Pancho Villa, my grandmother and the border’s revolutionary history

Stories of the Mexican revolutionary, preserved in family lore, are unlikely to feature in Texas's whitewashed 1836 Project

My maternal grandmother was a head nurse in a hospital in the northern state of Chihuahua during the Mexican Revolution - an epic event that affected both sides of the border and caused my family to permanently move to the United States to escape the violence.

Grandmother worked at the hospital, family lore goes, when the infamous general Pancho Villa seized the facility and left his wounded troops to the hospital's care. Mama, as we called her, took it upon herself to watch out for the female nurses amid all the soldiers, some of whom made unwanted sexual advances to them. She reported them to Villa's officers. That's when Villa showed up and asked Mama to point out the offending soldiers. When she did, he drew his pistol and summarily executed the men, astonishing the witnesses and delivering the message to his army that this behavior would not be tolerated.