Villistas

The Villistas are a northern armed force whose power is registered in Comala through gunfire, contradictory reports, and the changing allegiance of Damasio and his men. The account gives little about their organization or political program, but it makes their strength unmistakable: a local band that first appears to have fought them later claims to have joined them and arrives in numbers to demand support.

Identity and Arrival

The Villistas are identified as men from the north, moving through the region and taking what they find. Damasio describes them as powerful, and says that no one can deny their strength. Their passage is presented not as a distant political development but as a force felt in local life: armed men arrive in Comala, and don Pedro must reckon with the new balance of power.

The force first reaches don Pedro through a report from Gerardo Trujillo. He asks whether don Pedro knows that the Boa has been beaten. Don Pedro has heard the gunfire during the night, but says he knows nothing more and asks who brought the news. Gerardo explains that wounded men have come to Comala and that his wife helped dress their injuries. According to those men, they belonged to Damasio’s band, and many of their companions had been killed fighting supposed supporters of Pancho Villa.

The Clash and Conflicting Reports

Gerardo’s account makes the encounter sound like a defeat for Damasio’s men. Don Pedro reacts with dismay, anticipating difficult times, and asks Gerardo what he intends to do. Gerardo answers that he is leaving for Sayula to restore his business. The fighting has therefore already produced consequences beyond the battlefield: news of casualties prompts a local resident to depart.

Damasio later gives don Pedro a sharply different version. When don Pedro says he has heard that Damasio was beaten, Damasio insists that he was not and that his little troop remains intact. He says he has brought seven hundred men, along with others who joined them on the way. In his telling, some of his men, tired of doing nothing, opened fire on a small group of ragged soldiers that turned out to be an entire army: the Villistas. His explanation does not erase Gerardo’s report of wounded men and heavy losses; instead, the two accounts leave the scale and result of the clash unsettled.

Allegiance and the Demand for Support

Don Pedro asks where the newcomers came from and hears Damasio’s description of their northern origin, indiscriminate plundering, and strength. He then asks why Damasio does not join them, invoking his advice that one should always take the side of the stronger force. Damasio replies that he is already with them. The exchange makes the shift in allegiance plain: the force first described as the opponent of Damasio’s band has become the power under whose banner Damasio now acts.

That alignment does not end Damasio’s dependence on don Pedro. Asked why he has come, Damasio says his men need money and provisions. They are tired of eating meat, cannot obtain credit, and want don Pedro to supply them so they will not have to steal. He adds that, farther away, they would have felt free to visit neighboring settlements for what they needed, but they have relatives nearby and would feel remorse about robbing them. Their immediate desired purchase is at least one large, spicy corn tortilla. The request brings the force’s political strength into contact with ordinary material need: its men can march and fight, but they still require food and money.

Local Significance

The Villistas alter the calculations around Comala without being given a sustained scene of their own. Their arrival is first inferred from a night’s gunfire and the wounded; later, their reputation for strength is enough to explain Damasio’s decision to join them. Yet the armed force does not simply replace local authority. Damasio brings his men to don Pedro for resources, while don Pedro’s own counsel to side with the strongest helps frame the new allegiance as practical accommodation to power. In this brief account, the Villistas are at once an approaching army, a source of violent disruption, and the force that makes an existing local band change sides.