Folklore has it that a Mexican who was in Pancho Villa’s army was owed money. His name is missing from this account, but his grievance puts a different question at the beginning of the story: Did the violence begin with men stealing a rancher’s property—or with a rancher withholding money a working man had earned?
Pancho Villa enters the story at Ojinaga, across the Rio Grande from Presidio, Texas. In January 1914, his revolutionary army defeated the Federal forces defending the town. The victory established Villa’s power at this important border crossing and drove thousands of defeated soldiers and refugees toward the United States.
Across the river stood the ranching establishment represented by Lucas Charles Brite. Near Capote Peak in Presidio County, Brite’s property included a ranch and a store that served the surrounding country. Here, according to the wage-dispute account, a Mexican employee had worked without receiving all the money owed him.
Plácido Villanueva and Alfonso Sánchez are the men that the account places at Brite’s ranch in December 1914. Their purpose was to collect back wages for a cousin; the account describes payment being refused. Who sent them, whose cousin the worker was, and precisely how Brite answered are details still requiring their original source. But the human conflict is clear: a worker claimed his earnings, and two men took up his cause.
Three years later, armed raiders returned the Brite property to the center of border violence. On Christmas Day 1917, approximately forty-five men attacked while Brite was away in Marfa. Ranch foreman T. T. Van Neill and his family resisted; the attackers looted the store and took horses and saddles. Mail carrier Mickey Welch and two Mexican passengers were killed.
Villanueva’s name appears again in accounts of that raid. Author Joyce E. Means identified him and “Pegleg” Rentería as its leaders. That provides a possible connection between the characters in the wage story and the later attack, although it does not establish that unpaid wages motivated the raid or that Villa ordered it.
Then the men with official authority descended on Porvenir. Rangers from Company B, commanded by Captain James Monroe Fox, joined local ranchers Buck Pool, John Pool, Tom Snyder, and Raymond Fitzgerald in the operation, assisted by U.S. cavalry soldiers. On January 28, 1918, fifteen unarmed men and boys were separated from their families and executed. Investigations established that they died in Ranger custody, contradicting the perpetrators’ claim of a shootout.
Lyrics
Escuchen bien mis amigos, lo que el viento me ha contado, de una deuda de trabajo y un dolor que no ha sanado, allá por el Río Bravo, donde el llanto se ha sembrado.
No fue por tierras ni oro que la chispa se prendió, fue el sudor de un jornalero que un ranchero le negó. El trabajo es muy sagrado, pero el patrón no escuchó.
Año catorce empezaba, mi Pancho Villa ganaba, en Ojinaga la plaza la frontera dominaba. Y con esa valentía, nuestra gente caminaba.
Alfonso y don Villanueva fueron al rancho El Capote, a cobrar la justa paga del primo y su gran derrote. Pero el gringo fue soberbio y les dio puro garrote.
[El acordeón se vuelve más agresivo y oscuro]
Tres años se fueron lentos hasta aquella Navidad, año de mil nueve y siete, se cobró la crueldad. Cuarenta y cinco a caballo rompieron la oscuridad.
Buscaban lo que era suyo, y el rancho fue saqueado, murieron tres esa noche, el destino estaba echado. Pero la furia texana buscó al más desamparado.
[La música baja de ritmo, sonando casi como un lamento]
Se fueron pa’ Porvenir, los rinches del capitán Fox, con rancheros y soldados apagaron esa voz. Quince hombres de madrugada, se los entregaron a Dios.
[Remate clásico y fuerte de corrido]
Ya me voy con mi acordeón, llevando esta triste queja, que la deuda del obrero pura tragedia nos deja. Que descanse la inocencia bajo la tierra tan vieja.
