The San Diego Union Tribune
PBS does bang-up job in Villa documentary
by John Freeman
Pancho Villa's sombreroed, mustachioed, gun-toting visage can be seen on tequila bottles, so his fame reached mythic proportions.
"If Americans know anybody in Mexican history, it's Pancho Villa," said Paul Espinosa, co-producer of "The Hunt for Pancho Villa," a fast moving hour that airs at 9 tomorrow night on KPBS, Channel 15. "Everbody knows the name, and we can easily conjure up his face."
But if that's all you know about Villa, you're in for a surprise. Espinosa's work, part of PBS' "The American Experience" series, tells the real story of Villa's life and times nearly 75 years ago.
On march 6, 1915 Gen. Fransisco "Pancho" Villa led a daring band of some 600 Mexican revolutionaries as they swept across the border and attacked the sleepy town of Columbus, N.M. The casualties: 17 Americans, 67 Mexicans.
That battle led the U.S. government to organize an all-out effort to capture Villa, a marauding outlaw who, in the years before the raid, had been viewed as "the George Washington of Mexico," a heroic friend of the U.S. government whos deeds were worth supporting.
Several months after Villa's surprise raid, some 150,000 cavalry troops -- the largest deployment since the Civil War -- were mobilized to invade Mexico. The effort was backed by an armament of tanks, airplanes and trucks that few soldiers knew how to drive or fly.
The goal: to capture and kill Villa.
The massive invasion was bungled at every turn and proved unsuccessful. Relations between the U.S. and Mexico were severely strained, an uneasy mistrust that continues today.
Narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Linda Hunt ("The Year of Living Dangerously"), "The Hunt for Pancho Villa" took Espinosa and co-producer Hector Galan five years to produce, at a cost of $430,000. As with nearly every installment of "The American Experience," it's a dramatic history lesson brought to life.
Was Villa a good guy or a bad guy?
"Pancho Villa is a mythical, romanticized character, both a bad guy and a good guy," said Espinosa, a Channel 15 staff producer. "People who see him as a bad guy see him as a bandit, an assassin, a killer -- which he was."
"People who see him as a hero see him as a very larger-than-life Robin Hood, a poor man who robbed from the rich. And during the Mexican Revolution (1910-'20), it was Villa who helped bring down the autocratic regime of Porfirio Diaz."
Villa died in 1922, gunned down by political enemies in Mexico.
What's most impressive about "The Hunt for Pancho Villa" are the archival film footage, postcards, letters, cartoons, newsreels and photos that Espinosa and co-producer Hector Galan unearthed in museums in Washington D.C., and Mexico City.
Some six-million viewers likely will view "The Hunt for Pancho Villa," a prospect Espinosa admits he finds "thrilling."
Anthropology degrees
A KPBS producer since 1980, when he moved to San Diego from his native New Mexico, Espinosa, 43, holds masters degrees and doctoral degrees from Stanford and an undergraduate degree from Rhode Island's Brown University. His degrees are in anthropology, not filmmaking.
"Having my work viewed by six million viewers is a big part of the reason I decided to work in public television," he said, "as opposed to doing anthropological research at a university."
Recently, Espinosa has been putting the final touches on his latest project, "...and the earth did not swallow him," a $1.9 million, full-length docudrama on the life of a poor Mexican-American boy and his migrant farm-worker family. The boy, Tomas Rivera, went on to become chancellor of UC Riverside.
That movie is slated for national theatrical release next year. It also will air on PBS' "The American Playhouse."
At one point in "The Hunt for Pancho Villa," Linda Hunt quotes a 1916 editorial from a newspaper in New Mexico: "Mexico is a white man's land and made to be occupied by an industrious, virtuous and war-like race. If an inferior and unworthy race now possesses the land, they are but tenants."
Such was the climate between the two countries.
"It certainly reveals the extreme prejudice of the period -- and even of today," said Espinosa, who is of Mexican descent. "Maybe it's not quite so virulent, but basically many Americans view Mexico as a lesser-than country, that Mexicans can't take care of their own business.
"I wish we were a lot further along in terms of understanding each other. But even today, our relationship is still clouded by misperceptions and ignorance -- on both sides of the border."