FEATURE
THE LEGEND OF
Pancho Pistolas
By Marissa Rodriguez

During World War II a Mexican squadron known as the aztec eagles took to the skies battling the Axis and Racism; from among them emerged a legend.

In 1942, a group of Mexico’s best fighter pilots stepped off their military base training grounds and into the surrounding small town of Greenville, Texas and were promptly welcomed to the small town with a large banner. Instead of “We Support Our Troops” greeting soldiers to new cities today, this one read “Greenville: The Blackest Land,
The Whitest People.”
It was the height of Mexican involvement in World War II, and Squadron 201, a group of pilots handpicked by Mexican President Gen. Manuel Avila Camacho, was the only military unit dispatched by the Mexican government to assist U.S. troops with missions. To be one of these men, these Aztec Eagles as they would come to be known, was an unmatchable honor and the men were more than proud to be at the military base, even if their host city was less than welcoming.
At 83, Capt. Reynaldo Pérez Gallardo, a former member of the Aztec Eagles and highly decorated soldier and aviator, remembers the experience well. At first, training in the town was difficult, he says. In addition to the offensive sign, the pilots, considered Mexico’s golden flyboys, were subjected to snide comments on the base, and off the base some restaurants and stores hung signs from their windows that read “No Blacks, No Mexicans.”
After training under the shadow of the banner for three days, Pérez Gallardo had had enough. During a routine flight practice, he defiantly disobeyed orders by flying dangerously close to the building holding the offensive banner, and ripped it away from where it hung. The town was outraged, and he was court-marshaled.
Pérez Gallardo believes it was the military’s fear that those outside the small town would hear of the racist banner that kept him from being expelled altogether. But, through an agreement between the base and the city, he says, it was decided that he would be barred from flying until the unit left for war. A week later, his squadron flew to Southeast Asia. The event earned him the respect of his peers, as well as notoriety, but he had long been on the road to fame.
Today, the blue-eyed octogenarian, who was once good friends with Mexican movie star Pedro Infante whom he taught how to fly a plane, resides in a quiet North Austin neighborhood. In one of his three rooms in his one-story home, the walls are covered with newspaper clippings, old photos, military honors, commemorative plaques, medals, certificates of thanks, and his desk is piled with invitations and speaking requests that he receives weekly. It’s at once office and shrine to his career.
As the son of the governor of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí who was also a general during the Mexican Revolution, he could have done many activities perhaps more appropriate to his family’s status than spend his youth scrubbing the undersides of airplanes at a small airport close to his home. A lover of all things aeronautical, every day after school a 12-year-old Pérez Gallardo dutifully drove the planes along the tiny runways and parked them in their hangars, in hopes of one day being allowed to fly. One afternoon, when he was unable to wait any longer, he simply kept on driving and took to the skies. “That was the first day of my life,” he says.
It was also the beginning of a military career that would begin at age 15 when he lied to military recruiters in order to enlist before the legal age and fight in the last throws of the Mexican Revolution. Having grown up in a military home, the rigors of the army were second nature and he soon stood out among his colleagues.
A mere three weeks later he was involved in a terrifying battle in the Mexican mountains. The guerrillas, he says, had spread out, but his unit was ordered to pursue their kingpin. After following the leader to a small house, a shootout began. Positioned behind a rock fence, the guerrillas and the servicemen battled for 20 minutes before he saw one of his nearby companions shot in the throat and begin vomiting blood. “The next three minutes were the most important of my life,” he says. “That’s when I became a soldier.”
Steeling himself to the possibility of death, he called for backup, ran to the house and kicked in the door. Inside were three people, including a woman, he said quietly. None complied with his orders to drop their weapons and evacuate. “Then I knew what I could do and what I should do,” he says, “it was a big decision.” The teenage soldier aimed and fired, killing the kingpin and his associates.
Pérez Gallardo earned respect from his peers and accolades from his superiors for his bravery and was rewarded with admission to the super-elite Colegio Militar, considered Mexico’s West Point, and later the Military Aviation School. While Gallardo was being trained in Mexico and in the U.S., the rest of the world was changing.
In May 1942, German forces sunk two Mexican tankers off its coast, forcing President Avila Camacho to enter the escalating Second World War. “The same day I saw it in the news, I went to the office and volunteered,” Pérez Gallardo says.
Already a war veteran and a pilot, he entered the war with a sense of seasoned military confidence, which only increased when he was selected for Squadron 201. But, if training in Greenville had been rough, initial relations with American soldiers in the Philippines were worse. Soon before Mexican involvement, relations between the two countries were rocky. It took a near shootout for the groups to come together, and once again Pérez Gallardo was the instigator. He was at home in the cockpit, and doing daring stunts were little more than amusement. His insistence on aerial theatrics angered American pilots, who threatened him. Fearing an ambush, Pérez Gallardo reached for his gun while the soldier pulled his arm back to deliver the first blow. But instead of following through he put his hand out and said “gimme five.” This small gesture dissolved the enormous tension between the two groups for the duration of the mission.
In the spirit of newfound camaraderie the mechanics painted the tip of the Mexican planes white, and dubbed them the “White Noses.” The planes became favorites of the Filipino people. Pérez Gallardo’s plane, named Panchito in honor of his mother, Francisca, was decorated with the image of Pancho Pistolas, a popular Disney cartoon rooster, and he quickly acquired the nickname and developed a reputation for unparalleled bravery. Both were apparent when he volunteered to single-handedly destroy a bridge that the Japanese were using to move troops and weapons, using one airplane and two bombs.
When the war ended, the surviving Mexican forces had fought 59 battles in the Pacific jungle and the Filipino government bestowed them with ribbons and medals in appreciation for the defense of their islands. Accolades from the U.S. and Mexican governments soon followed as did the nickname Aztec Eagles.
There are only five Aztec Eagles who still live and their stories could be lost with the last of them. Gallardo, who relocated to Texas with his wife and first of two children in the late 80s after serving in Mexico’s social services, retells his stories in vivid detail to enlistees, servicemen and others. The stories aren’t overly moralistic or sugarcoated, but they are inspiring and reveal for Hispanic military youth the struggles of their predecessors. The stories, and language used to tell them, are uncensored and real, just as he lived it, he says.
After devoting more than six decades of his life to service, a well-earned retirement would seem like the next step. However, the captain, as his friends and admirers call him, wants nothing to do with a sedentary lifestyle and is instead in the process of making a feature film about the squadron, and a documentary has just been completed. A foray into the film industry is something most commonly undertaken by young twenty-somethings, but for Pérez Gallardo, it’s simply another act of duty in his service to the Mexican people, no matter which side of the border they reside on. “I am still a soldier,” he says. “I am still doing my job.”
The film, he hopes, will be an extension of what he’s been doing for decades. “We cannot change history, but we can learn from it and try to make things better for tomorrow,” he says. “This is my last task. I’m 83 and I don’t want to leave without sharing this experience.”

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