The Mexican Revolution finally settled into a power struggle between two men - Pancho Villa and General Venustiano Carranza - a rich landowner from the neighboring state of Coahuila. Neither man was much interested in anything more than personal power at this point, the ideals of the early revolution having given way to more personal pursuits - like that of unbridled power and riches on the part of two bloody and cruel warlords.

The man who was to decide the outcome of the struggle was another, far less significant general, Alvaro Obregon. Obregon had one distinct advantage. Whereas all of the other generals had foreign advisors, particularly Germans looking to see how modern military tactics would serve them in their upcoming struggle with the allies in WW1 - Obregon had the good sense to actually listen to their advice.

The conventional wisdom has it that Oregon's tactic was to charge Villa's powerful cavalry - the feared Dorados - and then retreat headlong into a trap he had set up for them - where Obregon's Yaqui Indian marksmen would be dug into foxholes positioned so as to get Villa's men in their crossfire. Villa was reported as using cavalry charges extensively in his campaign. This has since been disproven, and the evidence has now surfaced to support the contention of the Villistas - that they would have defeated Obregon at the critical Battle of Celaya if the Americans had not treacherously sold him bad ammunition.

Obregon, was able to defeat him in 1915, and Villa then launched into a guerrilla phase and remained in the field for another five years until he finally surrendered in 1920, and went into retirement as a the manager of an agricultural colony for his veterans in Canutillo, near Parral. He was assassinated in 1923.

Carranza only stayed in power a few months before he, too, was ousted. He was killed trying to escape to Spain with a large horde of gold from the national treasury. He was succeeded by Obregon, who arrived in Mexico City in the company of one of Emiliano Zapata's last surviving partisans, the enigmatic Zapatista general Genovevo de la O.