Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture

2. The Remains of Pancho Villa

66 2 • tHe reMains of PanCHo Villa As befits his tumultuous life, the earthly remains of General Francisco “Pancho” Villa, the “Centaur of the North” and leader of the División del Norte in the Mexican Revolution, did not rest in peace. In 1926, three years after his murder, Villa’s head was stolen from his grave in Parral , Chihuahua (Katz, Life 789). As with all of Villa’s actions and attributes, speculation and myth took hold of the disembodied head. Groups ranging from the army of Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles, American soldiers of fortune, and former Carrancista generals were rumored to have stolen Villa’s head. The head may have been scientifically examined in Mexico for research to determine the source of Villa’s military genius, perhaps preserved as a macabre trophy for one of his former enemies, or displayed in the United States as revenge for Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico. There is even a rumor that Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University, had acquired the head (Katz, Life 789–790; Medina Ruiz 151). As recently as the mid-2000s, groups of Chicano/a students at Yale demanded that President George W. Bush return the head to Mexico (Taibo, Pancho Villa 838). Villa’s head clearly holds talismanic resonance for his followers and enemies alike, suggesting the intensification of his mythic potential after his death. As historian Fernando Medina Ruiz argues, “Villa’s head is more popular today than when it rested on the shoulders of that extraordinary man” (144–145). According to Taibo, the residents of Parral are still haunted by tales of ghostly apparitions seeking the lost head around the town cemetery (Pancho Villa 838). The fascination with parts of Villa’s corpse appears in many representations of the general, ranging from Nellie Campobello’s novel Cartucho (in which an old woman taunts the federal soldiers who are hunting Villa down, “Hey, bastard, bring me a little bone from Villa’s wounded knee, so I can make myself a relic” [41]) The remains of Pancho Villa 67 to corridos such as Chalino Sánchez’s “Descansa General” that refer to the power of Villa’s remains. While Villa’s unruly remains are frequently celebrated within popular and literary culture, dominant institutions like the post-revolutionary Mexican state attempt to regulate the remains by converting Villa into the untouchable national hero of myth. This is especially obvious in his reburial at the Monument of the Revolution in Mexico City in 1976 where, fifty-three years after his death, Villa was granted the official recognition denied him after his assassination. His headless body now lies alongside those of his friend Francisco Madero, his bitter enemy Venustiano Carranza, and Plutarco Elías Calles, the president who was General Francisco Villa. New Mexico State University Library. Archives and Special Collections. 68 Borderlands Saints probably directly responsible for his assassination (Katz, Life 1–2, 789). Thus, the revolutionary factions Villa fought against in life are elided in death, further subsuming the general’s contradictory human attributes into monolithic legend.1 Yettheincongruityofinterringtheleadersofseveralwarringfactionstogether in the imposing monument to the revolution is not the most incredible aspect of this tale. According to Taibo, it is possible that the body in the monument is not even Villa’s body at all. Instead, according to legend, in 1931 Pancho Villa’s headless body was secretly moved to another tomb in the cemetery of Parral in order to thwart further violations. As the story goes, later that year a woman who was going north to the United States to seek treatment for cancer died in a hospital in Parral. Lacking identification, she was buried in the tomb that had originally been Villa’s. Taibo notes that in 1976 a doctor who examined Villa’s newly exhumed body claimed that it appeared to have a female pelvis. So, it seems that an anonymous woman is in fact in Villa’s place in the Monument of the Revolution , while Villa’s headless remains lie in another tomb in the cemetery of Parral (Taibo, Pancho Villa 851). Fittingly, Pancho Villa appears to have escaped the state’s intractable official myth even in death. The whereabouts of Villa’s scattered remains may never really be determined, but his specter is as unruly and as compelling as ever. In fact, the fervor over Pancho Villa, especially the desire to possess him either literally...