Titoli, I have taken the liberty to move this discussion to the film’s thread, hope you don’t mind.
I’m not sure that Tepepa actually has a casual relation to violence. Petroni said about Tepepa that it is a film with social intension. It seems to me that, among other things, Petroni intended to question the attitude towards violence prevalent among some leftist groups at the time. While Petroni obviously wants us to sympathize with the revolutionaries, in the film that is, it seems that he at the same time questions the proportionality of their use of violence.
Take the rape of Consuelo. In Quien Sabe? Adelita asks why, as she herself was raped as a child by aristocrats, should Don Felipe’s wife be spared? And in Tepepa the aristocrat woman is not spared. But I don’t think Petroni wanted to justify this act of violence. He questions it.
The same for Price, who set free to leave in peace even if he knows the revolutionaries’ hideout, takes advantage of this knowledge to lead Cascorro here. It means Price is willing to let Cascorro butcher the whole community following Tepepa, men, women and children, to get his revenge. Proportionate?
So when Paquito shoots Price, it is certainly not because the doctor didn’t like Mexico. It doesn’t make sense. Immediately before this, Paquito has saved the doctor twice. But eventually Paquito realizes that Price has given them away to the army, like his own father did before. He had betrayed them after all. For this reason he shoots him.
So what did Petroni actually think about it? That of course we don’t know for sure. But neither Tepepa nor Price gets away with it. Tepepa has to pay, and so has Price.