FOLLOWING THE PARRAL FIGHT, Hugh Scott and Frederick Funston were dispatched to El Paso to meet with Álvaro Obregón. Officials in Washington hoped the three generals could speak frankly to one another and halt the slide toward all-out war. After some hesitation, Carranza had reluctantly agreed to let his talented military chieftain attend, even though he was growing suspicious that he and Obregón were after the same prize: the presidency of Mexico.
The residents of Juárez and El Paso, who had lived for six years with revolution and counterrevolution and the almost daily rumors that they were about to be bombarded into rubble, greeted the news with a mixture of anticipation and irritation. Following the Columbus raid, El Paso had resembled an armed military camp. Soldiers from Fort Bliss had patrolled the downtown streets, sheriff’s deputies had tramped the muddy banks of the Rio Grande, extra men had been hired by the police department, and more than a hundred Villa sympathizers and ex-officials had been rounded up in nightly dragnets. The suspects had been placed in the city jail and bonds were set so high that their captivity had been assured for an indefinite period of time. In a moment of candor, the police chief had acknowledged that the measures being implemented were not always legal. “We are not always proceeding according to law. If we did, we would not accomplish anything. We are out to keep peace along the border and prevent Villa’s sympathizers from aiding him in evading our soldier boys. Dealing with bandits you have to take extraordinary measures.”
The mayor of El Paso had also taken steps to limit free speech, prohibiting public discussion of the Columbus raid or the expedition. “We all want to demonstrate patriotism and love of country, but futile conversations about this war benefit nobody,” he said. The police had cracked down on the small Spanish-language newspapers publishing in El Paso. Fernando Gamiochipi, the editor of El Paso del Norte, had been jailed on suspicion of inciting a riot and all copies of his newspaper were confiscated. Several other Spanish-language newspapers operated by Mexican expatriates were also suppressed “as a precaution against possible disorder resulting from inflammatory utterances.” The typesetting equipment was returned a few days later but the chief of detectives had warned that police officials would continue to censor the news.
Ironically, El Paso owed much of its prosperity to the Mexican refugees who had fled across the border during the revolution. Restaurants opened and became wildly successful, clothing stores did a brisk business, bank deposits increased dramatically, and barbershops were filled with military generals waiting for shaves and haircuts. In the southern part of town, known as Little Chihuahua or Chihuahuaita, the boardinghouses and hotels were filled with spies, smugglers, arms dealers, soldiers of fortune, reporters, revolutionists and counterrevolutionists who called themselves Maderistas, Huertistas, Villistas, or Carrancistas, or científicos of the old Díaz regime. “Young revolutions have started from it; shattered revolutions have ebbed back into it; plots and counterplots have been darkly hatched within the corridors of its hotels,” James Hopper wrote.
Luis Terrazas, the fabulously wealthy Chihuahua landowner, arrived in the city with twenty wagons filled with goods and an extended family that included forty-eight women and children, and rented an entire floor of the luxurious Paso del Norte Hotel. Upon his arrival, intelligence agents from nearby Fort Bliss proceeded to bug the rooms. The agents grew numb with boredom as they listened to the chatter about women’s hats and gowns and were no doubt relieved when the clan rented a commodious house overlooking the city that happened to belong to New Mexico senator Albert Fall. Grand as it was, the house in no way could accommodate the extended family and their servants, which numbered some 150 people, and nearby houses were leased or purchased for the overflow. “After breakfasting,” writes author Victor Macias-González, “don Luis held court, receiving family members, friends and acquaintances in seigneurial style in the mansion’s salon. Seated at a large and comfortable chair that must have appeared to visitors to be a throne, he welcomed those who sought his advice and money. He reached into a large pouch on a table at his side to disburse small cash gifts of 25 and 50-cent American coins.”
WHEN ÁLVARO OBREGóN’S entourage pulled into the Juárez train station, residents tramped down to look at his locomotive and then returned home, singularly unimpressed. Unlike Villa’s old train, Obregón’s was nondescript and consisted of a mix of boxcars, flatcars, coal cars, private cars, and passenger coaches. One coach, dubbed the “Celaya,” was the same car from which Obregón had directed the decisive battles against Villa and the car to which he was brought after his arm had been torn away by a Villista shell. A second railroad car, from which a long banner hung, was called the “Siquisiva,” named after the Hacienda Siquisiva, General Obregón’s birthplace. A third carried the heavy, cream-colored automobile that Obregón would use for trips across the river to meet with Hugh Scott and Frederick Funston.
A military band formed up on a platform to welcome Obregón’s party, which included several new brides. “The drummer was all set, the bass fiddler ready to saw away on the strings, and the clarinets and cornets, and slide trombones were all tuned for the ‘triumphal march’ which the band was to play,” a journalist reported. “Just as the diminutive director in beard and glasses, looking like an understudy of John Philip Sousa, was about to rap with his baton for attention, a green baize curtain of a car window was brushed aside and a command was given in sharp staccato sounds.” The general, it seemed, was having his siesta and the band was encouraged to serenade someone else down the line.
Several hours later, Obregón, now known throughout Mexico as el manco de Celaya—the one-armed man of Celaya—appeared on the platform, freshly shaved, wearing a dark gray uniform buttoned up to his chin and a gold fountain pen in his pocket. Surrounded by his aides and his personal bodyguard, who wore red bands on their sombreros and trim gray uniforms made in New Jersey, he strolled over to the customhouse and waited for General Scott and General Funston, who were to pay him a courtesy visit.
As the two cars bearing the U.S. generals rolled over the international bridge and toward the customhouse, Mexican troops stood at attention and trumpets and drums were played. The visit was strictly social in nature and one of the first things that Funston did was express condolences to Obregón for the loss of his right arm. Obregón smiled graciously, looking every part the war hero, and said that at least he hadn’t lost the rest of his body.
The following morning, the Mexican general returned the courtesy call at Scott’s private railroad car in El Paso. Accompanying him were General Plutarco Elías Calles, the governor-general of Sonora, who had defeated Villa at Agua Prieta; General Gabriel Gavira, who commanded the Juárez garrison and had warned Pershing of Villa’s approach to the border; and Consul Andrés García, the amiable civilian, who acted as interpreter and master of ceremonies.
Now it was the U.S. troops who were lined up smartly along both sides of the street. Obregón was saluted with a volley of nineteen guns and several bands played “The Imperial Potentate” march. As soon as the automobiles crossed the international line, the bands switched to the popular march “Under the Double Eagle.”
Obregón stepped from his automobile and began walking toward the railroad car where General Scott awaited him. He swung up onto the platform using his good arm. He extended his left hand sideways from his body and General Scott clasped it with his right hand, which itself had been crippled from an old bullet wound.
Scott and Funston had been given detailed instructions from the War Department on how to handle the negotiations. They were to open the discussion by emphasizing that the expedition’s presence in Mexico was for the sole purpose of “removing a menace to the common security and the friendly relations” of both countries. Then the two generals were to suggest to Obregón that their armies work cooperatively to capture Villa, with the Carrancistas driving Villa’s band north into the arms of the U.S. troops. “The government of the United States has no pride involved in who makes the capture, and its only interest is that it should be done expeditiously so that American troops can be withdrawn and the peace of the borders assured.”
The War Department emphasized that under no circumstances were Scott and Funston to address the question of the withdrawal of U.S. troops. If Obregón broached the issue, they were merely to say that any withdrawal of troops was a diplomatic matter. The two generals were also to make clear to Obregón that “so long as the possibility of further depredations by Villa exists the withdrawal of American troops would increase the danger and in any event be very difficult.”
At the insistence of the Mexican government, the first official negotiating session was held at five o’clock on April 29 in the green room of the Juárez customhouse. The two U.S. generals took a seat below a painting of Benito Juárez, Mexico’s liberator. Outside, a throng of reporters gathered, trying to discern through the windows what was being said. One of the windows had a “very clean cut” bullet hole. Several bands played and the crowd listened appreciatively. “The music was psychological,” a reporter wrote. “It was sweet and sensuous and disconcerting to ill feelings and hostilities. The spell of Mexico settled down upon the group. Who could quarrel with ‘Samson and Delilah’ ringing in their ears and the melodic folk songs of the Mexican people?”
But a quarrel did occur, almost immediately, when Scott and Funston brought up the problem of supplying their troops and pressed Obregón for use of the railways. Obregón, working from an entirely different script, politely turned aside the request and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. troops. He maintained that Villa was dead, or had been rendered innocuous, and his troops also killed or scattered. “There is no one to seek for now,” he said, adding that the presence of U.S. soldiers was only making his job more difficult. As the meeting wore on, the reporters peering through the windows noticed Funston gesticulating in an excited manner. With a deadlock imminent, the Americans ended the conference. The meeting had lasted two hours.
Afterward, Obregón talked with journalists, tapping his foot impatiently during the question-and-answer session and dodging questions about the purpose of the conference. When asked if his troops could capture Villa, he responded, “It is not a question of troops. Now it is only a question of a hunt, not a campaign. There is no need for a great column of troops to catch a single man.”
The negotiations might have ended there, but a mutual friend arranged a second meeting between General Obregón and General Scott at the Paso del Norte Hotel. (Funston was not present, Scott later wrote, because “he allowed his real sentiments to be expressed so brusquely that he lost his influences in those conferences, and he thought it best for him not to attend anymore.”)
The Paso del Norte Hotel was the city’s pride and joy. Fake marble, which could be manufactured in any color of the rainbow, had just come into use and the hotel’s builders had taken full advantage of the technological breakthrough. The dome in the lobby was “turquoise blue,” the pillars were “rice-field green,” the walls “ox-blood red” and the “yellow found in underdone boiled eggs,” and the whole mess trimmed in “delicate French mochas and ‘Ladies Home Journal’ frosting,” wrote James Hopper of Collier’s.
In order to evade reporters, Scott strolled uptown, occasionally stopping to purchase small items. When he was certain he was no longer being followed, he hailed a laundry wagon and asked to be dropped off at the service entrance of the hotel, where he took the elevator up to the eighth floor. Somehow, though, he wound up in the wrong corridor. “A Hearst correspondent, coming out of his room unaware of my presence, spied me and called out, ‘I got you!’” In just a few minutes, twenty-seven reporters were standing outside the room where he was to meet Obregón. Scott ducked inside and slammed the door. Wrote the El Paso Herald, “The closing of that door at the ‘mystery room’ started the longest diplomatic session and the longest drawn out siege of newspaper men since Francisco Madero received the peace envoys from Mexico City in the little ‘casa blanca’ across the river from the smelter.”
Scott was determined to get Obregón to sign an agreement that would allow Pershing to stay in Mexico “without his being assaulted by the Mexicans” for as long as President Wilson wanted. The two generals talked nonstop, pausing only long enough to devour sandwiches at 2:00 p.m. and steaks and salads at dinner. Hotel employees carried up pitchers of ice water and pots of strong coffee. In the hallway, the reporters waited, pitching pennies and shooting craps with the house detective. When one of the generals would go to the door to clear his head or receive telegrams, the reporters would leap up from their gambling games and ask for news. Downstairs, a bellboy walked through the fake-marble lobby carrying a silver tray in his hand and shouting at the top of his lungs, “Francisco Villa! Francisco Villa! Call for Mr. Villa.” After he had paged the grill, the smoking room, and the dining room, someone told him to go up to room 828 and ask for General Obregón, who might be able to shed some light on the whereabouts of the rebel leader.
Behind the closed doors, documents were drawn up in English and Spanish, argued over, changed, and rewritten. At 12:30 a.m., after twelve solid hours of “mental struggle,” the two generals arrived at an agreement. Only one page and eight paragraphs long, the document acknowledged that Villa and his band had been destroyed or dispersed. That said, the de facto government promised to aggressively patrol the border, and in exchange, the U.S. agreed to pull back its troops “commencing the withdrawal immediately.” Although the Mexicans still refused to allow U.S. troops to use their railways, Obregón nevertheless promised Scott that his Mexican troops would not “molest” the U.S. soldiers while they remained in Mexico. “So, instead of ending up with a clash,” Scott wrote in a letter to a friend, “we are on better terms now that we have been since the Columbus raid.”
Scott told Newton Baker that the conference was “not equaled by any similar struggle with the wildest and most exasperated Indian heretofore encountered.” In a letter to a colleague, he added, “I could not afford to let him get away from me without signing my papers because he would fall into the hands of a very hostile Mexican sentiment and I would lose everything I had gained. I do not know how I held him, for if he had said he was tired and wanted to go home and go to bed I could not have held him, but somehow or other I managed to keep him and he finally signed the papers.”
The two men opened the door and walked down to their parked cars on San Antonio Street. The moving-picture operators lit their torches, illuminating the street in a ghostly splendor. “General Obregón,” wrote one reporter, “sat in his big automobile like a fighter under fire. The brilliant light gave his olive skin a ghastly look and brought out his finely chiseled profile.” Obregón allowed the movie men to take their pictures, then he gave a sharp order to his driver, slouched behind the wheel in a cape coat, and the car leaped forward into the darkness.
Scott, red eyed and drained, returned to his railroad car, where a stack of messages from the War Department awaited him. He sank into his chair and began to read. “I had not known how intense my concentration had been until it was over and I began to relax, to find that every muscle was taut, my fingers clenched and my teeth likewise. Both hands and jaws ached with the intensity of the effort.”
But Scott’s effort turned out to be futile. The United States approved the agreement on May 4, 1916, but the de facto Mexican government did not. Carranza continued to insist that the U.S. troops withdraw immediately or face the military consequences. A memo, which had been intercepted by U.S. officials, suggested that he meant it: “Dispose your troops that they shall be in a position to cut off American expeditionary forces now in Chihuahua. The action must be sudden and will take place after the Scott-Obregón conference. It will make no difference what else may be decided upon in conference unless there is absolute withdrawal of American troops the above plans will be carried out. The Sonora troops will be assisted by troops in Chihuahua.”
Funston, in a defensive mode now, ordered Pershing to withdraw north to Colonia Dublán. Pershing balked, saying he would no longer be able to supply the troops hunting Pancho Villa and that such a withdrawal would result in a “serious loss of American prestige.”
Two days later, on May 5, a group of Mexican raiders crossed the border and attacked two tiny settlements in the Big Bend area of Texas. Three troopers and a seven-year-old boy were killed at Glenn Spring and six hostages were taken at Boquillas. A smaller version of the Punitive Expedition was hastily organized and spent two weeks in Mexico hunting the marauders. Convinced now that Carranza was dealing with them in bad faith, President Wilson called up the National Guard troops in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico and ordered them to the border. In response to the events, Funston dictated a forceful memo to Pershing:
War with de facto government almost inevitable. You are liable to be attacked at any time by large force reaching Chihuahua by train from central Mexico as well as by Sonora troops. Your line is too long and troops scattered too much. For a time we cannot support you. Fall back along your line of communications with view to general concentration of entire force at Colonia Dublán. Such action imperative. No question of prestige can be entertained as military considerations must govern. If attacked do not allow any preliminary success to induce you to advance too far as danger meeting overwhelming force and having your line of communications cut is too great. Acknowledge and report daily.
On May 19, Funston telegrammed him again, warning of the anti-American sentiment and the heavy movement of troops north “for ostensible purpose of suppressing bandits but movements suspiciously large for needs.” He continued, “If any part of your forces is attacked by an organized body of de facto government troops you will attempt to destroy all of their forces within reach taking care not to become too deeply involved or exposing your line of communications. . . . In case of such attack on you rush information to me without waiting to give details as it is essential that we learn of it before Mexicans.”
Carranza’s generals were daily becoming more bellicose. General Luis Herrera in Parral stated publicly that he would begin attacking Americans still in the country on June 1. And General José Cavazos, who had shared his whiskey with Major Tompkins, had verbally abused the expedition’s civilian scouts and ordered his men to fire on any American soldiers they saw. Funston urged Pershing to avoid anything that would bring the two sides into conflict. “You are instructed to act conservatively.”
Seething, Pershing nevertheless obeyed orders. Penned up in northern Chihuahua, he suffered alongside his troops through the sandstorms, the growing heat, the flies, the boredom. “We have been very idle,” George Patton confided in a sad letter to his father. “It is most tiresome sitting out on a bluff over a river in the sun and dust. We can’t go to town because they shoot at us now and then and the gen. does not want to start something unless he can finish it.”