Pancho Villa - Early Life

Early Life

Villa was born on 5 June 1878, as José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, to poor peasants Agustín Arango and Micaela Arambula at the Rancho de la Coyotada, which was located in San Juan del Río and was one of the largest haciendas in the state of Durango. Doroteo was the oldest of five children and as such helped his mother care for his siblings after Agustín died. As a child, Doroteo received some education from a local church-run school, but quit school and became a sharecropper after his father died.

According to his own later statements, at the age of 16, Doroteo moved to Chihuahua, but swiftly returned to Durango to track down a hacienda owner named Agustín Lopez Negrete, who had raped Doroteo's sister. However, historians have questioned the veracity of this story. After he shot and killed Negrete, Doroteo stole a horse and fled to the Sierra Madre Occidental region in Durango, where he roamed the hills as a bandit. Eventually, he became a member of an outlaw "super group" headed by Ignacio Parra, one of the most famous bandits of Durango at the time. As a bandit he went by the name "Arango."

In 1902, Arango was arrested for stealing mules and assault. While he was spared the death sentence from the rurales due to his connections with the powerful Pablo Valenzuela (to whom Villa would sell the stolen goods), he was forced to join the federal army. Several months later he deserted and fled to the neighboring state of Chihuahua. In 1903, after killing an army officer and stealing his horse, he was no longer known as Arango, but Francisco "Pancho" Villa after his paternal grandfather, Jesus Villa. He was also known to his friends as La Cucaracha ("the cockroach").

According to Frank McLynn, until 1910 Villa would alternate episodes of banditry with more legitimate pursuits. Villa's outlook on banditry would change after he met Abraham Gonzalez. The local representative for Francisco Madero, a politician who was opposed to the rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz, González convinced Villa that through his banditry he could fight for the people and hurt the hacienda owners.