El Norte

by Carrie Gibson

  By the early 1900s, the multiple reelections of Díaz and the heavy hand of his regime had become a source of discontent for many Mexicans. This was underscored by unresolved issues concerning land. Under Díaz, land policy had its roots the 1856 Ley Lerdo (or Lerdo Law, named after the finance minister at the time), which had involved the forced sale of Church land and communal peasant holdings. It was a move that benefited urban professionals, regional elites, and smaller private landowners who were in a position to buy up these assets but angered the Church and peasant communities.6 Intermittent rebellions took place from that point through the 1870s. Díaz had, at the start of his presidency, given the appearance of favoring village communities over the landed elite, but that ended up being not quite the case. His drive to modernize meant bringing railroads to Mexico, which entailed buying up land, including that held by villages, sparking further regional insurrections that were suppressed in the 1880s.7

  With trains to take products farther from the field, markets opened up for agriculture and large landholders; increasingly, foreign investors, including those from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and Germany, looked to further develop the railway infrastructure and the land. In the northern border area alone, between 1877 and 1910 the number of small ranches (ranchos) increased five times over, and there was a doubling of the larger haciendas.8 A labor shortage in the north meant that workers from elsewhere needed to be enticed to these estates. At times, wage advances were offered as an incentive, resulting in a system that left some laborers constantly indebted to their employers.9

  Over the course of the Porfiriato, community landholdings dropped to 2 percent of national land, down from 25 percent. Foreigners held 90 percent of the incorporated value of Mexican industry and 150 million acres of land. Of that, U.S. investors were the owners of 70 percent of the industrial wealth and 130 million acres of land.10 “Poor Mexico,” Díaz was said to have remarked, “so far from God, so close to the United States.”11

  As dissent grew, Mexicans persecuted by the Díaz regime sometimes crossed into the United States, for instance, the vocal brothers Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón, who had been imprisoned in Mexico for what they published in their newspaper Regeneración. They fled to San Antonio in 1904, and later to St. Louis, then Los Angeles where they continued to speak out against Díaz. They also established the Partido Liberal Mexicano (Mexican Liberal Party), calling for freedom of speech, better working conditions, and agrarian reform.12 Their radical ideas managed to attract the attention of U.S. authorities, landing them in prison—where they could be closely watched—on dubious charges such as the violation of neutrality laws.13

  Another voice joining the growing opposition was that of Francisco Madero, who captured the Mexican public’s attention in 1908 after publishing a critique of Díaz’s policies, The Presidential Succession in 1910. Madero was a wealthy scion of a landowning family in Coahuila, and his book reflected much of the anger about political corruption, calling, for instance, for the implementation of a rule allowing a president to serve only one term. The tract spoke to segments of the public who were fed up with Díaz and his cronies, and momentum gathered behind Madero, especially across the north of the country, propelling him toward a run for the presidency. All of these murmurings of discontent were taking place at the time of the hundredth anniversary of Padre Hidalgo’s famous Grito de Dolores. Díaz had planned lavish celebrations to mark the centenary on September 16, 1910, and was determined that voices of dissent would not interrupt the festivities or impede his reelection later that year.

  Díaz had Madero arrested ahead of the election on false sedition charges, rendering him ineligible to run. He was released on bail that October, after Díaz had again secured the presidency. Madero fled to Texas where he drafted and released his Plan de San Luís Potosí, in which he declared that after the result of the last election, it would be “treason to the people” if he did not “compel General Díaz by force of arms, to respect the national will” and step down.14 By November 20, 1910, armed uprisings started. At first, Díaz dismissed the violence as banditry, but it was soon clear, as the jails filled with political prisoners, that something much larger was afoot.15 At this early juncture, the United States was officially disinclined to become involved with what it regarded as an internal issue, so long as its interests remained unharmed.16

  By early 1911, more revolts broke out, including one in Morelos, a state to the south of the capital. Leading the fighters was Emiliano Zapata, who grew up in Anenecuilco, a village in that state, in a landowning family. Like many in these rural regions, Zapata became concerned, and then mobilized, over the preservation of local lands, especially as sugar interests dominated Morelos.17 His desire to defend the poorest farmers—coupled with photographs of his unwavering gaze and enormous mustache—later transformed him into a national figure who became known well beyond Mexico. Also riding into battle in 1911 was Francisco “Pancho” Villa, who would enjoy wide renown as he allowed newsreel cameras to follow his exploits. His chubby, often smiling face; large sombrero; and bandoliers slung across his chest would make him instantly recognizable. Villa was from humble origins in Durango and had joined the revolution under the leadership of Pascual Orozco, who was organizing forces in Chihuahua.18 The rebels soon moved in on Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, and this now signaled to an ailing Díaz the scale of the revolt. Almost every state was embroiled in some sort of upheaval, causing U.S. president Taft to send troops to reinforce the border in March.19

  Madero, by this point, had enough support to put him in a position to insist on a deal. Talks at first focused on a demand for Díaz’s resignation, which was rejected, and so fighting resumed, with at least twenty-five thousand revolutionaries taking up arms.20 On May 10, 1911, Orozco’s troops defeated federal forces and took Juárez, a strategic move, as the city had access to the railways and proximity to willing arms smugglers across the border.21

  The shouts against the president grew louder, as the public flooded into Zócalo, the main square in Mexico City—despite the fact that troops were firing on them—to demand again that Díaz step down. He relented, offering his resignation on May 25, and a few hours later he left for exile in France.22 Elections were scheduled for October, and Madero won. Now that he was in power, however, he faced a new challenge. Significant differences existed between him and the hastily organized outfits that had come to his aid. In these conditions, Madero soon misstepped, angering allies by allowing some government and military officials from the previous regime to keep their roles.23 Madero also enraged Zapata by refusing to order an immediate return of village lands, and he even appeared to be privatizing holdings in some areas. In response, on November 25 Zapata issued his Plan de Ayala, which called for, among other things, the overthrow of Madero. He also incensed Orozco by not giving him a significant political post.24 Before long, Orozco also proclaimed himself against the new regime, in spring 1912, as other regional commanders joined in the rebellion against Madero.

  The United States continued to watch with concern, both at the border and farther south, not least because Zapata and his Zapatistas were raiding U.S. investors’ large landholdings. Many Americans living in Mexico were running back north. At one point, President Taft sent the USS Buford to evacuate U.S. citizens from the Pacific coast. He also put an embargo on selling weapons to Mexico.25

  Throughout that year a number of revolts occurred around the country, as did crippling strikes as unions called for better working conditions. Two more key players emerged on Madero’s side: Álvaro Obregón, who had pushed rebels under Orozco out of Sonora; and General Victoriano Huerta, a leftover from the Díaz regime.26 Huerta would prove to be a dangerous ally. He orchestrated behind the scenes—with the involvement of the U.S. ambassador Henry Lane Wilson—Madero’s eventual assassination on February 22, 1913, along with that of his vice president, José María Pino Suárez, which ended a particularly violent episode known as the Decena Trágica (Tragic Ten
Days).27

  What had been unleashed in 1910 now had very different dimensions. Representing the old order, Huerta—now installed as president—faced a large rebellion across the northern states, where Villa returned to action after Huerta had the antagonistic governor of Chihuahua, Abraham González, killed. Now the rebels were calling for a return to a constitutional government based on the Plan de Guadalupe, written by Venustiano Carranza, a former supporter of Madero and governor of Coahuila. These “Constitutionalists” decided that Carranza would be their “first chief,” until Huerta could be thrown out of office and the constitution restored.28

  The north of Mexico was a key area—Villa and Obregón led divisions there, and Constitutionalist troops were positioned across states that bordered the United States, as well as in their provisional government headquarters in Hermosillo, Sonora.29 In particular, Villa’s División del Norte continued to attract willing fighters from many walks of life, including miners, farmers, and vaqueros. For a short while, U.S. interests even favored him to be the future president of Mexico.30 So magnetic was the pull around Villa that the writer Ambrose Bierce, seventy-one years old at the time, traveled to Mexico to join his troops. Bierce’s last known letter was sent from Chihuahua in 1913, and he was never heard from again. Not everyone was seduced by the legend, least of all press baron William Randolph Hearst, who owned land in Chihuahua. Villa and his men attacked Hearst’s Babicora Ranch in late 1915, taking sixty thousand head of cattle and chasing the ranch manager all the way to Texas.31 The coverage of Villa in Hearst’s newspapers painted a far from flattering portrait, as might be expected.

  Throughout this period, often called the “brown scare,” concern grew about the number of Mexicans seeking refuge in the United States. Some of these refugees were monitored by agents, were arrested, or faced physical violence.32 The revolution was spilling across the border; not only were people traversing it, but so were guns, ammunition, drugs, cattle, and stolen goods. The U.S. guards were on the lookout for all manner of suspects, from contrabandists to political radicals, though innocent people were apprehended, too.33 Many Mexicans in the United States and Mexican-Americans had their own reservations about the United States’ involvement in this conflict. In 1913, New Mexico senator Albert B. Fall received a copy of an open letter addressed to him by Pedro Portillo, a local man angered that the senator was “fathering a bill in Congress that if passed will allow the exportation of guns and ammunition to both government and rebels in Mexico.” For Portillo, the hypocrisy was clear because “at the same time you and other senators are raising cane [Cain] because the Mexican government has not been able to protect the life and property of Americans in some isolated places.”34 Fall—who was later implicated for secretly leasing oil reserve lands in the Teapot Dome Scandal—had been sent the letter by a friend who wanted to alert him that it was being distributed “through the mail to the Spanish Americans.” In replying to this friend, an unconcerned Fall noted that the letter “simply caused amusement,” explaining:

  Portillo like a great many others, seems to imagine that Mexico conferred a great favor upon us by allowing us to invest one and a half billions of dollars in the commercial conquest and actual civilization in that country until we own practically twice as much of Mexico as do the Mexicans themselves, and at the same time he thinks that we should display our gratitude to them by allowing them to destroy with impunity all this property.35

  As the conflict near the border intensified, Villa continued to reassure U.S. representatives in Mexico that their interests were not in danger, though his confiscation of hacienda land that had belonged to Huerta’s supporters in the north gave them some cause for concern.36 Senator Thomas Catron of New Mexico received a telegram in April 1914 from a contact in El Paso who heard that Villa was on his way to the city and that he had seven thousand men within thirty miles of Juárez.37 Catron fired off a letter to William Jennings Bryan, now serving as secretary of state, asking him to “take the necessary steps to secure the safety of persons and property in El Paso.”38 Army units from San Francisco and Kansas left soon afterward to fortify the border.

  By this point, Woodrow Wilson had become president of the United States. He was reluctant to recognize Huerta’s government until there were fresh elections and ran out of patience by the time they were finally held in October 1913 and immediately criticized as being fraudulent. Huerta remained in power, despite Wilson’s demand that he resign.39 By February 1914 Wilson lifted the arms embargo, allowing ammunition to reach Villa and Carranza.40 Then, in April, after receiving reports of the arrest of U.S. sailors in the Mexican port of Tampico and news of a German ship bound for Veracruz loaded with arms for Huerta’s troops, Wilson decided to act. On April 21, the U.S. president sent in the Navy, and fifteen ships bombarded Veracruz, leaving hundreds dead, most of them innocent civilians. Afterward thirty-five hundred U.S. troops went ashore to occupy the city.41 The return of the United States to Mexican soil—especially to the same city assaulted in the Mexican-American War—was greeted with a unanimous cry of outrage.42 Even Carranza declared the intervention to be a violation of national sovereignty.43 There were protests and attacks on U.S. civilians, which worsened relations between Wilson and the Constitutionalists. By November, the United States pulled out.44

  Villa had, in the first half of 1914, managed to strike a number of blows against Huerta’s troops, including a key victory at Zacatecas in June. As the Constitutionalists successfully pushed south, Huerta lost ground, and by mid-July 1914, he capitulated and resigned, going into exile. On August 20, Carranza entered the capital, where Obregón had brought some six thousand troops five days earlier. From there, Carranza established his government, though this did not end the fighting.45

  New factions were emerging, and they would lead to more violence. In very general terms, Carranza and Obregón represented the interests of some regional elites, the middle classes, merchants, and other professionals, while Villa and Zapata claimed the support of the working class, including the miners and vaqueros, as well as the poorer agricultural workers, smallholders, and peasants. Both sides also had the support of women who accompanied their husbands to battle, went in support roles such as nurses, or took up arms themselves as soldaderas.

  Carranza, Obregón, Villa, and Zapata disagreed about a number of issues, most of all land.46 Although Villa redistributed some of the lands he had confiscated in the north, land reform was not a defining issue for him, as it was for Zapata. The rifts among the four men continued to grow, and so, to quell the animosity, a convention was called, with delegates to be sent from the Constitutionalists, Villa’s División del Norte, and the Zapatistas. They convened at Aguascalientes, about three hundred miles northwest of the capital, on October 10, 1914. By this point, only a handful of the hundred or so delegates still supported Carranza, but they continued to be committed Constitutionalists and so were slow to encourage a Villa-Zapata alliance. The delegates did, however, commit to adopting parts of Zapata’s Plan de Ayala, promising to put agrarian reform in any future constitution.47 By the end of the convention, the delegates voted Carranza out and put General Eulalio Gutiérrez in his place. Carranza refused to step down, and so Gutiérrez put Villa in charge of leading the attack on him, and Zapata also followed suit. Carranza retreated to Veracruz, while a tenuous “Conventionalist” alliance of Villa and Zapata, with Gutiérrez as an interim president, was formed.48 Soon after the convention, Villa and Zapata had a meeting in Xochimilco, just south of the capital, in early December, discussing their shared hatred of Carranza and the petit bourgeois he represented. A couple of days later, they paraded their armies into Mexico City.49 Despite the seemingly united start, the two men soon discovered their divisions. During his campaign to drive Carranza’s troops out of Puebla, Zapata was annoyed that the artillery Villa had promised him was late in arriving, and this was only around a week after their meeting.50 A short time later, in December 1914, Carranza decided to declare that, among other re
forms, he would return land to dispossessed people and villages. While Carranza was trying to broaden his support, Gutiérrez decided to flee the capital and the interim presidency in 1915, leaving the Conventionalists under Villa and Zapata facing an uncertain future.51

  Meanwhile, hostilities in Mexico toward non-Mexicans continued to rise. In 1915, foreign landowners in Sonora were told to show their land titles. One businessman, L. W. Mix, owner of the Arcadia Hotel in Hermosillo, sent a letter to the U.S. consulate in Nogales, Mexico, to find out if he had to comply. He was fearful that he would lose everything, especially if he did not have the necessary papers. “Conditions in Mexico are, in my opinion, growing worse,” he wrote. “Also at various times during the recent anarchy and revolution, which has ruined Sonora, public records of all kinds, have been maliciously and wantonly destroyed.”52

  The poet Langston Hughes recalled how his father lived in Mexico during this period, working for a New York–based electric-light company in the Toluca area, to the west of Mexico City. Unlike other Americans, he had an unexpected advantage. “Because he was brown, the Mexicans could not tell at sight that he was a Yankee,” Hughes recalled in his memoir The Big Sea. “and even after they knew it, they did not believe he was like the white Yankees.” Hughes’s father managed to stay when other foreigners fled, as “the followers of Zapata and Villa did not run him away as they did the whites.”53

  Mexicans living near the border, meanwhile, suffered no matter what side they supported. Estimates put the overall death toll somewhere between 350,000 and one million.54 Food shortages were common, as Amparo F. De Valencia recalled: “Sometimes one ate and sometimes one didn’t. What good was money? Everyone suffered because one couldn’t buy anything.”55 Aurora Mendoza was forced to go to El Paso because the ongoing violence cost her family their livelihood. “The federalists and the revolutionaries came and took whatever they wanted from our ranch,” she recalled. “Many times they came and we didn’t know what side they were on.”56