WILL PANCHO VILLA BE AN UNWANTED MR. AMIGO?

By Juan Montoya
On March  9, 1916, Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte, smarting from a disastrous defeat at the hands of Mexican Army forces, attacked Colombus, New Mexico.

After it was over, they left eight American soldiers and 10 civilians dead.
Villa suffered 90 killed and 6 captured. Of those captured, six were hanged by the U.S. Army and their bodies dragged out of town, soaked with kerosene and burned.
When the U.S. Government sent "Black" Jack Perhsing in an unsuccessful punitive expedition to capture Villa, that only resulted in more American soldiers killed numbering perhaps 40 to 50, many at the hands of guerrillas and some in a disastrous battle with Mexican forces.
At today's Mr. Amigo's installation of the star for Itati Cantoral originally scheduled for 3 p.m., a statue of a Mexican charro was to have been unveiled and placed atop a pedestal at Brownsville's Memorial Park in front of the federal courthouse by the Linear Park.
Those who have seen it say it isn't just any charro. They say it is a statue of the bandit Villa.
It is said to weigh more than 3,000 pounds, and that city engineers concluded that the hollow pedestal coated with a cement layer would not hold up the weight of the heavy, 13-foot statue.
Workers at the site said that organizers had decided to postpone the ceremony of the unveiling of the statue to avoid an accident when Cantoral was to install her star.
Those who have seen it up close say it is one of Pancho Villa, hardly a representative of the friendly Mexican.
"It isn't a charro,"" said a Mr. Amigo insider. "It's a statue of Pancho Villa. To have his statue close to where we have the names of those local soldiers who died during the wars would be an insult to their memory."
City workers say that it might be days