Robin? Hood?

MEMOIRS OF PANCHO VILLA by Martin Luis Guzman. 512 pages. University of Texas. $8.50.

He was a swashbuckling ex-bandit who had killed 20 men before he was 30. His mustache bristled, his eyes burned black, and his temper was so violent that his personal physician forbade him to eat meat. He drove his ragged armies to the spectacular victories that finally brought the revolution to power. Then, claiming its leaders were corrupt, he spent the next six years trying to destroy them, finally retired in disgrace. Ever since his death in 1923, Mexicans have argued whether Pancho Villa was the Robin Hood he claimed to be--or just an ambitious hood.

Author Guzman, a prominent Mexican historian who knew Villa well, has long been his foremost defender. In this book, he has converted piles of official documents, letters and unpublished notes into the "memoirs" that he claims Villa would have written if Villa had not been illiterate. Reconstructing the old bandit's speech habits may have been an amusing intellectual exercise for Guzman, but it does not come off very well. In translation, it sounds like bad Hemingway. In content, it ignores the broad historical background necessary to relate Villa's actions to the progress of the revolution, is stuffed with too many meaningless names and unidentified locations. Even so, it is a frequently fascinating and probably fairly accurate insight into the most controversial character of the Mexican Revolution.

Gunpoint Cosigner. Guzman admits that Villa's habits were brutal: he shot one man for pushing his horse, ordered another executed because "I saw in his glance that he waa a traitor," once lined up 60 enemy prisoners in rows of three "to save ammunition by killing three with one shot." To show his disgust for the dandified "chocolate drinkers" who, he feared, were taking over the revolution, he ordered a prisoner shot in front of his luncheon guests. Villa's only interest, according to Guzman, was to preserve the revolution for the poor--with whom, as a bandit, he had always shared his plunder.

Unfortunately, he too often let his temper get the best of him. Impatient with arguments, sensitive to the superior ways of his fellow revolutionaries, Villa grew more and more adamant in his own views of how the new government should be shaped, more and more convinced that those who disagreed with him were enemies trying to usurp the revolution. He once flew into a rage at the powerful General Alvaro Obregon, ordered him at gunpoint to cosign a rebellious telegram, then had to retire for more than an hour to restrain himself from shooting Obregon.

Film Battle. Unable to throw his enemies out of power, Villa's temper grew worse and his acts more erratic. In 1915, he led his army into open rebellion against the government. He tried to enlist the sympathy of the U.S. press by staging a real battle at the request of a film company. He tried to discredit the regime by raiding the border town of Columbus, N. Mex., and, although he achieved headline notoriety by disappearing with his whole army while General "Black Jack" Pershing led a 12,000-man punitive expedition after him, Obregon did not fall.

Finally, Villa himself realized that he had lost popular support. He laid down his arms, agreed to stop molesting the government, and retired with a $250,000 government grant. Three years later the end came when an assassin pumped 47 bullets into his body. He was one of the last victims of the idealistic, passionate, violent, intrigue-filled revolution that he had symbolized almost to the point of caricature.

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