 Their life experience in Mexico's northwest, described as a "savage pragmatism" was in a sparsely settled region, conflict with Indians, secular rather than religious culture, and independent, commercially oriented ranchers and farmers.This was different from subsistence agriculture of the dense population of the strongly Catholic indigenous and mestizo peasantry of central Mexico.Obregón was the dominant member of the triumvirate, as the best general in the Constitutionalist Army, who had defeated Pancho Villa in battle.