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These days the 'hero' Villa would be more properly
called what he actually was - a murdering 'terrorist'
who rose to fame during a 1910-1917 revolution in
Mexico.
Spanish actor Antonio Banderas filmed the HBO movie
'And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself' at a time when
Hollywood's treatment of history is becoming a sensitive
point for Mexicans. So what else is new?
Actress Salma Hayek recently starred as Mexican artist
Frida Kahlo in a Hollywood movie filmed entirely in
Mexican-accented English.
In fact, the HBO movie seems to be largely sympathetic
to Villa, who led the last army to invade the United
States, killing 18 Americans during a 1916 raid on
Columbus, New Mexico. Something the American audiences
are not likely to be happy watching.
Banderas promises the Villa movie, filmed in Mexico,
will be even handed. But despite the PC - bending
over backwards to be fair stance taken by Beresford,
it's still not 'sympathetic enough for modern-day
Villa thug imitators. Adolfo Lopez Villarreal - who
founded a rough-and-tumble slum group named the Francisco
Villa Popular Front in Mexico City in 1988 - aren't
happy about the HBO film.
"They should have given the role to a Mexican," Villarreal
said. "I like Banderas, but he's a Spaniard. I think
there are Mexican actors who could do the role well."
In addition, there is at least one young woman whose
heart will not flutter when Banderas' film airs next
year.
America Del Valle, a 21-year-old student, knows a
thing or two about Villa-style politics. In July,
she helped lead a modern peasant uprising in Atenco,
a town east of Mexico City. She egged on machete-wielding
farmers on horseback, took hostages, hijacked gas
tanker trucks and threatened to blow them up - all
in the name of defending the town's land.
Del Valle would have preferred a Mexican actor - and
a real revolutionary - in the role. "It's very Hollywood,
to use big-name actors who have never participated
in real-life political movements to depict revolutionaries,"
Del Valle said in a telephone interview from the farming
town of Atenco. "I'm sure they'll do Che (Guevara)
next.
"It's playing marketing with the truth. I just hope
they'll respect the historical reality, and not paint
him all black or all white." (In case anyone doesn't
know, 'Che' was also another idiotic lefty middle-class
'hero' who has a thing for being wrong about everything
he touched or did.)
No one ever accused Villa of being easy to define.
A cattle rustler and one-time bandit by his own admission,
Villa's troops were not averse to rape and pillage
as they broke up the large haciendas that oppressed
poor workers. Villa often decided to shoot captured
soldiers on the spot.
The movie makers pledge an even handed treatment.
"He is a disputed character not only for the Mexican
people but throughout the world," Banderas told a
news conference in October before filming started
in the north-central state of Guanajuato. "I am not
here to judge him. That is up to God.
"The movie won't have an American point of view. I
think it will anger the Americans a bit more than"
the Mexicans.
Director Bruce Beresford says Villa will be portrayed
as "very intelligent, often witty, funny. And fascinating."
The word 'truthful' did not come up.
Villa murdered 16 Americans during a 1914 train robbery
and eluded U.S. troops for years. But he was gunned
down soon after by the same revolutionary government
he helped bring to power.
By 1923, 13 years after he took up arms against the
rich and three years after he retired, enriched by
plunder, the new Mexican government decided it had
had enough of Francisco Villa - real name, Doroteo
Arango - and had him killed. But that's Mexico for
you.
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