By Mark Stevenson
Associated Press
Dec. 29, 2002
MEXICO CITY - There's a Pancho Villa revival in Mexico, but it's not the books,
the Antonio Banderas movie or the nostalgia wave that worries some Mexicans.
It's the real-life reawakening of Villa's violence.
Rising social unrest swept to the pinnacles of power Dec. 10 when protesters
on horseback broke down the ornate doors of Congress and surged into the lower
legislative chamber to demand subsidies for farmers and pay raises for teachers.
The protest was reminiscent of Villa's sweep across northern Mexico in the 1910-17 revolution, when he and his pistol-packing, horse-riding soldiers would burst into haciendas to loot the rich landowners.
The invasion stunned lawmakers. The time for such violence is long past, all parties agreed, even Mexico's leftist Democratic Revolution Party, which has flirted with violent protests and rebellions.
"These violent . . . tactics are not the way to solve society's just demands," Democratic Revolution congressional leader Jesus Ortega said.
To some Mexicans, though, Villa remains a hero and his methods still appeal. Few embody Mexico's chaotic violence, devil-may-care attitude, sense of rough justice and spontaneous rebellion as much as the revolutionary leader.
His image has gone commercial, with restaurants from San Francisco to Moscow adopting Villa's name or grinning face as trademarks.
The Antonio Banderas movie in production in Mexico is expected to be a largely sympathetic view.
"Pancho Villa is synonymous with the fight against injustice," said Adolfo Lopez, a Mexico City assemblyman who in 1988 founded a rough slum group named the Francisco Villa Popular Front to fight for affordable housing.
The modern-day Villistas built a reputation by battling police at demonstrations, hijacking buses, blocking traffic and leading squatters in occupations of housing lots.
Lopez defends the tactics.
"Given a choice between dying of hunger and dying with a rifle in your hand, a lot of people will choose the latter," he said.
But the group copies some of Villa's less savory aspects. It uses iron-handed leadership to urge poorly educated troops into violence with little talk of what they are fighting for.
In July, the Popular Front gave key support for a peasant uprising in Atenco, a town near Mexico City threatened by a proposed airport. Villa would have been right at home: Machete-wielding farmers on horseback took hostages and hijacked gas tankers and threatened to blow them up.
The uprising derailed the airport project, but it also divided residents, lost the town all government funds, and installed a relatively undemocratic rebel council in power.
In southern Chiapas state, where small-scale farmers fear being overwhelmed by a looming free trade in farm produce, Zapatista rebels have taken to hanging Villa's portrait beside their own namesake, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata.
The debate over Villa is still very much alive in Mexico, in part because the conditions he fought against are still here: a vast poor separated from a wealthy elite.
Critics say Mexico's conservative government may have brought fuller democracy
to the country, but there has been little social change. That, for them, makes
Villa the right man for the times.
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