Friday, July 20, 1923. Pancho Villa slain.

José Doroteo Arango, better known as Francisco "Pancho" Villa, was gunned down along with his assistant Daniel Tamayor, his unfortunate chauffeur Migel Trujillo and bodyguards Rafael Madreno and Claro Huertado in Hidalgo del Parral. Bodyguard Ramon Contreras survived the attack, killing one assailant.

The fatal trip into town in his Dodge sedan was to pick up payroll for his ranch employees. Details of the killings remain unclear, but it is widely suspected Plutarco Elías Calles and President Alvaro Obregón had a role in the killings, and that they were brought about by Villa's murmurings that he might reenter politics.  Jesús Salas Barraza took responsibility for the murder, with it being attributed to resentment over Villa whipping him in a feud over a woman, but it's generally felt that this was to divert attention from the plotters. Barraza served three months out of a twenty-year sentence for murder, and went on to become an officer in the Mexican Army.  Most of the surviving assassins also ended up in the Mexican army.

Telegraph service to Villa's hacienda of Canutillo was interrupted briefly, apparently in a move to cut communications lest his followers there start an uprising.

Villa left a complicated personal life in his wake.  His longest lasting spouse, Luz Corral, was not living with him at the time, and Austreberta Rentería was in residence at his hacienda as his wife.  Court challenges would uphold Corral as his legal spouse, and she would inherit his estate.  He had at least four living children at the time of his death.

Villa was an extremely odd character who had served brilliantly as a cavalry commander in the initial stages of the Mexican Revolution, but who was unable to adjust to the changes in military technology that had altered how cavalry had to be used.  He's the best remembered Mexican Revolutionary by far, although politically not a terribly effective one.  His decision to rail Columbus New Mexico in 1916, in retaliation for Woodrow Wilson allowing Carranza to transport his troops across Texas and back into Mexico, nearly lead the US into war, and provided an embarrassing episode in which a US expeditionary force was unable to run him down.  The Punitive Expedition, as it was known, did however serve to prepare the US for entry into World War One.

Perhaps Villa's violent life and death make the gathering of "prominent young girls" in a pageant in Seneca Falls depicting the progress of women, in which they were depicted as ancient warriors, a bit ironic.

 Warriors. Agnes Lester, Marjorie Follette, Emily Knight, Elizabeth Van Sickle, Carol Lester, prominent young girls of Seneca Falls, as warriors in the Drama depicting the Progress of Woman to be given at the reception at Seneca Falls, N.Y., on July 20, 1923.

The bodies of Villa and his men, laying dead in their Dodge, depicted the true face of war, which is not very glamorous. Women in liberal western societies, but only in liberal western societies, would "progress" into combat over the next century, but it's not an existential progress, but a retrograde trip into barbarity.

Casper's paper for the same day reported the end of the second dusk to dawn flying record attempt in Rock Springs.

Speaking of violence and women, the Casper paper was reporting a Cheyenne rancher was charged with violation of the Mann Act in the far western part of the state.

There were strikes in Port Arthur, Texas.

June 12, 1919. Villa arrives at Villa Ahumada.

The R34.  A British airship that had crossed the Atlantic.

Villa's forces arrived at Villa Ahumada, a town directly sought of Juarez.  Mexican forces commenced to prepare to receive Villa's assault.

Beer becomes a casualty of the Great War and Villa resurgent. September 7, 1918.

Prohibition, which was rising prior to World War One, gained massive momentum during the war for a variety of stated reasons and a series or more significant unspoken psychological ones.

On September 6, 1918, it received a big boost in the form of an emergency agricultural bill that had been amended to include a ban on brewing on December 1, 1918.  There was a certain logic to the ban, in that resources were really tight and the brewing of beer consumed agricultural products that could go elsewhere. But that only provided part of the reason for banning brewing.  The more significant one was that the American public had been persuaded by the war to take the country dry, in part due to concerns that soldiers in hastily assembled Army camps would booze it up in nearby, formerly quiet, towns and in part by fears that soldiers far from home would be corrupted by drink outside the eyes of their families, both in the US, and away in wine laden France.

That can be seen in particular by the paper above, which not only noted the passage of the bill, but the mustering of dry forces that would seek to carry on Prohibition post war. . .a move that was successful. . . and not.

Meanwhile, the war in France itself was going well, but Villa was resurgent in Chihuahua.

The 8th Cavalry Crosses into Chihuahua. The Battle of Pilares. March 26, 1918.

Troop A and Troop G of the 8th Cavalry, under the command of Captain Henry H. Anderson, following the raid on Neville's Ranch on March 25, crossed into Chihuahua Mexico in pursuit of the raiders who had committed the raid on this day in 1918.  It was a classic cavalry force, made up of cavalrymen supported logistically by mules.  The cavalry force tracked and closed with the raider over a course of seventy miles until they Mexican force doubled back towards the border and to Pilares, Chihuahua.  Then apprised to the fact that they were being pursued they staged an ambush for the cavalrymen.

It didn't work and the Mexican force soon broke, with the battle turning into an eleven mile running fight.  As it went, townspeople from Pilares joined the raiders in defending their town.  Oddly, some contemporary reports had, however, statements from a local Mexican Federal officer both claiming to have driven the Americans out of Pilares but also to have aided them against, presumably, Villistas. Given that Villa war far from beaten at the time, and Carranza's government proving to be far from stable, perhaps that also isn't too surprising.  In reality, the Mexican Federal troops arrived just as the Americans were ready to depart, and after the Mexican commander, present with 500 Mexican cavalrymen, protested their presence the Americans, the Americans did indeed depart.

The fighting in Pilares was fierce and in fact the cavalry charged the town, which is where the sole American casualty lost his life, shot out of his saddle in that event. Anderson wasn't really driven out of Pilares, but he did withdraw, but not before searching it very completely and then issuing an order to burn the town, which was done.  In the town, a large cache of German 98s were found, but again while that was deemed significant it isn't terribly surprising.   American forces also recovered materials linking the town to the Raid on Brite's Ranch and the Neville Ranch, the latter of course making perfect sense under the circumstances, including Glen Neville's chaps, which were found on the body of dead Mexican combatant.  Materials linked to the mail driver killed in the Brite's Raid, however, were also recovered and harder to explain.  Items belonging to the Mexican Federal army were recovered, but they were likely items that had been captured by Villistas in other raids.  The Mexicans sustained 33 deaths in the American counter raid, with the 8th Cavalry suffering the loss of a Pvt Carl Albert, A Troop, 8th Cavalry.  Some of the dead were identified including at least one known Villista but also several former Porvenir residents, including some who were teenagers.   One house was left standing due to the pleas of the owner, a Mexican woman with children who was desperate to keep her house intact.

As for the village of Pilares, victims of the Porvenir Massacre were buried there, so it would be logical to assume that they had some fear about Americans being in the vicinity, no matter what their allegiance may have otherwise been.  But later reports indicated that some of the Neville raiders may have been former Porvenir residents who had taken refuge there, it was not far away.  The town was close by and intimately impacted by the Porvenir Raid and therefore the Neville Raid is not illogically tied to it.

So what does this event tell us?  Well, while all the country now was focused on France, and with an Army that remained mostly in the US in training and which was now, huge, things continued to be very heated on the border.  The presence of German arms in northern Mexico could easily have lead to a furor which would have refocused attention on Carranza's Mexico in a way that would have been devastating for him, given the present size of the U.S. Army, but also for the fortunes of the Allies in the Great War.

But perhaps more than that, it focuses us on a conflict that had now evolved into a low grade guerilla war.  A man had lost his son, a group of Mexican villagers had lost their small town, a husband and his children had lost their wife and mother.  And to them, it probably all seemed far removed from whatever the greater cause was supposed to be.

The Neville Ranch Raid, March 25, 1918.

Today finds us, in the midst of all the news on the Kaiserschlacht, back on the border with Mexico.  The Neville Ranch Raid occurred on this fateful day of 1918.

The Neville Ranch was an isolated ranch in West Texas that was run by Edwin W. Neville.  Neville lived there with his son, Glenn, his Mexican servant, Rosa Castillo, her husband and their three children.  There were, ironically, more Mexicans living on the small isolated ranch than there were European Americans.  That hadn't always been the case. Mr.  Neville had a wife and two daughters, but after the  Christmas Raid on Brite's Ranch he moved them to Van Horn, Texas and stayed on with his son and Mexican help. After all, a ranch can't simply be abandoned but must be worked, and he likely felt that this left him with enough help to work the ranch and that his Mexican employees were likely safe.

This particular raid was not without warning.  Warning came earlier in the day to Captain Leonard Matlock, 8th Cavalry, that a Mexican (the exact nature and allegiance of the raiding force is still not known) raid on Neville's ranch was planned and he accordingly sent out a patrol. The patrol was detailed to go to the ranch and warn Neville, but he wasn't there when it arrived as he was in Van Horn, where his family otherwise lived, and buying supplies there.  He learned that something was going on and rode back to his ranch with his son, Glen, an eight hour ride by horse.  When he arrived he discussed the situation with his ranch residents in his ranch house when the raid broke out.  The party took refuge in a ditch near the house which was better protected but Glen was shot in the head and severely wounded.  Mrs. Castillo was also shot and mutilated by the raiders in sight of her children, something that seems to have been at least a feature of other similar raids in which Mexican raiders took  vengeance upon the Mexican employees of American ranchers.  The raiders then took to looting the ranch, which was also common, and Edwin, in a state of shock over his dying son and murdered female employee wondered off into the desert.

Mr. Castillo rode for assistance and found the 8th Cavalry patrol about six miles distant from the ranch.  That patrol, under a Lt. Gaines, returned to the ranch just after the raiders had departed and he sent word to his superiors of what had occurred.

As noted, the identify and even the exact purpose of the raiders remains unknown.  It is felt that they likely were Villistas, and they were well armed as they were carrying German made Mauser 98 rifles (the left some in the raid), the common military rifle used by all sides in the Mexican Revolution.  That latter fact, however, has lead some to suggest a German connection with the raid, and of course German military advisors were a feature of the Mexican Revolution.  The raid may have been in reprisal for the Porvenir Massacre as well.  Or maybe looking at an exact cause of a single raid on the border in this era is simply asking for too much.

This story didn't end with the raid itself, which is often cited as the last "serious" raid across the border in this era (it isn't).  With Neville lost and then found deranged in the desert, Glen dead, and Mrs. Costillo murdered, the raid was a human tragedy that served no purpose for the raiders.  It did, however, result in the mustering of the 8th Cavalry.  Shortly before Lt. Gaine's patrol arrived back at the ranch the raiders withdrew, loot in hand, to Chihuahua.  But that didn't see the end of things.

Neville would live into the 1950s.  But not on his ranch.  He opened a cafe in Marfa, but held a vendetta against the murderers of his son for the rest of his life.

The Punitivie Expedition: U.S. complete its withdrawal from Mexico. February 5, 1917.

The smile on the soldier to the left's face was likely quite genuine.  The 6th and the 16th Infantry crossing back into the United States.

U.S forces complete their withdrawal from Mexico.  The Punitive Expedition was over, although the official end would come two days later, on February 7.

And it happened, in terms of military withdrawals, in record time.  The US had been deep into Mexico just a week prior.  Now, it was out.

Note, there were big headlines going in, coming out was still on the front page, but not nearly as big in the headlines. 

Was it a success?

Not in terms of its expressed aims.  Pancho Villa remained not only at large, but resurgent. Commanding a handful of men the prior year when he raided Columbus New Mexico in a reprisal for Woodrow Wilson granting Constitutionalist troops transit across southern Texas to attack him, he now had many more men and had resumed being an effective commander in the field.  His forces had resumed combat in Chihuahua with some success and it was far from certain that the Constitutionalist, who ratified the new Mexican Constitution on this very day, would defeat him, let alone defeat him and Emiliano Zapata who was fighting in the south.

Nor was it a success in terms of our relationship with Mexico, although that was strained beforehand.

American relations with Mexico had been very poor throughout the Mexican Revolution, in no small part because the United States had failed to reign in its diplomatic representation in Mexico after Modero had taken power, which helped lead to his being overthrown in a  coup by Huerta.  Modero would have been a seemingly natural ally to the United States but American representation in Mexico City failed to appreciate that and actually felt the opposite way, which was assessed to be the case by the Mexican military.  That helped lead to Modero's overthrow and death, and in turn that helped lead to the ongoing Mexican Revolution and American intervention in Mexico, although the naive Modero was complicit in his own demise in that he left the defeated professional Mexican army, including its officer crops,  intact.  Modero hadn't won the allegiance of the Mexican federal army, he'd defeated, with the likes of men like the radical Carranza, the populist Villa and the agrarian Zapata, amongst many others.

Those men wouldn't stand by and allow Gen. Huerta to impose a military dictatorship on Mexico, but that doesn't mean that they agreed with one another on the future course of Mexico either. And, ironically, in spite of being complicit in Modero's overthrow, the Untied States wasn't keen on Huerta either and took action to prevent his being supplied as he fought against his numerous opponents. That did not engender love for the United States amongst all of them, however.

The blundering that got rolling early on continued under Wilson who favored Carranza, after the defeat of Huerta and rebellion of Villa and Zapata, even though Carranza never liked the United States.  Granting railroad transit across Texas so that Constitutionalist forces could attack Villa was a huge and odd mistake that lead directly to the raid at Columbus.  Committing American forces to Mexico was perhaps then inevitable, but no Mexican leader could be seen to be supporting an American presence in Mexico and Carranza genuinely disliked the US.  Villa, who had lived in the US, ironically likely did not have any strong dislike for us, but he did dislike Wilson's role in nearly leading to his defeat and his odd and mercurial personality did not cause him to recoil from being responsible for the death of foreigners.  At any rate, American intervention in Mexico in pursuit of Villa nearly lead to a war between the Constitutionalist and the United States even though the Constitutionalist had not been able to fully defeat Villa and Zapata and were then engaged in war against them.  After war nearly broke out, it was only avoided by the United States ceasing to advance further into Mexico and cooler heads on both sides avoiding outright hostilities against one another.

Mexican American relations would be forever changed and stressed.  The United States regarded Mexico as a potential adversary as late as early World War Two, and not without good reasons as the Mexican government was heavily leftist and not democratic. The new radical Mexican governments took to oppressing sections of the Mexican population and they, and we use the plural advisedly, flirted with the extreme left periodically.  It was not by accident that when Stalin's assassins tracked Trotsky down, they found him in Mexico.

Those facts would lead to ongoing war in Mexico for years as various Mexican movements attempted to overthrow the Mexican government, all without success.

Which is not to say that the central players in Mexico had happy ends themselves.

Zapata was assassinated by the Mexican government, still under arms and having never surrendered, in 1919, bringing to a close his agrarian movement until modern times, when Zapataistas revived in Mexico on his old domain. 

 Zapata in 1915

Flag of the Zapatista Army of Liberation, a Mexican movement inspired by the legacy of Emiliano Zapata.

Carranza, whom we have dealt with at length, was overthrown by Alvaro Obregon, his most successful general, in 1920.

 Alvaro Obregon.

Obregon had served Carranza well, after having missed the initial stages of the revolution, but he grew into a political adversary starting in the very period we're discussing.  Carranza never favored the radical turn the Mexican Constitution took in 1917, favoring instead a preservation of the 1857 constitution.  Obregon was a full radical.  After that, he went into retirement, but in 1920 he through his considerable weight behind a revolution against Carranza, which succeeded.  In May 1920 Carranza himself died in an ambush, a victim of ongoing Mexican revolution.

Obregon then lead the country for a while and then stepped down upon the election of Plutarco Elías Calles.  However, during Obregon's administration the Mexican government, which had already become hostile to religion with the 1917 Constitution, adopted on this same day (see earlier post) started to become more repressive of the Catholic Church.  Calles would accelerate this which would lead to the Cristero War, which the Mexican government put down.  After that, Obregon ran for the presidency of Mexico again, in 1928, but was assassinated very soon after taking office by José de León, a Mexican who had sympathies toward the Cristeros.

Villa as he's commonly remembered.

Villa, upon whom our story has been focused, remained in rebellion until Carranza was assassinated.  Following that, he was able to negotiate peace with the Mexican government.  He then went into retirement on a hacienda that was provided to him in Chihuahua and was even allowed to retain a small private army made up of his loyalist.  This would ultimatley not save him, however, as he was assassinated in 1923 in Parral.  The assault on Villa was obviously well planned and its never been proven who did it but suspicion is strong that the act at least had the tacit approval of the Mexican government as Villa was making sounds of running for the presidency.

The revolution consumed itself even while becoming "institutionalized"     The victors may have called themselves "constitutionalist", but in practice power often changed hands with those hands being bloody.  By any objective standard, the Mexican Revolution itself would become a failure.  Ironically, perhaps, the American support of Carranza, which had never been appreciated by Carranza, was a small aid in bringing to power a force that would have little respect for democracy.  Mexico would not overcome this for decades.

With the U.S. Army came hundreds of refugees.  Some, like the residents of Colonia Dublan, had strong roots in the United States and feared living under Villa's forces for good reasons.  Many, however, were Mexicans who feared the fate of Chihuahua under a resurgent Villa.  Again, ironically, the United States would be reforming its immigration laws on this very day, creating real border controls on the southern border for the very first time.

Mexican refugees crossing into the United States in 1915.

That border itself would be hostile to a degree at least until the 1940s.  During World War One the United States was compelled to guard the border militarily; stationing cavalry regiments all along the border.  Pershing had wanted American cavalry in France to serve in the AEF, which shipping restrictions prevented, but that did not mean that the cavalry was idle during the Great War.  A shortage of available manpower along the border during the same period required Texas to deploy its State Guard, a militia separate and apart from the Federalized National Guard, made up of men who were ineligible to serve in World War One due to age, situation or ailments.  The Army would continue to patrol the border to some extent all the way into the 1940s.  Indeed, the border situation would see some violence all the way through the Great War and after, with occasional U.S. small interventions lasting all the way through the teens and into the early 1920s.

1917 vintage recruiting poster aimed at border service.

All of which is not to say that there were not some small, but significant, successes associated with the Punitive Expedition.  For one thing, crossing into Mexico in 1916 was likely simply inevitable. The raid on Columbus could not be ignored.  Irrespective of Carranza's refusal to sanction it, moreover, the United States, which had a very small military establishment, had shown that it could rapidly mobilize an effective field force any time it wanted to.  It was not that Mexico was a military threat to the United States, but Mexican forces that may have thought the US could be ignored no longer thought that.  Mexico was not an unarmed nation by any means and the United States during peacetime relied upon an Army made up of a small professional corps and a large amateur militia.  It had shown that its system was sufficient such that it was able to rapidly mobilize both.

The expedition itself, moreover, was the first large assembly of American arms since the Spanish American War. The mobilization had shown what, and who, worked well and what, and who, did not.  While it can't really be regarded as a "success" per se, this would prove to be hugely important almost immediately in 1917 as it became obvious the United States was headed toward entering the enormous First World War.  An entire series of weapons were experimented with, many of which were new. The National Guard had been mobilized and much of it remained under arms.  The Punitive Expedition into Mexico likely shortened American mobilization in 1917 by months and lead to it being clear that John J. Pershing could command the American Expeditionary Force that would come into existence.

So how have we done reporting on the Punitive Expedition in "real time", and in general?  Let us know. We're only somewhat satisfied with our effort, which of course was an effort to learn as well.  There were a lot of things we wanted to report on and missed. Some we may still, and some we likely won't.

As this entire blog is a sort of research platform for a book, we may continue to do a little real time as well, but most likely not like we were.  We aren't, for example, going to report on the US in World War One the way we have on the Punitive Expedition, as that's more or less outside of our focus.  But we will a little, and of course we'll continue to focus on this era, at least until we get our book written. . . which is taking forever.

The Cheyenne Leader for November 26, 1916 (but with a date error): U.S. Ready to Ratify Protocol With Mexico

We need to note here that the Leader made an error on its date on page 1.  To show that, we've uploaded page 2 as well.  This was the November 26 paper, note the November 25 paper.

Woodrow Wilson, the Leader reported, was ready to ratify the protocol with Mexico. But was Carranza ready?  The battle appeared to be turning for Carranza's enemy, Villa, in Chihuahua.

In Washington, John E. Osborne, former Wyoming Governor, appeared to be pondering leaving his Assistant Secretary of State position in the Wilson administration in order to head back to Wyoming. 

And sad news was reported regarding the death if Inez Milholland Bossevain, who had been in Cheyenne during the Presidential campaign.

And the Governor put out a Thanksgiving message for the upcoming holiday. 

Cheyenne State Leader for September 17, 1916. The Wyoming Guard to the border, and Villas raid on Chihuahua

The Wyoming National  Guard is ordered to the border.  On the same day, showing how initial news reports might not be fully accurate, the Villista raid on Chihuahua was reported as a defeat, when in reality, it was not.  A better question would have been how a force that had been down to 400 men just a few weeks prior now had many times that number.

Villa raids Cuidad Chihuahua

Showing exactly how dangerous he remained even while semi incapacitated (he was recovering from a wound by this time), how capable he remained in regards to rebuilding his forces, and how ineffective the US mission had become, Pancho Villa raided Ciudad Chihuahua on this day with about 2,000 to 4,000 men, a considerable increase in the number he'd had only a few short weeks ago.  Indeed, at the time of his raid on Columbus, New Mexico, he was down to a few hundred and had been down to as few as 400 men just a few weeks prior to this date.  His main target was the prison, where many of the men freed were former soldiers of his.  The raid is remarkable in that it was conducted in the face of the US presence while against Carranza's forces.

 Villa leading his forces prior to his 1915 defeat at Celaya, from the post noting the raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in real time.

The raid was a success in spite of a Constitutionalist force being in town. Villistas occupied the city during the night and withdrew in the early morning hours.  Recent efforts by the U.S. Army to corner Villa had resulted in some engagements and sightings, but no success. And he remained capable of taking Carranza.

Pershing had recently gone on record as arguing that only the occupation of the entire state of Chihuahua would be effective in the campaign against Villa, and he'd urged the same.  This raid seemed to reinforce his view, but fairly clearly the occupation of the entire state would risk war with Carranza, no matter how ineffectual he was, and therefore there was no realistic chance that Wilson would authorize such an action.  Villa, therefore, in desperate straits just a few weeks prior, seemed, in some ways, to have effectively called the American bluff.

Friday, February 20, 1914. Revolutionary execution.

William S. Benton, a British rancher with Chihuahua holdings, was executed in Juarez by Villistas, after a "court-martial".  He was accused of making an attempt on Villa's life, but his associates claimed he had no views on the Mexican Revolution at all. 

More on this from a Scottish blog:

Pancho Villa murders Keig man

Rosa Luxemburg was tried in a Frankfurt court on charges of encouraging public disobedience and sentenced to a year in prison.  In the Court she stated.

When, as I say, the majority of people come to the conclusion that wars are nothing but a barbaric, unsocial, reactionary phenomenon, entirely against the interests of the people, then wars will have become impossible.

Nice sentiment, but shallow thought.

Luxemburg herself has always struck me as not being too deep. Perhaps I'm wrong as she remains the deluded darling of the far left, and maybe there's more to her than my very limited knowledge is aware of.

James William Humphyrs Scotland made the first cross-country flight in New Zealand.  On the same day, Winston Churchill, serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, flew as a passenger in a Sopwith Sociable.

Panama-Pacific International Exposition, Feb. 20, 1914, one year before opening day. San Francisco.

Legal, Alberta, was founded.