Wednesday, November 18, 1914. Karolina Kózka and a march on Mexico City.

Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata commenced their march on Mexico City following Carranza's public refusal to step down from the disputed Mexican presidency.

Imperial Russian and German forces clashed in bitter winter conditions at Łódź, Poland.  The Russians held.  Both sides were still clad in their summer uniforms.

Deeply Catholic Karolina Kózka, a 16-year-old Polish girl died while resisting an attempted rape by a Russian soldier near her village of Wał-Ruda, Poland.   The soldiers stabbed her to death. Pope John Paul II beatified her as a "martyr of Christ" in 1987.

Austro-Hungarian forces began an assault on Lazarevac, Serbia.

Russian, Turkish Fleets Clash Off Cape Sarych

Admiral von Tirpitz advocated massed Zeppelin attacks on London.

Last edition:

Tuesday, November 17, 1914. Strained resources.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Eastern Front, First Battle of Ypres, German Army, Germany, Taxes, United Kingdom, World War One

OROZCO by SK GUNS and Pascual Orozco himself.

Wow, that's a wild commemorative.

Pascual Orozco was a Mexican Revolutionary who originally supported Madero before falling out with him.  He was of immediate Basque descent, something we tend not to think about in regard to Mexico, which is in fact more ethnically diverse than we commonly imagine.  He was an early recruit to Madero's 1910 revolution, and was a natural military leader, and could be rather morbid.  After his January 2, 1911, victory at Cañón del Mal Paso he ordered the dead Federal soldiers stripped and sent the uniforms to Presidente Díaz with a note that read, "Ahí te van las hojas, mándame más tamales" ("Here are the wrappers, send me more tamales.").

On May 10, 1911 Orozco and Pancho Villa seized Ciudad Juárez, against Madero's orders, a victory which caused Díaz to briefly resign the presidency.  Madero would naively choose to negotiate with the regime, which resulted in The Treaty of Ciudad Juárez allowing for the resignations of Díaz and his vice president, allowing them to go into exile, establishing an Interim Presidency under Francisco León de la Barra, and keeping the Federal Army intact.

Like Zapata, he went into rebellion against the Madero government, which he felt had betrayed the revolution.  He openly declared revolt on March 3, 1912, financing it with his own money and confiscated livestock sold in Texas.  His forces were known as the Orozquistas and the Colorados (the Reds). They defeated Federal troops in Chihuahua under José González Salas. Madero in turn sent Victoriano Huerta against him, who in turn were more successful.  A wounded Orozco fled to the US. After Madero was assassinated and Huerta installed, Orozco promised to support him if reforms were made, and he was installed as the Supreme Commander of the Mexican Federal forces.  As such he defeated the Constitutionalist at Ciudad Camargo, Mapula, Santa Rosalía, Zacatecas, and Torreón, causing his former revolutionary confederates to regard him, not without justification, as a traitor.

He refused to recognize the government of Carvajal after Huerta's fall and was driven into exile again.  He traveled in the US in opposition to Carranza along with Huerta.  In 1915, he was arrested in the US, but escaped.  An unclear incident at the Dick Love ranch in Texas led to claims that he and other like-minded combatants had stolen horses from the ranch, which in turn resulted in a small party of the 13th Cavalry, Texas Rangers, and local deputies pursing the supposed horse thieve with Orozco being killed once the party was holed up.  What exactly occured is not clear.

His body interred in the Masonic Holding Vault at the Concordia Cemetery in El Paso by his wife, dressed in the uniform of a Mexican general, at a service attended by a very larger gathering of admirers.  In 1925 his remains were retuned to Chihuahua.

Why the commemorative?  I have no idea.  He is not an obscure figure in the Mexican Revolution, but not a well known one like Villa or Zapata.  I can't see where he's associated with the M1911 either, a weapon that was brand new at the time the Revolution broken out.  The .38 Super, which is apparently popular in Mexico, wasn't intruduced by Colt until 1929.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week. Emiliano Zapata.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week. Emiliano Zapata.:   

Agrarian of the Week. Emiliano Zapata.

 

The land belongs to those who work it with their hands.

Emiliano Zapata.

More observations on the Hamas Israeli War. A sort of primer, war aims, and campaign aims. Part I.

War Aims.

A lot of reporting on the Hamas Israeli War, indeed nearly all of it, is devoid of discussion on war aims.  Some of it vaguely discusses Israeli campaign aims.  None of it so far that I've seen has discussed Hamas campaign aims.  Given that, a lot of the reporting is sort of naive.

Hamas, having started the campaign, will be discussed first.

Hamas was formed in 1987 (probably considerably more recently than many suppose.  Hamas controls Gaza, Fatah, the political arm of what had been the Palestinian Liberation Organization, controls the West Bank.  The two entities have actually fought each other.  Hamas started off with the goal of pushing Jews out of the boundaries of what had been the 1948 Palestinian borders, but earlier in the 2000s seemed to lessen its demands.

It seems to have returned to them.  As far as can be told, its war aims are to remove the Jews from Israel, dead or alive, and of any age, and create an Arab Palestinian, and seemingly Islamic (not all Palestinians are Muslims) state in its wake.  That's what's summed up in the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", which like a lot of slogans is catchy but doesn't really convey the full meaning of what it seeks.

Those are the war aims.

Without abandoning them, Hamas cannot back down, and Israel cannot unilaterally realistically convert the current war into a large scale punitive action at this point.  War aims can change, but Hamas shows no desire at all to do so.  A limited raid that was not aimed at civilians could have been undertaken if it has some other goal, but it didn't.

The campaign aims are much more difficult to discern.  Perhaps it was to spark a wider war in the belief that it could be won, or perhaps it was just a gross act of terrorism in furtherance of its remote, unobtainable goal.

Of course, discerning campaign aims, is often tricky in regard to an entity like Hamas, or even large entities.  In spite of long knowledge to the contrary, they may have thought that their raid, if that is what it was intended to be, would scare Israel into submission.  Hitting civilians never does that.  The British didn't surrender after the Blitz, and the air raids on civilian populations in Germany and Japan, perhaps if we exclude the atomic bomb, didn't cause them to surrender either.  Air raids on military targets in North Vietnam which inflicted civilian deaths didn't cause North Vietnam to give up.  9/11 only made Americans mad, it didn't achieve whatever it was that Al Queda thought it would, which seems to have been a hoped for general economic collapse.

Israel's war aims are also simple.  Its goal is to destroy Hamas as it views it, correctly, as irreconcilably opposed to its existence and genocidal in nature.  Its campaign aims seem to be to occupy Gaza, or perhaps the northern portion of the Gaza Strip, trap Hamas, and destroy it and its infrastructure.

Outright destroying an underground organization, however, is very difficult to do. The US basically did it in Afghanistan, however, so it can be done.

Nobody is talking at all about what's going to become of the Palestinians.  Israel isn't addressing it. The Arabs aren't either.  Hamas is simply using their own people as human shields and for propoganda.

A cultural existential difference, or Why can't everyone get along?

Cultures play a part in wars, which people in the West are oddly inclined to forget.  Jimmy Carter famously absent-mindedly quipped that the problems between the Israeli's and Palestinians would go away if they all started acting "like good Christians", but of course neither group is predominantly Christian.

I've taken some criticism on a more stretched observation in this area recently, so I'll explain a bit what I mean.

This question posed above is really a Western one, filtered through our eyes, which are the eyes of heavy Christian influence.  As a South American atheist friend of mine once stated, culturally, "we're all Catholics", even if we often don't behave like it.  That's why we're shocked when people don't behave accordingly.  

Historically and culturally, that's not necessarily the default human norm at all, which doesn't mean that every non-Christian culture (including the two in question) default to bad behavior.   But, as Genghis Khan supposedly noted (often filtered in our culture through Conan the Barbarian in a modified form):

The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.

We don't think that way, and we don't want others thinking that way.

Back to this war, the fact of the matter is that these two groups of people aren't going to get along.  The Western concept that somehow they can be made to is simply in error at this point.

It might have been true a couple of times.  One was in 1948, just before the first Arab Israeli War broke out, although that's pretty debatable. The second time was when the 1993 and 1995 Palestinian Accords were reached. The big problem is that both times, large numbers of Palestinians simply rejected a future which included Jews within the 1948 Palestinian boundaries.

The 1948 rejection was accompanied by voting with their feet by the Palestinians, a logical choice but one that was taken advantage of by Israel in that it offered the opportunity to truly make the country principally Jewish.  Nobody can fault somebody for fleeing fighting, but the fact that it occured meant that a large Arab population removed itself.  If it had not, demographics alone would have repeated what in fact occured in Lebanon, where a majority Christian population at that time is now 32% of the population.

Instead of taking that route, the Palestinians first relied on Arab hostility to take the country back for them, and then for the PLO, which ultimately compromised on that, to do so.  Now, a certain percentage are relying on Hamas.

Regarding that calculation, relying on it in the 1950s, and even into the 1960s, wasn't irrational.  After that, it really started to be. At some point, the land belongs to those who live there.  It was Zapata who stated; “The land belongs to those who work it with their own hands”, which is how it should be (and how it's increasingly ceasing to be in the United States)  That same analogy pertains to revolutions.  It instinctively makes sense for the people ruled by another people to rebel, but not so much a people that had once lived in a land where the majority of the population isn't yours, and the majority of your population wasn't born in that land.  Indeed, the fact that the initial Jewish war for independence sort of violated that tenant is part of the reason that many nations around the globe were quite hesitant about supporting Israel early on, combined with the fact that it appeared they'd lose.

Beyond that, as an essay in Minding The Campus has related:

(Professor Mordechai) Kedar, a former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, has spent his academic life studying Islamic and Arab history and society. He explains that the animus of Palestinians, Arabs, and Islamists against the Jewish state is based on the consensus of Islamic religious thought that believes that Jews as a religion, people, or nation are never to be the equals of Muslims, and so their independent state, Israel, must be “struck down.”

While that can be debated, there's at least something to it, or there has come to be.   For the most part, since World War Two, Middle Eastern Islam, which is its cradle, has become increasingly more "conservative", if that is the correct term, and militant over the decades.  That was always there, and indeed Saudi Arabia was founded due to the Saud family's alliance with a group so conservative it was regarded as heretical.  Islam does not have a real coexistence ethos as we'd understand it towards other religions.  It's often noted that it has allowances for "People of the Book", meaning both Jews and Christians, but that tolerance is limited and provides that they are to be second class citizens.

Neither Christianity nor Judaism have something similar towards other religions, which doesn't mean that individual Christian or Jewish societies are de facto tolerant.  People tend to generally be intolerant of any group that's different from themselves.

Interestingly, early Middle Eastern governments didn't have this feature to them, or at least not to the same extent.  Turkey just celebrated its 100th founding as a modern state, and that state was founded as a secular one.  Atatürk suppressed Islam in his country.  Jordan has always been a Muslim state, but the Hashemite family that rules it, and once controlled Mecca, has tended towards moderation consistently.  The Baath movement that controls most of Syria and once controlled Iraq was a fascist movement early on that included Muslim and Christian Arabs and which sought a secular state in the Middle East.  The PLO was a secular organization that leaned heavily on Communist thought.  There was at one time a strong sense amongst Arab nationalist that Islam had to be suppressed or, if not outright suppressed, the state's had to be secular. That really began to fall way with the Iranian revolution, and there's been a good deal of retreat from it since that time.

Which takes us to the current highly conservative (again, if that is the right word) Israeli government.

The current Israeli government is the most conservative, again if that's the word, one ever.  It follows part of the global drift towards far right populism.  Prior to the Hamas attack, it was receiving a good deal of pushback from Western nations and internally, in no small part due to an effort to subordinate the Israeli supreme court to the Knesset.  In the irony that all such conflicts create, that's all been forgotten now.  At any rate, a sharp turn to the right by Israel made it pretty clear that any current Israeli desires to really find a mutual solution to the problems now being fought over just weren't there.

All of which leaves us with this.

Hamas has attacked and made it clear that it thinks it can murder its way towards achieving its goals, a sort of accelerated variant of the 1939-1945 lebensraum at this point.  Israel can't allow that to happen.

There are paths to a lasting peace here, but nobody involved, or even with influence, is going to try to bring them about, so the question is whether the warring parties, or more precisely Israel, can bring it about by force.

The Interior Conflict

"We'll be here, " Wilbarger said.  "You won't have to hunt us up"
"Wait a minute, " Call said.  "What's your horse brand, or do you have one?"
"I have one, " Wilbarger said".  "I brand HIC on the left hip."
"Are your horses shod?" Call asked
"All shod," Willbager said.  "Bring 'em if you see 'em".
"What HIC stand for?" Augustus said.
"Well, it's Latin," Wilbarger said.  "Easier than what you wrote on that sign."
"Oh," August said.  "Where'd you study Latin?"
"Yale college," Wilbarger said. Then he and Chick trotted off.
"I figure he's a liar,"Augustus said.  "A man that went to Yale college wouldn't need to trail cattle for a living."
"How do you know?"  Call said.  "Maybe the family went broke.  Or maybe he just wanted an outdoor life."

Lonesome Dove, page 105.*

Every now and then somebody I know will claim that I look like Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1904/05.  Colorado.

I don't see it myself and I'm certainly making no effort to.  I think people say that as I have a heavy mustache, as Roosevelt did, and I wear very round glasses, as Roosevelt also did.  Having said that, Roosevelt normally wore the now long gone pince nez type of glasses which were more or less the contact lenses of their day.**  He wore more conventional glasses when doing something outdoors.  I have adopted contact lenses, which I hate, recently because I have to work with a computer daily and that allows me to wear reading glasses and therefore not be constantly changing glasses during the day.  When I wear glasses, which I almost always do outside of the office, I wear B&L rimless temple frames, which Roosevelt did not and which I don't think even existed in his day.  I wear those as they have small lenses and I hate large lenses.  I also just like the style of them.

All of which basically goes to say that if you have a heavy mustache and you work in town, people are going to claim you look like Theodore Roosevelt or Pancho Villa, depending upon your mindset and maybe the color of your hair.

Emiliano Zapata.  Now that's a mustache.

Now, I like Roosevelt, so I don't want to be taken to be holding otherwise.  I just don't want to be regarded as a Roosevelt impersonator.  That's not, however, why I'm bringing this topic up here.

I've been posting some fairly grim posts here recently.  One of them might be, although I hadn't considered it to be, my post on my occupational history the other day.  About the same time that I posted that I made a similar remark to two friends of mine, who happen to be married to each other.  The husband in that family is a lawyer, but also a psychologist of a specific type, and had an immediate reaction to it, which the wife also did in less scientific terms.

The basic gist of it was that "you're an intellectual and would have been miserable in any other occupation other than the law".  He's said something similar in the past and, as he's a European, he expanded that out a bit to include "the clergy and the law".

That's a really common view in a broad sense and one of the interesting things about it is that the view actually operates in society to keep you doing certain things.  Another interesting thing about it is the belief, and perhaps it's true, that a person who has that sort of makeup, an intellectual frame of mind and a strong attraction to the outdoors, is in someway at war with themselves.

Maybe, however, it's the modern world that's at war with people of that mindset.

The Roosevelt analogy people make is interesting in that Roosevelt was afflicted with asthma as a child. So was I. Indeed, the only really good written description of what its like to have asthma is given in David McCullough's biography of Roosevelt's youth, Mornings on Horseback, which is an excellent read.  McCullough there, and Edmund Morris in his masterpiece first volume on Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, go on to describe how TR's father told him as a child that he "had the mind" but "didn't have the body", and he'd have to "make the body".  Roosevelt certain did that.  Anyhow, as part of that, he not only conquered his asthma, but he developed an immense existenail fondness for the outdoor life.

My parents never said anything like that to me, but what they did do was simply raise me normally and make sure that I did have physical activity, which was mostly swimming.  I developed an immense existential love of the outdoors simply by being around my father and by being raised in rural conditions.  My attraction to the outdoor life, however vastly exceeded that of my father's, which is saying something.  I've never gotten over it in any fashion and its as intense now as it was when I was a teenager.

Morris notes in his book, although I'm not sure of where the quote can be found, that when Roosevelt was a young man an observer noted to him that as a man with a strong mind and a deep attraction to the outdoor life, he'd always be in an internal struggle.  If that's true, Roosevelt certainly managed it well.  But is that true?

Well, it may be.  But maybe people just don't like the idea very much.

Indeed, it's true now, it wasn't always true.  For one thing, people's careers tended to be much more fluid at one time and for that reason people didn't really think it weird to be a lawyer and a farmer simultaneously.  John Adams was.  And there's any numbers of similar examples.

I don't find that to be anywhere near the case now, although there are examples.  Indeed, usually a person who tries to do two things such as that is regarded as occupying the more outdoorsy one as a hobby or a retirement position.  And because its regarded as a hobby, or retirement, avocation, it's not taken seriously.

Cowboy, 1887.  At this time being a cowboy was a glamourous occupation.

Even rarer are examples of people who have pretty high intellects and opt for something that doesn't seem, in society's view, to reflect that.  Society tolerates, although only barely, a person being in agriculture if they were born into it. So a person born a farmer can stay in the family business.  But somebody breaking into it from the outside is pretty rare.  Rarer yet are people who simply enter an outdoor career as a "hand", so to speak, and economics is part of that.  Hands don't get paid as well and therefore people tend not to enter those fields, except perhaps temporarily, if they can do something else.  It's the great economic motivator.  Put another way, being an actual cowboy, as opposed to being a rancher, puts you in a state of lifelong poverty that most people will probably seek to avoid.

This has particularly been the case since World War Two.  Prior to the Second World War entire classes of Americans opted for occupations that didn't require university in part because not as many did, but in part also because it was foreclosed to them.***

Indeed, one of the great myths of the practice of law is that it's always been a profession of the elite. That's far from true.  For much of the post World War Two era it was the blue collar world's introduction into the white collar world. Indeed, a lot of blue collar parents pushed their children into it under the belief that: 1) it didn't actually involve work, and 2) every lawyer was rich.  Neither of those things was in any fashion true.  At any rate, if you know lawyers whose parents came of age during the Second World War or earlier you probably know somebody whose experience is just that.  A lawyer I practiced with for years had a father who was a career railroader.  Another one had a father who was a bar owner.  There are a lot of such examples.

Mistaken impression or not, what's come to be the case is a subtle, or sometimes outright, push towards certain types of careers.  Adding to that push is the fact that our modern world has eliminated outdoor jobs at a blistering rate so that people are really left with a selection of indoor ones, not all of which everyone can occupy.  You have to be good at math, for example, to be an engineer.

That also has meant that the push exists in a continual and understated way that few really grasp.  It's part of our culture.  In the film Stand By Me, for example, we learn that one of the early teen kids whose really smart, but from a blue collar family, overcomes what is portrayed as a negative fate by becoming, of course, a lawyer.  That's all the more there is to it. He's smart, so he becomes a lawyer.  Voila, success.

And maybe it is, but a person has to at least wonder how we got to this point.  And maybe that should give us pause.

In other words, in 1982 or 83 (can't remember which, probably 83) my CC history teacher suggested that I consider a career in the law based upon my written papers, was he acting responsibly?  No doubt he believed so, and I believe now he was as well. But he didn't really know me.  And its remarkable that only two figures I knew at the time every commented on it.  One was a geology professor I knew really well, also at CC, whom I caught back up with as I was getting to go to law school.  He mentioned another student who had done the same (I didn't know him) and regarded the decision with disdain.  The other was the mother of one of my friends whom I'd known forever, and who I, as an adult, regarded as a friend.  "I don't see you as a lawyer" was her comment, although I later became her lawyer.

________________________________________________________________________________

*Hic translates as "this".

**Which are oddly making a comeback as portable reading glasses.

***An aspect of that change is that its now the case that single wage earner households have become rare and the sort of situation that existed mid 20th Century, in which a person might work in some of them and still enjoy a middle class income on one job has ended.

Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .

on this day in 1920, by officers who had betrayed him, pretending to offer him a safe lodging for the night in the town of Tlaxcalantongo.  Sometime during the night, their forces surrounded the house and then opened fire into ito.  Oddly, the assassins then telegramed Obregon to inform him that "we are at your service" but also asked for permission to bring Carranza's body to Mexico City for burial.  Obregon replied with the comment "It is very strange that a group of officers who vouched their loyalty and honor should have permitted him to be assassinated instead of complying with your duty."

The actual killing may  have been the next day, May 21, early in the morning and the story exceedingly confused.  What seems to be the case is that a party of Mexican soldiers under Rodolfo Herrero and his brother Hermilo approached Carranza's party as defectors, and offered them a refuge for the night.  Sometime during the night Rodolfo removed himself and then sometime during the morning the troops opened fire on the house Carranza was in.  Carranza was hit in the leg, which may explain his last words, "Lawyer, they have already broken one of my legs", recorded. This seems to have referred however to a colleague who was similarly ambushed.  The conventional story is that he died of his other wounds.  Some claimed, however, including some who were immediate witness to the events, that Carranza actually killed himself after being wounded and that the intent of the troops was to capture, not kill, Carranza.

The leader of the party of assassins, Rodolfo Herrero, was prosecuted for murder, but acquitted, but was cashiered from the Mexican army. During the presidency of Obregon, he was reinstated as a general only to be dismissed again in 1937.

In any event, it showed how really far gone things had become.

Carranza had, of course, risen to leadership of Mexico in the second stage of the Mexican Revolution, which at that point was frankly not so much of a revolution as it was a civil war.  Modero had prevailed over Diaz, but then he'd gone down in a military coup to Huerta, as we recall. After that, the backers and admirers of Modero had risen up against the military regime that Huerta imposed and defeated him, but that was soon followed by the third stage of the revolution in which Zapata and Villa, and their supporters, struggled against Carranza.

They really won. They entered Mexico City and a new Mexican civil government was installed.  Carranza was holed up in Vera Cruz and could have been wiped out, but instead Zapata, who was a regionalist at heart, and who was disenchanted with Villa, went home.  Without Zapata to aid him, Villa was pushed out by forces loyal to Carranza and a long struggle against both Villa and Zapata ensued.

That resulted in Zapata being assassinated on April 10, 1919 as Mexico headed towards elections in 1920.

The passing of Zapata effectively doomed any chance of a liberal Mexican democracy emerging from the Mexican Revolution.

Carranza was from a privileged family that was involved in cattle ranching.  His father had twice served in successful Mexican revolutionary armies and so the family had that heritage.  Carranza himself had hoped to become a doctor, but an eye disease prevented that from occuring so upon completion of school he returned home and commenced ranching himself.  He soon entered politics with his family's support and stood for the election to the position of the of Coahuila in 1908.  He did not secure that position as he lacked the backing of Diaz for reasons that are unclear.

In Modero's revolution of 1909 Modero named him as a regional commander but he failed to act upon the appointment.  He none the less became Minister of War under Modero and then Governor of Coahuila.  Upon Modero's assassination he went into rebellion against Huerta and rose to the senior position of the forces opposing Huerta.  He thereafter was the head of the Constituionalist government of Mexico after he entered Mexico City with the support of Obregon, one of the three major commanders of the Mexican Revolution, in August 1914.

Soon thereafter two of those commanders, Zapata and Villa, were at war with Carranza and Obregon.  In spite of a condition of civil war existing, he was basically recognized by the United States as Mexico's official head of state and he was elevated by the Constitutionalist to the presidency in 1917.  Woodrow Wilson treated his government as the official one and effectively aided it, as we've addressed before, in the war against Villa, an event which lead to the 1916 Columbus New Mexico raid.  Ironically, Carranza had a strong distaste for the United States and was far from a friend to its interest.  The resulting intervention by the U.S. in pursuit of Villa nearly brought the United States into a state of war with Mexico.

Carranza chose not to run for a second term as president in 1920 but instead of endorsing his long time supporter Obregon he endorsed another figure who had served as a diplomat for him in Washington D. C..  The decision was based on his not wanting to have military figures rise to head of state, but Carranza's supporters commenced violent actions against Obregon's, up to and including murder.  By April of 1920 Obregon was in rebellion against Carranza and Carranza was repeating his earlier move of retreating towards Vera Cruz.  Rebel forces caught up with him and he was killed on this date. His alleged killer was put on trial by a victorious Obregon, but was acquitted.

The entire serious of events put Mexico firmly on a radical path, which Carranza himself had started.  Obregon would further it.  Democracy in Mexico was dead.

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

 

Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata, the greatest of the Mexican Revolutionaries, assassinated

And with him died the hopes for a rational, just and democratic Mexican government for decades.

Emiliano Zapata was the Mexican revolutionary who embodied the best hopes for a real reform in Mexico that was not tainted by the radical spirit of the era, and who held the real hopes of most Mexican's closet to his heart.  He was a great man, and in some way unique among North American revolutionaries and politicians.  His attributes were, in some ways, also his faults, and those faults lead him in the end to unfortunately be ineffective when he could have been a national force.  His death guaranteed the rise of of institutionalized socialist cronyism in Mexico from which it has only recently emerged.

Zapata was of the small farmer class from Morelos State.  His class had been disadvantaged under the regime of Porfirio Diaz who favored the small farming class over the peasant class on water distribution, which was necessary for the production of sugar cane.  This caused Zapata to become politically active at a young age.

During the first stage of the Mexican Revolution, Zapata formed and commanded the Army of the South, proving to be a highly effective military leader.  This, together with the efforts of Pancho Villa in the north, proved critical if the defeat of the Mexican Federal Army.  Once in power, however, Modero, under the influence to a degree of Diaz functionaries and military men who had been left behind and whom Modero did not displace, suppressed Zapata and denounced his views. In turn, Zapata issued the Plan of Ayala and went into rebellion against Modero in November 1911.  The plan stated:

1. Taking into consideration that the Mexican people led by Don Francisco I. Madero went to shed their blood to reconquer liberties and recover their rights which had been trampled on, and for a man to take possession of power, violating the sacred principles which he took an oath to defend under the slogan “Effective Suffrage and No Reelection,” outraging thus the faith, the cause, the justice, and the liberties of the people: taking into consideration that that man to whom we refer is Don Francisco I. Madero, the same who initiated the above-cited revolution, who imposed his will and influence as a governing norm on the Provisional Government of the ex-President of the Republic Attorney Francisco L. de Barra [sic], causing with this deed repeated shedding of blood and multiple misfortunes for the fatherland in a manner deceitful and ridiculous, having no intentions other than satisfying his personal ambitions, his boundless instincts as a tyrant, and his profound disrespect for the fulfillment of the preexisting laws emanating from the immortal code of ’57, written with the revolutionary blood of Ayutla;

Taking into account that the so-called Chief of the Liberating Revolution of Mexico, Don Francisco I. Madero, through lack of integrity and the highest weakness, did not carry to a happy end the revolution which gloriously he initiated with the help of God and the people, since he left standing most of the governing powers and corrupted elements of oppression of the dictatorial government of Porfirio Díaz, which are not nor can in any way be the representation of National Sovereignty, and which, for being most bitter adversaries of ours and of the principles which even now we defend, are provoking the discomfort of the country and opening new wounds in the bosom of the fatherland, to give it its own blood to drink; taking also into account that the aforementioned Sr. Francisco I. Madero, present President of the Republic, tries to avoid the fulfillment of the promises which he made to the Nation in the Plan of San Luis Potosí, being [sic, restricting] the above-cited promises to the agreements of Ciudad Juárez, by means of false promises and numerous intrigues against the Nation nullifying, pursuing, jailing, or killing revolutionary elements who helped him to occupy the high post of President of the Republic;

Taking into consideration that the so-often-repeated Francisco I. Madero has tried with the brute force of bayonets to shut up and to drown in blood the pueblos who ask, solicit, or demand from him the fulfillment of the promises of the revolution, calling them bandits and rebels, condemning them to a war of extermination without conceding or granting a single one of the guarantees which reason, justice, and the law prescribe; taking equally into consideration that the President of the Republic Francisco I. Madero has made of Effective Suffrage a bloody trick on the people, already against the will of the same people imposing Attorney José M. Pino Suáez in the Vice-Presidency of the Republic, or [imposing as] Governors of the States [men] designated by him, like the so-called General Ambrosio Figueroa, scourge and tyrant of the people of Morelos, or entering into chains and follow the pattern of a new dictatorship more shameful and more terrible than that of Porfirio Díaz, for it has been clear and patent that he has outraged the sovereignty of the States, trampling on the laws without any respect  for lives or interests, as has happened in the State of Morelos, and others, leading them to the most horrendous anarchy which contemporary history registers.

For these considerations we declare the aforementioned Francisco I. Madero inept at realizing the promises of the revolution of which he was the author, because he has betrayed the principles with which he tricked the will of the people and was able to get into power: incapable of governing, because he has no respect for the law and justice of the pueblos, and a traitor to the fatherland, because he is humiliating in blood and fire, Mexicans who want liberties, so as to please the científicos, landlords, and bosses who enslave us, and from today on we begin to continue the revolution begun by him, until we achieve the overthrow of the dictatorial powers which exist.

2. Recognition is withdrawn from S. Francisco I. Madero as Chief of the Revolution and as President of the Republic, for the reasons which before were expressed, it being attempted to overthrow this official.

3. Recognized as Chief of the Liberating Revolution is the illustrious General Pascual Orozco, the second of the Leader Don Francisco I. Madero, and in case he does not accept this delicate post, recognition as Chief of the Revolution will go to General Don Emiliano Zapata.

4. The Revolutionary Junta of the State of Morelos manifests to the Nation under formal oath: that it makes its own the plan of San Luis Potosí, with the additions which are expressed below in benefit of the oppressed pueblos, and it will make itself the defender of the principles it defends until victory or death.

5. The Revolutionary Junta of the State of Morelos will admit no transactions or compromises until it achieves the overthrow of the dictatorial elements of Porfirio Díaz and Francisco I. Madero, for the nation is tired of false men and traitors who make promises like liberators and who on arriving in power forget them and constitute themselves tyrants.

6. As an additional part of the plan, we invoke, we give notice: that [regarding] the fields, timber, and water which the landlords, científicos, or bosses have usurped, the pueblos or citizens who have the titles corresponding to those properties will immediately enter into possession of that real estate of which they have been despoiled by the bad faith of our oppressors, maintain at any cost with arms in hand the mentioned possession; and the usurpers who consider themselves with a right to them [those properties] will deduce it before the special tribunals which will be established on the triumph of the revolution.

7. In virtue of the fact that the immense majority of Mexican pueblos and citizens are owners of no more than the land they walk on, suffering the horrors of poverty without being able to improve their social condition in any way or to dedicate themselves to Industry or Agriculture, because lands, timber, and water are monopolized in a few hands, for this cause there will be expropriated the third part of those monopolies from the powerful proprietors of them, with prior indemnization, in order that the pueblos and citizens of Mexico may obtain ejidos, colonies, and foundations for pueblos, or fields for sowing or laboring, and the Mexicans’ lack of prosperity and well-being may improve in all and for all.

8. The landlords, científicos, or bosses who oppose the present plan directly or indirectly, their goods will be nationalized and the two-third parts which [otherwise would] belong to them will go for indemnizations of war, pensions for widows and orphans of the victims who succumb in the struggle for the present plan.

9. In order to execute the procedures regarding the properties aforementioned, the laws of disamortization and nationalization will be applied as they fit, for serving us as norm and example can be those laws put in force by the immortal Juárez on ecclesiastical properties, which punished the despots and conservatives who in every time have tried to impose on us the ignominious yoke of oppression and backwardness.

10. The insurgent military chiefs of the Republic who rose up with arms in hand at the voice of Don Francisco I. Madero to defend the plan of San Luis Potosí, and who oppose with armed force the present plan, will be judged traitors to the cause which they defended and to the fatherland, since at present many of them, to humor the tyrants, for a fistful of coins, or for bribes or connivance, are shedding the blood of their brothers who claim the fulfillment of the promises which Don Francisco I. Madero made to the nation.

11. The expenses of war will be taken in conformity with Article 11 of the Plan of San Luis Potosí, and all procedures employed in the revolution we undertake will be in conformity with the same instructions, which the said plan determines.

12. Once triumphant the revolution which we carry into the path of reality, a Junta of the principal revolutionary chiefs from the different States will name or designate an interim President of the Republic, who will convoke elections for the organization of the federal powers.

13. The principal revolutionary chiefs of each State will designate in Junta the Governor of the State to which they belong, and this appointed official will convoke elections for the due organization of the public powers, the object being to avoid compulsory appointments which work the misfortune of the pueblos, like the so-well-known appointment of Ambrosio Figueroa in the State of Morelos and others who drive us to the precipice of bloody conflicts sustained by the caprice of the dictator Madero and the circle of científicos and landlords who have influenced him.

14. If President Madero and other dictatorial elements of the present and former regime want to avoid the immense misfortunes which afflict the fatherland, and possess true sentiments of love for it, let them make immediate renunciation of the posts they occupy and with that they will with something staunch the grave wounds which they have opened in the bosom of the fatherland, since, if they do not do so, on their heads will fall the blood and the anathema of our brothers.

15. Mexicans: consider that the cunning and bad faith of one man is shedding blood in a scandalous manner, because he is incapable of governing; consider that his system of government is choking the fatherland and trampling with the brute force of bayonets on our institutions; and thus, as we raised up our weapons to elevate him to power, we again raise them up against him for defaulting on his promises to the Mexican people and for having betrayed the revolution initiated by him, we are not personalists, we are partisans of principles and not of men!

Mexican People, support this plan with arms in hand and you will make the prosperity and well-being of the fatherland.
Ayala, November 25, 1911
Liberty, Justice and Law

Modero's troops, which consisted of Diaz's former Federal Army, were very heavy handed in their campaign against Zapata, which ended up throwing support to Zapata. Those forces, lead by Victoriano Huerta, ended up deposing and assassinating Modero in 1914, ending Mexico's first really republican government of any kind in decades.  Following that, former forces and elements that had supported Modero in the first stage of the Mexican Revolution joined forces with him in various regional uprisings in what might be regarded as its second stage, including forces loyal to Villa, Carranza and Obregon.  They in turn defeated Huerta.

The problem had become, however, that with the death of Modero radical elements in the Mexican revolutionary forces were contesting a reactionary government.  None of the forces opposing Huerta lacked radical ideas, but those that were coalescing around Carranza and Obregon were radically socialist and bordered strongly on concepts what would emerge across the globe in the form of Communism.

This not surprisingly lead to strong disagreements between the forces that ousted Huerta and efforts to reconcile the failed.  A provisional government was formed under Eulalio Gutierez and Francisco Pancho Villa was appointed head of the new government's army. At that point, at least technically, Carranza, a socialist radical, was in defiance if not rebellion of the legitimate Mexican government.  

Villa, as the Conventionalist General and head of its armies, Gutierez, the head of state, and Zapata, as always in traditional Mexican dress, at a state dinner in Mexico City after their near victory over Carranza.

The forces of that government, under what was then Gen. Villa and Zapata, successfully waged war against Carranza who withdrew his forces to Vera Cruz.  Villa and Zapata entered Mexico city on December 6, 1914 with a force of 60,000 men.  At that point, had they been more organized and unified, they could have potentially emerged the victors in the war, but their provincial views soon came into play.  Zapata, always a provincialist, withdrew his men to his home state of Morelos, which granted is just south of Mexico City, and the alliance that had allowed for his side to take Mexico City and nearly drive Carranza into defeat fell apart.  For his part, Zapata had turned out not to be impressed by Villa once they had become successful, which was a common impression of the man who was a brilliant cavalry commander but who was also extremely erratic without the stabilizing influence of Modero.

Without Zapata in the capital, Carranza reemerged and soon defeated Villa.  Wild swings of fortune such as this were common in the Mexican Revolution.  Villa remained in the field, but with very little in his control.  Carranza, for his part, secured the support of President Woodrow Wilson in a bizarre twist of fate given that Carranza strongly disliked the United States and he was not sympathetic to Mexico's northern neighbor in any fashion.  He was also a political radical.

Carranza's victory, however, can be partially attributed to Zapata.  Carranza regarded Zapata as an uncultured savage but did try to treat with him when he was under pressure.  It soon became apparent, however, that Zapata's withdrawal to Morales meant that the Constitutionalist had a free had against Villa in the north.  This allowed the Constitutionalist to gain ground and install their regime in Mexico City, which soon acquired international recognition.

Returned to Morales, Zapata was for a time effectively its ruler and he put into place in full his agrarian reforms, which greatly benefited the average peasant but which also harmed other elements of society.  He had a relativity free hand in doing this until 1916, when the victorious Carranza turned his attention on Morales and the Constsitutionalist army invaded and took it. Following this, Zapata engaged in a guerrilla war against Carranza's forces, which of course Pancho Villa was doing in the north as well.  That same year, as we already know, Villa crossed into the United States and the U.S. entered onto Mexican soil as a result.

Indeed the war being waged by Villa in the north, and Felix Diaz in Oaxaca meant that the Cosntitutionalist were not able to reinforce their forces in Morales and Zapata re took the state by the end of 1916 showing how weak the Constitutionalist really were.  During this same period Villa began to grow resurgent even as the U.S. sought a way to exit from Norther Mexico.  By the turn of the year, however, Constitutionalist positions improved and resistance to Carranza outside of Morales started to collapse.  Zapata, for his part, was content to have the state of Morales and not venture outside of it.  Carranza in turn felt secure enough to hold elections in 1917 and to enact a constitution which incorporated Zapata's Plan of Ayala.

This lead to an uneasy state of quasi independence that couldn't last.  Some of Zapata's supporters, recognizing this, sought to treat with the Constitutionalist.  Zapata did not take that approach and looked for support in the country among the followers of Diaz, a political liberal, and even the United States.  By late in the year a rebellion in Morales itself threw part of the state into the hands of Zapata's opponents.

The winter of 1918 proved to be a harsh one in Mexico and the Spanish Flu was devastating in the country.  One quarter of the population of Morales died due to the Spanish Flu.  In December of the year the Constitutionalist commenced an invasion of Morales and Zapata's forces suffered the loss of ground.  With this, Zapata turned his attention to the upcoming 1920 election and threw his support behind Vazquez Gomez and publicly urged Carranza to resign, while also accusing Carranza of sympathy with teh Germans. This threat was not an idle one and did cause Carranza concern. He was urged by his supporters to openly campaign against Carranza but declined, feeling that his leadership of his troops was vital.

In March 1919 the Constitutionalist intended to resume their offensive in Morelos and Gen. Jesus Gaujardo was ordered to do so. Prior to that, however, he was caught carousing in a tavern and a public scandal ensued.  Zapata naively saw this as an opportunity to cause Gaujardo to switch sides and sent him a note inviting him to do so. The note, however, made its way to Gaujardo's superior who called Gaujardo in and dressed him down to the point of tears, before offering him the chance to redeem his honor by enticing Zapata to a meeting as a ruse.  An meeting was arranged between Zapata and Gaujardo on this day in 1919, in which Zapata believed the plan would be to work on the details of a military mutiny.  Instead, he was mowed down by Gaujardo's troops.  The brutal action would be used by Obregon, now a political candidate, against Carranza in the 1920 election.

The dead body of Zapata, photographed for proof of his demise.

Following Zapata's death, his senior commanders aligned with Obregon in ever fashion.  Obregon's vision, however, was not the same as Zapata's.  Zapata was an agrarian in his views and indeed it was his strong regionalism that in the end made him ineffective in a larger sense, even if some of his land reform programs did come into play.

Beyond that, of the principal Mexican revolutionaries of the period, he was the only one who generally fully embodied the view of average Mexicans and the long history of Mexican revolutions against autocracy.  He was an adherent Catholic, if one who strayed (he had a large number of illegitimate children and one legitimate daughter) whose troops marched under a banner featuring the Virgin of Guadalupe, making him in the only notable revolutionary of that period who wasn't either 1) indifferent to religion (Villa); or 2) outright hostile to it, such as Carranza.  The views of Mexico's revolutionary leaders on this point would lead to real hostility to the nation's average citizens and to the Catholic Church, which in turn would lead to the Cristero War in the 1920s.

While an economic radical of a sort, as an agrarian and as a sort of proto distributist, he was not any sort of capitalist and therefore American politicians of the day would not have been keen on his views. Having said that, however, he was not a quasi socialist like most of the Mexican revolutionaries of the period were, and far less radical in every sense than those who came into power with Carranza.

He was also so regional, however, that he had a difficult time seeing outside the boundaries of his own state, and that in the end doomed much of his efforts.  In order to really be effective after his falling out with Modero he would have had to have been willing to play a central role in a national government, and he wasn't.  That proved to be a national tragedy.

Indeed, that tragedy strangely played itself out in a Mexican revolution that odd mirrored the Russian revolution that came a few years after the commencement of Modero's, although it never reached the genocidal level of violence and the absolute extremes that the Russian Civil War did.  Like that war, the first revolution saw a democrat take office but to fall in the face of other forces. The resulting civil war saw the more or less democratic forces at first prevail only to fall due to disunion.  Like the Russian Civil War some of the forces were really purely local, within one of the significant ones in each country being an agrarian entity. And in both nations the side that ultimately prevailed was deeply antithetical to large portions of the nation's culture and absolutely opposed, in the end, to any political competition whatsoever.

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.

Wednesday, January 17, 1917. Joint Mexican American Committee Concludes

 

Mexican refugee entering the United States.  In spite of the caption, his wealth is probably all on this horse.  Part of the tragedy that involved both the United States and Mexico for well over a decade.

The Joint Committee between the US and Mexico concluded its business.  With the agreement of December 24, 1916 having been made, with Carranza having refused to sign it, and with events overcoming the United States that would give Carranza the result he wanted anyway, there was no more work to be done.

 

Porfirio Diaz in full military costume.  The collapse of his rule lead to the long civil war in Mexico.

Some have stated that the mere existence of the Joint Committee was a success in and of itself, and there is some truth to that.  The committee worked for months on an agreement and came to one, and even if Carranza would not execute it as it didn't guaranty the withdraw of American forces, the fact that the country was now hurtling towards war with Germany made it necessary for that to occur without American formal assent to Carranza's demand.  By not agreeing to it, the US was not bound not to intervene again, which was one of the points that it had sought in the first place. Events essentially gave both nations what they had been demanding.

 

 Revolutionary, intellectual, and radical. General Carranza.  His government fought Villa and Zapata successfully, but he'd go down in a coup lead by his own general, Obregon some years later. 

Even if that was the case this step, the first in the beginning of the end of the event we have been tracking since March, has to be seen as a Mexican Constitutionalist victory in the midst of the Mexican Revolution.  At the time the Commission came to the United States it represented only one side in a three way (sometimes more) Mexican civil war that was still raging.  Even as Carranza demanded that the United States withdraw his forces were not uniformly doing well against either Villa or Zapata.  Disdaining the United States in general, in spite of the fact that Wilson treated his government as the de facto government, he also knew that he could not be seen to be achieving victory over Villa through the intervention of the United States, nor could he be seen to be allowing a violation of Mexican sovereignty.  His refusal to acquiesce to allowing American troops to cross the border in pursuit of raiders, something that the Mexican and American governments had allowed for both nations since the mid 19th Century, allowed him to be seen as a legitimate defender of Mexican sovereignty and as the legitimate head of a Mexican government.

 

More typically imagined in a sombrero, General Francisco Villa.  The colorful, erratic, and perhaps somewhat mentally unstable Villa would attempt to retire to a ranch he acquired after his surrender to Obregon and Carranza, but he ended up being assassinated under cloudy circumstances in 1923.  His killer would live into the 1950s and declare at the end of his life that he'd rid the world of a "monster".

 Emiliano Zapata and his staff.  Zapata was an agrarian and looked the part, which we in turn tend to confuse with the look of the Mexican Revolution.  As with many leaders of the Mexican Revolution, Zapata was assassinated, although unlike Villa he still commanded an army in the field at the time of his death.

As will be seen, even though the war in Mexico raged on, events were overtaking the US and Mexico very quickly.  The Constitutionalist government was legitimizing itself as a radical Mexican de jure government and would quickly become just that.  Revolutions against it would go on for years, but it was very quickly moving towards full legitimacy.  And the United States, having failed to capture Villa or even defeat the Villistas, and having accepted an effective passive role in Mexico after nearly getting into a full war with the Constitutionalist, now very much had its eye on Europe and could not strategically afford to be bogged down in Mexico.  A silent desire to get out of Mexico had become fully open.  The rough terms of the agreement arrived upon by the Committee, while never ratified by Carranza, would effectively operate anyway and the United States now very quickly turned to withdrawing from Mexico.

 

Alvaro Obregon, whose competence and study of military tactics lead to the defeat of Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte.  He'd ultimately become present of Mexico following his coup against Carranza.  Obregon would serve one term as president of Mexico, and was elected to a second term to follow his successor Calles, but he was assassinated prior to taking office.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Related threads:  The Mexican Revolution.

Last Edition:

January 16, 1917. Admiral George Dewey dies

Labels: 1910s, 1917, Civil War, Personalities, Politics, Spanish American War, U.S. Navy