The Spanish American War and Spanish Acquisitions in the Caribbean
The Monroe Doctrine, while initially intended for policing the Americas, was expanded during the Spanish American War (1898) when the United States gained Spanish colonial possessions in the Pacific. The pretense for the war with Spain was an explosion on the USS Maine on February 15, 1898, that occurred in Havana, Cuba, resulting in the deaths of 260 sailors. Interestingly, the Indian War generals, notably Nelson A. Miles, and buffalo soldiers played a role in this short war that ended on December 10, 1898, with the Treaty of Paris. In addition to the acquisition of the Caribbean Island, Puerto Rico, and a foothold on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, (GITMO) the United States also took command over the Spanish colonial holdings of Guam and the Philippines. This was considered the United States first foreign war, leading to the creation of the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization. The United States also held possession of Cuba for four years until its independence on May 20, 1902. Prior to its independence, the United States signed a treaty that provided the United States a ninety-nine-year lease on a navy base at GITMO. The 1901 Platt Amendment required U.S. approval for all foreign treaties made with Cuba. Fresh from its one-sided victory over Spain, the United States continued in its colonial acquisitions in the Pacific, including Hawaii (1898) and American Samoa (1899), as well as other islands such as the Carolina Islands and Wake Island, territories that played a significant role in the horrendous, colonial war with Japan (1941–1946). The Spanish-American War also catapulted Theodore Roosevelt into the limelight and presidency (1901–1909).
An extension of the Spanish-American War and a precursor to the Mexican Revolution were the aggressive actions of President Theodore Roosevelt, who fostered a paternalistic view of Latin America. In 1904, he proclaimed his Roosevelt Corollary, establishing the right of the United States to unilaterally intervene in the Caribbean and Central America in order to prevent foreign nations from interfering with America’s interests in the region. This policy authorized the subsequent use of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) to act as a de facto international police force in protecting U.S. business interests in the Americas. These police actions resulted in U.S. interventions in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic before it was replaced with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy in 1934.1 Like the Indian Wars, policing the Monroe Doctrine south of the U.S. border during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries replenished the U.S. military with a host of new military leaders: General Smedley Butler and Lewis “Chesty” Puller for the USMC; and Army Generals Leonard Wood, John “Black Jack” Pershing, George Patton Jr., and Arthur and Douglas MacArthur.
Pacific Acquisitions and the Philippine Rebellion
While winning the Spanish-American War was seen as a quick victory for the United States, acquisition of the Philippine Islands proved to be the opposite—a brutal sectarian war pitting America against both the Roman Catholic administration inherited from Spain and the Islamic population of Moroland (1899–19013). The United States had its earliest influence in Southeast Asia in the Philippines as part of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, making the Philippines its first foreign colonial outpost outside the American continent. The First Philippine War involved the United States and the Katipuneros, who declared Philippine independence on June 12, 1898.
The U.S. suppression of the revolutionary forces for independence continued until 1902. The Second Philippine War was fought in the Muslim south and was not resolved until 1913, when a civilian became the colonial governor. Deployed U.S. generals who had recently fought in the U.S. West used Indian war tactics for the destruction of entire villages (scorched-earth campaigns), the execution of surrendering prisoners, torture (including waterboarding), and internment (concentration camps) of civilians who were suspected of being sympathetic to the local revolutionaries. The U.S. forces had one of the most disproportionate enemy casualty rates recorded at the time, with fifteen Filipinos killed for every one wounded. The coverage of the atrocities in the world press, along with those associated with the British military in the Boer War in South Africa, led to the establishment of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which articulated the rules of international and military law and behavior, including the treatment of prisoners and civilians.
General Arthur MacArthur (U.S. Civil War, Indian Wars), his son, Douglas MacArthur (World War I, World War II, Korean conflict), Dwight D. Eisenhower (World II), and John J. Pershing (Spanish-American War, Punitive Expedition; World War I) all served in the Philippines during the U.S. colonial era. Arthur MacArthur served as military governor in 1900 along with his son Douglas, a second lieutenant who went on to become the field marshal of the Philippines. Dwight D. Eisenhower served as Douglas MacArthur’s aide when Douglas served as field marshal, while John J. Pershing, commanding general of U.S. forces during World War I, served as the last military governor-general of Moro Province (1909–1913). During the First Philippine War, the United States forcefully confiscated property of the Roman Catholic Church, giving it to U.S. business interests. Even then, Catholicism thrived in the northern Philippines, while Islam continued to dominate the southern Islands, notably Mindanao.2
In his book, The Savage Wars of Peace, Max Boot noted:
The Filipinos stubbornly resisted their new colonial masters, and though successive U.S. generals proclaimed victory at hand, American soldiers kept dying in ambushes, telegraph lines kept getting cut, and army convoys kept being attacked. Among the most stubborn of guerrilla commanders was General Vincente Lukban, scion of a rich family of mixed Chinese and Tagalog origin who directed resistance on Samar. Lukban’s men had begun by executing all the Spanish clergy on the island and replacing them with native priests. Afterward they targeted not only Americans but also their collaborators, burying three americanistas alive, tying another to a tree and hacking him to bits. The Americans retaliated in kind. . . . It was not at all the kind of conflict that soldiers like. This dirty war offered no heroic charges, no brilliant maneuvers, no dazzling victories. Just the daily frustrations of battling an unseen foe in the dense, almost impassable jungle.3
United States and the Mexican Revolution: Prelude to the Modern U.S. military
Manifest Destiny and U.S. Expansionism at Mexico’s Expense
The genesis of contemporary animosities and anti-Hispanic sentiments in the United States has its origin in the early years of the republic when American citizens heeded Spanish-Mexico’s call for settlers in its northern territories. American settlers took advantage of the empresario land grants offered by the Spanish colonial government in Mexico. Moses Austin, formerly from Missouri, was granted the first empresario permit on January 17, 1821, allowing him to settle three hundred families in what is now Texas. Two major events in the United States precipitated this southern migration—the economic panic of 1819 and the increasing cost of U.S. public lands, especially for slaveholders. Empresario grantees became de facto lord or governor of their land grant, giving them considerable authority over their subgrantee settlers. Austin’s land grant contract allowed 23,000 acres per one hundred settler families. These land grants were interspersed with other elements of the Spanish frontier community, which consisted of Roman Catholic missions, presidios (frontier garrisons), ranchos, farms, towns, and villages. The empresario grants in Coahuila and Tejas (what became Texas) continued following the establishment of the Republic of Mexico on September 27, 1821, with the largest grantees being Austin, Green de Witt, and Haden Edwards.4
Under the Imperial Colonization Law, immigrants (settlers) were compelled to be of the Roman Catholic faith or to convert to Catholicism in order to receive land within the empresario. Mexico held the deed to the settler’s land for six years. Title transfer was contingent upon all conditions being met. These conditions were enacted by the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas on March 24, 1825, setting the maximum limit of a single empresario to eight hundred families. The conditions for settlement were:
One of the major factors leading to the Texas rebellion was the Republic of Mexico’s 1821 antislavery law. This led to the first attempt at independence known as the Fredonian Rebellion in 1826. The Edwards brothers (Haden and Benjamin) were awarded empresarial grants in April 1825, entitling them to settle up to eight hundred families in the Nacogdoches area north of the Austin grant. Their authoritarian methods and hostility to local residents led to a federal investigation. In reaction, the Edwards brothers raised their own militia and declared the region independent of Mexico, to be known as the Republic of Fredonia. Their short-lived rebellion and independence ended on January 31, 1827, with the remaining rebels fleeing back to the United States.
The Edwards brothers set the stage for the rest of the American immigrants with slaveholding leading to continued unrest and the eventual war of succession leading to the Republic of Texas, a country with strong links to the U.S. Southern slave states. “Remember the Alamo” was the war cry of Americans who abandoned the United States and swore allegiance to first Spain, then Mexico, in order to get large tracts of land, who then rebelled in defense of slavery. The Alamo is a shrine to deceit and slavery and not to high Christian values attributed to it today. Following Texas’s independence, the republic struggled for recognition and acceptance for nine years, while all along begging for its annexation to the United States. Once Texas became part of the United States in 1845, slavery exploded, increasing from 30,000 in 1845 to 182,566 in 1860. Slavery was a critical issue at the time of the Mexican War (1846–1848). President Polk saw the war with Mexico as an opportunity to again greatly expand the United States, doing this under the mandate of both Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. Polk’s war with Mexico was not universally supported by the U.S. Congress, and the Mexican War spelled the demise of the Whig Party and the emergence of the Republican Party.5
The Texas Rangers’ Ethnic War of Terror
The law enforcement agency historically associated with U.S.-Mexico border jurisdiction is the Texas Rangers. Long lauded as a heroic force for justice in myth and in the media, a closer examination paints a different picture. Contemporary analysis portrays the Texas Rangers as a cruel, extermination squad, ridding Texas of Hispanics, Mestizos, and American Indians. The Texas Rangers trace their origins to 1821 and the Austin empresario in Mexico, where ten men were hired as rangers with the mandate of protecting Anglo settlers from Indian raids. The rangers were the authorized militia stipulated in the empresario contract. During the Texas Revolution, the rangers were expanded into companies of fifty-six men, each under the control of a major. On October 17, 1835, the rangers became the republic’s police force until November when the army, the rangers, and other militias fell under the command of the commander in chief. While placed under the authority of the new army, the Texas Rangers were an irregular force, and they were not involved in any of the major battles. Their duties during the revolution were to continue protecting the Anglo settlers from Indian attacks.6
What distinguished the Texas Rangers from both the regular military (army and navy) and other militias was its adoption of the Colt revolver, the first repeating firearm at the time. The Republic of Texas became the proving grounds for this innovative weapon. Samuel Colt of Hartford, Connecticut, patented his repeating handgun in 1836—the same year Texas declared its independence from Mexico. Texas was Colt’s first customer, ordering 180, .36-caliber five-shot revolvers for its navy in 1839. Texas Rangers, on the other hand, had been ordering them individually since they first became available in 1837. Once President Sam Houston disbanded the Texas navy, the Paterson Colts were reassigned to the Texas Rangers. Consequently, with the advent of the Paterson Colt repeating single-action revolver, the Texas Rangers could fire as long as they could fan the hammer which rotated the cylinder. Texas Rangers often carried three or more revolvers with loaded extra cylinders, increasing their firepower and greatly enhancing their image as a deadly force. Following annexation, the Texas Rangers became the de facto Texas state police. And during the Mexican War, the Texas Rangers again proved the superiority of the Colt revolver, even providing practical adaptations leading to the six-shooter and a protective trigger guard. The Colt revolver went on to become the most popular sidearm of both sides of the Civil War—thanks to its endorsement by the Texas Rangers.7
Unfortunately, as is still evident today, the combination of racist white-elitism and superior firepower do not promote the tenet of justice for all. During the Mexican War, the Texas Rangers exhibited racist and ruthless atrocities branding them the title, diablos Tejanos—Texan devils. C. H. Harris noted, “From the Rangers’ point of view, the war was a splendid opportunity to kill Mexicans and get paid for it.”8 These killings and abuses were rampant, prompting General Zachary Taylor to threaten to imprison an entire Ranger unit. Even then, the Texas Rangers used the Mexican War as license to continue with their blatant violations of international law, conducting cross-border raids well after the war’s end, including the 1855 destruction of the Mexican town, Piedras Negras.9
The Texas Rangers reign of terror resurfaced in 1874 when old pro-confederate Democrats again took over the mantle of power in Texas. The Texas Rangers, the military, militias, and outlaws were now armed with a more advanced form of the “six-shooter”—one that used cartridges (bullets). The development of the self-contained (integrated) cartridge (bullet) further enhanced the firepower of repeating weapons, both rifles and pistols, and allowed for more rapid-firing, breech-loading, single-shot rifles such as the Sharps military carbine, widely used during the Indian Wars. Prior to the self-contained cartridge, both long guns (smooth bore or rifles) and handguns (including the revolver) required the additional step of activating the “cap-and-ball” sequence, whereby black powder had to be packed into each cylinder (muzzle loading) along with the installation of a firing cap at the hammer. The early cartridges had the powder held together in a cardboard bullet that was either rim- or center-fired by a firing pin that ignited the percussion cap. The French were the first to invent the cartridge, which soon evolved from a cardboard to a metallic shell (shotgun shells still use the cardboard format). Indeed, the .22 caliber percussion cap soon became a bullet in itself, with the .22 long rifle one of the most popular calibers today. The advent of the bullet led to new adaptations to the revolver, notably the Colt single action army revolver, introduced in 1873. The civilian model of this .45 caliber “six-shooter” was commonly known as the Peacemaker. It was used by both the military during the Indian War and by law enforcement, notably U.S. Marshals and county sheriffs, as well as being popular with outlaws that roamed the West during the post–Civil War era up until the First World War.
For the rest of the nineteenth century, the Texas Rangers served as the private police for the governor of Texas and Anglo ranchers. The Texas Rangers had carte blanche when it came to maintaining Anglo financial interests in the area, via their Special Forces and Frontier Battalion. Interestingly, “special forces” still connote military and police units that operate with a license to kill outside the restrictions of either military or civil justice. Clearly, the Texas Rangers were to Mexicans, Mestizos, and American Indians what the Ku Klux Klan was to blacks, until they were brought under the authority of the Texas Department of Public Service in 1935. Then, the Texas Rangers could no longer be used merely as the private police force for the governor of Texas. From 1935 on, they were accountable to the general statutes applicable to all law enforcement agencies within the state.10
United States and Mexico: The Emerging Borderlands
An important chapter in United States-Mexico relations occurred during the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. During this time the United States and Mexico witnessed an era of cooperation during the reign of Porfirio Diaz, a period from 1872 to 1911 known as The Porfiriato. Diaz, a general under President Juarez, the first indigenous Mexican leader, during the rebellion against the European-installed dictator, Archduke Maximilian, made a name for himself as leader of the May 5, 1862, defeat of Napoleon III’s troops at Puebla. This became a major event in Mexican history and folklore, celebrated to the present as Cinco de Mayo. Diaz was also involved in the final defeat and execution of Maximilian in 1867. Diaz rose to the presidency following Juarez’s death, confirmed as president in 1877.
Diaz soon became one of the United States’ favorite despots, maintaining the Monroe Doctrine and keeping European and other outside interests out of Mexico, while at the same time providing an environment favorable to U.S. business and political interest. Specifically, President Diaz opened up Mexican resources (copper, oil, and the like) and markets for U.S. capitalist endeavors. During the Porfiriato era, Mexico had the semblance of political stability and economic growth. The national debt was paid and the treasury had some 70 million dollars cash reserves at the end of his tenure in 1911. But this prosperity for big business and the upper classes came at a price, one that eventually led to the revolution of 1910. The indigenous Indians and poor lower-class Mestizos suffered under the classist and racist policies of the Porfiriato era. Ironically, it was these same practices that endeared Diaz to U.S. political and business interests.
Ironically, a newly emerging middle class surfaced during the Porfiriato era, comprised of clerks, teachers, small businessmen, and legal and clinical/health practitioners. While creating a buffer between the elite cientificos and the large peon/peasant class, the middle class, by virtue of its limited influence, also felt marginalized by the Diaz government. The prosperity of the Diaz regime did little to increase the quality of life for the rank-and-file Mexican workers and their families. Even in U.S.-operated enterprises, Mexican workers earned less than workers from the United States who were employed at the same facility. American miners were paid five dollars for a ten-hour day at the Mexican mine while Mexican workers were paid one-dollar-fifty for the same work. The double-wage system led to strikes in mines, and the bloody suppression of the Mexican workers only fueled discontent. Borrowing techniques from the Texas Rangers, the Mexican strikers were brutally suppressed by government goon squads called rurales. Diaz even allowed U.S. businesses to bring in their own strike breakers. U.S. police and vigilante militias were employed in Cananea mining strike of 1906 under the pretense of protecting U.S. lives and property:
The first flashpoint was the mining town of Cananea in Sonora, which was, in effect, a U.S. company town belonging to the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company. A protest over wage differentials between the 6,000 Mexican employees and their 600 U.S. counterparts led to a riot in which company guards fired on the workforce. The excessive use of force was compounded by the permission granted to the company by the governor of Sonora, Rafeal Izabal, to allow 260 Arizona rangers to cross the border to restore order, in what was widely criticized at the time as an open violation of Mexican sovereignty.11
The ensuing two-day battle left more than twenty Mexican minors and six company men dead. A year later, strikes at Mexico’s textile mills were also brutally suppressed by troops and rurales, resulting in striking workers being killed and five union leaders executed. These actions merely served to solidify the solidarity of the workers, including female workers. Textile strikes in Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz were met with harsh treatment by the government and business owners. Hence, law and order during the Diaz era came at a high price. Civil liberties and rights were suppressed for the majority of Mexicans, especially those of Indian descent. This double-standard of justice followed public sentiments in the United States—that indigenous and poor lower-class people of color were biologically, racially, and morally inferior and, therefore, not eligible for judicial standards offered the privileged elites.12
Following three decades of abuse, Mexicans revolted over the exploitations of Mestizos and Indian peasants as well as the restrictions placed upon the new emerging middle class. The Maderista Revolt against the Diaz regime was launched on November 10, 1910, by Francisco Madero, a member of the privileged elite. Madero ran against Diaz in the 1910 elections, resulting in his arrest. He escaped from jail and fled to the United States. On November 10, 1910, Madero and his forces crossed into Mexico from the United States at Piedras Negras in the state of Coahuila, initiating the Mexican Revolution. Two popular revolutionary leaders quickly emerged, igniting popular support for the overthrow of Diaz—Emiliano (Emilio) Zapata, an indigenous Mexican, and Francisco “Pancho” Villa (Doroteo Arango), a Mestizo. In May 1911, Madero’s forces took Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, leading to the Treaty of Juarez where Diaz agreed to resign and leave the country to live in exile in France. The end of the Porfiriato era did little to quell the divisions within Mexican society. Madero succeeded Diaz as president—only for him and his vice president, Pino Suarez, to be assassinated in a coup d’etat led by General Victoriano Huerta in 1913. Huerta, in turn, was forced into exile in 1914, resulting in the revolution split between the forces of Generals Carranza and Obregon (Constitutionalists) versus the Conventionists and the generals of the popular forces—Emilio Zapata and Pancho Villa. The Constitutionalists represented a strong Mexican federal government free of U.S. controls, while the Conventionists also fought for an autonomous country, but with a redistribution of the land in the hands of the wealthy elite and support for the aboriginal communal village (Pueblo) system. Zapata was assassinated under orders of General Pablo Gonzalez while Pancho Villa’s forces raised havoc in northern Mexico, finally giving his support to President-elect Adolfo deal Huerta in 1920.13
Wilson’s Critique
A consequence of the Mexican Revolution was the migration of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to the United States. It is estimated that nearly 900,000 immigrants crossed the border between 1910 and 1920. Fearful of border conditions during the Revolution, President William Howard Taft ended the U.S. long-held nonintervention policy with the Diaz regime, instead creating a Maneuver Division of (black) buffalo soldiers to patrol the U.S. side of the border, beginning in March 1911. These soldiers were stationed in San Antonio, Texas, as a readiness force to counter any cross-border attacks. Taft’s successor, President Woodrow Wilson, took an even more active military approach toward border security and Mexican politics with his paternalistic Wilsonism Critique. Wilson’s intent was to side with the Constitutionalists because he felt they would best protect U.S. oil, mining, and manufacturing interests in Mexico. When all parties in the Revolution objected to Wilson’s plan, the United States reacted by using gunboat diplomacy with military intervention into Mexico in April 1914, occupying Veracruz until November, again raising the U.S. flag over Mexico. The U.S. Marine Corps seven-month occupation resulted in four hundred Mexican casualties compared to four U.S. deaths. President Wilson also supported General Pancho Villa in the early stages of the Mexican Revolution.
General Villa’s January 1914 attack on Ojinaga forced Huerta’s forces to cross over into the United States and surrender to the army instead of chancing their fate with Villa’s army. Now the United States was responsible for the care of some 5,000 Mexican combatants, as well as 1,000 women, 500 children, and 3,000 horses and mules. Huerta’s forces were initially held at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and later transferred to Fort Wingate, New Mexico, near the Navajo Reservation. The victory of Ojinaga gave Villa’s forces control of northern Mexico, including the Mexican-U.S. border. Both General Hugh L. Scott and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryant became confidants and strong supporters of General Villa. With northern Mexico secure, President Wilson felt safe in sending marines to Veracruz as a message to Germany to cease interfering in Mexico by lending support to Huerta’s forces.14
It was General Villa’s break with Carranza that eventually led to this falling out with the United States. Now Villa’s forces were fighting the Carranzitas under General Alvaro Obregon who had U.S. support. The United States first alienated Villa in April 1915 in the battle of Matamoros when the United States allowed the Carranzitas to cross the border into the protection of Brownsville, Texas, while at the same time stopping Villa’s forces at the border. Here, Brigadier General “Black Jack” Pershing and his buffalo soldiers played a major role in selectively securing the U.S.-Mexico border. President Wilson’s recognition of Carranza over Villa was probably an effort to end the internal strife within Mexico, which many in the United States felt was being fueled by Germany in its effort to draw the U.S. military into the Mexican Revolution, thereby keeping them out of the ongoing European war (1914–1918). Evidence of German motives came later with the Zimmerman Communiqué of May 3, 1916. Most likely Germany saw General Villa’s March 9, 1916, raid on the U.S. Army base in Columbus, New Mexico, as the likely catalyst for full U.S. intervention into the Mexican Revolution. The resulting Punitive Expedition actually had the opposite effect, mobilizing the National Guard for the first time and transforming the U.S. military from the nineteenth-century horse tactics to a mechanized force in the form of the highly successful Rainbow Division led by Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur under the overall leadership of the Army Chief of Staff General “Black Jack” Pershing. Harsh reactions to the Plan de San Diego by the United States, notably the actions of Texas Rangers, also aggravated the situation, contributing to General Villa’s cross-border attack on a U.S. military base.15
Plan de San Diego
U.S. intervention and interference in the Mexican Revolution helped precipitate the Plan de San Diego, an ill-fated manifesto initiated January 16, 1915, by a small radical element of Mexican revolutionaries calling for a bloody revolt by both Mexicans and Mexican Americans in order to regain territory lost to the United States since 1845 with the annexation of Texas. The plan was ill-fated in that it did not gain support from either the major groups involved in the Mexican Revolution—Constitutionalists or the Coventionists—although there is some evidence that followers of General Carranza were tacitly involved. Those involved made cross-border raids during its year-long existence, resulting in twenty-one U.S. deaths. Also contributing to the animus of the time was President Wilson’s strong endorsement of the widely disseminated propaganda film, The Birth of a Nation, in 1915. This movie justified the brutal suppression of blacks by the Ku Klux Klan, with the KKK portrayed as the protectors of Aryan white supremacy, further widening the divide between American whites and people of color with the depiction of blacks, American Indians, Mexicans, Catholics, and Jews as being lesser humans. Accordingly, a vicious race war emerged along the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, resulting in the murder of more than three hundred Mexicans or Mexican Americans, many summarily executed by the Texas Rangers.16
The brutality of the Texas Rangers is depicted in Benjamin Heber Johnson’s book, Revolution in Texas:
Tejanos (Texas Hispanics) paid a high price for the newfound unity of Anglo south Texans. . . . Those suspected of joining or supporting the raiders constituted the most obvious of targets, as they had from the uprising’s beginning. Ethnic Mexican suspects were lynched after nearly every major raid in 1915. Shortly after the attack on the Norias ranch house, for example, unknown assailants killed three Tejanos . . . presumably for suspicion of aiding or participating in the attack. The Texas Rangers who had arrived after the fight might have been responsible. In any event, the Rangers’ actions encouraged such measures: the next morning, they posed with their lassos around the three corpses, and the picture soon circulated as a postcard.17
U.S. soldiers, who were not permitted by military law to execute their prisoners, often turned Mexican or Tejanos suspects over to local sheriffs or the Texas Rangers, knowing that they would execute them without a trial. In a battle on September 28, 1915, Texas Rangers battled with raiders near Ebenoza, in Hidalgo County, taking more than a dozen prisoners who they summarily hanged, leaving the bodies to rot with empty beer bottles stuck in their mouths. Relatives did not dare to take the bodies down for burial, fearing that they could be targeted for death themselves by the local sheriff or the Texas Rangers. Many felt that the death count of three hundred was low with a local paper, Regeneracion, placing the count closer to 1,500. U.S. Army Scout Virgil Lott noted that hundreds of Mexicans were killed and unaccounted for because their bodies were concealed in the thick underbrush and many deaths were unreported.18
The Texas Rangers’ reign of terror in south Texas generated a pervasive fear, resulting in many Mexican-Americans, those who lived in the region for generations prior to U.S. acquisition of Texas, fleeing across the border to Mexico never to return, much to the glee of the large Anglo landowners. Indeed, Robert Kleberg, manager of the King Ranch, called for martial law in south Texas, with Mexicans and Tejanos rounded up and placed into concentration camps. Kleberg further suggested: “When a certain man [who] is discovered to have taken part in a bandits’ raid is captured or killed in such a raid, his brothers, half-brothers, and brothers-in-law are assumed to be guilty and are immediately arrested or killed.”19 It should be noted that the King Ranch’s 1.25 million acres were stolen from Mexicans and Tejanos following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a process legitimized by Anglo judges and courts. Many of the former owners were then placed into servitude as sharecroppers on their own land. Toward this end, the Texas Rangers acted as the King Ranch’s private police force.20 The remaining Tejanos organized themselves, giving rise to Mexican American political influence under the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULSC).
Pancho Villa’s Attack on the United States
The massacre of Mexicans and Mexican Americans (Tejanos) by the Texas Rangers and local Anglo sheriffs in south Texas and across the border into northern Mexico had a negative impact on the warring parties involved in the Mexican Revolution. The harsh treatment of Hispanics following the ill-fated Plan de San Diego soured General Villa, the leading general in northern Mexico, leading to his own cross-border raids into the United States. The most notable of these raids being the 1916 raid on the U.S. Army base at Columbus, New Mexico. General Villa, long alienated from the Carranza faction, was also upset over President Wilson’s formal recognition of Carranza as the legitimate leader of Mexico. Villa felt that this arrangement was a return to the old Diaz era.
Two months prior to the raid, on January 11, 1916, Villa’s troops stopped a train at Santa Ysable, Chihuahua, Mexico, executing seventeen Texas mining engineers who were invited by President Carranza to reopen the Cusihuiriachic mines in Mexico. In retaliation, U.S. vigilantes killed more than one hundred Mexican Americans in the United States. On March 9, 1916, General Villa and 485 troops made an early morning raid on the 13th U.S. Cavalry at Camp Furlong on the outskirts of Columbus, New Mexico, former Mexican territory until the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. The raid had a dramatic effect on U.S.-Mexican relations because of its audacity and not so much on its effectiveness. U.S. casualties consisted of only ten military and eight civilians killed. The aftermath of the raid had far more devastating consequences for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. James Hurst, in his book on the Villista prisoners, indicates that abuses occurred immediately following the raid, with U.S. soldiers indiscriminately killing anyone who looked Mexican during the so-called hot pursuit led by Major Frank Tompkins’s forces. President Wilson’s reaction was one of intervention into Mexico under the authority inherent in the Monroe Doctrine.21
President Wilson unilaterally deployed some 12,000 army troops under the command of Brigadier General John J. (Black Jack) Pershing in an eleven-month Punitive Expedition. He federalized two state army National Guard units for this deployment—New Mexico and Massachusetts. This represented a new era of policing in America given that the Posse Comitatus Act restricted federal use of the National Guard to Acts of Insurrection. These two National Guard units remained on the U.S. side of the border during the Punitive Expedition, providing a supportive function. However, this use of the National Guard greatly aided in the rapid expansion of the U.S. Army for deployment during the First World War via the Defense Act of 1916. This also put an end to volunteer regiments, like the Rough Riders during the Spanish American War, which were often poorly trained and equipped and holding allegiance only to their politically appointed leaders.22
Criticism of Wilson’s intervention into Mexico, coupled with the U.S. entry into the First World War, led to the abrupt end of the Punitive Expedition. The U.S. reaction to the New Mexico raid elevated General Villa to that of a national hero, along with his martyred counterpart Emiliano Zapata, forcing the Carranza administration to include many of the Conventionists planks into the 1917 Mexican Constitution such as compulsory, secular, free public primary education (six grades) and for land reform, effectively ending the large landholdings by both Mexicans and foreign interests. The new Constitution also restored the ejido communal land system enacted under President Juarez in 1856, an eight-hour workday, and laws prohibiting child labor. The United States, under President Coolidge (1923–1929), finally ended its attempts to interfere with Mexican elections, agreeing to recognize the duly elected Mexican administrations regardless how distasteful to U.S. business interest—thus ending the border wars of the early twentieth century.23
Punitive Expedition’s Aftermath: Cruel and Unusual Retribution
While the Punitive Expedition brought considerable hardships to Mexicans along both sides of the Borderlands, it did not accomplish its intended mission—the capture of General Pancho Villa. Instead, the retaliatory invasion into Mexico raised havoc among the rural, poor Mexicans residing in northern Mexico. Pershing’s forces also clashed with Carranza’s government forces in the town of Carrizal, resulting in the deaths of dozens of Mexicans, more than the U.S. casualties from the Columbus raid. Anticipating another full-fledged war with Mexico, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Act in June 1916, authorizing doubling the size of the U.S. Army and authorizing the federalization of the National Guard. Following passage of the act, President Wilson authorized the federal activation of some 75,000 National Guardsmen to be stationed along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mexico showed considerable restraint during these trying times by not abusing U.S. POWs despite the harsh treatment afforded the Mexican soldiers captured in the Columbus raid. Seven Mexican soldiers were captured during the Columbus raid and were tried in civilian courts, resulting in the death penalty by hanging. Racial sentiments played a major role here—much like it did in south Texas during the Plan de San Diego retaliation by the Texas Rangers and local sheriff’s departments. Anti-Mexican sentiments ran high among Anglo-Americans in New Mexico, in the southern part bordering Mexico, which was part of Mexico until 1853, especially in Deming, just north of Columbus. The captured Mexican prisoners were not treated as soldiers, following the Geneva Convention; instead, they were labeled bandits, excluding them from military justice. Another nineteen soldiers were captured by General Pershing’s troops in Mexico and were also charged with murder and tried in U.S. civilian courts. Six Mexican soldiers were executed (hanged) in June 1916 while six of the seven soldiers captured in Columbus eventually received full, complete, and unconditional pardons from the governor of New Mexico in November 1920. His decision was influenced by the 1907 Hague Convention regarding the laws and customs of war on land. These rules were adopted in response to the brutal treatment of the Boer (Dutch) by the British in South Africa during the Boar War (1899–1902) and the atrocities attributed to U.S. troops in the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. Despite the governor’s pardon, these same prisoners were then arrested by Luna County, where Deming is the county seat, and again charged with murder. They were easily convicted and sentenced to prison terms in violation of the U.S. constitutionals guarantee against double jeopardy.24
This disdain for justice was just a continuation of abuses extending back to the war with Mexico when U.S. occupation forces arrested Mexicans and Indians for rebelling against their occupation of northern New Mexico, which was still a part of Mexico. James Crutchfield addressed this injustice in his book on the New Mexican and Indian insurrection of 1847 when non-Anglo combatants were accused of treason against America while fighting on their own land. Tried by Anglo occupiers in April 1847, seventeen locals were hanged on April 9 and 10 and May 7. Crutchfield noted the U.S. Army’s presence at the execution:
The American army took no chances. In one hanging incident . . . soldiers positioned themselves on the roof of the jail and aimed the mountain howitzer that had been used in the battle at Taos Pueblo at the gallows. A soldier stood erect over the fuse with a lighted match in his hand. Two hundred and thirty American soldiers marched down the street in front of the jail in a show of force. The sheriff and his assistant placed the nooses around the prisoner’s necks as officials balanced the men off a board that stretched across a wagon drawn by two mules.25
Questions were raised over the sentencing of Mexican nationals and indigenous Indians for treason while in defense of their own land during a war incited by the United States for the deliberate purpose of westward expansion. President Polk had to admit that perhaps conviction for treason against the United States was not the appropriate sentence. This belated admission came forth prior to a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Fleming v. Page that also resulted from U.S. haste to claim war-occupations as U.S. territory. Fleming v. Page addressed U.S. occupation of Tampico in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas during the Mexican War. Although decided in 1850, the incident extended to the 1847 occupation of Tampico and the imposition of U.S. laws by the military commander relevant to port activities. The high court ruled that U.S. laws had no bearings on the activities of the port of Tampico in that it was a foreign port and that occupation did not signify U.S. ownership. The U.S. Supreme Court noted that acquisition of territory does not allow the United States to subjugate the enemy’s country. This can only be done via treaty. While the Mexican State of Tamaulipas did not become part of the United States following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, portions of New Mexico did. Even then, the 1848 treaty specified the Spanish-Mexican recognition of the autonomy of the Pueblo Indian tribe’s land grants, including that of the Taos Pueblo implicated in the 1847 uprising.26 Clearly, this decision came too late for those executed defending their homeland.