Pancho Villa's Revolution by Headlines (review)

This is a refreshingly original and highly readable study of one of the most controversial figures of the Mexican Revolution. In eight thematic chapters, Mark Cronlund Anderson persuasively argues that Pancho Villa was a masterful propagandist: a bandit turned revolutionary who manipulated the press (both American and Mexican) and thereby influenced the content of United States policy toward Mexico. He successfully promoted an image of himself as a great friend of the United States, so that even as his command of the battlefield waned, Villa still retained a remarkable degree of American support.

Anderson's depiction of Villa as PR man is supported by an impressive array of sources. Major American newspapers, including the San Francisco Examiner, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, as well as U.S. diplomatic reports and correspondence, provide most of the information for the author's analysis. The book is also supplemented with an engaging collection of editorial cartoons from the revolutionary era.

Anderson begins his analysis with an exploration of Villa's foreign policy and with a history of the Villista "propaganda machine." He demonstrates that, at least until 1915 (when the U.S. recognized Venustiano Carranza as Mexico's legitimate leader) Villa succeeded in promoting himself as pro-American, even as he maintained a reputation as a defender of Mexican national interests. Villa's propaganda efforts in the United States were carefully calculated and thorough, and they included press releases, planted stories, and even the bribing of American reporters. Early attention to the creation of a favorable image in the U.S. helped Villa achieve crucial diplomatic and popular support.

Anderson also explores the reaction of Villa's principal rivals, Victoriano Huerta and Venustiano Carranza, to Villista propaganda. This is a particularly interesting analysis that clearly illustrates the difficulties encountered by both men as they sought to bolster their own images in the eyes of the American public. While Huerta could not overcome the American perception of him as the murderer of Francisco Madero, Carranza's propaganda machine ultimately succeeded in winning U.S. support, and was able, albeit with great difficulty, to counter negative press views of Carranza himself.

As Villa, Huerta, and Carranza worked to manipulate the media and to court U.S. support, they all had to contend with negative perceptions about Mexicans that persisted in the American mind. In a series of three chapters, the author explores these perceptions and the ways in which all three men became victims of stereotypes. Through the creative use of news stories, editorials, and editorial cartoons, Anderson illustrates the extent to which Americans of the early twentieth century held views of Mexicans as backward, racially inferior, and morally wanting. Thus, even favorable depictions of Villa in the American press were offset by the alter-image of Villa as "Warrior-Villain." While the positive image of Villa was (at least until 1915) generally ascendant, American newspapers frequently reminded their readers of Villa's inherent "Mexicanness" with less flattering portrayals of the fighter from Chihuahua. Meanwhile, Huerta was depicted as "the Savage," and Carranza as "the Sneak."

In a concluding chapter, Anderson seeks to gauge the extent to which media portrayals, and by extension the propaganda efforts of Villa and his rivals, affected diplomatic decisions in the United States. Through an exploration of the content and tone of American diplomatic correspondence, Anderson argues that U.S. media portrayals did influence American policy-makers. Thus the diplomatic correspondence echoes American newspapers in its emphasis on Villa's military successes and on his protestations of pro-Americanism. At the same time, U.S. diplomatic officials, like their media cousins, expressed negative views of Villa and his countrymen; views that stemmed from stereotypes that had become a part of American culture by the time of the Mexican Revolution.

This is an excellent book that should interest Mexican specialists as well...