Pancho Villa

Background

Pancho Villa was born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, on June 5, 1878. Most of his early life remains a mystery. According to most sources, he went to a local school run by a church. His father was called Augustine Arango and he worked as a sharecropper, his mother was called Micaela Arambula. Pancho Villa grew up at the Rancho de la Coyotada, a hacienda in Durango, alongside his four siblings. While growing up, his father died, leaving the family under the care of Micaela. Pancho Villa, being the firstborn son of the family, quit school to help his mother raise the kids. He began working menial jobs such as mule skinning, bricklaying, butchering, construction, and sharecropping.

When he was 16, he moved to Chihuahua. Several months later, he went back to his hometown to track down a man named Agustine Lopez Negrete, who had raped his sister. He killed him, stole a horse, and fled to the Sierra Madre Occidental region of Durango where he joined a bandit band and changed his name to ‘Arango.’

In 1902, Pancho Villa was arrested for assault and stealing mules. He was forcibly inducted into the Federal Army where he served for a few months and escaped. In 1903, he killed an army officer, stole his horse, and took up the alias ‘Pancho Villa.’ In 1911, Abraham Gonzalez, the leader of the anti-reelection in Chihuahua, reached out to Pancho Villa and asked him to join the movement. He accepted the offer and went ahead to become a key figure in the revolutionary violence that forced President Porfirio Diaz out of power.