page_title: Pancho Villa
section_title: Assassination in 1923
hierarchical_section_title: Pancho Villa / Assassination in 1923
context_page_description: Francisco "Pancho" Villa was a Mexican revolutionary general and one of the most prominent figures of the Mexican Revolution.
  As commander of the División del Norte, 'Division of the North', in the Constitutionalist Army, he was a military-landowner of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Given the area's size and mineral wealth, it provided him with extensive resources. Villa was provisional governor of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914. Villa can be credited with decisive military victories leading to the ousting of Victoriano Huerta from the presidency in July 1914. Villa fought his erstwhile leader in the coalition against Huerta, "First Chief" of the Constitutionalists Venustiano Carranza. Villa was in alliance with southern revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who remained fighting in his own region of Morelos. The two revolutionary generals briefly came together to take Mexico City after Carranza's forces retreated from it. Later, Villa's heretofore undefeated División del Norte engaged the military forces of Carranza under Carrancista general Álvaro Obregón and was defeated in the 1915 Battle of Celaya.
context_section_description: On Friday, 20 July 1923, Villa was killed while visiting Parral. He frequently made trips from his ranch to Parral for banking and other errands, where he generally felt secure. Villa usually was accompanied by his large entourage of armed Dorados, or bodyguards, but for some unknown reason on that day he had gone into the town without most of them, taking with him only three bodyguards and two other ranch employees. He went to pick up a consignment of gold from the local bank with which to pay his Canutillo ranch staff. While driving back through the city in his black 1919 Dodge touring car, Villa passed by a school, and a pumpkinseed vendor ran toward his car and shouted "Viva Villa!", a signal to a group of seven riflemen who then appeared in the middle of the road and fired more than 40 rounds into the automobile. In the fusillade, nine dumdum bullets, normally used for hunting big game, hit Villa in the head and upper chest, killing him instantly.
  Claro Huertado (a bodyguard), Rafael Madreno (Villa's main personal bodyguard), Danie Tamayo (his personal secretary), and Colonel Miguel Trillo (who also served as his chauffeur) were killed. One of Villa's bodyguards, Ramon Contreras, was wounded badly but managed to kill at least one of the assassins before he escaped; Contreras was the only survivor. Villa is reported to have died saying "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something," but there is no contemporary evidence that he survived his shooting even momentarily. Historian and biographer Friedrich Katz wrote in 1998 that Villa died instantly. Time also reported in 1951 that both Villa and his aide (Tamayo) were killed instantly.
  Telegraph service was interrupted to Villa's hacienda of Canutillo, probably so that Obregón's officials could secure the estate and "to prevent a possible Villista uprising triggered by his assassination."
  The next day, Villa's funeral was held and thousands of his grieving supporters in Parral followed his casket to his burial site while Villa's men and his closest friends remained at the Canutillo hacienda armed and ready for an attack by the government troops. The six surviving assassins hid out in the desert and were soon captured, but only two of them served a few months in jail, and the rest were commissioned into the military.
  Although there is a theory that the family of Jesús Herrera, which had been feuding with Villa, was behind the assassination, a more plausible theory is that Villa was assassinated because he had talked publicly about re-entering politics as the 1924 elections neared. Obregón could not run again for the presidency, so there was political uncertainty about the presidential succession. Obregón favored General Plutarco Elías Calles for the presidency. In Villa's opinion, his agreement to withdraw from politics and retire to a hacienda indicated he might reenter politics. That would complicate the political situation for Obregón and the Sonoran generals.
  While it has never been proven who was responsible for the assassination, most historians attribute Villa's death to a well-planned conspiracy most likely initiated by Plutarco Elías Calles and Joaquín Amaro with at least tacit approval of the then president of Mexico, Álvaro Obregón.
  At the time, a state legislator from Durango, Jesús Salas Barraza, whom Villa once whipped during a quarrel over a woman, claimed sole responsibility for the plot. Barraza admitted that he told his friend, who worked as a dealer for General Motors, that he would kill Villa if he were paid 50,000 pesos. The friend was not wealthy and did not have 50,000 pesos on hand, so he collected money from enemies of Villa and managed to collect a total of 100,000 pesos for Barraza and his other co-conspirators. Barraza also admitted that he and his co-conspirators watched Villa's daily car rides and paid the pumpkinseed vendor at the scene of Villa's assassination to shout "Viva Villa!" either once if Villa was sitting in the front part of the car or twice if he was sitting in the back.
  Despite the fact that he did not want to have a
caption: Dodge automobile in which Pancho Villa was assassinated, Historical Museum of the Mexican Revolution in Chihuahua
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