, J. Salas.” Why did Salas feel he had to report the crime he had committed? He attended the vigil over Villa’s body at the Hidalgo Hotel. He was in Parral until July 21, spending a day in Jesús Corral Valles’ house, who had been one of those to provide stable space for the horses. Then he went to Santa Bárbara, and from there to Chihuahua to sound out, report, inform, and to try to get something out of Gov. Enríquez via Gustavo Talamantes. Enríquez sent him a message, “I will give you all necessary guarantees.” However, Salas did not stay in Chihuahua, instead leaving for Durango.
In Durango, he met with his friend, regional telegraph inspector Juan S. Serrano, who put him in touch via the wire with Gen. Abraham Carmona, who had been in charge of Durango and was the Secretary of War’s commander of artillery. The three were members of the Freemasons and this may be the reason why Serrano had sought out Carmona.
Abraham Carmona traveled to Durango where, on August 5, he met with Salas Barraza. At the time, Carmona had instructions from Obregón. What instructions? We don’t know. After the interview, Salas wrote a letter to Carmona (dated the same day) in which he took responsibility for the assassination, “I set myself up as the avenger.” He said that there were nine men, gave information about the ambush, and attributed the attack to feelings against Villa running high. “I could but not accept the leadership of this handful of courageous men,” adding that he had written the letter to “save the government’s good name [. . .] and to avoid [the blame] falling on various public officials.”
Salas’ confession had one weak spot, it had without doubt been requested by Carmona, because he snuck in, “. . . I would like to remind you of the offer that you spontaneously made to me with the aim of influencing the president of the republic’s support in order to avoid, due to the exaltation of the moment, me not being judged with the equanimity that the case requires.”
Salas had also written out a document, “a letter to his compañeros,” that seems more like a draft in which he informed them that he was going to “make public” his authorship of the crime and that he had authorized a commander in the army to communicate this to the president.
After his confession, Salas Barraza, took fright and left Durango, stopping in Torreón where he met with Gen. Escobar to talk over the “familiar business,” complaining that Amaro “had turned his back.” He asked for a letter of introduction to the president and Escobar gave him the runaround. Salas said that some of the men who participated in the assassination with him could be arrested at any moment and that they could talk. In fact, according to Salas, one had already been detained but “they had to release him” because he kept silent. He closed by demanding to hear Amaro’s opinion and that of “our friend in the vicinity” because the people believe that “I am the intellectual and material leader of this affair.”
Who was the “friend in the vicinity?” Calles was at his hacienda Soledad de la Mota in Nuevo León at just this moment, recovering from an operation performed in the United States.
Carmona traveled to Mexico City with Salas Barraza’s letter in hand on August 7. From there, he sent a telegram to Salas, reporting, “I await the letter by mail.” Another letter? He then met with Obregón. There is no record of what they talked about during the meeting.
Salas received a letter on August 8 from his wife suggesting he go to the United States and postpone the “publication” for ten or fifteen days until she could leave as well.
On August 8, Obregón wrote to Calles, informing him of Salas Barraza’s confession (before his arrest). By the tone, it didn’t appear that they were conspiring, no one is capable of such useless cynicism, but there’s no doubt that each of them knew things the other did not. What’s worse, neither wanted those things said out loud.
On August 9, Carmona sent Salas Barraza a telegram in which he reported having met with President Obregón. He wrote that the president read the letter twice and then said, “Our friend has a big heart.” Simultaneously, Carmona sent his friend (chief of telegraph operations Serrano) another telegram in which he said that Salas should not leave Durango where he had parliamentary immunity as a state deputy. What had Carmona negotiated with the president?
Obregón released a copy of the letter to the press, which was published that same day, August 9, and spoke to Attorney General Eduardo Delhumeau. The result was an urgent message from the Secretary of Government to Gen. Paulino Navarro in Durango, who was working with Carmona and watching over Salas. He was ordered to report every six hours and not to arrest Salas because he was a Durango deputy, unless he tried to cross state lines. Gen. Paulino Navarro (“commander of a state police station”) detained Salas in Monterrey when he boarded the train for Laredo, Texas, around 11 p.m. on August 9, and ordered him to be taken to Mexico City.
Gilberto Valenzuela, Undersecretary of Government, recounted many years later that, after searching Salas’s room before detaining him on the train, Navarro found compromising letters, among them was one written by a certain Jesús (Heredia or Herrera), who stated that “our friend and partner from Soledad de la Mota is getting nervous because of the delay in concluding the business at hand.” Valenzuela believed that the discovery of these letters led Salas to flee north after passing through Gen. Serrano’s station in Monterrey. Valenzuela also recalled that Navarro had told him that after arresting Salas, gun in hand, on the train, Gen. Amaro suggested that before he brought him to Mexico City as a prisoner, he should talk to Calles.
Valenzuela went further, stating that Obregón refused to receive Salas’ documents that Navarro had brought him telling him to do what the law required. Upon leaving his office, someone suggested to Navarro that he burn the documents, which he then did.
It seemed that the arrest was necessary to calm public opinion, which was growing ever more skeptical and irritated.
Finally, on August 30, Salas was taken to Parral and then Chihuahua where he was placed in the penitentiary and sentenced to twenty years in prison. Over the following months, he kept up a correspondence with Gen. Amaro, asking for money and that he intercede with Gen. Enríquez, the governor of Chihuahua.
On September 5, Calles began his presidential campaign in Monterrey no less, Amaro’s jurisdiction.
When the Delahuertista rebellion erupted on April 4, 1924, Gov. Enríquez of Chihuahua amnestied Salas Barraza one the very same day he resigned his post—Salas had served only eight months in prison. Salas joined Calles’ troops in Torreón with the rank of colonel and, when the rebellion ended, was named “confidential advisor to Gen. Obregón,” a previously nonexistent position. Later, Amaro gave him a job as an officer in the Secretary of War’s police force.
At least two of the assassins died in shootouts in the following years: Ruperto Vara was shot down at the hands of an army corporal in Alianza, Chihuahua, and Juan López Saenz Pardo took two shots to the head in 1938. Melitón Lozoya was rewarded with a ranch given to him by Gen. Miguel Acosta in the state of Mexico. As the years went by, he couldn’t stand Salas getting all the publicity for the crime and told his version of the story to a reporter named Guillermo Ramírez. Salas Barraza died in May 1951 at the age of seventy-two, in a military hospital in Mexico City. Shortly before his death, he declared that if Villa were to come back from the dead, he would kill him again. It was the only noteworthy act in the life of an obscure and mediocre man.
As small investigations piled up over the years, the identities of the triggermen and those who participated in the conspiracy’s second tier became very clear, as did the support of Calles or his associates in the events. And it is obvious enough that Obregón hindered the investigation and spread an enormous smoke screen over it, manipulating Salas Barraza’s confession in the eyes of the public in order to exonerate the government and insulate his future (1928) campaign to be reelected president. If Villa had lived, the coming clash between Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta, which exploded in 1924, might have had a different outcome and Mexico’s contemporary history would have been altered.
Only a shadow of doubt remains with respect to Pancho Villa’s assassination, a doubt suggested over many years without much backing. Was there a second group of gunmen that July 20 morning in Parral?
Piñón, Villa’s godson, asserted that there was and said that the holes in the car’s canopy proved it. Parral’s historian confirmed Piñón’s story, claiming that seven military marksmen sent by Calles were positioned the day of the attack on the roof of a building located at number 2 Gabino Barreda Street. A town plan from the time shows that house number 2 was owned by a Mr. Finland and was not inhabited at the time of the assassination. In the 1970s, Juan Hurtado y Olín, asserted that twenty-five men from Gen. Amaro’s forces in Monterrey under the command of Júpiter Ramírez were sent to Parral after training for several months. And Gen. Enrique León Ruiz (quoted by Calzadíaz) declared that a group of officers from the Fiftieth Cavalry Regiment under the command of Col. Júpiter Ramírez were, without question, positioned at a point near the Carrizos bridge between Canutillo and Parral. He did not report the date or if they took any action or were held in reserve. Calzadíaz himself buttresses this version of events by citing Gen. Lamberto Álvarez, who met an officer in Durango in 1957 who, in turn, introduced him to a second officer who had participated in Villa’s assassination. This second officer said that the majority of the assassins were soldiers from Félix Lara’s garrison.
In October 2004, this author and Dr. Rubén Osorio inspected the Dodge Brothers in the museum dedicated to Villa on Décima Street in Chihuahua. The Secretary of Tourism of the state of Durango told us that the car was struck by sixty-three bullets. Visually, it was clear that there were two kinds of impact marks: those caused by expanding bullets and other, less destructive marks that must have come from pistol shots. Eleven marks are clearly visible on the back part of the car and there are ten on the right side of the car, slanting from the top to the bottom. One is visible on the left side, one in the front, and two in the bars holding up the roof. The absence of impact marks in the front conforms to the windshield being shot out.
The marks on the back part of the car have been explained as shots from Juan López, the lookout, and from shots fired from the houses at 7 and 9 Gabino Barreda Street after the car struck the telegraph pole.
But the shots running from top to bottom on the right side of the automobile?
Good history is, in the best of cases, interminable.
