Revolucion mexicana 1920 -1940

The Mexican Revolution - consolidation (1920–40) part 1
Of the major figures in the 1910-20 phase of the Mexican Revolution, only Alvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa remained. In a strange twist offate, the counterrevolutionaries --Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta-- had died in bed while the revolutionaries Francisco Madero, Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza all perished violently.Violent death --at the hands of the Texas Rangers-- also came to Pascual Orozco, a man who could be counted in both camps: a revolutionary against Díaz, but later an ally of Huerta and "regulator" in theservice of the Chihuahua cattle barons.
Pancho Villa, once a commander of forces that included troop trains, heavy artillery and even a fledgling air corps, had been reduced by his 1915 defeats to whathe was in the beginning: a marauder --half-guerrilla, half-bandit-- prowling through the Chihuahua sierra. But even in that reduced role he could be troublesome. Striking here, striking there, hethoroughly bedeviled the federals and his cross-border raid on Columbus, New Mexico, succeeded in unleashing the hated gringo Punitive Expedition into Mexico. What finally immobilized Villa was a July28, 1920 agreement that he signed with provisional president Adolfo de la Huerta. The two were friends and Villa agreed to accept amnesty and become a private citizen in return for a 25,000 acre ranchin Canutillo, Durango, just across the border from Parral, Chihuahua. The package also included a pension and the right to keep a 50-man escort drawn from his elite force of dorados ('golden ones').If de la Huerta was a high-level friend, Villa also had high-level enemies.
Two of the most dangerous were Obregón, who would assume the presidency before the year was out, and future presidentPlutarco Elías Calles, who served as minister of the interior under Obregón. Pancho Villa's retirement idyll came to end in July 1923. He had quarreled with a cattle dealer named Melitón Lozoya, accusing...