Pancho Villa, sometime outlaw and sometime folk hero, so the saying goes, was "hated by thousands and loved by millions." The mere mention of his name conjures up tales of daring and kindness, treachery and lawlessness. Like Robin Hood, who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, Villa helped northern Mexico's less fortunate, and they repaid him by keeping his name alive in legends. Some call him half-man half-wolf, others the Centaur of the North.
As I stand staring at the his bullet-ridden, black Dodge Roadster, the car which Villa was driving when seven men gunned him down while on the way to friend's child's christening, I can't help but wonder what lies behind the larger than life legends that surround him.
One of the few things about Villa's life which most historians agree is that he was born in 1878, in San Juan del Rio in the State of Durango, on the Rancho de la Coyotoda, owned by the Lopez Negrete family, to his sharecropper parents Agustin Arango and Micaela Arambula. They baptized him Doroteo Arango.
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