Woes of the True Policeman

“I want a careful job,” said Don Pedro. “You’ll deliver the report to me personally.”

“At your service,” said Pancho.

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Homero Sepúlveda (1895–1955) showed an aptitude for military leadership from an early age: at eight he was tall and dauntless and he captained a gang of kids that made itself hated and legendary in the neighborhoods surrounding the old Municipal Slaughterhouse that once stood on the east side of Santa Teresa, where the man soon to be so prominent in the Revolution grew up. His father was a schoolteacher, originally from Hermosillo, and his mother was a self-effacing housewife, born in Santa Teresa. He was the third of a litter of three brothers and four sisters, all tall and strong, though none of them with Homero’s eyes. He didn’t attend high school.

When the Revolution began, he and his older brother Lucas took up arms with Pancho Villa. Soon his skill at mounting ambushes, planning raids on enemy supply bases, and moving his troops at lightning speed earned him a well-deserved reputation for bravery and intelligence, a reputation he would never lose. But unlike his brother Lucas, who was brave and intelligent, too, and who died in a cavalry charge in 1917, Homero Sepúlveda was also (and chiefly) cautious and prudent and possessed the ability to predict the twists and turns of fate. It wasn’t long before he earned his general’s stripes, bestowed on him by Pancho Villa himself aboard his private train.

He battled Porfirio Díaz and was a dyed-in-the-wool Maderista (though in his heart — like his father, who read the Latin American classics — he was never too deeply convinced of anything), he fought tirelessly against Huerta and Pascual Orozco, and then he retired, young and newly wed, and returned to Santa Teresa until the Villistas went back to war, this time against Carranza, whom Sepúlveda fought with few resources but great art, winning respect near and far and earning himself the nickname Epaminondas of Sonora or — it depended on the poet and the spot where the ode was composed — Scipio of Chihuahua, not to mention the Spanish baker who called him El Empecinado of the North or the Milans del Bosch of the Border, though General Sepúlveda always preferred the Greek and Roman references.

He was the only Villista chief (except for Ángeles and Lucio Blanco) who fully exploited the marriage of cavalry, mounted artillery, and mobility: he was skilled at exploiting victories and penetrating the enemy’s rear guard, creating chaos.

He didn’t fight against Obregón. For a while he retreated to his house in Santa Teresa, supposedly writing his memoirs but really letting matters take their course. Then he was admitted with full honors into the Obregonista camp. He was a personal friend of General Plutarco Elías Calles. In 1935, his friendships and clout got him named state governor. He prospered, like all of them, and his house in Santa Teresa grew like an Erector set, without rhyme or reason, with new wings and stables and staff quarters and even a tennis court used only by his children. As a politician he was a disaster and there were those who said he was like some notorious Greek tyrant or deranged Roman general and others who likened him to Napoleon the Small or the bloodthirsty hypocrite Thiers, but General Sepúlveda didn’t give a fig about the nicknames and comparisons, classical or modern.

He survived three assassination attempts.

He had three sons, two of whom went to study and live in Texas, married American women, and founded the Austin branch of the Sepúlveda family. The third never married and lived in the big house in Santa Teresa until his death, in 1990. General Sepúlveda hardly undertook or encouraged any public works during the long years in which he served Mexico as governor of his home state or senator of the Republic. Three years before his death the street where he lived was rechristened Calle General Sepúlveda. After he died his name was given to a street in Hermosillo and the Santa Teresa State Hospital.

A life-size bronze statue memorializes him now in the city’s main square. Its creator was the sculptor Francisco Clayton and it portrays the general staring nostalgically into the distance. It’s a strange sculpture, with much more dignity than the intellectuals of Santa Teresa, with their sarcastic and naïve mockery, give it credit for, and it’s also a sad sculpture — so sad, one might say, that it is rendered absent.

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