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Chapter 3. Pancho Villa on Two Sides of the Border
- University of Texas Press
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Pancho Villa on Two Sides of the Border In The Eagle and the Serpent (1928), Martín Luis Guzmán writes, “My interest in Villa and his activities made me ask myself, while I was in Ciudad Juárez, which exploits would best paint the Division of the North: those supposed to be strictly historical or those rated as legendary; those related exactly as they had been seen, or those in which a touch of poetic fancy brought out their essence more clearly. These second always seemed to me truer, more worthy of being considered history” (1965, 163). This view of the historical credibility of legend is key to Villa’s mythology and to his standing as the most popular and best-known figure in Mexico’s modern history. The mystery of his early years and the transformation from outlaw Doroteo Arango into revolutionary leader were indispensable factors. Class, race, and gender made Villa at once picturesque and threatening and imprinted his celebrity and reputation. In the Villa “legendcreation process,” as John Rutherford contends, “there is not that alternation between legend and counter-legend found in the cases of Madero and Zapata, but a continuous coexistence of the two, and to a certain extent an overlapping of them” (1971, 152). In this sense, Mexican and American historiography coincides. Out of the Villa legend emerges a historical agent that is variably a murderous bandit, a lower-class rogue and political adversary, a social outcast, and an untrained but gifted military leader. For those who loathed, admired, or identified with him, for those bent on defeating him, enthralled by his charisma, or who followed him into war for land and justice, “Villa was the stuff of fantasy” (O’Malley, 1986, 89). Only spectacle and romance could contain the paradoxes that overdetermined the legend, and, as I argue in this chapter, only popular mass culture could ingrain the legend in the collective imaginary. In the first part of the 1930s, and as Villa’s historical legacy and status as hero of the Mexican revolution were being disputed in the political arena, the burgeoning radio and music recording industries disseminated corridos, the folk ballads that told episodes of Chapter 3 constructing the image of the mexican revolution 0 his life, recollected victories and defeats, and mourned his passing. The rapidly growing tabloid press, which specialized in lurid stories of violence , sex, and romance, circulated testimonies and fictionalized accounts (O’Malley, 1986, 100). The cinema contributed as well to keeping the legend alive, notably by means of two films, very different in aesthetic and political terms, which were produced one decade after his assassination on July 20, 1923, in the town of Parral in the state of Chihuahua. In the United States, David O. Selznick of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios bought rights to the fictionalized biography, Viva Villa! A Recovery of the Real Pancho Villa. Peon . . . Bandit . . . Soldier . . . Patriot, by Edgcumb Pinchon and Odo B. Stade (1933).1 In Mexico, the director Fernando de Fuentes, with the poet and playwright Xavier Villaurrutia , adapted the first third of Rafael Felipe Muñoz’s novel ¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! (1931). Viva Villa! (1934) and ¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! (1935) created visual archetypes and story lines that remain classic to this day. In both, the aesthetic and discursive resources of filmmaking mediate the multiple meanings and competing narratives that turned Villa into a larger-than-life figure. Iconography and narrative echo processes of image and legend construction in which historical and fiction-driven modes are implicated in revisualizing situations and actors. Moreover, both films reveal the combined power of and the inconsistencies within the “black,” “white,” and “epic” legends identified by the historian and Villa biographer Frederick Katz. Brutality, victimization, and heroism coexist to give historical legitimacy to the narrative. Heavy on epic spectacle and melodrama , representation in these films favors the responses elicited by Villa in the United States and Mexico, which Katz describes as consisting of a “mixture of love and hate, respect and contempt” (1998, 2). These affective and perceptual disparities historicize representation: in Viva Villa! they reinforce the revolutionary leader’s appeal as a cinematic hero, and in Let’s Go with Pancho Villa! they are used to scrutinize the legend by critically reconfiguring its themes of bravery and loyalty. In the early years of sound cinema, Hollywood and the nascent Mexican film industry were differently drawn to Villa’s legend. Hollywood sought to capitalize on the renewed political and...