Читать книгу Ringside Seat to a Revolution - David Dorado Romo - Страница 13

his favorite drink, and hang out with all kinds of char-

acters. One evening, he met with alleged German

secret agent Maximilian Kloss at the bar. Apparently,

the agent wanted to buy the rights to some submarine

bases in Baja California just in case Germany went to

war against the United States.

When I first walked inside the Roma Hotel as part

of my investigation, the first floor had been turned

into a grocery and the second floor was a rundown

tenement for farm workers. I wanted to show my old

photographs of Villa to the campesinos and ask if

anyone of them recognized this man.

They would probably think I was some

kind of undercover agent. Maybe they

would tell me that a man looking like

that used to live there but he had moved

a long time ago. No, they didn’t have his

new address.

A few months later in 2002, I came

back to snoop around some more, but

the Roma Hotel had been torn down to

make space for a Burger King. Pancho

Villa was definitely not there any more.

If I had been a detective looking for

Pancho Villa when he was hiding in El

Paso, I would have looked for him in

one of his wives’ houses. Everyone

knew Pancho was a real mujeriego. He

had a pad for Luz Corral on 608 Oregon

Street and another one for Soledad

Seañez just two blocks up on 816

Oregon, where she bore him a son. But

these homes too have been torn down.

Damn. How was I ever going to

find Pancho Villa if they kept demolish-

ing every building he’s ever been in?

AFTER A FEW months of walking through the city,

I realized my aimless wanderings had transformed

themselves into an obsessive, very focused manhunt.

I’d somehow entered a zone I couldn’t get out of.

Now if I went to a cemetery, it was no longer just

an aimless stroll. I went specifically to cast about for

Pancho Villa’s friends or enemies. I looked up

Victoriano Huerta’s grave at Evergreen Cemetery,

across from Chico’s Tacos on Alameda Street. I won-

dered whether the old military dictator was still pissed

off at Pancho for capturing Juárez in 1913 in the mid-

dle of the night with a brilliant Trojan Horse attack.

He was probably still muttering to himself—six

feet under the ground—the same thing he told the El

Paso newspapers nine decades ago. “Pouf! That man

is only a bandit, an ignorant peon. Es un inculto. Villa

can hardly spell his name. No. No. He’s incapable of

coming up with such a plan. It is too complicated for

him. He’s nothing but an ignorant brigand, a murder-

er. That’s all.”

I felt sorry for Huerta. The unwanted former pres-

ident of Mexico hasn’t drunk a drop of whiskey in

decades. I’m sure his throat is extremely dry.

I WALKED INTO the basement of the El Paso

Public Library downtown and lost myself there for

three or four years, reading every single newspaper

published in El Paso between 1893 and 1923.

I examined thousands of photographs and pored

through old maps. I had read some place that

Columbus spent several years poring over ancient

maps of the world before he set out across the ocean.

I found maps showing where old mines were located

in the area, but I wasn’t interested. What I was

prospecting for was much more valuable than any

precious metal.

While doing research for Discipline and Punish:

The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault uncovered

Jeremy Bentham’s architectural specifications for the

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Colonel Pancho Villa (left) and General Pascual Orozco Jr.

(sitting at center) eat ice cream at El Paso’s Elite Confectionary, 1911.

(Aultman Collection, El Paso Public Library.)