"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.

The arrest came so quickly, that the not all of the sailors had disembarked, and that is really the crux of the matter.   The Tamaulipans could arrest the men with at least one boot on shore, but diplomatically speaking, the men still in the whaleboat were on sovereign American territory.  The Tamaulipan guardsmen didn’t speak English and were perhaps understandably unfamiliar with the finer points of international maritime law.  The Federal Commander, General Zaragosa, understood the situation and immediately released the gringos, acknowledging the error with an apology to the American Admiral Mayo.  The whole incident was over in a little over an hour, but Woodrow Wilson was in the market for a pretext, and this one was good enough to put a war resolution before Congress.

There are many ins and outs of the negotiations over terms of a mutually acceptable apology, Admiral Mayo's stubborn defense of American honor, the independence of naval command, problems in communications, and it is all very interesting.  Mayo was a great commander, but understanding his actions at Tampico are not necessary for understanding the big picture, since neither Huerta or Wilson were looking for a resolution.   Both men saw an opportunity to take advantage of the incident, each for their respective benefits.  Both were gambling on high stakes; both hoped they could avoid a fight, but both were ready to take some risks.

For Huerta it was double-or-nothing, as he faced being overthrown by the revolutionaries, with Zaptata harassing in the south, Pancho Villa threatening from the north, and steady pressure from Obregón down the west coast.  Facing the U.S. marines to the east would seem like something he'd want to avoid, but, under the circumstances, it provided a golden opportunity to play a nationalist gambit, forcing Mexicans to choose between him and the Americans.  It was a gamble that Huerta lost, but one of the great untold stories of the Mexican Revolution is just how close he came to splintering the revolutionaries over the American intervention.

The planning began in November 1913, and by the spring of 1914, Wilson was ready to pull the trigger on a Mexican intervention.  Getting Congress to go along became the priority.  In a interview with the Saturday Evening Post in May 1914, Wilson let slip that “Really, it [Tampico] was the right psychological moment.”    The Tampico incident gave Wilson a narrative for selling his intervention policy to the public.

Wilson got his war resolution from the House, but the Senate was more difficult, and he finally had to confront them with a fait accompli, with the seizing of Veracruz, eleven days later.    With the marines already in action on the streets in Veracruz, the Senate delivered a war resolution.