Interview with Francisco Piñon Carvajal, adopted son of General Francisco Villa, conducted in Cd. Chihuahua, Mexico, on October 20, 1976, by Dr. Ruben Osorio:PAGE FIVE
Dr. Osorio: Was the general really interested in education?
Sr. Piñon: General Villa asked of the government of Obregón the creation of a primary school so that they might educate the workers in Canutillo and his own children. Through the Secretariat of Education this was conceded, providing them with all of the elements for schooling and an excellent group of primary teachers. Lic. Vasconcelos did not scrimp on anything in his good offices. Even before he arrived at Canutillo, the general had great interest in education, especially for that of the children and he was stimulated by the idea that the poor people should have access to education; perhaps due to his own lack of schooling, he felt the need that the people educate themselves. When his forces in 1914 occupied the capital of the republic, one night he gave the order that they round up three hundred abandoned children who slept on the sidewalks of the streets of Mexico covered with newspapers; these children, orphans, shoeshine boys, newspaper sellers, and he sent them by train to his wife Doña Luz here in Chihuahua so that they could go to the Escuela de Artes y Oficios and could become useful men. Almost no one knows that when the general was here in the city, the ten most studious of those children were invited to dine with him. Not only those children received his help but he gathered in and protected many others whom he sent to study. I was one of those fortunate ones who, thanks to the interest of the general for my education, I had the opportunity to study, since when I was a twelve year old child and orphaned by my father, he protected me and sent me to study together with other youths named Manuel Baca, Eustaquio Rivera, Eugenio Acosta, Ignacio Bailon and Zenaido Torres to the Mount Tamalpias Military Acadamy, in San Rafael, near San Francisco, California. He sent another group of boys to the Hitchcock Military Acadamy there; among those were some brothers whose surname was Díaz. He kept me up until 1920 in American colleges as I have told you earlier; a feel that everything I am I owe to General Villa whom I consider more that a protector but as my adoptive father. Yes, the general always had a great interest in education and he was always preoccupied that the Escuela Felipe Ángeles lacked nothing. Many of the necessities of the school he paid for from his own pocket and he gave much consideration to the teachers. He frequently invited them to dine with him. He worried so much about the education that one time he sent me to a rancho called Torreoncito to say to the parents who had children studying in the school in Canutillo that he would pay a worker daily wages, but that, during the planting season that they should not fail to send the children to school.
Dr. Osorio: Why did he send students to schools in the United States?
Sr. Piñon: For the question of security, since the war was very hard in the state of Chihuahua and he did not want the students to be exposed to it. Therefor it was common for Chihuahua families to send their children to study in the United States. In 1915 when General Villa and General Calles were fighting hard in Agua Prieta, Rodolfo Elias Calles and I were companions and friends at Palmore College in El Paso, Texas, the son of the general and I; we never lost our friendship
Dr. Osorio: Did the General study English in Canutillo?
Sr. Piñon: No, as far as I know he was never studying English. He read the works that he acquired for our library because he wanted to perfect himself in our history, customs and culture. But I never knew of him studying English.
Dr. Osorio: In the report General Villa expressed himself in a very braggadocios manner about several matters, especially about the works that were done on the hacienda. Do you consider him to have been very braggadocios?
Sr. Piñon: I expressed to you earlier that General Villa was not vain, he was a modest person and although he knew of his popularity among the working classes, he never expressed that in any way. When the Mexican Revolution had need for energetic men, of action, Sr. Abraham González contacted with him and he joined the movement, as much because he felt the impulse to collaborate in the movement, as he considered Sr. González to be an honorable and patriotic man. Both don Abraham and Sr. Madero excused him publicly for his previous life, this last in a letter he published in the El Paso Morning Times on April 25, 1911. General Villa knew perfectly well that his name had crossed the borders of Mexico but I never saw this to cause ostentation in him. I studied his manner of being and I never noted any tendency to think he was outstanding for any reason, and I think he had no reason to do so, it didn’t matter to him. With respect to his declarations, I have mentioned before that he received the hacienda in complete ruins and under his direction, in a short time it was flourishing. If the newspaper men of El Universal were there to write a report and they needed material to write about, I consider it very natural that they be shown the works that took place there, those of the farming operation, but I consider that this was done in a very natural manner, and not with the idea that it should be any kind of big deal, since he was opposed to that sort of thing.
Dr. Osorio: He declared that in the sense that he had resolved the agricultural problem in Canutillo that he now gave such chores to the politicians of the country, being for him such a simple thing to resolve them.
Sr. Piñon: I have already described to you the way that the general divided the lands of Canutillo among his soldiers forming an agricultural colony, according to the accords that he had with the government. With the rest of his soldiers they formed other agricultural colonies in the states of Chihuahua and Durango and General Villa served as representative of all these colonies. Nevertheless, this does not mean that he bragged that he had resolved the agrarian problem, since it was not in his hands to do so; he had no reason to make these absurd declarations and I don’t think he made them. He carried out his commitment with the government by founding the agricultural colony of Canutillo.
Dr. Osorio: He gave actual press conferences to the reporters about the planting of potatoes and peanuts. Did he consider himself an expert on agriculture?
Sr. Piñon: No, I don’t think he wanted to show himself before the reporters as an agricultural expert. He considered himself to be farmer like any other who knew well that if he had achieved success he owed that to his having the elements with which to work the soil. Apart from that I have told you that he applied to his work all of the energy that he was capable of; if during the war he could organize and manage contingents of up to fifty thousand men, what problem would it signify for him to organize the work of one agricultural community? I can also assure you that in Canutillo they never planted potatoes or peanuts, this is a lie; I had in my possession all of the keys to all of the storage houses where they kept the seeds, the machinery, the tools and all types of elements of work and I can tell you, that what was planted in Canutillo was wheat, corn, and beans and some chile, and that is all. It is also false that General Villa had offered to Colonel Lara five thousand bales of straw to sell; it would have come as a surprise to me the existence of such a large quantity of straw because we had no place to store it and these bales would have had to been stored outside and I would have noticed. I am sure that there were never any five thousand bales of straw in Canutillo and General Villa could not have sold them, this is false.
Dr. Osorio: He also praised his own intelligence when he said: “I am an intelligent man, with an intelligence endowed by nature.” And then he added bragging: “If among my people, sir, there were many Pancho Villas so in love with the land, the people would no longer suffer so.”
Sr. Piñon: I never heard him making a show of his being intelligent and as I told you was very much against showing off and this is why I think he did not express himself like that. I never heard him talk like that.
Dr. Osorio: Do you think he was an utter enemy of newspapermen?
Sr. Piñon: No, because these gentlemen from El Universal were not the only reporters who went to Canutillo. There were others who went there to interview him and I always saw how he received them and attended them well. This is untrue that in the two years that I was with General Villa in Canutillo he would have exempted himself from receiving journalists since I happened to be photographed with several of them together with the general. Already during the civil war General Villa had the opportunity to appreciate the value of the press since he knew what it was to be systematically attacked by it, above all by the reactionary press in Chihuahua which never stopped calling him a bandit. Nevertheless, when his forces dominated the state of Chihuahua, when he held power, he was one of the few revolutionaries who never harmed any journalist. In spite of that they attacked him without rest, and he never bought them off, because it seemed undignified to do this as he wished to see the truth come out of its own accord. On certain occasions he avoided making declarations with the aim of avoiding what he said being misinterpreted and now living in Canutillo I heard what he had to say about the newspapers had said, but he did not speak contemptuously. On only one occasion I saw him become greatly bothered by something published in the Torreon press, when Sr. Jesús Herrera attacked him insulting him in a coarse and vile manner. But it is not true that he declined to receive the newspaper reporters or that he was predisposed against them. The best proof of what I am saying is that he received Sr. Hernández Llergo and his companions with all sorts of attentions. What other considerations could he have had with the journalists, if he received those who were sent by EL Universal, who were complete strangers, without any problem? I have a copy of the attentive letter that the General sent on June 23, 1922 to Sr. Hernández Llego thanking him for his visit and excusing himself for “not having been able to proportion to yourselves the accommodations which you deserve.” He sent another similar letter of thanks to Ing. Palavicini, director of the newspaper El Universal.
All rights reserved by Dr. Ruben Osorio Zuniga. Prior written permission to republish in part or in whole is required except for excerpts of one sentence or less.
Translation by E. Bryant Holman, Ojinaga, Chihuahua
To contact Dr. Osorio rubenosorio@ojinaga.com
