‘Our Storied Desert Land,” Big Jim Griffith’s blog about our corner of the planet, is always a fascinating delight. It should be. Big Jim is Southern Arizona’s premier banjo-plunking folklorist, fabulous historian and fantastic teller of tales both true and tall.
This week’s installment is a tale of terror. “A Massacre Revisited” is about the slaughter of the men in San Pedro de la Cueva, Sonora, by the revolutionary Gen. Francisco “Pancho” Villa. Weary of constant attacks by bandits, a frantic villager made the mistake of firing upon Villa’s army of rebels as it approached from a distance. Enraged, Villa ordered the small Sonoran town cleansed of all its adult males. In all, 74 men were butchered.
Which leads me to our town’s disgrace, the god-awful 5-ton statue of the murderer that sits smack dab in the heart of downtown Tucson.
My kid: Who is that dude on the horse, dad?
Me: Yosemite Sam.
My kid: No way.
Me: Yup. That’s Yosemite Sam there, giving out a “Hi-yo, Silver” on Trigger.
My kid: No, really. Who is that?
Me: (muttering) Pancho Villa.
My kid: Who?
Me: Some bad guy. Right out of a Quentin Tarantino flick.
Some worship old Pancho as “the Robin Hood of the Mexican Revolution,” overlooking the fact he was a mass murderer, a horse thief, a cattle rustler, a train robber and a terrorist who condoned extortion, looting and burning.
My kid: If he’s a bad dude, why do we have a statue of him in the middle of town?
Good question, kid. Back in the ’80s, Mexico thought it would be a swell idea to give a statue of Pancho Villa to the state of Arizona.
Arizona graciously accepted the gift, smiled and said, “Gracias.”
Faster than you could say, “What in blazes do we do with this thing? Here, you take it,” the state dumped it on tiny Guadalupe, a dusty Whoville south of Phoenix.
Guadalupe recoiled and said, “No, gracias. How about a giant Paul Bunyan statue like the one Tucson has at Grant and Stone? Now that would be awesome.”
And thus it ended up here in Tucson, a hand-me-down statue for a hand-me-down town.
Speaking of beggars-can’t-be-choosers, be sure to enjoy the jarring red “sculpture” that looks like a daddy long legs wrangling a red scorpion having a seizure while excreting a red staircase. Crouching in front of the Joel Valdez Main Library, it reflects no sense of our region save for the name “Sonora,” which the artist came up with to sucker us suckers into adopting his salvage.
Any town with sense would have dropped the Pancho paperweight off at a Goodwill donation center for resale among the forgotten Hummels, the cracked kokopellis and the torn and worn Che Guevara T-shirts.
Now that I think about it, a statue of Che in the park next to Pancho would make for a good pairing. Old Che, another “champion of the poor,” was a murderous nihilist, the architect of Cuba’s slave labor gulag and a brutal police state enforcer. Surely Pancho’s bronze heart would be warmed by Che’s axiom: “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”
Villa, who also murdered 17 Americans in Chihuahua and attacked a border berg in New Mexico, dominates tiny Veinte de Agosto Park, a small patch of green between Broadway and Congress Street. You may have seen it. It’s just west of the crowded intersection of history and amnesia. There the barbarous bandit has ridden for decades, in the symbolic heart of our city, leaning back on his rearing steed, waving his rifle like a pry-it-from-my-fingers Charlton Heston and laughing at the collective ignorance of us all.
I have a proposal. Let’s have the last laugh on Pancho. We Tucsonans love to recycle, right? Some of our finest public art is made of recycled materials. Why not recycle Pancho? Haul down Pancho like Saddam, toss him into a furnace, and recast the bronze into a likeness of a truly heroic revolutionary. The natural choice would be a red-blooded American veteran, the embodiment of Christian nonviolence, a native son of Arizona and a true voice for the downtrodden.
César Chávez would be right at home in Tucson, a desert town that’s as gritty, poor, humble, hardworking and alive with faith as the great American himself. Like Chávez, Tucson embraces social justice. Like Chávez, we proudly celebrate our rich multi-
ethnic heritage. And we have a tenacious can-do spirit. And, without a shot, he truly changed the world. That’s a real man.
Can Tucson do better than a murderous bandolero? Si, se puede. Yes, we can.
Kid: Who is that dude?
You: César Chávez.
Kid: Why is there a statue of him there? Was he a good guy? What did he do?
Now there’s a conversation worth 5 tons of gold, kid.
