The General and the Jaguar Read Online Free PDF

spread throughout
     the country. In February of 1911, Madero returned to Mexico from Texas to take charge of the revolution himself. In one of
     his first armed confrontations, at the town of Casas Grandes, which is about one hundred miles south of the New Mexico border,
     Madero was soundly defeated, but his followers had witnessed his indomitable courage and their devotion to him grew. He set
     up his provisional headquarters at Hacienda de Bustillos, west of Chihuahua City, and summoned Villa to a meeting.
    Villa was deeply impressed by Madero and maintained affection and loyalty toward him for the rest of his life. “I thought
     to myself, ‘Here is one rich man who fights for the people. He is a little fellow, but he has a great soul. If all the rich
     and powerful in Mexico were like him, there would be no struggle and no suffering, for all of us would be doing our duty.
     And what else is there for the rich to do if not to relieve the poor of their misery?’”
    On April 7, 1911, Madero and his boisterous army of
insurrectos
began marching toward Ciudad Juárez—a railway hub, port of entry, and conduit for contraband flowing to and from the United
     States. As the army approached the border town, it swelled with new recruits. Pancho Villa led a column of five hundred soldiers.
     Pascual Orozco, another revolutionary leader, led a second column of equal strength. “Maderito,” as Villa would fondly call
     him, brought up the rear with fifteen hundred horsemen. With its crowded saloons, gambling dens, and brothels, Juárez was
     considered one of the most wicked—and exciting—cities in North America. Martín Luis Guzmán, a Mexican writer who participated
     in the revolution and later wrote a brilliant book describing that period, observed that going from the United States to Juárez
     was
    one of the greatest sacrifices, not to say humiliations, that human geography had imposed on the sons of Mexico traveling
     on that part of the border. . . . Streetcars clanged by. People and shapes resembling people crowded the streets. Occasionally
     above the mass of noise in Spanish—spoken with the soft accent of the north—phrases of cowboy English exploded. The hellish
     music of the automatic pianos went on incessantly. Everything smelled of mud and whisky. Up and down the streets, rubbing
     against us, walked cheap prostitutes, ugly and unhappy if they were Mexican; ugly and brazen if they were Yankees; and all
     this intermingled with the racket and noise of the gambling machines that came from the saloons and taverns.
    The
insurrectos
surrounded Juárez on three sides. Instead of pressing forward and attacking the city, the gentle Madero, at the urging of
     his family, implemented a cease-fire while he tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Díaz government. During the
     interlude, young boys from El Paso crossed the swaying bridges and sold sardines, cookies, candy, pop, and Washington State
     canned salmon to the revolutionaries. Similarly,
insurrectos
crossed into El Paso and outfitted themselves with khaki campaign uniforms, underwear, and shoes. “It was estimated some
     five hundred men outfitted themselves in one day,” Mardee Belding de Wetter, an El Paso writer, noted. A Mexican restaurant
     opened to standing-room-only crowds on San Antonio Street in downtown El Paso and some of the profits were set aside to pay
     for Red Cross doctors and nurses who would be treating the
insurrectos.
    As the cease-fire continued into its third week, Madero’s troops grew restless and their revolutionary fervor began to fade.
     Some soldiers slipped away in the darkness to return home to their families. In an effort to prevent further demoralization,
     Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco decided to attack Juárez without Madero’s express approval, figuring that he would join the
     assault when he saw that their side was winning.
    An advance group of about forty men started into Juárez. When a sentry spotted