Francisco Villa (UK: , also US: ; Spanish: [bia]; born Jos Doroteo Arango Armbula, 5 June 1878 20 July 1923) was a general in the Mexican Revolution. He was a key figure in the revolutionary movement that forced out President Porfirio Daz and brought Francisco I. Madero to power in 1911. When Madero was ousted by a coup led by General Victoriano Huerta in February 1913, he led anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army 191314. The commander of the coalition was civilian governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza. After the defeat and exile of Huerta in July 1914, Villa broke with Carranza. Villa dominated the meeting of revolutionary generals that excluded Carranza and helped create a coalition government. Emiliano Zapata and Villa became formal allies in this period, but it was only in principle. Like Zapata, Villa was strongly in favor of land reform, but his plans were not implemented when he had power. At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, the U.S. considered recognizing him as Mexico's legitimate authority. Civil war broke out when Carranza challenged Villa. Villa was decisively defeated by Constitutionalist General lvaro Obregn in summer 1915, and the U.S. aided Carranza directly against Villa in the Second Battle of Agua Prieta in November 1915. Much of Villa's army left after Villa's defeat on the battlefield and his lack of resources to buy arms and pay soldiers' salaries. Angered at the U.S. aid to Carranza, Villa conducted a raid on the border town of Columbus, New Mexico to goad the U.S. to invade Mexico in 191617. Despite a major contingent of soldiers and the latest military technology, the U.S. failed to capture Villa. When President Carranza was ousted from power in 1920, Villa negotiated an amnesty with interim President Adolfo de la Huerta and was given a landed estate, on the condition he retire from politics. He was assassinated in 1923. Although his faction did not prevail in the Revolution, he is one of its most charismatic and prominent figures.

In life, Villa helped fashion his own image as an internationally known revolutionary hero, starring as himself in Hollywood films and giving interviews to foreign journalists, most notably John Reed. After his death he was excluded from the pantheon of revolutionary heroes until the Sonoran generals Obregn and Calles, whom he battled during the Revolution, were gone from the political stage. Villa's exclusion from the official narrative of the Revolution might have contributed to his continued posthumous popular acclaim. He was celebrated during the Revolution and long afterward by corridos, films about his life, and novels by prominent writers. In 1976, his remains were reburied in the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in a huge public ceremony.



The Mexican Revolution (Spanish: Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history." It resulted in the destruction of the Federal Army and its replacement with a revolutionary army, transformed Mexican culture and government. The northern Constitutionalist faction prevailed on the battlefield and drafted the present-day Constitution of Mexico, which aimed to create a strong central government, with revolutionary generals holding power from 1920 to 1940. The revolutionary conflict was primarily a civil war, but foreign powers, having important economic and strategic interests in Mexico, figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles. The United States played an especially significant role.Although the decades-long regime of President Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911) was increasingly unpopular, there was no foreboding that a revolution was about to break out in 1910. The aging Díaz failed to find a controlled solution to presidential succession, resulting in a power struggle among competing elites and the middle classes, which occurred during a period of intense labor unrest, exemplified by the Cananea and Río Blanco strikes. When wealthy northern landowner Francisco I. Madero challenged Díaz in the 1910 presidential election and Díaz jailed him, Madero called for an armed uprising against Díaz in the Plan of San Luis Potosí. Rebellions broke out in Morelos, but most prominently in northern Mexico. The Federal Army was unable to suppress the widespread uprisings, showing the military's weakness and encouraging the rebels. Díaz resigned in May 1911 and went into exile, an interim government installed until elections could be held, the Federal Army was retained, and revolutionary forces demobilized. The first phase of the Revolution was relatively bloodless and short-lived.

Madero was elected President, taking office in November 1911. He immediately faced the armed rebellion of Emiliano Zapata in Morelos, where peasants demanded rapid action on agrarian reform. Politically inexperienced, Madero's government was fragile, and further regional rebellions broke out. In February 1913, prominent army generals from the Diaz regime staged a coup d'etat in Mexico City, forcing Madero and Vice President Pino Suárez to resign, and few days later both were murdered by orders of new President, Victoriano Huerta. A new and bloody phase of the Revolution ensued when coalition of northerners opposed to the counter-revolutionary regime of Huerta, the Constitutionalist Army. The Constitutionalists were led by Governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza. Zapata's forces continued their armed rebellion in Morelos. Huerta's regime lasted from February 1913 to July 1914, with the Federal Army defeated by revolutionary armies. The revolutionary armies then fought each other, with the Constitutionalist faction under Carranza defeating the army of former ally Pancho Villa by the summer of 1915.

Carranza consolidated power and a new constitution was promulgated in February 1917. The Mexican Constitution of 1917 established universal male suffrage, promoted secularism, workers' rights, economic nationalism and land reform, and enhanced the power of the federal government. Carranza became President of Mexico in 1917, serving a term ending in 1920. He attempted to impose a civilian successor, prompting northern revolutionary generals to rebel. Carranza fled Mexico City and was killed. From 1920 to 1940, revolutionary generals held office, a period when State power became more centralized and revolutionary reforms implemented, bringing the military under control of the civilian government. The Revolution was a decade-long civil war, with a new political leadership that gained power and legitimacy through their participation in revolutionary conflicts. The political party they founded, which would become the Institutional Revolutionary Party, ruled Mexico until the presidential election of 2000, when an opposition party won. Even the conservative winner of that election, Vicente Fox, contended his election was heir to the 1910 democratic election of Francisco Madero, thereby claiming the heritage and legitimacy from the Revolution.