Occupation of Veracruz in 1914

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The US fleet during the attack on Veracruz, 1914.

The occupation of Veracruz in 1914 was a military intervention in the wake of the US gunboat policy in civil war-torn Mexico . From April 21 to November 23, 1914, United States forces held the city of Veracruz and its port on the Gulf of Mexico .

Background and pretexts

The Tampico incident as a pretext for intervention

In the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of 1914, troops from two camps faced each other: on the one hand, those of the army commander-in-chief , Victoriano Huerta , who had brought himself to power in a 1913 coup , and on the other, the “constitutionalist ones ", D. H. For the armed forces fighting for the constitutional groups. On April 9, 1914, the Tampico incident occurred , which gave President Woodrow Wilson the opportunity to finally carry out military intervention in Mexico, which his cabinet had decided since January 1914. For this purpose, a US naval association had already been brought together off the Mexican Gulf coast.

The pretext for choosing Veracruz as the site of intervention

Since Tampico , the site of the incident, was not as strategically significant and not as close to the recently discovered oil wells in southern Mexico as Veracruz, Wilson decided that Veracruz should be occupied in place of Tampico. On April 18, he unexpectedly received a message that met his Veracruz plans: The ship Ypiranga of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) had - with machine guns from the Colt Defense company on board for the troops of Victoriano Huerta - Set course for Veracruz. Wilson thus justified the planned occupation of Veracruz to Congress : The Ypiranga would undermine the US arms embargo against Huerta; the landing of the weapons must be prevented. That this pretext was implausible was already evident from the fact that the US government had previously approved the arms transport through the Ypiranga . Therefore, after a diplomatic demarche from the German side , the cargo of the Ypiranga was soon released (on May 26th) in Puerto México , a port controlled by Huerta's troops.

The Veracruz Landing and the Mexican Resistance

On April 20, 1914, three battleships , three cruisers and several gunboats of the US Navy had reached Veracruz, by April 22, another seven battleships, four troop transports and several cruisers and destroyers had arrived. On the morning of April 21, US troops under the command of Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher went ashore in Veracruz - without a declaration of war. There was only one call from the local US consul to the harbor master that the invasion had started.

In view of the overwhelming strength of the US troops, the two regiments stationed in or near Veracruz under General Gustavo Maass withdrew on the orders of Huerta. Only a contingent of 180 soldiers remained. The students of the Military Academy of the Navy ( Escuela Naval Militar ) However, under their commander Manuel Azueta resisted, backed by the 800 members of the Defensores del Puerto de Veracruz , a beginning of 1914 to defend against a possible invasion based vigilantes and other citizens of the city, who took up arms and, led by Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Contreras, rushed to the aid of the cadets and the remaining soldiers. The unexpected resistance took US forces by surprise; whose Second Seaman Regiment fled. This moved Admiral Fletcher to have the city bombarded with naval artillery , schools, residential and commercial buildings included. On the morning of April 22nd, more US troops went ashore so that 6,000 men stood ready to take Veracruz, including 3,000 Marines .

After four days, on April 24, 1914, the fighting ended after the ambassadors of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, the so-called “ ABC states ”, had intervened diplomatically in Washington. On April 27, the US flag was hoisted in Veracruz; the warships in the harbor fired 21 rounds of salute. The US troops counted 22 dead and 75 wounded soldiers. 172 soldiers were killed on the Mexican side, as well as hundreds of civilians. The Niagara Falls peace negotiations in Canada then took place with the participation of the two states and the ABC states. For the host Canada , the conference was the first to deal with all-American conflicts.

The authorities of the city of Veracruz refused to cooperate with the occupying forces, so that they had to set up their own civil administration. After seven months and two days, the US troops withdrew on November 23, 1914; Constitutionalist troops moved into Veracruz.

Aftermath and commemoration

The occupation of Veracruz did not cause the Mexicans to show gratitude to the United States for the weakening of the usurper Huerta, as the US military and President Wilson had expected, but sparked a wave of patriotic enthusiasm and rallies against the aggression. The Asociación Católica de la Juventud Mexicana (ACJM), the umbrella organization of the Catholic Mexican youth movement, which was founded last year , protested against the “defilement” of the Catholic fatherland by a Protestant power, which the bishops joined. In the following days and weeks there were demonstrations against the USA in numerous countries, except in Mexico and in several Central American states also in Ecuador, Chile and Argentina. Hopes that the United States would pursue “less imperialist” policies under President Wilson than his predecessors had vanished.

In the USA, Minister of the Navy Josephus Daniels awarded the Medal of Honor , the highest military award, 65 times , almost half as often as in the entire First World War and the Korean War.

In Mexico, numerous streets, squares, schools and other public institutions are named after the Héroes y martires de Veracruz , the "heroes and martyrs" of Veracruz. The Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones (National Museum of Interventions) in Mexico City depicts the occupation of Veracruz and the afterlife of that event in Mexico. The centenary of the intervention was celebrated on April 21, 2014 in Veracruz, in the capital and in many Mexican cities.

On the 1978 released album Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon , the title busy Veracruz with the historical events.

classification

The occupation of Veracruz in 1914 is counted as the second US intervention in Mexico ( Segunda Intervención Norteamericana ) after the Mexican-American War and before the Mexican Expedition .

literature

  • Guy Renfro Donnell: United States intervention in Mexico, 1914 . Diss. University of Texas, Austin 1951.
  • Lester D. Langley: The Banana Wars. United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 . University of Kentucky Press, Lexington 1985, ISBN 0-8131-1548-5 . In it the chapters Veracruz and The rulers of Veracruz. Pp. 85-108.
  • Robert Quirk: An affair of honor. Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz . University of Kentucky Press, Lexington 1962.
  • Jack Sweetman: The landing at Veracruz, 1914. The first complete chronicle of a strange encounter in April, 1914, when the United States Navy captured and occupied the city of Veracruz, Mexico . US Naval Institute, Annapolis 1968.

Footnotes

  1. ^ A b John Mason Hart: Empire and Revolution. The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War . University of California Press, Berkeley 2002, ISBN 0-520-22324-1 , p. 307.
  2. ↑ Lawrence Lenz: Power and policy. America's first steps to superpower, 1889-1922 . Algora, New York 2008, p. 185.
  3. ↑ On the competition between the USA and the German Reich in Mexico after 1900 see: Alfred Vagts : Germany and the United States in world politics . Macmillan, New York 1935. Volume 2, pp. 1771-1781.
  4. ↑ Jack Sweetman: “Take Veracruz at Once!” In: Naval History, Vol. 28 (2014), Issue 2, pp. 34–41.
  5. ↑ Lawrence Lenz: Power and policy. America's first steps to superpower, 1889-1922 . Algora, New York 2008, p. 191.
  6. ^ Lester D. Langley: The Banana Wars. United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 . University of Kentucky Press, Lexington 1985, p. 89.
  7. ^ Isidro Fabela : Historia diplomática de la Revolución Mexicana . Vol. 2. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City 1959. Therein the chapter Cómo se llevó a cabo la ocupación .
  8. ↑ Lawrence Lenz: Power and policy. America's first steps to superpower, 1889-1922 . Algora, New York 2008, p. 192.
  9. ↑ The Heroic Defense of the Port of Veracruz on the Mexican President's website, accessed May 24, 2014 (Spanish).
  10. ↑ Lawrence Lenz: Power and policy. America's first steps to superpower, 1889-1922 . Algora, New York 2008, p. 193.
  11. ↑ George B. Clark: Battle History of the United States Marine Corps, 1775-1945 . McFarland, Jefferson 2010, ISBN 978-0-7864-4598-1 . In Chapter 13: Mexico 1914. here p. 103.
  12. ^ A b John Womack: The Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920. In: Leslie Bethell (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Latin America . Volume 5: C. 1870 to 1930 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-24517-6 , pp. 79–153, here p. 102.
  13. ↑ United States Marine Corps: Roots of deployment - Vera Cruz, 1914. ( Memento of the original from June 16, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on May 24, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mca-marines.org
  14. ^ Arturo Guevara Escobar: 21 cañonazos , accessed May 24, 2014.
  15. ^ Gastón García Cantú: Las invasiones norteamericanas en México . Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City 1996, p. 276.
  16. ^ Alan McPherson (Ed.): Encyclopedia of US Military Interventions in Latin America . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2013. Volume 2., therein pp. 390–394: Intervention in the Mexican Revolution. here p. 393
  17. ↑ Michael Small: The Forgotten Peace. Mediation at Niagara Falls. 2009 online only through University of Ottawa
  18. ^ Ronald Glen Woodbury: Wilson y la intervención Veracruz (análisis historiográfico). In: Historia mexicana. Revista trimestral publicada por El Colegio de México. Vol. 17 (1967), No. 2, pp. 263-292.
  19. ↑ Michael Small: The Forgotten Peace. Mediation at Niagara Falls, 1914. University of Ottawa Press, Ottawa 2010, ISBN 978-0-7766-0712-2 , p. 35.
  20. ^ David Zabecki: American artillery and the Medal of Honor . Merriam Press, Bennington 1997, p. 175.