Most of us would not want Pancho Villa as a friend. I probably would not. He and his friends were dangerous and unpredictable. One might as easily be sharing a bottle of tequila as stretched on the ground with a bullet in the head. Yet, for some reason, I find him fascinating and have for a long time. I have been able to find few biographies of Pancho Villa, so this fictionalized account – THE FRIENDS OF PANCHO by James Carlos Blake – seemed a good bet. This time I bet right.
Though by no means an expert, to me the general chronology provided by Blake seems accurate: Pancho’s path from a peasant, mistreated at the hands of the landowner, through revolutionary (and almost president of Mexico), bandido, gentleman farmer, assassination in a blaze of gunfire, and finally to legend and myth.
In the story, as told in the voice of Rodolfo Fierro, one of Pancho’s most trusted friends, the band of revolutionaries and bandidos was a curious mix of barbarian – sometimes using executions as a kind of sport – but also with their own code of honor.
“Villa’s enemies had been trying to kill him all his life—it’s what enemies are supposed to do,”Fierro says. “Pancho knew that better than anybody, but he got careless. I was fair game because I was with him. Hell, Salas didn’t know me from Adam; he shot me because I damn sure would have killed him if that worthless .45 hadn’t jammed. They got the jump on us and they won. When they killed Villa, it was over. Revenge—bah! Only women and fools seek revenge for a lost fight.”
Sometimes the code seems almost unbelievably idealistic:
“I would not conspire against the only . . . what? . . . understanding? unwritten law? code?—different men call it different things if they call it anything at all—but it is the only thing in the life of men like us that has absolute value, the only thing, finally, that counts. God damn it, the compact of comrades is all that separates men like us from the rough beasts of the earth, that makes us something more than another random catastrophe of nature like earthquake and fire. Villa knew that. He’d always known it. Urbina knew it too, which is why he couldn’t look me in the eye. He had violated the compact, had deliberately betrayed his friends. He had to be punished. For him it would be penance. For me and Villa it would be fidelity.”
Sometimes punishment for breaking the code is almost unrealistically harsh, as with Tomas Urbino, once a friend who had betrayed them:
“I ordered the boys left with me to set torches to the house. Soon flames were leaping from the roof and bursting through the windows.. I blasted away his left kneecap. He tumbled off the bench, howling and writhing on the ground. The remainder of his side of the proceeding was conducted in screams and spasms. I shot his feet and ankles, then an elbow, then a shoulder. I shot his thieving hands, the other knee, and the points of both hipbones, tearing flesh and smashing bone but sparing the big arteries. I shot the other elbow, then blew off an ear. I pressed the bore of the gun against the side of his nose and shot the whole thing off his face. I went through three reloads, then paused to piss on him, then clapped my hand over his mouth to cut his moaning while I whispered into his good ear: “You’ll never rest in peace, Tomás, never. Not you.” I gave him the last one in the belly, then sat in front of him and watched the light fade slowly from his eyes.”
And the code can be paradoxical:
“When we caught up to the rest of the boys near the Durango border, Villa was entertaining them around a campfire with Tomás Urbina stories. I’d been a part of some of those stories, and I’d heard almost all the others, plenty of times. But on this night they seemed funnier than ever before, and I laughed along with the boys at every story Pancho told. Like Villa, I believed that even though some men did not deserve to go on living, they still deserved to be remembered at their best.
Fierro can sometimes verge on poetry as he tells the stories to the reader:
“As for the misfortune of never finding something to love, I’ll tell you what’s worse: to find it—whether it’s a woman or gold or God, whether it’s power or fame or the exercise of one’s own will—to find it and yet lack facility with it. That’s the greatest tragedy that can happen to a man: to discover his true love and then be no good with it. I saw it happen to many. I suffered no such misfortune. I loved the Revolution. I loved its rolling thunder and brute power, its exhilarating rage. It set free the man I truly am. It let me do what I do best as well as it can be done…”
Pancho might not be a person one would crave to have as a friend. But he is certainly a fascinating person to get to know.
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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
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Top reviews from other countries
Miguel Tonnies
a perfect and authentic rendering of Mexico's latest revolution
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2014