Tampico

"The Psychological Moment"

“As incidents go, [Tampico] was a most innocuous affair.”—The Landing at Veracruz: 1914

What really happened at Tampico?    On April 7, 1914, there was a skirmish between Constitutionalist and Federalist troops at the Inturbidé bridge over Panuco river, a train trestle of the Tampico-Victoria line.  Afterwards, federalist colonel Ramón Hinojosa ordered the area to be secured by Tamaulipas guardsmen.  All unauthorized persons were to be arrested.  Two days later, on a routine mission to buy some gasoline, paymaster Charles Copp of the USS Dolphin came ashore under the bridge with 8 bluejackets pulling at the oars of a whaleboat, where they were promptly arrested.

Woodrow Wilson on the April 1914 U.S. Invasion of Veracruz

The American public was brought into the plans of policy makers to invade Mexico in a typically round-about way: the offended dignity of America demanded a martial response.

“I therefore come to ask your approval that I should use the armed forces of the United States in such ways, and to such an extent, as may be necessary to obtain from Gen. Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States”       —Woodrow Wilson, April 20, 1914, message to Congress

Josephus Danials on the April 1914 U.S. Invasion of Veracruz

"Washington, D.C.
April 21, 1914

Fletcher
Vera Cruz, Mexico
Seize custom house.  Do not permit war supplies to be delivered to Huerta government or to any other party.

Danials”

This terse Communiqué from Secretary of Navy Josephus Danials to Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher brought an end to the lives of over 200 Mexican Naval Cadets and an undetermined number of Veracruz citizens, although it failed to prevent the war supplies aboard the S.S. Ypiranga from being eventually delivered to the Huerta government.

The actual objective of protecting American control over strategic resources in Mexico, and of influencing the outcome of the Mexican Revolution, was revealed in a round-about way by Josephus Danials, some thirty years later, in his memoir:

Unexpected resistance to the April 1914 U.S. Invasion of Veracruz

Protecting American interests in strategic materials such as oil, rubber, copper and zinc, was, according to the reasonable account of John Mason Hart, the Wilson administration's reasoning for invasion of Veracurz.   The administration sought to bring about a beneficial stability through a policy of regime change.  

However, it wasn't the regime of Victoriano Huerta, targeted for change, that was actual problem for the American holders of Mexican properties, but rather, the expropriations of Pancho Villa.  Texas and Wall Street interests were growing worried as Villa's influence grew in the vicinity of Tampico.    The objective of the Wilson policy was not so much the overthrow of Huerta, but to insure that Venustiano Carranza came out on top.  

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