Tampico incident

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The Tampico incident in the Mexican port city of Tampico was a momentous diplomatic incident in April 1914 that US President Woodrow Wilson used as a pretext for the subsequent occupation of Veracruz .

background

In the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of 1914, troops from two camps faced each other:

  • on the one hand the army of the commander-in-chief of the army , Victoriano Huerta , who came to power in a coup in 1913 and declared himself president of Mexico,
  • on the other hand the “constitutionalist”, i.e. H. For the armed forces fighting for the constitutional groups.

On April 5, 1914, the constitutionalist general Pablo González Garza advanced on the city of Tampico, held by troops of the Huerta government. These then declared the port facilities of Tampico to be a combat area and therefore closed to foreigners.

Before Tampico crossed a flotilla of US Navy and was lying at anchor. This naval formation, the Fifth Division of the Atlantic Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Henry Mayo, had been drawn together off the Mexican Gulf Coast to be ready for a landing. President Wilson's cabinet had already decided on such a military intervention in Mexico in January 1914. The imminent intervention was intended on the one hand to protect the US citizens living in Tampico as well as the economic interests of the USA, especially in oil production, and on the other hand to cut Huerta's supply lines in the civil war and thereby overthrow him.

The incident

USS Dolphin, photograph from 1891

At noon on April 9, 1914, on the orders of the captain of the gunboat USS Dolphin, a commando, consisting of the purser and eight sailors from the reconnaissance cruiser Chester , went ashore at the Iturbide pier in the port of Tampico. They were assigned to buy urgently needed fuel from a local German dealer, Max Tyron. Since the nine were within the exclusion zone, an officer from the Huerta troops had them arrested. But on the orders of a higher-ranking officer of the Huerta troops, the detained US sailors were released within an hour and the Mexican soldiers were instructed to help with the loading of the oil drums for the USS Dolphin .

In a gesture of courtesy, General Ignacios Morelos Zaragoza, commander of the Tampico garrison, apologized to the commander of the US flotilla, Rear Admiral Henry Mayo, for the arrest. Admiral Mayo did not accept the apology, however, but also demanded - without consulting his superiors - that the US flag should be hoisted in Tampico, on Mexican soil, and that the Mexicans should pay their respects with 21 gun salutes. General Morelos rejected this demand after consulting Huerta.

The preparation of the intervention

President Wilson was briefed on the events that evening. He saw the opportunity the incident presented. He encouraged Mayo to be tough. On April 13, he promised reporters: "You will shoot a salute." Wilson threatened Huerta with "the most serious consequences." Mayo worked out plans to occupy the port and city of Tampico. The "Tampico incident", the action of an officer of the Huerta troops against the nine US sailors, was the opportunity to finally be able to strike.

Since Tampico, the location of the incident, was not as strategically significant and not as close to the recently discovered Mexican oil deposits as Veracruz , Wilson decided that Veracruz should be occupied in place of Tampico. On April 15, the plans for the invasion of Veracruz were completed. On the same day, the imminent invasion was in danger again when Huerta agreed to fire the required salute if, in return, a US ship fired a salute in honor of Mexico. Mayo agreed, Wilson did not: he wanted his intervention and demanded that Mexico submit unconditionally to US demands.

On April 18, Wilson unexpectedly received a message that promoted his Veracruz plans: The ship Ypiranga of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) was on course - with machine guns from the Colt Defense company on board for the troops of Victoriano Huerta taken on 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. On April 21, 1914, US forces began occupying Veracruz.

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 pp. 82–84 on the Tampico incident.
  • Lawrence Lenz: Power and policy. America's first steps to superpower, 1889-1922 . Algora, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-87586-664-2 . In it pp. 185–190 on the Tampico incident.
  • 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. ↑ 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. 186.
  3. ↑ Jeffrey Wallenfeldt (Ed.): US Imperialism and Progressivism. 1896 to 1920 . Britannica Educational Publications, New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-61530-754-8 , p. 40.
  4. ^ Arturo Guevara Escobar: 21 cañonazos , accessed May 24, 2014.
  5. ^ Message from President Woodrow Wilson to Congress, April 20, 1914. In: Russell D. Buhite (Ed.): Calls to Arms. Presidential Speeches, Messages, and Declarations of War . Scholarly Resources, Wilmington 2003, ISBN 0-8420-2592-8 , pp. 135-138, here p. 137.
  6. ^ 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 pp. 101f.
  7. ^ A b Jack Sweetman: "Take Veracruz at Once!" In: Naval History. Vol. 28 (2014), Issue 2, pp. 34–41.
  8. ↑ Arthur Stanley Link: Wilson . Volume 2: The new freedom . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1956, p. 396.
  9. ↑ Lawrence Lenz: Power and policy. America's first steps to superpower, 1889-1922. Algora, New York 2008, p. 188.
  10. ↑ Isidro Fabela (ed.): Revolución y Régimen Constitucionalista . Volume 2: La intervención norteamericana en Veracruz (1914) . Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City 1962, pp. 6-10.
  11. ↑ Lawrence Lenz: Power and policy. America's first steps to superpower, 1889-1922 . Algora, New York 2008, p. 191.