Pancho Villa

The División del Norte general of the Mexican Revolution who successfully raided Columbus, New Mexico in 1916 — the only successful foreign military invasion of the continental United States since the War of 1812 — and eluded Pershing's punitive expedition for a year in the Chihuahua desert. Villa's contradiction of bandit and revolutionary, landowner and agrarian reformer, makes him the most ambiguous and therefore the most enduringly fascinating figure in Mexican revolutionary history.