Venustiano Carranza - an opportunistic hacienda owner from the neighboring state of Coahuila - would become Villa's chief rival over time, engaging Villa in a long and drawn out civil war that Villa ultimately was destined to lose.

Felix Diaz was the nephew of the dictator Porfirio Diaz whom the maderista rebellion had overthrown. Feliz Diaz led a rebellion against Madero, and Madero asked Victoriano Huerta to fight it. Huerta betrayed Madero and joined forces with Diaz in a military coup and Huerta was installed in power. Madero and his brother were murdered, and the man behind the whole plot was United States ambassador Henry Lane Wilson.

Victoriano Huerta was a full blooded Huichol Indian who had been a loyal supporter of Porfirio Diaz, and he was brilliant military officer but a raging alcoholic. After Madero took power, he sent Huerta to the state of Morelos where he led a fire and steel campaign of attrition against the population there, massacring whole communities for their support of the rebel cause of Emiliano Zapata. When Madero called him back to Mexico City to defend his government against the rebellion attempt of Felix Diaz, Huerta betayed him and then murdered him, and seized the reigns of power for himself. He soon found himself in a war with the former supporters of Madero, including Pancho Villa, who went on to defeat him and drive him into exile.

Huerta went into exile in the United States, but he began plotting with Pascual Orozco against the new constitutionalist government in Mexico. The United States, fed up by now with troubles south of the border, arrested them both and jailed them. Orozco escaped, but Huerta died in jail of scirrosis of the liver.

Guisseppi Garibaldi - grandson of the man who unified Italy - came to Mexico as a self-styled freedom fighter and attached his shining star to that of Francisco I. Madero. Although he had no real credentials as a fighter, his presence was deemed important for public relations purposes and he was actually allowed to accept the sword of the federal officer in charge of the defense of Juarez, as if he had actually had some important part in the battle. Villa had several run ins with him, including an incident where Villa's forces disarmed those of Garibaldi. Madero made Villa give them back their weapons, but their hard feelings were not erased so easily. Later, Villa was going to kick his butt in a bar in El Paso, Texas, but Pascual Orozco stopped him.

The man who systematically delivered Villa one defeat after another was Alvaro Obregon, and methodical general from the state of Sonora, who had led Carranza's forces down through the west in successive victories against the federal forces of Huerta's generals earlier on. When it was clear that he would have to choose which leader he would back - Carranza or Villa - he chose Carranza because he considerred him to be the lesser of two evils. He defeated Villa and the Battle of Celaya, but he lost his arm in the process. Obregon is the third from the right in this photo.

Obregon meets with American general Bell in photo. He is always easy to spot even when his face is hidden because of his missing arm.

Obregon's strength came, in part, to his command of the Yaqui Indian fighters of his native state of Sonora.