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The last of the major "federales" armies in Northern Mexico which defended the regime of Victoriano Huerta - the man who murdered Francisco Madero - was holed up in Ojinaga at the end of 1913 under the command of General Salvador Mercado and Pascual Orozco, and the rebel generals Toribio Ortega and Panfilo Natera were unable to dislodge him from the fort there. Finally, Pancho Villa arrived from Chihuahua City with a huge rebel army and sent the federales packing across the Rio Grande to Presidio, Texas after much slaughter. The federales, along with their women and children were led on a forced march up to Marfa, Texas, where they were loaded into boxcars and sent off to concentration camps.
 Villa executed any stragglers and suspected sympathizers of the federales cause, and hammed it up for movie photographers in the streets of Ojinaga, while stocking up on American military supplies and reportedly burying a rather large horde of gold in a secret location near "Devil's Cave" on the Cerrito de la Santa Cruz, near Ojinaga.
Meanwhile, the Americans, not knowing what to do with Mercado's soldiers and their families, kept them behind barbed wire for the remainder of the conflict, until the federales' cause was finally lost for good.
This was to be the first and the most famous of Villa's occupations of Ojinaga. There were actually four different battles of Ojinaga though out the revolution, but this was the most important and most famous.
Earlier, Villa had participated in a campaign to rout the traitor Pascual Orozco, who had joined a reactionary uprising against Francisco I. Madero, but fled to the US near Lajitas, Texas, new to Ojinaga, in order to escape the pursuit of Madero's forces. Orozco, who had originally been supreme commander of Madero's original revolutionary forces, was eventually killed by American ranchers in a failed attempt to steal horses.
Among those who were in Ojinaga or across the river in Presidio, Texas, at the time of the battle were the famous American writers John Reed and Ambrose Bierce - the "Old Gringo" - General John Pershing, who later became the leader of the American forces in WWI, and most of the elite of Chihuahua, including Enrique Creel and Luis Terrazas - the former Chihuahua governors whose selfish and shortsighted policies had largely been responsible for the uprisings that they were now fleeing.
An earlier battle of near equal proportions had been fought at the outset of the Revolution under the directin of Generals Toribio Ortega and Jose de la Cruz Sanchez. It had resulted in a statemate similar to the impasse that existed in January, 1914 before the arrival of Villa. Ojinaga was an almost impregnable location in terms of either a siege or an assault, and it was mainly the fearsome reputation of Villa that sent Mercado and Orozco fleeing into the US. (SEE THIS ARTICLE) | 
