On June 23rd, 1914, the legendary División del Norte, commanded by General Francisco “Pancho” Villa, defeated the forces of then-president Victoriano Huerta and took the city of Zacatecas. After the decisive battle, the federales were unable to recover. The path to Mexico City—and ultimate victory—was clear for Villa and the revolutionaries. As Colonel Montejo, the narrator of Paco Taibo’s epic tale, says, “We broke their spine in Zacatecas. The rest was just a march south.” In this remarkable graphic novel, Paco Ignacio Taibo II (a.k.a. PIT)—the prolific historian, biographer of Che Guevara and Pancho Villa, as well as the founder of Mexican neopolicial fiction—brings his tremendous storytelling skills to bear, united with stunning illustrations by the artist Eko that evoke traditional Day of the Dead imagery and the etchings of legendary Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. Pancho Villa Takes Zacatecas not only depicts one of the most decisive moments of the revolution, it also profiles, in glorified action, one of the most beloved heroes of contemporary Mexico. Now translated into English and seamlessly adapted to ebook format, Pancho Villa Takes Zacatecas is an unforgettable paean to the dramatic story of the Mexican Revolution that will fascinate history buffs, avid readers, and graphic novel enthusiasts alike. Praise for Pancho Villa Takes Zacatecas "Like never before, maverick Mexican novelist, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, and visual virtuoso, Eko, bring to kinetic life a pivotal moment in Villa’s against-the-odds, David-Goliath battles with sitting oppressors—one that returned the power to the Mexican people. Extraordinarily energetic woodcut-art and a nimble narrative voice make this history showing and telling at its best!" —Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Your Brain on Latino Comics. “It’s impossible to review [Taibo II’s] literary work without painting an ideological portrait. He’s probably the writer on the left with the proudest lineage of all those I’ve read.” —Christopher Domínguez Michael, Letras Libres “Eko is in many ways a Renaissance artist who through archetypical characters and his work showing them to us recovers the essence (and drives) of humanity, and he shows them without objection.” —Jorge Rueda, Replicante Paco Ignacio Taibo II, or PIT, was born in Gijón, Spain in 1949, before fleeing Franco’s dictatorship with his family in 1958. He has resided in Mexico City ever since, where he’s built a career as a writer, journalist, historian, biographer of Pancho Villa and Che Guevara, and, perhaps most crucially, a founder of the neopolicial fiction genre in Latin America. His books have been published in 29 countries and translated into nearly as many languages. In addition to being a prolific writer, he is an active member of the international crime writing community and organizes Semana Negra or “Noir Week” in his native Gijón. He has won the Latin American Dashiell Hammett Prize three times, as well as the Mexican Premio Planeta, and several other awards for international crime fiction. Eko, born in Mexico in 1958, is a cartoonist, engraver, and painter. His wood etchings, often erotic in nature and the focus of controversial discussion, are part of a broader tradition in Mexican folk art popularized by José Guadalupe Posada. He has collaborated on projects for The New York Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Spanish daily El País, in addition to having published numerous books in Mexico and Spain. Nina Arazoza is a recent graduate of Tufts University’s International Relations Program and an aspiring translator and publishing professional. Her enthusiasm for Latin American culture, history, and politics led her to Restless Books and Pancho Villa Takes Zacatecas.

This is a tale that might be told around a campfire, night after night in the midst of a military campaign. The kinetic and garrulous Pancho Villa talking on and on about battles and men; bursting out with hearty, masculine laughter; weeping unashamed for fallen comrades; casually mentioning his hotheadedness—"one of my violent outbursts"—which sent one, two, or a dozen men before the firing squad; recounting amours; and always, always protesting dedication to the Revolutionary cause and the interests of "the people." Villa saw himself as the champion, eventually almost the sole champion, of the Mexican people. He fought for them, he said, and opponents who called him bandit and murderer were hypocrites. This is his story, his account of how it all began when as a peasant boy of sixteen he shot a rich landowner threatening the honor of his sister. This lone, starved refugee hiding out in the mountains became the scourge of the Mexican Revolution, the leader of thousands of men, and the hero of the masses of the poor. Great battles of the Revolution are described, sometimes as broad sweeps of strategy, sometimes as they developed half hour by half hour. Long, dusty horseback forays and cold nights spent pinned down under enemy fire on a mountainside are made vivid and gripping. The assault on Ciudad Juárez in 1911, the battles of Tierra Blanca, of Torreón, of Zacatecas, of Celaya, all are here, told with a feeling of great immediacy. This volume ends as Villa and Obregón prepare to engage each other in the war between victorious generals into which the Revolution degenerated before it finally ended. Martín Luis Guzmán, eminent historian of Mexico, knew and traveled with Pancho Villa at various times during the Revolution. General Villa offered young Martín Luis a position as his secretary, but he declined. When many years later some of Villa's private papers, records, and what was apparently the beginning of an autobiography came into Guzmán's hands, he was ideally suited to blend all these into an authentic account of the Revolution as Pancho Villa saw it, and of the General's life as known only to Villa himself. The Memoirs were first published in Mexico in 1951, where they were extremely popular; this volume was the first English publication. Virginia H. Taylor, translator in the Spanish Archives of the State of Texas Land Office, has accurately captured in English the flavor of the narrative.

Based on archival research, this study of Pancho Villa aims to separate myth from history. It looks at Villa's early life as an outlaw and his emergence as a national leader, and at the special considerations that transformed the state of Chihuahua into a leading centre of revolution.

The Mexican Revolution (1910-19) was the first seismic social convulsion of the twentieth century, superseded in historical importance only by the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Tierra y Libertad (land and liberty) was the watchword of the revolutionaries who fought a succession of autocrats in Mexico City. But the revolution was fired by a confusing multiplicity of issues- local, national, international, cultural, racial and economic. The two greatest rebel leaders were Francisco (Pancho) Villa and Emiliano Zapata, and Frank McLynn here tells the story of the Revolution through a dual biography of these legendary heroes.The great ten-year struggle that devastated Mexico was essentially a war on two fronts- in the north waged by Villa and a mobile army of ex-cowboys and ranchers; and in the south carried on by Zapata and an infantry army recruited from the peons of the sugar plantations. Villa was the Revolution's great military hero, but Zapata was its soul and the only rebel whose revolt was aimed at a genuine root-and-branch transformation of Mexican society. The two men reached the peak of their careers in 1914 when they met briefly in triumph in Mexico City. Failing to make common cause, over the next five years they gradually fell victim to their great rivals.

Hailed as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution, The Underdogs recounts the story of an illiterate but charismatic Indian peasant farmer’s part in the rebellion against Porfirio Díaz, and his subsequent loss of belief in the cause when the revolutionary alliance becomes factionalized. Azuela’s masterpiece is a timeless, authentic portrayal of peasant life, revolutionary zeal, and political disillusionment.

The victory of the revolutionary army at Zacatecas devastated the morale of the federal army and planted the unthinkable idea of defeat in the mind of General Victoriano Huerta. Soon afterward he fled Mexico. Personal accounts of this pivotal battle are valuable, fragile documents available in only a handful of university archives. This book consists of English translations of two such documents, diaries of the battle. One account is by General Felipe Angeles, the highest-ranking officer of the Mexican military to oppose the coup d'etat against President Francisco I. Madero. Angeles was a respected academic, the director of the Colegio Militar de Chapultepec, the West Point of Mexico. When General Pancho Villa requested an artillery-general, Angeles volunteered. The successful partnership between the educated Angeles and Villa, the illiterate peasant leader, remains one of history's intriguing mysteries. The second account is by Major Federico Cervantes, an outstanding graduate of the military college, chosen by President Madero to create an air force for Mexico. He was in France preparing for this task when Madero was assassinated. He returned to Mexico to join those who opposed Huerta and became aide to General Angeles. Cervantes is also the author of an exhaustive biography of Felipe Angeles.

Alongside Moctezuma and Benito Juárez, Pancho Villa is probably the best-known figure in Mexican history. Villa legends pervade not only Mexico but the United States and beyond, existing not only in the popular mind and tradition but in ballads and movies. There are legends of Villa the Robin Hood, Villa the womanizer, and Villa as the only foreigner who has attacked the mainland of the United States since the War of 1812 and gotten away with it. Whether exaggerated or true to life, these legends have resulted in Pancho Villa the leader obscuring his revolutionary movement, and the myth in turn obscuring the leader. Based on decades of research in the archives of seven countries, this definitive study of Villa aims to separate myth from history. So much attention has focused on Villa himself that the characteristics of his movement, which is unique in Latin American history and in some ways unique among twentieth-century revolutions, have been forgotten or neglected. Villa’s División del Norte was probably the largest revolutionary army that Latin America ever produced. Moreover, this was one of the few revolutionary movements with which a U.S. administration attempted, not only to come to terms, but even to forge an alliance. In contrast to Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, Villa came from the lower classes of society, had little education, and organized no political party. The first part of the book deals with Villa’s early life as an outlaw and his emergence as a secondary leader of the Mexican Revolution, and also discusses the special conditions that transformed the state of Chihuahua into a leading center of revolution. In the second part, beginning in 1913, Villa emerges as a national leader. The author analyzes the nature of his revolutionary movement and the impact of Villismo as an ideology and as a social movement. The third part of the book deals with the years 1915 to 1920: Villa’s guerrilla warfare, his attack on Columbus, New Mexico, and his subsequent decline. The last part describes Villa’s surrender, his brief life as a hacendado, his assassination and its aftermath, and the evolution of the Villa legend. The book concludes with an assessment of Villa’s personality and the character and impact of his movement.