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DEATH OF THE LAST VILLISTA
by Allana Martin
Worldwide, October 2002
253 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0373264348


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Forty years earlier, a movie company had come to the desert border country of Texas along the Rio Grande to make a movie about the life of Pancho Villa. Most of the locals were extras in the film. Texana Jones was a child and remembers only bits and pieces of what happened. She and her friends used to ride out to the Mexican village constructed on the Trading Post property and play there.

Now, the region has changed little. It is still desert. The nearest towns on both sides of the border are still poverty stricken. But a PBS crew is coming to make a documentary on the making of the 1961 film Panchito which was the story of a raid Villa made on a ranch in Texas. Many of the residents of Polvo, Texas, and their counterparts in Mexico, who worked on Panchito greet the return of the stars to the area with suspicion.

Jacinto Trejo, an adviser to the 1961 movie was found dead on an island in the middle of the river...an island that was claimed by neither the US nor Mexico, so his death was not investigated by officials from either company. Trejo was the "Last Villista" of the title. He was a boy of about 11 when he was drafted to serve with Pancho Villa in 1917. Forty years later, Allana, curious about the incident, starts asking questions.

The two stars of the movie have agreed to come back to the area and be in the documentary. Rosalinda Pray seems to be a complete bubblehead, but Dane Anthony, now white haired but still handsome, is confined to a wheelchair due to post-polio syndrome. When Anthony's trailer explodes in the parking lot of the Trading Post, it is considered an accident. But when a young boy disappears, things start heating up.

DEATH OF THE LAST VILLISTA is the fifth book in Allana Martin's series set on the border between Texas and Mexico in an area where, on both sides of the border, the people have to work very hard to earn a living. Most of us have never lived under those conditions. Most of us are descended from people who left their home countries to come to the United States in hopes of finding better living conditions and less prejudice. Martin's series pleads for those who wish to do the same.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, June 2003

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