War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion By Jeff Guinn
The Mexican/United States border has aggressive money/land grabbing opportunists, mostly political and corporate, on both sides each lacking human empathy. This has been ongoing through good times and bad. There might not be any good guys and the poor will always be the looser.
It has been said that it is far better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent. Also might is right.
An excellent history lesson and must read book.
Excerpts:
All of the major fighting took place on Mexican soil, and the better-equipped and -organized American forces prevailed.
Veracruz in Mexican history. In 1519, Cortez brought his invaders ashore there, launching three centuries of enslavement by Spain. Veracruz was where America landed many of its troops during a war that took half of Mexico’s territory. The French occupied Veracruz in 1864 as the first step in its Mexican conquest. The American arrival in 1914 was assumed to signal another full-fledged invasion. American military commanders in the field certainly thought so, and were surprised to receive orders to remain in Veracruz instead of next striking 230 miles west at Mexico City.
1847, Mexico was forced to negotiate a peace settlement the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, America came away with almost one million square miles of new territory that included all or part of what would become the states of California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming, plus the Nueces Strip, which remained so uninviting that General William T. Sherman subsequently suggested that “we should go to war again, to make them take it back.”
In return for about half of its nation, Mexico received $15 million, plus the cancellation of another $3.25 million in American business claims. The country’s leaders did what they could for Mexican nationals who suddenly found themselves living in the United States.
German suggestion to Mexico of reclaimed land deliberately didn’t include California. That great prize was intended to lure Japan into a German alliance. Those two nations remained in an official state of war, but it would be ideal for the Germans if, as their unrestricted warfare throttled the Allies in Britain and Europe, Japan attacked California while Mexico assaulted Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Japanese officials would be reluctant to meet with representatives of Germany, but Mexico and Japan were friendly.
Japan might be convinced to change sides, especially if the Germans dangled California as a potential reward. The Germans considered Japan’s chances of taking California far superior to Mexico’s odds of regaining any portion of the other three states, but in any event those outcomes would not be Germany’s concern. It all hinged on Carranza, and, if the United States declared war on Germany, whether his enmity for America would incline him to accept the German offer.
American diplomats in Germany routinely accepted messages, including those in code, addressed from German officials to their nation’s diplomats in Mexico.
telegrams were initially sent to the State Department in Washington; officials there passed them along to the German ambassador and his staff, who used America’s Western Union to make the final transmissions to the German embassy in Mexico City. Zimmermann’s telegram was sent through both the Swedish and U.S. transatlantic cable systems.
German leaders enjoyed the irony of the U.S. helpfully transmitting a message intended against America’s best interests.
The Germans did not know that British intelligence regularly intercepted all telegrams sent over Swedish and American cables and that Britain’s agents had cracked the German code.
The headline in the New York World was representative: “MEXICO AND JAPAN ASKED BY GERMANY TO ATTACK U.S. IF IT ENTERED THE WAR.”
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