Pancho Villa - Last Years, Death and Gravesite

Last Years, Death and Gravesite

Following his unsuccessful military campaign at Celaya and the American incursion, Villa's influence began to wane. While Villa still remained active, Carranza shifted his focus to dealing with the more dangerous threat posed by Zapata in the south. By the end of 1915, Villa no longer had an army and had gone back to being a guerrilla leader in the mountains of Chihuahua. Villa's last major military action would be a raid against Ciudad Juárez in 1919. Following the raid, Villa would suffer yet another major blow after Felipe Angeles, who had returned to Mexico in 1918 after living in exile for three years as a dairy farmer in Texas, left Villa and his now small militia. Angeles was also later captured by Carranza's forces and was executed on November 26, 1919.

After losing his final battle at Ciudad Juárez, Villa agreed that he would cease fighting if it were made worth his while. Villa still continued fighting and conducted a small siege in Ascencion, Durango after his failed raid in Juarez. However, the siege failed and Villa's new second-in-command, his longtime lieutenant Martín López, was killed during the fighting.

On May 21, 1920, a break for Villa came when Carranza, along with his top advisors and supporters, was assassinated by supporters of Álvaro Obregón. With his archnemesis dead, Villa was now ready to negotiate a peace settlement and retire. On July 22, 1920, Villa was finally able to send a telegram to Mexican interim President Adolfo de la Huerta, which stated that he recognized Huerta's presidency and requested amnesty. Six days later, Adolfo de la Huerta met with Villa and successfully negotiated a peace settlement.

In exchange for his retirement, Villa was given a 25,000 acre hacienda in Canutillo, just outside of Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua, by the national government. This was in addition to the Quinta Luz estate that he owned with his wife, María Luz Corral de Villa, in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. The last remaining 200 guerrillas and veterans of Villa's milita who still maintained a loyalty to him would reside with him in his new hacienda as well and the Mexican government also granted them a pension that totalled 500,000 gold pesos. The 50 guerrillas who still remained in Villa's small cavalry would also be allowed to serve as Villa's personal bodyguards.

On Friday, 20 July 1923, Villa was killed while visiting Parral. Usually accompanied by his entourage of Dorados (his bodyguards) Pancho Villa frequently made trips from his ranch to Parral for banking and other errands. This day, however, Villa had gone into the town without them, taking only a few associates with him. 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 roadster, Villa passed by a school and a pumpkinseed vendor ran toward Villa's car and shouted Viva Villa! – a signal for a group of seven riflemen who then appeared in the middle of the road and fired over 40 shots into the automobile. In the fusillade of shots, Villa was hit by 9 Dumdum bullets in his head and upper chest, killing him instantly. He was found in the driver seat of the car, with one hand reaching for his gun.

One of Villa's bodyguards, Ramon Contreras, was also badly wounded but managed to kill at least one of the assassins before he himself managed to escape; he would be the only person who accompanied Villa during this assassination who managed to survive. Two other bodyguards, Claro Huertado and Villa's main personal bodyguard Rafael Madreno, who were with him also died, as did his personal secretary Daniel Tamayo and his high ranking Colonel Miguel Trillo, who served as his chauffeur. Villa is sometimes reported to have died saying: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." However, there is no contemporary evidence he survived his shooting even momentarily, and his biographer, Katz, confirms that Villa died instantly; Time Magazine also reported in 1951 that both Villa and his aide (Tamayo) were killed instantly. 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 hacienda in the Canitullo 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.

Shortly after his death, two theories emerged about why he was killed. One was that he was killed as an act of family revenge by Jesus Herrera, the last surviving son of Villa's former general Jose de la Luz Herrera. In 1914, Jose de la Luz Herrera and his family betrayed Villa and joined Carranza. Villa then made it a goal to exterminate the Herrera clan.

In 1915, Herrera's son Maclovio was accidentally killed by friendly fire while fighting Villa on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. Another one of Herrera's sons, General Luis Herrera, was captured in a hotel by Villa's soldiers after the Battle of Torreón in 1916 and was executed. In 1919, Jose de la Luz Herrera and his two sons Zeferino and Melchor, along with a number of the men in their militia, were captured by Villa's soldiers after an unsuccessful attack on Villa's base in Parral and were executed; Villa, however, surprisingly pardoned and released the remaining prisoners who were captured. After Villa retired, Jesus Herrera was determined to use his family's wealth to seek revenge on Villa. In 1922, a secret war began between Herrera and Villa and lasted over a year. According to Villa, Herrera had bribed a number of men, including some of his own former generals, to kill him and was unsuccessful.

The other theory that emerged was that Villa was killed for political reasons. At the time of his death, Villa had taken an interest in running for President of Mexico and would have presented a significant challenge to his rival potential candidate Plutarco Elías Calles.

While it has never been completely 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 Joaquin Amaro with at least tacit approval of the then president of Mexico, Obregon. At the time, a state legislator from Durango, Jesus 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 Gabriel Chavez, who worked as a dealer for General Motors, that he would kill Villa if he were paid 50,000 pesos. Chavez, who wasn't wealthy and didn't have 50,000 pesos on hand, then 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 sitting politician arrested, Obregon gave into the people's demands and had Barraza arrested. Barraza was originally sentenced to 20 years in prison, The following month, however, Barraza's sentence was commuted to three months by the Governor of Chihuahua; Barraza eventually became a colonel in the Mexican Army. In a letter to the governor of Durango, Jesus Castro, Barraza agreed to be the "fall guy" and the same arrangement is mentioned in letters exchanged between Castro and Amaro. Others involved in the conspiracy were Felix Lara, the commander of federal troops in Parral, who was paid 50,000 pesos by Calles to remove his soldiers and policemen from the town on the day of the assassination, and Meliton Lozoya, the former owner of Villa's hacienda whom Villa was demanding pay back funds he had embezzled. It was Lozoya who planned the details of the assassination and found the men who carried it out. It was reported that before Barraza died of a stroke in his Mexico City home in 1951, his last words were "I'm not a murderer. I rid humanity of a monster."

Villa's purported death mask was hidden at the Radford School in El Paso, Texas, until the 1970s, when it was sent to the Historical Museum of the Mexican Revolution in Chihuahua; other museums have ceramic and bronze representations that do not match this mask.

Villa was buried in the city cemetery of Parral, Chihuahua, Tombs for Villa exist in Chihuahua and Mexico City.

Period newsreel showing views of the assassination location in Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua, news reporters at the scene, and Villa's bullet riddled corpse and auto still exist to this day. Villa's skull was stolen from his grave in 1926.

Villa's last living son, Ernesto Nava, died in Castro Valley, California, at the age of 94, on 31 December 2009. Nava appeared yearly in festival events in his hometown of Durango, Mexico, enjoying celebrity status until he became too weak to attend.