Roger Soiset graduated from The Citadel in 1968 with a B.S. in history, and after serving in the U.S. Army graduated from California State University (Long Beach) with a Master’s degree in history. Roger’s fields of specialization are ancient history and the Vietnam Era. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
Title: An Assessment of the U.S. Punitive Expedition of 1916
Date Originally Written: April 7, 2019.
Date Originally Published: June 3, 2019.
Summary: Prior to the 9/11 attacks was Pancho Villa’s 1916 attack on Columbus, New Mexico. Large-scale efforts to capture Villa failed. Border violence continued until the success of a more focused U.S. response in 1919. Today the U.S.-Mexico border remains unsecured and discussions continue to determine the best approach.
Text: The attack by Al Qaeda on 9/11/2001 was the second such attack on the continental U.S., the first being in the 20th century. In view of ongoing discussions about U.S. border security, it is useful to look at the U.S. response to terrorist attacks from Mexico a hundred years ago.
Emerging as the hero of the Mexican Revolution was Francisco Madero, elected president in 1911 and soon enjoying cordial relations with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. The U.S. and Mexico both had presidents who were liberal reformers until Madero was murdered. Madero’s purported murderer was his successor, Victoriana Huerta. Following Madero’s death, rebellions promptly broke out in several areas, led by men like “Pancho” Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Venustiano Carranza.
The U.S. had already occupied a Mexican seaport, Veracruz, in April 1914 in order to prevent the landing of arms for rebels by a German ship. Believed to be Mausers direct from Hamburg, it turned out the rifles were Remingtons from New York, but that was not discovered until later. The occupation of Veracruz lasted five months and saw lives lost on both sides. Huerta’s departure in 1915, the successful blocking of “German” arms and U.S. recognition of Carranza’s government smoothed the troubled U.S.-Mexico relations for everyone except Pancho Villa[1]. Wilson’s arms embargo applied to all the parties involved in the revolution except for the legitimate government, so this meant Carranza was not affected–but Villa was[2].
Villa’s anger resulted in U.S. civilian casualties in Mexico when 17 U.S. mining personnel were executed by Villa’s men in January 1916[3]. Then on March 6, 1916, Villa and about a thousand of his men raided Columbus, New Mexico, killing nine civilians and eight soldiers. The demand for Wilson to “do something” was not to be denied and he invoked the “hot pursuit” doctrine. President Carranza’s foreign minister Jesus Acuna informed Wilson that he agreed in principle “to the reciprocity of hot pursuit of bandits…if the raid at Columbus should unfortunately be repeated elsewhere[4].” Wilson chose to ignore this last caveat and took the message to be an unrestricted right to pursue Pancho Villa into Mexico. Carranza desperately needed U.S. support, so remained largely silent.
Despite the ruthless treatment of many Mexican towns by Villa and his men, he was still supported by most Mexicans; or perhaps they feared the local bandit more than their weak government and the “yanquis” whom they hoped would soon go home. Carranza, seeing his popularity sinking due to his corruption and tolerance of this “gringo” invasion, increasingly made life difficult for U.S. Army General John J. Pershing and his 10,000 men who were pursuing Villa in Mexico. Perhaps the best examples of Carranza’s efforts were his denial to Pershing the use of the Mexican Northwestern Railway to move troops and positioning Mexican federal troops in the Americans’ path[5].
Notwithstanding the politics, weather, terrain and the difficulty of the mission, Pershing continued the pursuit some 300 miles into Mexico before two skirmishes occurred between the U.S. and Mexican Army forces with casualties on both sides. After six weeks, the punitive expedition had come to its Rubicon: fight the hostile Mexican Army before them and possibly start a war, or withdraw. The withdrawal option was taken, although it took more than seven months before the last U.S. troops crossed back into Texas in February 1917…just in time to pack new gear for World War I in France. Despite Pershing not capturing Villa, the nine months in Mexico had proven invaluable insofar as getting the U.S. Army in shape for World War I and giving new equipment a field trial.
But it wasn’t over in 1917—Pancho Villa and his “Army of the North” were busy looting and shooting up Juarez, Mexico, again in June 1919, just across the Rio Grande from Ft. Bliss. Bullets from the raid killed and wounded U.S. personnel on the base, and this time prompt action was taken. A combined infantry and cavalry force attacked Villa’s band of approximately 1200 men and destroyed or disbursed them so effectively that Villa never rode again[6]. One wonders what the course of events might have been after a similar action in January 1915 at the town of Naco in Sonora, Mexico, when a Villa band had driven Carranza’s forces from that border town. Stray bullets killed one American and wounded twenty-six more in Douglas, Arizona. The U.S. reaction was to remove the Tenth Cavalry four miles north of the danger zone[7]. This reaction, viewed as weakness, encouraged contempt and further violence. A limited response in 1915 like the later one in 1919 might very well have discouraged another such incident—and the violence at Columbus might never have happened.
If President Wilson had recognized Victoriana Huerta as the legitimate ruler of Mexico as did most other countries, it is likely that the Mexican Revolution would have ended in 1913. If Wilson had not decided to stop Germany from supplying arms to rebels in 1914, Pancho Villa’s relations with the U.S would not have soured. The revolutions in Morelos (Zapata), Coahuila (Carranza) and Chihuahua (Villa) might very well have burned themselves out without the added incentive of a foreign army invading their land. As it was, Carranza would become the undisputed president after the murder of his rival Zapata in 1919 and the bribing of Villa into retirement (which was made permanent in 1923 with his murder). One is reminded of that description of Europe after the Hundred Years War: “They made a desert and called it peace.”
It is said that good fences make good neighbors. The incidents cited in this paper show the truth of this from a hundred years ago, and certainly events today beg the question: What is the best approach to securing the U.S. border with Mexico?
Endnotes:
[1] Mason, Herbert Molloy, Jr, pp. 45-50. “The Great Pursuit: Pershing’s Expedition to Destroy Pancho Villa”, Smithmark Publishers, 1970.” Hereafter, “Mason”.
[2] Eisenhower, John S. D., p. 185. “Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917”. W.W. Norton & Co., 1993. Hereafter, “Eisenhower”.
[3] “U.S. Imperialism and Progressivism 1896 to 1920”, ed. Jeff Wallenfeldt, p. 41.
[4] Mason, p. 71.
[5] Eisenhower, p. 236.
[6] Eisenhower, p. 312.
[7] Eisenhower, p. 171.