Pancho Villa

[Paradox]

What are your opinions about Pancho Villa? How "ruthless" was he? I haven't read too much about him, but I've read that the majority of the people he used to attack Columbus, New Mexico, he had recruited at gunpoint. I also remember reading that he had discovered an assassination plot against him that some women were planning and had them executed. I wouldn't really consider that ruthless, seeing that they were going to assassinate him, but were there any incidents to justify these claims against him? For example, have you seen that movie they made about him for HBO? That was supposed to be based on a true story. If so, the part towards the end where he shoots and kills that woman who's hitting him because her husband was killed, did that actually happen? I also read he forbade the comsumption of alcohol among his men. Which is ironic, seeing that there's a bar named after him downtown. Maybe they don't about that. Oh well.

[FatFreeMilk]

I have much respect for this man. Yeah he was brutal but he had big cojones for doing the things he did. That attack on Columbus was the first, maybe not last anymore, time the US has been invaded. Crazeh huh.

[Iepilei]

I used to live an hour way from Colombus, in a cited named Deming. I have always had mixed feelings about his actions, probably because the area made it so apparent that he was THE bad guy.

But mostly because I know relatively little about the whole event.

:ph34r:

[RASH chris]

[That attack on Columbus was the first, maybe not last anymore, time the US has been invaded.]

Dude! WHAT?! No it wasn't, ever heard of a little thing called the War of 1812? They burned the fucking President's House in DC.

[refuse_resist]

Pancho Villa was a great man. On my dads side of the family I had a relative who fought and died side by side with him during the Revolution.

As far as anything being made about him in the US, it's always hard to trust how accurate it really is.

[NovelGentry]

I have seen the film, and I wouldn't say it's something to distrust. It actually sorta leaves the viewer with a very rough decision to make. Presenting him as someone who was doing something very important for his people -- but at the same time, carrying flaws. After seeing the film I was left with the sensation that he was an admirable man... but a man, just like all of us.

Holding those you admire in any other form, as if somehow they are not susceptable to mistakes is a foolish thing, and it should be actively countered by our own conscious attempts to seek the truth and understand all aspects of situations.

[Urban Rubble]

It actually sorta leaves the viewer with a very rough decision to make. Presenting him as someone who was doing something very important for his people -- but at the same time, carrying flaws. After seeing the film I was left with the sensation that he was an admirable man... but a man,

That seems to be a pretty accurate portrayal then. Pancho Villa is a figure had many contradictory sides to his personality.

He was ruthless, but he was a freedom fighter. I respect what he did, but I don't idolize him or his personal life.