La toma de Guadalajara
“La toma de Guadalajara”
La toma
de Zacatecas
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Picture taken from www.lib.msu.edu/diversity/pancho.gif
History of the battle of Guadalajara
The Mexican Revolution, which had
begun initially quite modestly in 1910, proved to be one in which the heroes
and the heroic stories were seemingly summoned and sustained by the people’s
sheer passion and desire for change; an energy so great that it was able to
sustain the pressure, to somewhat ameliorate many occurances,
of a national government and a beuracracy that
wished to keep the will of the people oppressed in order to self-serve. Such is the origin of many heroes of the
time, such as Emeliano Zapata as well as Pancho Villa, to name the obvious.
During the time of the Mexican
Revolution, the corrido saw what was to be its
greatest period of ascent, to which many of these heroes can attribute such
great fame. Such a corrido
was “La Toma de Guadalajara,” which tells the story
of the Division of the North, led by Pancho Villa,
and their sacking of the city of Guadalajara.
The city
of Guadalajara is the capitol of
the Mexican state of Jalisco, which is located on
the Southern third of the Pacific coast, located between the states of Nayarit, to the North, and Colima,
to the South. However, the corrido begins not in Guadalajara,
the focus of the narrative, but rather a couple of weeks earlier in November,
1914, on the route from Chihuahua
to Guadalajara.
As stated
in the corrido, Villa is following the same route
as the carrancistas, the army under Venustiano Carranza,
commander-in-chief of the Constitutional Army, which was established by the
Guadalupe Plan of March 1913. That
same month, “Francisco Villa [had] crossed into Chihuahua
from the United States,
where he had taken refuge on escaping from prison (Gilly,
100).” Under Villa’s natural
leadership, “the Northern Division soon took shape and developed into an
irresistible military machine (Gilly, 101.)” At this time, Carranza
and Villa are fighting for the same side.
Up until
the middle of 1914, Carranza, Villa, and Obregon had been fighting on the same side, more or
less. However, soon after Carranza declared himself
president in August of 1914, Villa turned on him, and thus we find ourselves
in the era of “La Toma de Guadalajara.” Villa follows Carranza’s
army through Torreon,
Fresnillo, Lagos,
Iapuato, and La Barca,
encountering varying levels of resistance, eventually to make it to Mexico
City. Dieguez is mentioned in the corrido
here. Manuel Dieguez,
a divisional commander in Obregon’s army in Guadalajara,
was forced to flee from Guadalajara
by the pending invasion by the Villa and his Northern Division army in late
1913.
The corrido speaks of Julian Medina, as well, who was to
later become the villista governor of the state of Guadalajara. Upon entering and taking Guadalajara,
Villa made an instant impression. The
prisoners and officials are all given liberty by Villa, who gives them food
and clothes, to the sound of the people exclaiming, “Que
Viva Pancho Villa!”
Interestingly enough, by April of 1915, Villa had moved on, and Dieguez had again assumed control of Guadalajara,
but not before the corridistas again solidified Pancho Villa as one of the greatest heroes of the
revolution.
Soon
after the United States
declared their support of Obregon and Carranza, Villa began his raids on the United
States border. Villa would eventually surrender to the
Mexican Government after two failed attempts by the United
States to capture him. He retired, living on the salary of a
general until his assassination in 1923.
However, through the permeation and survival of corridos
such as “La Toma de Guadalajara,” his legend lives
on.
Continue to “La toma de Guadalajara”
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