Veracruz

Veracruz Invasion: Following in the Footsteps of Winfield Scott

Winfield Scott at Veracruz

To the men in the Wilson administration who ordered American troops to seize the Mexican port of Veracruz, the world appeared a very different place than we imagine :

"It was 1914, an Age was approaching an unsuspected and violent end.  The comforting vision that had illuminated the Edwardian world was about to be lost in a darkness from which none other has emerged.  One August dawn, [the lights would go out] across Europe, and afterwards it would be impossible for anything to be quite the same again.  [..] At the time, there seemed no reason to fear that the most colossal accident in mankind’s experience was soon to occur."  —The Landing at Veracruz: 1914

Cuba, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Haiti had been theaters of war in the years preceding the Veracruz expedition.   Hawaii had been annexed and Puerto Rico and Guam seized.  American interests had been upheld by force of arms in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Korea and China by the generation of soldiers, sailors and marines who were called upon to intervene in the Mexican Revolution.

From Merida to Monterrey, Americans ruined by April 1914 U.S. invasion of Veracruz

 

Up until the U.S. Invasion of Veracruz, American ranchers, farmers, miners and merchants were affected by the Mexican Revolution in much the same way as Mexicans of similar station: expropriations, inflation, and payment in rebel currencies, all worthless outside of Mexico. The situation changed for the worse when the blue jackets landed in Veracruz.

While the assets of Texas oil interests and the major investors such as J.P. Morgan Jr. and John Stillman were protected, the result of the U.S. intervention for the typical American settler in Mexico was utter ruin. From Sonora to Jalisco, from Monterrey to Merida, Americans suffered the wrath of enraged Mexicans.

Pancho Villa finds himself on the receiving end of weapons left by U.S. troops

The U.S. intervention at Veracruz was only partially successful in cutting off the arms supply to Victoriano Huerta’s federal army, but had a big impact in denying Huerta the revenues from the Veracruz customs house.

By mid-summer of 1914, Huerta decided there was nothing left for him except to save his skin.  After a heart-felt final address to his cronies in Congress where he declared that he had always had the best intentions for the fatherland, he fled Mexico.  The subsequent collapse of the federal army left 4 powers in Mexico: the armies of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata in the north and south respectively, Victoriano Carranza’s Constitutionalist forces commanded by Alvaro Obregon holding the west coast and the center from Guadalajara to Mexico City, and the Americans, ensconced in Veracruz.   When the Americans pulled out in November 1914, there remained 3 scorpions in the bottle.

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:

Pancho Villa and the April 1914 U.S. Invasion of Veracruz

Shortly after the untimely death of William Benton in November 1913, Pancho Villa seized a mine in Durango, known as El Desengaño.   It was just one of many expropriations made by Villa to support his growing army in the field.   Land reform, was, after all, the principle which unified all of the anti-Huertista forces, and Pancho Villa was, if nothing else, a man of action.    With the demands of raising money to buy arms, Villa was not much of a stickler for legal due process.

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