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    Born in Molango, Hidalgo in 1869, the son of Colonel Felipe Angeles and Juana Ramírez. In 1883, the able student entered the Colegio Militar de Chapultepec with a government scholarship  given because of his father's service to the government of Porfirio Díaz. Beginning in 1904, the young officer was given important jobs outside the country, one of which was a study commission to the United States to study the manufacture of smokeless gunpowder.  When the Mexican Revolution began in the Fall of 1910. Angeles, who was in Paris, asked to return to Mexico to participate in the fight against the revolutionaries. Instead, he was sent to Germany. When Francisco I. Madero and the revolutionaries, Madero brought Angeles back to Mexico, making him a brigadier general in charge of an artillery unit and sending him to pacify the state of México. Madero contemplated putting him in charge of the army but decided, upon the advice of associates, to give the job to General Victoriano Huerta. When Madero was assassinated in 1913 on Huerta's orders, Angeles was in Hermosillo, Sonora; unlike many other generals, he had no political ambitions. Initially, he was a loyal soldier and obeyed Huerta but defected and joined the forces of Pancho Villa. He was Villa's ablest commander.

Based on Juan López de Escalera, Diccionario Biográfico y de Historia de México. México, Editorial del Magisterio, 1964. pp. 54-55.

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