Francisco "Pancho" Villa was a Mexican revolutionary and general in the Mexican Revolution. He was a key figure in the revolutionary movement that forced out President Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero to power in 1911. When Madero was ousted by a coup led by General Victoriano Huerta in February 1913, Villa joined the anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army led by Venustiano Carranza. After the defeat and exile of Huerta in July 1914, Villa broke with Carranza. Villa dominated the meeting of revolutionary generals that excluded Carranza and helped create a coalition government. Emiliano Zapata and Villa became formal allies in this period. Like Zapata, Villa was strongly in favor of land reform, but did not implement it when he had power. At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, the U.S. considered recognizing Villa as Mexico's legitimate authority.
Tejanos are descendants of Texas Creoles and Mestizos who settled in Texas before its admission as an American state. The term is also sometimes applied to Texans of Mexican descent.
José Venustiano Carranza de la Garza was a Mexican land owner and politician who served as President of Mexico from 1917 until his assassination in 1920, during the Mexican Revolution. He was previously Mexico's de facto head of state as Primer Jefe of the Constitutionalist faction from 1914 to 1917, and previously served as a senator and governor for Coahuila. He played the leading role in drafting the Constitution of 1917 and maintained Mexican neutrality in World War I.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley, commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley or locally as the Valley or RGV, is a region spanning the border of Texas and Mexico located in a floodplain of the Rio Grande near its mouth. The region includes the southernmost tip of South Texas and a portion of northern Tamaulipas, Mexico. It consists of the Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco, Pharr, McAllen, Edinburg, Mission, San Juan, and Rio Grande City metropolitan areas in the United States and the Matamoros, Río Bravo, and Reynosa metropolitan areas in Mexico. The area is generally bilingual in English and Spanish, with a fair amount of Spanglish due to the region's diverse history and transborder agglomerations. It is home to some of the poorest cities in the nation, as well as many unincorporated, persistent poverty communities called colonias. A large seasonal influx occurs of "winter Texans" — people who come down from the north for the winter and then return north before summer arrives.
The Pancho Villa Expedition—now known officially in the United States as the Mexican Expedition, but originally referred to as the "Punitive Expedition, U.S. Army"—was a military operation conducted by the United States Army against the paramilitary forces of Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa from March 14, 1916, to February 7, 1917, during the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920.
In the history of Mexico, the Plan of Guadalupe was a political manifesto which was proclaimed on March 26, 1913, by the Governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza in response to the reactionary coup d'etat and execution of President Francisco I. Madero, which had occurred during the Ten Tragic Days of February 1913. The manifesto was released from the Hacienda De Guadalupe, which is where the Plan derives its name, nearly a month after the assassination of Madero. The initial plan was limited in scope, denouncing Victoriano Huerta's usurpation of power and advocating the restoration of a constitutional government. In 1914, Carranza issued "Additions to the Plan of Guadalupe", which broadened its scope and "endowed la Revolución with its social and economic content." In 1916, he further revised the Plan now that the Constitutionalist Army was victorious and revolutionaries sought changes to the 1857 Constitution of Mexico. Carranza sought to set the terms of the constitutional convention.
In Mexican history, a plan was a declaration of principles announced in conjunction with a rebellion, usually armed, against the central government of the country. Mexican plans were often more formal than the pronunciamientos that were their equivalent elsewhere in Spanish America and Spain. Some were as detailed as the United States Declaration of Independence. Some plans simply announced that the current government was null and void and that the signer of the plan was the new president.
The United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution was varied and seemingly contradictory, first supporting and then repudiating Mexican regimes during the period 1910–1920. For both economic and political reasons, the U.S. government generally supported those who occupied the seats of power, but could withhold official recognition. The U.S. supported the regime of Porfirio Díaz after initially withholding recognition since he came to power by coup. In 1909, Díaz and U.S. President Taft met in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Prior to Woodrow Wilson's inauguration on March 4, 1913, the U.S. Government focused on just warning the Mexican military that decisive action from the U.S. military would take place if lives and property of U.S. nationals living in the country were endangered. President William Howard Taft sent more troops to the US-Mexico border but did not allow them to intervene directly in the conflict, a move which Congress opposed. Twice during the Revolution, the U.S. sent troops into Mexico, to occupy Veracruz in 1914 and to northern Mexico in 1916 in a failed attempt to capture Pancho Villa. U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America was to assume the region was the sphere of influence of the U.S., articulated in the Monroe Doctrine. However the U.S. role in the Mexican Revolution has been exaggerated. It did not directly intervene in the Mexican Revolution in a sustained manner.
José Inés Salazar was a Mexican revolutionary general who led the Orozquistas during the Mexican Revolution and later fought with Pancho Villa. He was a native of Casas Grandes, Chihuahua.
General Jacinto Blas Treviño González was a Mexican military officer, noteworthy for his participation in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1921.
The Mexican Border War, also known as the Border Campaign, refers to a series of military engagements which took place between the United States military and several Mexican factions in the Mexican–American border region of North America during the Mexican Revolution.
The Ojo de Agua Raid was the last notable military engagement between Mexican Sediciosos and the United States Army. It took place at Ojo de Agua, Texas. As part of the Plan of San Diego, the rebels launched a raid across the Rio Grande into Texas on October 21, 1915 aimed at harassing the American outposts along the Mexican border and disrupting the local economy. After moving across the border, the Sediciosos began an assault against the United States Army Signal Corps station at Ojo de Agua. The small group of American defenders was cornered into a single building and suffered heavy casualties before reinforcements arrived driving the Seditionist force back into Mexico. The raid proved to be the tipping point in the American conflict with the Sediciosos, as its severity convinced American officials to send large numbers of American troops to the area in order to deter any further serious border raids by the Mexican force.
The Raid on the Norias Division of the King Ranch was an attack August 8, 1915 by a large band of disaffected Mexicans and Tejanos in southern Texas. It was one of the many small battles of the Mexican Revolution that spilled over into United States soil and resulted in an increased effort by the United States Army to defend the international border. Five to fifteen attackers were killed in the raid and more among the wounded may have died shortly afterwards.
The Bandit War, or Bandit Wars, was a series of raids in Texas that started in 1915 and finally culminated in 1919. They were carried out by Mexican rebels from the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua. Prior to 1914, the Carrancistas had been responsible for most attacks along the border, but in January 1915, rebels known as Seditionistas drafted the Plan of San Diego and began launching their own raids. The plan called for a race war to rid the American border states of their Anglo-American population and for the annexation of the border states to Mexico. However, the Seditionistas could never launch a full-scale invasion of the United States and so the faction resorted to conducting small raids into Texas. Much of the fighting involved the Texas Ranger Division, but the US Army also engaged in small unit actions with bands of Seditionist raiders.
The raid on Glenn Springs occurred on the night of May 5–6, 1916, when Mexican Villistas and Carrancistas attacked the towns of Boquillas and Glenn Springs, Texas. In Glenn Springs, the raiders burned several buildings and fought a three-hour battle with a small force of American soldiers who were stationed there. At the same time, a second party of rebels robbed a general store and a silver mine in Boquillas. Four Americans were killed and the rebels took two hostages to Coahuila. In response to the attack, the United States Army launched a short punitive expedition into Mexico, fought with the rebels, and rescued the captives.
The Second Battle of Nogales was a three-sided military engagement of the Mexican Revolution, fought in November 1915 at the border towns of Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona. On the morning of November 26, rebel forces of Pancho Villa, who occupied Nogales, Sonora, began firing on United States Army soldiers in Nogales, Arizona. The Americans responded with counter fire for over two hours before a force of Carrancistas arrived to attack the Villistas. Later that day, the Constitutionalistas accidentally opened fire on American soldiers and another short skirmish was fought. The battle resulted in the deaths of several Mexicans and was the first significant engagement fought between Villistas and the United States military.
The Raid onSan Ygnacio refers to a skirmish on June 15, 1916 between the United States Army and Mexican raiders near the border town of San Ygnacio, Texas. Three different Mexican factions were known to have launched raids into Texas at the time but most of the evidence suggests that either Sediciosos or Carrancistas were responsible for the incursion. Four American soldiers and at least six of the raiders were killed during the battle and the resulting American punitive expedition further strained the already hostile relationship between the Mexican and United States governments.
The Porvenir massacre was an incident on January 28, 1918, outside the village of Porvenir, in Presidio County, Texas, in which Texas Rangers and local ranchers, with the support of U.S. Cavalry, killed 15 unarmed Mexican American boys and men. The Texas Rangers Company B had been sent to the area to stop banditry after the Brite Ranch raid. Despite having no evidence that the Porvenir villagers had been involved in recent thefts or the killings of ranchers, the Rangers separated 15 men and boys from the rest of the village and shot them on a nearby hill.
José Tomás Canales was an American businessman, lawyer, and politician based in Texas. He served five terms in the State House, where he was the only Mexican-American representative at the time. He is best known for his work on behalf of Mexican-Americans and Tejanos in Texas, defending the civil rights of Hispanic Americans.
La Matanza and the Hora de Sangre was a period of anti-Mexican violence in Texas, including lynchings and massacres, between 1910 and 1920 in the midst of tensions between the United States and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. This violence was committed by Anglo-Texan vigilantes, and law enforcement, such as the Texas Rangers, during operations against bandit raids known as the Bandit Wars. The violence and denial of civil liberties during this period was justified by racism. Ranger violence reached its peak from 1915 to 1919, in response to increasing conflict, initially because of the Plan de San Diego, by Mexican and Tejano insurgents to take Texas. This period was referred to as the Hora de Sangre by Mexicans in South Texas, many of whom fled to Mexico to escape the violence. At least 300 Mexican Americans were killed in Texas during the 1910s, with total estimates of ranging from hundreds to thousands killed and according to William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb they estimate that at least 5,000 people had been murdered. At least 100 Mexican Americans were lynched in the 1910s, many in Texas. Many murders were concealed and went unreported, with some in South Texas, suspected by Rangers of supporting rebels, being placed on blacklists and often "disappearing".
