And We Think We Have Problems: The Border in History
(NOTE: portions of this article are reprinted from the author's book “Chasing Ghosts: Unconventional Warfare in American History” Potomac Books, 2007)
In contrast to the relatively stable U.S.-Canadian border, the U.S.- Mexican boundary, especially with Texas, has been one of the most volatile frontiers on earth. From the beginnings of Mexican independence from Spain (1821), this area, which includes the Arizona and New Mexico borders, has been the scene of a chronic and violent political anarchy and warfare, both regular and guerrilla, which still plagues the citizens of both sides in the terrorist-atmosphere of the early twenty-first century. Although the border now hosts disorder of a much different kind, including drug runners, and illegal aliens, the scene still recalls a long and unsavory tradition, which often saw opponents from both sides take the law into their own hands.
The lawlessness which prevailed in that area encouraged a great variety of American and Mexican outlaws, Indians, and settlers to encroach upon each other, and upon the civilian population, with reckless and repetitive, abandon. The geographic centerpiece at the beginning was the uncertain political future of Texas. By 1835 over 30,000 U.S. citizens had emigrated into Texas (the beginnings of the “illegal” problem, except in reverse) and were openly challenging the sovereignty of Mexico. The massacre of nearly 200 Texans, including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, by Mexican dictator Santa Anna at the Alamo in March 1836 was actually exceeded shortly afterward when nearly 400 Texans were surrounded and systematically shot at Goliad. Nevertheless, “Remember the Alamo” became the cry which inspired other Texans, led by Sam Houston, to capture and defeat Santa Anna in April 1836, thus granting the “Lone Star” state independence, down to the Rio Grande.
Santa Anna subsequently repudiated the treaty and the political status of Texas
remained open and uncertain, caught between Mexican revanchism, British and French intrigues and southern U.S. political ambitions for admission to the union as a slave state. Adding fuel to these high-stakes fires was what historian Walter Prescott Webb called “a three-cornered racial and cultural conflict” between the Indians of Texas, Mexicans to the south and, the “Anglo-Americans” (Texans), who were emigrating every year by the thousands. The Comanche Indian, Mexicans vaquero and the Texas Rangers offer excellent examples of frontier Americans in their roles as guerrilla paramilitary units.
To give order to the anarchy of early Texas the Rangers were formed in 1835. Born amidst revolution, they copied many of the politico-military features of the original American war against Great Britain. Reminiscent of the revolutionary Whigs, rebellious Texans formed local committees of safety and correspondence to promote political cohesion against Mexico. Their fighting style was unconventional: they were individualistic, without uniforms, and often made their own ammunition. At first equipped with long-rifles and shotguns, they originally fought on foot but later adoption of the Colt revolver allowed their platoons to fire from the saddle, a tactic which made them the match of even the best Indian warriors. The unconventional nature of the Texas Rangers came from the improvisations which were necessary to hunt down hostile Indians and Mexican outlaws. It was also partly due to economics. From the outset, the Texas government found it impossible to finance regular armies costing millions of dollars. Instead, Texas legislated the formation of companies of Rangers, to be raised for three to six months at little expense.
The Texas Rangers were deliberately set apart from regular militia and local police forces. Their organization was simplistic and small and, until much later, was not even considered permanent. The very quality of the individual Ranger, furthermore, precluded regular discipline. He was the characteristically rugged frontiersman and cowboy who had migrated into Texas and who resented the intrusions of a disciplined routine and government. He lived strictly off the land and learned his riding and shooting skills as a youth. He fought in the winter and in the summer and was as familiar with the local terrain, rivers, mountains and plains, as were the Indian opponents who preceded him by centuries. Webb’s account of the irregular profile of the Texas Rangers gives testimony to these early American irregulars:
They were entirely distinct from the soldiers of the regular army, from the militia, and from the local police. The organization was simple, almost primitive, something like the band of Comanche braves who followed their chief, or the posse comitatus of the early Germans. The term of service was short, either three or six months. At first there was nothing like a permanent force … Another characteristic of these early organizations, and this applies to every force that has borne the name, was the absence of formal discipline. The simplicity of the organization and the small size of the force and the character of the work made military rule of the formal sort impossible. Furthermore, the very qualities necessary for a Texas Ranger made him impatient of discipline. The natural turbulence and independence of the frontiersman made obedience distasteful to him. (Webb, Walter Prescott. “The Texas Rangers.” University of Texas Press, Austin, 1965, p. 7)
During most of their life in the nineteenth century, the Rangers main preoccupation was to defend the northern and western frontier against irregular outlaws and defiant Indians. Seldom over a thousand strong, they systematically defeated Cherokees, Commanches, Wacos, Apaches and other tribes who threatened the onrush of white civilization. Like General Crook of the Union Army, the Texas Rangers used generic, mobile and small-war tactics to defeat the Indian tribes at their own game. Sam Houston gave this personal testimony to Ranger resourcefulness as local partisans:
It is evident to my mind that Texas Rangers stand pre-eminent on the score of economy and usefulness.... They are excellent horsemen, accustomed to hardships, and the horses of Texas, having been raised on grass, can perform service without requiring grain to subsist them.... The Texans are acquainted with Indian habits, and also their mode of warfare. They are woodsmen and marks¬men. They know how to find the haunts of the savages, and how to trail and make successful pursuit after them. They, too, have their families, their kindred, and their neighbors to protect. They have the recollections of a thousand outrages committed upon those dear to them by the savage, to impel them onward; and if, in pursuit of the foe, they get out of rations, they can subsist on game, being dexterous hunters. What are privations, suffering and danger to them, in comparison with the plaudits of their fellow citizens... They are accustomed to the heat of the prairies, and the severe northers to which we are subject. They need no tents to shelter their hardy frames from the night winds, but are content with the earth for a bed and a blanket for a covering. Such a force as this, continually on the alert, will be a terror to the savage. (Ibid, 1)
The warfare between Rangers and Indians wound down shortly before the Civil War when the last of the tribes were driven from the state. Henceforth it was illegal for Indians to reside in Texas and all were considered to be outlaws. Subsequently, as related by Professor Webb:
No Indian had any business in Texas. If he came now, it was at his own peril, and it was the duty of any Texan to kill him and then inquire as to his intentions. The Indians continued to come in despite of the danger, but they walked more circumspectly than ever along the borders where Texas Rangers stood to greet them. (Ibid, 172)
“Terror to the savage,” in Sam Houston’s phrase, described fairly the border wars
and included defense against outlaws who crossed the border from Mexico to rustle cattle, plunder towns, and rob banks and stores. Indeed, a constant irregular warfare involving both Mexican rebels and American outlaws prevailed on or near the border throughout the nineteenth century until the early 1920's. Little-known contests, such as “Cortina’s War” against the Mexican political-irregular, Juan N. Cortinas (1859 – 60) and the “Red Raid” of the 1870’s offer typical samples of the problems the Rangers had in policing the Mexican-American border. Ranger Captain L.H. McNelly reported back to headquarters his own assessment of the problem as it existed in June 1875:
I find that the killing of those parties has developed a most alarming
state of things on this frontier. The Mexicans on the other side of the
river are very much infuriated and threaten to kill ten Americans for
each of their Bravos. And then on this side the Mexican residents of
Brownsville … are pubic in their denunciation of the killing and the
attention given my dead soldier seems to have exasperated them
beyond measure. I really consider the place in danger as Cortinas
is known to have twelve or fifteen hundred men that he can muster in
three or four days. The U.S. forces here only amount to about two
hundred and fifty all told, officers, soldiers and servants … (Ibid, 241)
Lawlessness in Texas was not confined to the border but reigned supreme throughout the state, aided by the return of armed and embittered Confederate veterans, the arrival of carpetbaggers from the north, the rule of reconstruction, the presence of Union armies in occupation, and the growth of the Ku Klux Klan as a major homegrown terrorist outfit. To police what Webb has called “a lawless land,” (319) Texas Rangers formed what came to be known as the Frontier Battalion, initially led by a Major John B. Jones, whose task, as he related it, was both unconventional and multifaceted:
Besides the scouting for Indians, the battalion has rendered much
service to the frontier people by breaking up bands of desperadoes who
had established themselves in those thirty settled counties, where they
could depredate upon the property of good citizens, secure from arrest
by the ordinary processes of law, and by turning over to the civil
authorities many cattle and horse thieves, and other fugitives from
justice in the older counties. (Ibid, 322)
Such a condition was fairly typical for Texas and the border during the remainder of the nineteenth century. Texas Rangers maintained a diligence in the region throughout the time period, as hundreds of skirmishes within the triangule – Indians, Mexicans and Texans - persisted into the twentieth century. The conflicts among these antagonists have long-since been erased from the collective memory, but disputes such as The Mason County War (between ethnic Germans and Texans), the Kimble County Clean-Up (of thieves and armed gangs), The El Paso Salt War (Mexican riots against U.S.-owned salt preserves) and the Las Cuevas War (border raids against Mexican soldiers and guerrillas) kept the Texas Rangers busy against banditry and irregular violence both in Texas and, at times, across the frontier inside Mexico.
J. Sandos points out that “In the twentieth century the Texas Rangers continued their patrols against bandits at home, but saw increased service on the border, particularly during the 1910 Mexican revolution that gave rise to dramatic cross-border forays by Pancho Villa and other politically-driven ‘banditos.’” (J. Sandos, “The Plan of San Diego: War & Diplomacy on the Texas Border 1915-1916,” ARIZONA AND THE WEST, vol. 14, no. 1, p. 8 (Spring 1972)) As a finale to nearly a century of existence as independent, American paramilitary units, a group of six Texas Rangers, led by Captain Frank Hamer, ambushed and killed the notorious bank robbers and murderers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow on May 23, 1934. Today, the Rangers use modern technology and information war tactics to hunt illegal aliens and terrorists in the post 9/11 atmosphere, true descendants of their original namesakes. Their stubborn tenacity over nearly two centuries attests to the lasting American capacity for self-defense either within or outside official authority.
The origins of the Mexican War, 1846 – 1848, are still today a topic of controversy among those few Americans who have bothered to study it. Yet, this long forgotten conflict may have experienced an unwelcome and troubling renaissance, especially within the spiraling Latino immigrant population of California, where the war serves as a convenient political platform on behalf of a resurgent Hispanic nationalistic revanchism. This goes far beyond the proper boundaries of this book, but it is important to remember that, like many other conflicts in U.S. history – The War of 1812, certain of the Indian campaigns, the Vietnam War, and the present war in Iraq – many of America’s great conventional contests developed domestic political controversy which never really ended. Their evolution into counter-terrorist and guerrilla operations sponsored even further division and protest which, also, never really ended. In some U.S. quarters, the Mexican War remains a live and valid issue today, just as the Vietnam War dominated much of the 2004 presidential race.
The capture of the presidency in 1844 by the expansionist Democrats under James K. Polk of Tennessee probably made war with Mexico inevitable. Embracing the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the Democrat platform called for an immediate “reannexation of Texas.” Polk was also intensely interested in acquiring California from Mexico, and early in his term offered $25 million to the Mexican government. Mexico not only refused to entertain the gesture but severed diplomatic relations and threatened war when the U.S. finally annexed Texas on July 4, 1845.
Polk was prepared to force a showdown and, on January 3, 1846, he dispatched 1,500 men under General Zachary Taylor to march south to the Rio Grande in direct proximity to the Mexican Army, encamped on the other side. The Mexicans obliged him and attacked Taylor on April 24. In his war message, Polk made much of the idea that the U.S. was attacked on its own territory, justifying passage of a declaration of war by Congress. While a patriotic Congress overwhelmingly approved war, a certain Whig Congressman, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, offered a number of resolutions which requested evidence of the exact “spot” on American soil where the attack took place. Since Mexico’s claim to the land on the northern side of the Rio Grande had a certain historic and legal validity, Lincoln’s point was not lost on others. So persistent was Lincoln in his “spot” resolutions that he came to be known as “spotty.” Lincoln. As the war went on, more anti-slavery northern agitators, most of them Whigs, labeled Polk a liar, with the nickname “Polk the Mendacious.”
The most ironic personality in opposing the war with Mexico was, arguably, America’s greatest - and most grimly violent – prosecutor of war, Ulysses S. Grant. As a Lieutenant fresh out of West Point in 1847, Grant helped wage the war against Mexico despite misgivings he privately entertained. In his Memoirs, published shortly before his death in 1885, Grant’s passion against the Mexican War were emphatic, labeling the conflict as “the most unjust war ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation … an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies.”
Although subsequent historians have disagreed with Grant, notably Justin Smith in his thoroughly researched two-volume book, it is true, as John Eisenhower has written, that … “without a doubt, the preponderance of American opinion has agreed with Grant that the United States treated Mexico unjustly.”
While the beginnings of the Mexican War saw widespread support both in Congress and in the general population, some of this began to wear thin as casualties mounted and as the contest went into its second year without result. The cost in American lives, especially measured in pre-Civil War terms, was staggering. Of the more than 100,000 volunteers who eventually served, 13,768 died (most from disease), a figure which Eisenhower writes, remain “the highest death rate of any war in our history.”
The conduct of the conventional war campaign, however, remains a classic in American military history, especially by the infantry, logistical and artillery tactics. It is still not fully appreciated how difficult the logistics of operating a volunteer army inside Mexico’s vast interior was, especially for an army which had never operated beyond the confines of American soil. Nor has it been fully appreciated how far outnumbered U.S. forces actually were, considering that the Commanding General, Winfield Scott, had only 6,000 soldiers in 1847 amidst a hostile population of seven million. Even after this figure was augmented to 24,000 the Americans were outnumbered in every single action of consequence. On February 22-23, 1847, for example, General Taylor’s lumbering but weakened columns had crossed the Rio Grande with 5,000 men, only to be met at Buena Vista by Santa Anna with over 20,000. After a bloody engagement, the Mexicans were beaten back by the vast American superiority in firepower. Similarly, Scott’s campaign inland from Veracruz on the Gulf coast depended upon artillery firepower, since he also was outnumbered in each engagement. With limited resources, the U.S. Army did not really conquer Mexico, but rather it was able to keep supply lines open and to capture vital areas such as Mexico City, Veracruz, Tampico, Cuernavaca, Pachuca and Toluca through the use of superior technology. John Eisenhower has also noted this critical feature of the Mexican campaign, which would subsequently define the essential quality of the American way of war:
Logistical factors, then, restricted the amount of force that the United States could deliver to any given point inland. With the size of the armies so limited, American troops were outnumbered in every inland battle fought. Taylor’s and Scott’s men were much better organized, disciplined, and motivated than their Mexican counterparts; but in some instances, as at Buena Vista, Mexican numerical superiority was so great that decimation of the American force would have been inevitable save for one factor: superior weaponry and the ability to use it.
In the course of the war, as Mexican defeats multiplied and occupation of major cities became a reality, remnants of the army, in league with the citizenry, adopted guerrilla tactics. There was a precedent for this, as guerrillas had helped defeat the Spanish Army in the path toward independence in 1821. Most of this action began in March 1847, when Scott landed at Veracruz and began his march westward to Mexico City, a distance of about 200 hundred miles. The scene was the broken and mountainous country - the so-called "Veracruz Line" - which consisted of a succession of peaks and gorges, narrow mountain passages and forested thickets; ideal for the type of guerrilla action the Mexican irregulars had resorted to after the defeat of their main army.
The Mexican guerrillas carried out successful attacks on the American army. They ambushed Scott's line and killed isolated units whenever they roamed too far. In April, the guerrilla leader J.C. Robelledo captured ten supply wagons. In June, Colonel McIntosh lost one-quarter of his wagon trains and a number of men in passing westward along the Veracruz Line. In July, General Pierce lost 100 out of his force of 1,000 to a guerrilla raid; Captain Wells then lost 40 out of his 200 men. The situation was approaching epidemic proportions, but the regular command floundered in its initial tactics, as related by J.J. Oswandel in his review of a soldier’s diary:
On Thursday several parties went out after pollitos and carne, [they] ‘fell in with some rancheros or guerrillas … the result was … that several of our men were killed.’ On Friday the Illinois company went out after carne and guerrillas; they came back without dead guerrillas but with two dead soldiers. Saturday two men belong to the Illinois regiment and one from the New York regiment were killed by guerrillas. Sunday morning more Illinois men went out to avenge the death of their companions. Later in the afternoon they returned. Two of their men had been lassoed, dragged on the ground at full speed, and speared to death. (Webb, p. 115)
The transformation to guerrilla war was endorsed by the Mexican government, including General Santa Anna. "Guerrillas of vengeance" were instructed to make "war without pity. Let the echo of the mountains repeat the cry of war and liberty" proclaimed the Congress of Vera Cruz. (Ibid, 2)
Another guerrilla leader, Antonio Canales, claimed responsibility for the murder
of 161 Americans in the period of one month alone. To avenge this, Scott sent Texas Rangers under Captain Samuel A. Walker against the mountain partisans of Mexico. Walker struck them a dose of their own medicine. On June 20 his men caught a group of guerrillas by surprise and killed the entire lot. Walker's cry was "no quarter," and - true to his word- he took no prisoners. Walker and his Rangers remained on the Veracruz Line throughout the summer of 1847, scouting the roads and chasing the partisans away. He often brought in captured supplies and horses, but he rarely brought a Mexican back in. An observer of the time has described how this nineteenth century counter-insurgency soldier behaved:
Should Capt. Walker come across the guerrillas God help them, for
he seldom brings in prisoners. The Captain and most all of his men
are very prejudiced and embittered against every guerrilla in the
country. (Ibid, 3)
The U. S. infantry had very little success in ferreting out the armed guerrillas of
Mexico, but mobile and light units, such as Walker's, were able to pursue the Mexican partisans without rest. When Walker was killed in October 1847, President Polk himself instructed another Texas Ranger, Colonel Jack Hays, to finish the job. Hays' men each carried a rifle and four pistols. They wore outlandish clothing; long-tailed blue coats and bob-tailed black ones, felt hats, panama hats and black leather caps. Most of them sported long and bushy beards. But they knew how to do the job. Hays was as merciless as was Walker before him. No quarter was given, and the Mexican insurgents were hounded day and night.
By the end of 1847 the U. S. command was pursuing the conclusion of the Mexican War in earnest. In December an order was given that all guerrillas caught would be executed on sight. The Americans were now eager to control the guerrilla problem. As described by Professor Smith, this endeavor involved an energetic counter-guerrilla war deep inside of Mexico:
Infuriated by their treacheries and cruelties, the Americans were persistent and unsparing in severity. Patrols who seemed never to sleep hunted out their nests in the mountains. On the march, flanking parties would force their way through the woods five miles or more from the road to catch them between two fires. The torch was applied with much liberality on suspicion, and sometimes on general principles, to huts and villages; and in the end a black swath of devastation, leagues in width, marked the route. (Ibid, 4)
True to form, and in search of much-needed supplies, the Mexican guerrillas began to prey upon their own people. They plundered their own society, and frantic complaints started to come in for the Americans to protect the Mexican population against the insurgents. The guerrillas robbed women and children and killed those civilians who refused cooperation. They pillaged churches and stores, seized bank funds and attacked haciendas.
In the states of Puebla, Mexico and Oaxaca, guerrillas were organized by the Mexican General Jose Rea. His officers adopted a set of insurgency "rules," but here, too, the guerrillas wantonly attacked unarmed civilians as well as American soldiers. Forces under General Joseph Lane cornered Rea's irregulars at the city of Puebla, where a short firefight drove them away. He followed the remainder some twenty miles southwest, where his artillery destroyed their hideouts in the-town of Atlixo. Aided by Texas Rangers, Lane then went after other guerrilla forces on the roads beyond Mexico City, where he routed them time and again. Inside the capital itself, the Texas Rangers quickly restored order, their own way. As the memoirs of one observer recalled:
When Adam Allsens of Robert’s company was murdered in a part of the city called ‘Cutthroat,’ the Rangers took a bloody vengeance. The Mexicans carried in their dead on a wooden litter. ’At breakfast time they had brought in fifty-three corpses … In the evening the Captain reported more than eighty bodies lying in the morgue. … They had been shot in the streets and left lying.’” (Ibid, 120)
By February of 1848 Rea was finished as a partisan leader and a peace treaty was signed by the two governments. But for months thereafter, the Veracruz Line continued to witness lawless ambush attacks and robberies by Mexican irregulars who refused to acknowledge the war's end.
The generous terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which confirmed Texas as a U.S. state and ceded all of New Mexico and California to the U.S., by-no-means ended the expansionist drive of the American nation. The fact that few Mexicans became American as a result of the war mattered little either, for the relatively swift victory only nurtured expansionism and raised the idea of Manifest Destiny to a higher level of sophistication. The Mexican War established a greater trend toward power and expansion which subsequently led to further interventions into the Caribbean and, when the time came, back into Mexico again. Behind this movement was the notion that American political ideals are available for a-near universal transfer, whether the recipient is ready and willing or not. In the twentieth century, this idea was espoused by President Woodrow Wilson and has since been characterized by foreign policy analysts as “Wilsonianism.” As Professor Weinberg described it nearly seventy-five years ago,
Expansionist ideology changed during the strange tutelage of a war from an almost Nietzschean self-realization to a quasi-altruism. The moral inspiration of the expansionists during the [Mexican] war was derived from the conception of a religious duty to regenerate the unfortunate people of the enemy country by bringing them into the life-giving shrine of American democracy. (Quoted in J. Tierney, John. “Chasing Ghosts.” Potomac Books, 2007, p. 151)
The spirit of expansionist embrace through annexation began as early as the spring of 1847 and grew into a national ideology by the end of the war. By 1848 nearly every avenue of the American media, including almost every newspaper, was calling for the absorption of the defeated Mexico into the nation. The expressions of the New York Herald were typical of the sentiment behind the newly-found spirit of democratic expansionism: “The universal Yankee nation can regenerate and disenthrall the people of Mexico in a few years; and we believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country and enable its inhabitants to appreciate some of the many advantages and blessings they enjoy.”
The groundswell of American opinion toward an overlordship of Mexico , and in some cases the remainder of Latin America, has been described as nothing-less than an imperialist ideology, which in Weinberg’s words, “presented the mission of regeneration as a ground for an effort or a willingness to acquire all Mexico, a large part of it, or at least a virtual protectorate involving indefinitely a military occupation.” During the 1848 Democratic national convention, the new American mission abroad received official party endorsement. The words of Senator H.V. Johnson were fairly typical, an early version of that same ideological embrace which most Americans assume to be original to Woodrow Wilson. Not so, as Johnson’s ringing endorsement of a war to make “the world safe for democracy” (at least for Mexico) should demonstrate:
I would not force the adoption of our form of government upon any people by the sword. But if war is forced upon us, as this has been, and the increase of our territory, and consequently the extension of the area of human liberty and happiness, shall be one of the incidents of such a contest, I believe we should be recreant to our noble mission, if we refused acquiescence in the high purposes of a wise Providence. War has its evils. In all ages it has been the minister of wholesale death and appalling desolation; but however inscrutable to us, it has also been made, by the Allwise Dispenser of events, the instrumentality of accomplishing the great end of human elevation and human happiness … It is in this view, that I subscribe to the doctrine of ‘manifest destiny.’(Ibid, 152)
The poet, Carl Schurz, in a popular essay on Manifest Destiny, inspired the American people in the belief that, “this republic, being charged with the mission of bearing the banner of freedom over the whole civilized world, could transform any country, inhabited by any kind of population, into something like itself simply by extending over it the magic charm of its institutions.” (Ibid)
But the arrival of the treaty which ended the war presented the American people with a largess of territorial gain and a fait accompli which satisfied most of the country and led to a general war-weariness against further projects of intervention. Yet, the aspiration to extend and project the American shadow over Mexico never entirely disappeared, often accompanied by the felt-need to intervene against potential European intrusions. For this reason, Polk urged an occupation of Yucatan in 1848, and ten years later President James Buchanan offered a similar proposal that the U.S. occupy northern Mexico. French armed intervention into Mexico during the Civil War, with the installation of the Archduke Maximilian as Emperor, led to strong U.S. protests once the war ended. But war with France was averted when the Mexicans themselves overthrew and executed this pretender in 1867. But the great exhaustions of the Civil War arrested any further American imperial expansion against Mexico. The latent urge to expand American ideals and symbols of democracy, however, never fell very far from the surface of the American ideology and would resume in the Caribbean in the early twentieth century.
When Mexico collapsed into another period of chaos in 1910 Americans reacted with another sense of mission. The “missionary” spirit was always latent in the U.S. approach to the outside, and would rise and fall related to the conditions or disturbances which provoked the leadership, whether Republican or Democrat. In this case, the thirty-five year dictatorship of Mexican president Porfirio Diaz had finally ended and, with it, came political anarchy. For the next ten years Mexico experienced eleven presidents, all of whom assumed office through either murder or revolution. Nine of these served between 1911 and 1915, one for a term which lasted exactly twenty-eight minutes. The repercussions of these disorders were not seriously felt on the U.S.-Mexican border until 1912, when skirmishes occurred in Juaraz, opposite El Paso. In 1914 violence erupted at the seaport of Tampico, when a party of Americans was arrested and detained. President Wilson refused recognition to the administration of President (General) Victoriano Huerta, and announcing that he was “going to teach the South American republics to elect good men,” sent troops in occupation of Veracruz in April. Nineteen Americans and 126 Mexicans died in the operation, but Wilson defiantly upheld the morality of the new renaissance of American “mission”: “We are the friends of constitutional government in America; we are more than its friends, we are its champions; because in no other way can our neighbors, to whom we would wish in every way to make proof of our friendship, work out their own development in peace and liberty.” (Ibid, 153)
Two years later, in early 1916, the same type of political and social anarchy on the border led Wilson on still another expedition into Mexico. This was preceded by two audacious military strikes by the northern guerrilla jefe, Pancho Villa. The first of these occurred in January, where Villa’s band murdered sixteen American engineers in a train robbery near Sonora. Villa’s army, which at one time numbered around 8,000 partisans or “Villistas,” then crossed the border, March 9, 1916, and destroyed the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing eight U.S. soldiers and ten civilians. At the time, Villa was already forty-five and had an outlaw and insurgent past stretching back to his teens. But his appetite for terror and war was combined with a political savvy which understood the attraction of policies of force combined with a facade of socialist-populism. He appreciated the peasant’s demand for land reform and his guerrilla bands were deliberately generous in civic works – repairing buildings and streets and in widely-publicized demonstrations of land distribution. At the same time, he led an army of terrorist/killers, with captains such as Fausto Borunda, known to never give quarter and Rodolfo Fierro, alleged to have killed 300 federal prisoners on one spot.
Villa never specifically revealed the motivation for his cross-border raid in 1916. It may have come from revenge against a U.S. arms embargo. Some have speculated that he was retaliating against an earlier American murder of several Mexican nationals in El Paso; others believe that his purpose was to spark another U.S.- Mexican war, a conflict which might propel him to the presidency. There is also the theory that Villa’s ego had promoted his raids, since years of insurgency had failed to win power for the Villistas and, indeed, his forces were dwindling. He needed, according to this hypothesis, another attention-grabber. This, after all, was a guerrilla movement that was the first in history to use film and “spin” in pursuit of its aims. Villa was a masterful propagandist, and sought the aid of Hollywood movie studios to advertise his methods and efforts to overthrow the Mexican government. Silent film crews, in fact, had crossed the border to enhance Villa’s image as a modern Mexican “Robin Hood.” Although most of the battle scenes in these first-edition silent films were staged, some were also authentic, giving the U.S. public a glimpse of history’s first documentaries of actual war. Villa’s image as a defender of the poor and downtrodden, however, masked a fierce and cruel political personality. Relentless in his pursuit of power, he cut a wide swathe through northern Mexico and ruled as a virtual dictator. His weapons were, typical for guerrillas, stolen from the Mexican government, in part smuggled from the U.S. or exacted by force and terror over the towns of Chihuahua province. Villa was an early century terrorist, both against the inhabitants where he reigned and against the American population where his murderous raid took place. While certainly not as powerful as the modern terrorist network of 9/11 fame, Villa’s destruction of an American town was equally effective in its own time in arousing the indignation and vengeance of the American people.
Whatever his motive for the raid against Columbus, Villa caught the U.S. public off-guard. Soldiers of the 13th U.S. Cavalry, stationed at Camp Furlong near Columbus on that morning, were awakened to the sound of blistering rifle fire and the shouts of more than 500 Villista horsemen trampling the streets of Columbus and setting fire to public buildings. When the Cavalry regrouped and began returning heavy fire to the Villistas, the Mexicans retreated back across the border, but left the town virtually demolished.
President Wilson acted immediately. He ordered General John J. Pershing, a veteran of both the Indian and Philippine campaigns, into Mexico with 5,000 cavalry to catch and punish the Villistas guerrillas. Pershing's official objective was to break up the Villistas army that had been plaguing the border area for several years. He also wanted to capture Villa and eliminate entirely the guerrilla forces under the Mexican leader's command. While he was very successful in the first objective, the second – and the most publicized one – was never accomplished, even though an American bullet at one point seriously wounded Villa. Failing to capture the guerrilla leader stigmatized the "Punitive Expedition" (as it was
called) as a lasting failure. But the forced retreat of the Villistas into seclusion at least silenced them for the short duration of U.S. occupation. Even after the American withdrawal in early 1917, when Villa once again began his military activity, he was careful never to raid again across the U. S. border.
The Punitive Expedition lasted less than a year (March 1916 to January 1917). From the outset it was complicated by the serious diplomatic and military problems between the U.S. and Mexican governments. Mexico was sliding dangerously close to the German side in World War I. Hovering over the entire episode, therefore, was the impending U.S. war with Germany, and as the European situation became more tense, U.S. officials began seeking ways to bring the Army back from Mexico. The imminence of European war, in fact, was a major consideration in the final withdrawal. Despite its brevity, however, the intervention into Mexico contained classic features of unconventional war in U.S. history; features which the military had faced many times before, and which, reluctantly, they were to face again in the future.
Initially, U.S. authorities were forced to rediscover and improvise against the natural handicaps involved in military expeditions in foreign territory where its very presence, especially under the conditions of political revolution, strengthened the civilian loyalty of the populace to the guerrillas. In comparison to the invading Americans, with their long and winding columns, stretching miles into the hot Mexican sun, the native Villistas partisans appeared as patriots and political saviors. Accompanying Pershing’s cavalry was a string of Dodge motor vehicles for mobility and a nascent air force of six scout planes, all of which crashed within a month. This orthodoxy had little success in the early months of the campaign, and clearly hindered the overall effort. As one specialist on the Punitive Expedition has written: "Going into Chihuahua to lay hands on Villa was like the Sheriff of Nottingham entering Sherwood Forest expecting the peasants to help him land Robin Hood. Pershing could not count on idolaters to help him catch the idol."
Nor was this due to any undue benevolence on the part of Villa toward the inhabitants of Chihuahua. Like most other guerrilla leaders, he seldom winced at repressive measures, including torture and murder, deemed necessary to corral the population to his side. Even the residents of Chihuahua who were not in sympathy with the Villa faction of the Mexican civil war were afraid to render assistance to the Americans. But their fear was also derived from contempt against an outside army encamped within their own borders and was independent of their fear of Villa. Few people enjoy foreign domination. "Probably most anti-Villa Mexicans," Clarence Clendenon has concluded, "hated the Americans more than they hated Villa."
The frustrations inherent in conducting anti-guerrilla operations in hostile country played a significant role in the eventual decision to curtail Pershing's operations. The quest to capture Pancho Villa was also the last campaign waged by the American horse soldier. The technology of the future, tanks, mechanization, machine guns and barbed wire, would make the Punitive Expedition the “last hurrah” for this most romanced of the military branches. The terrain where Pershing crossed with horses, trucks and biplanes was formidable to strangers but offered magnificent sanctuary to the native partisans of Villa’s army. The twelve thousand-foot peaks of the towering Sierra Madres, with their deep and winding canyons shaded in the daytime sun, protected the fleeing Villistas as much as they confounded the pursuing Americans. Villa, as usual, was fighting in his own backyard, which was mostly unmapped wilderness.
While General Pershing set up camp in the town of Colonia Dublan, his men crisscrossed the rugged terrain as if searching for ghosts, which they rarely found. About the only notable tactical episode of the entire intervention launched the career of the legendary George S. Patton. It was there where the young Lieutenant Patton, fresh out of West Point, piled with ten other soldiers plus guides into three Dodge touring convertibles in search of retreating Villistas. After a brief firefight they killed three. Patton roped the bodies unceremoniously to the hood of his truck, as hunters do deer, and drove back to camp where their photographs finally gave the public back home something to crow about. The incident, of course, did little to improve relations with the Mexican people and had no significant affect on the outcome. For the American soldier and public, however, this was about as much “PR” as they could expect.
Toward the end of the expedition, the U.S. force of 6,600 "Doughboys" (so named because of the white chalk that collected on their uniforms) was restricted to within 150 miles of the border. Not only were Mexicans united in opposing the soldiers, but the forces of the Carranza government hampered their movements whenever they could, even to the point of armed resistance. The U.S. Army fought the Mexican Army in several bloody clashes. "If this campaign should eventually prove successful," Pershing commented, "it will be without the real assistance of any natives this side of [the] line."
The fact that the expedition enjoyed at least a degree of success was due to the swift pursuit of the Villistas that Pershing employed. Here was a military leader that had a good measure of experience against irregular forces, including five years against American Indians and an equal time against Muslim insurgents in The Philippines. Pershing was a soldier's soldier. He maintained a strict and traditional discipline in the ranks, but lived the life of a non-com in his personal association with the men. He refused to even use an officers tent, slept in the field with the ordinary enlistee and traveled freely throughout the war zone with only one or two orderlies accompanying him, often directly in the line of fire.
At first, Pershing's army, understandably, was completely unprepared for the type of mobile operations that chasing Villa would entail. The expedition not only caught U. S. authorities by surprise, but all contingent plans for war in Mexico were, as Professor Smythe has written, dependent upon the traditional use of force that Americans had been accustomed to: "Plans on file made no provision for chasing a single guerrilla. All plans were based on the assumption of a full-scale war, with seaborne operations at Vera Cruz and Guaymas. Any expedition hunting Villa would have to 'play it by ear'." Improvisation, as usual, guided strategy.
Not only did the expedition operate in unfamiliar terrain, but the Army did not even have accurate maps of Chihuahua. Villa knew every corner of the area, lived off the country and roamed at will among the barren and arid wastelands of north-central Mexico. After less than a month in the country, Pershing understood anew the implications of counter-guerrilla war. Cabling his superiors, he stated: "Now evident capture Villa will require many months difficult work by small columns and well organized secret service..."
Pershing confronted the Villistas with the type of "flying columns" that were made famous by the French colonial army. Combining four such small and mobile groups with three forward columns of the regular type, the Punitive Expedition resembled at times the highly maneuverable operations that General Crook used against hostile Apaches many years before. While more often than not they combed the vicinity without trace of the enemy, the encounters that they did have all succeeded in routing the Villistas, forcing them further away from the settled areas of the state. With the guerrillas either hiding or in retreat, Pershing organized the area of operations into five military districts, each occupied by a regiment.
In the meantime, relations between the United States and Mexico had so deteriorated that Washington had mobilized 15,000 National Guard on the border, with war an imminent possibility. Under these circumstances, both sides stepped back from the brink and the pursuit of Villa by the American army ceased altogether. In the month of August 1917, Villa took full advantage of this respite and exploded from hiding, still full of fury against both the U.S. Army and Carranza's Mexican forces. By October he had stormed several cities and was in full control of central Chihuahua. Pershing, straining at the leash, wrote his superiors that "A swift blow delivered by this command should be made at once .... Our own prestige in Mexico should receive consideration at this time ...further inactivity of this command does not seem desirable..."
The sensitive nature of Mexican-American relations plus the upcoming war in Europe, however, prevailed against further action. In January 1917 President Wilson ordered the Army back home. The Punitive Expedition was over; it was a success in that Mexicans no longer raided U.S. territory. While it was active, it had succeeded in containing Villa's guerrillas, although they were never eliminated. After the withdrawal, with the U.S. fully committed to Europe, Pancho Villa almost succeeded in re-establishing his authority in Chihuahua, but this time at the expense of the Mexican government only, and not that of the United States.
Villa's active military career, ironically, ended at the hands of the United States when, in June 1919, his advance to the border town of Juarez provoked an American counterattack so devastating that his army was finished as a serious factor in Mexican politics thereafter. Characteristically enough, the famous guerrilla of northern Mexico saw his career come to ruins on the only occasion of his career when he chose to match strength with American regulars. After 1919 Villa finally made peace with the government and was given a pension and large hacienda, which he enjoyed until he was also done in by “the sword,” ambushed and killed by a political rival on July 20,1923.