Who is it? I can’t make it out.
The Equestrian Statue of General Francisco Villa was a gift to the people of Arizona from the President of Mexico. Bronze, it is in the tradition of equestrian statues and poses the General in action. It is located in the downtown Tucson 20 de agosto Park.
Although much revered as a revolutionary hero in Mexico, the memory of Villa in the U.S. is more often that of a bandit. The gift inspired many heated conversations and letters to the newspaper that brought in issues of cultural diversity and politics, and is well remembered today by most long-time Tucsonans. The solution to the controversy was to face the statue pointing south, in a not heavily trafficed location, surrounded with trees.
According to biographer Fredrich Katz (1998), Villa was a Robin Hood figure to the poor of Mexico, stealing from wealthy miners, ranchers, and others and redistributing the money or goods (such as cattle) to peasants. In Robin Hood Style, Villa is said to have noted that the poor were owed compensation for the work and working conditions they had endured. His actions in these redistributions are often characterized as brutal. But there is no question that he was a crucial figure in changing the governance of Mexico during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 towards a more democratic, socially oriented structure. Because Villa was commander of the Northern Division of the forces of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, his actions sometimes directly affected U.S. towns close to the border. Revolutionary battles along Arizona’s borders that involved Villa’s troops occurred in Agua Prieta, Naco, and Nogales, Sonora (the state that adjoins Arizona to the south). U.S. Americans were terrorized and killed during these battles. In Nogales, 60 miles south of Tucson, Villa’s forces had a shootout with American soldiers in 1915 and in 1918 Mexican and American troops exchanged gunfire when a Mexican arms smuggler was shot while crossing the border (Trimble, 1989). Most famous is the Villistas’ raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916 after a bad arms deal with a resident of the town, Sam Ravel, that resulted in the deaths of 17 US citizens, mostly local residents. (The raid is also sometimes interpreted as retaliation for President Wilson’s collaboration with the Carranza government that resulted in serious defeats to the Villistas at Agua Prieta, Sonora, and Celaya in central Mexico.) Until recently, according to Katz, Villa was the only foreign born person since 1812 to have invaded, attacked, and killed U.S. Americans inside the country’s borders.
http://www.cfa.arizona.edu/are476/files/pancho.htm