By Alex P. Vidal
“Violence has always been unfortunately embedded in masculinity, this alpha thing.”—Sebastian Stan
A MAN who is reportedly the “great grandson” of Pancho Villa was apparently picking at random people he wanted to hurt with a steely chain whip when he chanced upon me in the gate on my way outside the apartment at past seven o’clock in the evening recently in Queens.
The muscular man, identified later as “Francisco Arango”, was either drunk, high on illegal substance, or a plain yahoo. Or both.
As he approached me, he couldn’t walk straight and was violently murmuring something in Spanish.
Because his feet could not sustain his unruly deportment, I feared the medium-built “Incredible Hulk” could be knocked down with a strong push by any heavier adversary.
Arango was holding with both his hands a heavy chain whip, “preparing” to smash it into my head without any apparent provocation when our eyesight accidentally collided. Nobody blinked.
“Hello, good evening,” I told the amok nicely while preparing my legs to make a dash like Usain Bolt, just in case.
The wacko stopped talking and cancelled his homicidal attempt.
The violent man allowed me to walk away. Thank God.
Back in my apartment room on second floor at past 11 o’clock in the evening, I heard a commotion downstairs.
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When I checked in the terrace, I saw the mad man chasing with the same deadly weapon a tall but sober person while engaging him in a shouting match. They both spoke in Spanish. Drugs and alcohol were probably still very much in control and Arango was wild, woolly and dangerous.
The victim managed to elude the attack using his own tantrums and quick feet.
I went back to sleep.
At around past three o’clock in the morning, a more intense and boisterous commotion erupted anew. I was roused from sleep. I dashed to the terrace and saw Arango exchanging blows with another unidentified man (I have been a professional boxing referee and the action I saw downstairs was peanuts– except it did not have the rules).
The chain whip wasn’t there anymore thus the slugfest was even.
At one moment, Lou Ferrigno-look alike Arango, who could still be under the influence of alcohol and drugs, overpowered his foe.
But to his misfortune, another man joined the fray with intention to rescue Arango’s opponent.
Fighting against four fists and four kicking legs, Arango was battered black and blue despite his superior built.
A final kick delivered by the second person hit Arango’s chin and knocked him out cold like a sack of rambutans.
There were no police; no ambulance; no passersby; no witnesses other than myself.
It was like an elevated ringside view in a WWF bout.
I went back to sleep.
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I had no idea what happened to Arango, but I figured the punishment he absorbed that dawn was enough to land him in the emergency room.
Did he suffer from major injuries? Did the physical assault paralyze his body? Did he die from head injuries? No one knew.
I haven’t seen him for several weeks after that fatal fisticuff.
To my surprise, Arango was alive and kicking. While I was on my way outside the apartment one morning days later, he was sitting outside; he saw me and opened the gate for me voluntarily.
Meek and ashen-looking, this time he avoided an eye-to-eye contact.
The erstwhile Eurasian wild boar has become a shy kitten.
I learned that Arango is from Durango, Mexico and is the “great grandson” of Pancho Villa, born Doroteo Arango.
Pancho Villa was a Mexican revolutionary hero, a man of bold action with an uncanny sense of destiny whose exploits–whether actual or mythical, inherently good or evil–have become the stuff of legend.
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As a general, Villa staged bold cavalry charges that overwhelmed his opponents even at great risk to his own life. He was very popular with the ladies (purportedly marrying 26 times) and loved to dance.
With the start of Mexican Revolution, Villa came down from the mountains to form an army in support of the populist platform espoused by Francisco Madero.
He was assassinated by unknown persons while visiting the village of Parral in 1923.
When Filipino boxer Francisco Guilledo made a debut in the United States in the same year, his handlers named him as “Pancho Villa.”
Boxer Pancho Villa was an Ilonggo from Ilog (now Kabankalan), Negros Occidental who won the world flyweight title by knocking out Jimmy Wilde in the 7th round on June 18, 1923, at the Polo Grounds in New York City.
He died on July 14, 1925 at 23 in San Francisco, California of tooth infection.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)
