For other battles at Veracruz see Battle of Veracruz.
The United States occupation of Veracruz began with the Battle of Veracruz and
lasted for seven months, as a response to the Tampico Affair of April 9, 1914.
The incident came in the midst of poor diplomatic relations between Mexico and
the United States, and was related to the ongoing Mexican Revolution.
Background The Tampico Affair was set off when nine
American sailors were arrested by the Mexican government for entering
off-limit areas in Tampico, Tamaulipas. The unarmed sailors were arrested when
they entered a fuel loading station. The sailors were released, but the U.S.
naval commander demanded an apology and a twenty-one gun salute. The apology was
provided but not the salute. In the end, the response from U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson ordered the U.S. Navy to prepare for the occupation of the port of
Veracruz. While awaiting authorization from the U.S. Congress to carry out such
action, Wilson was alerted of a delivery of weapons for Victoriano Huerta due to
arrive in the port on April 21 aboard the German-registered cargo-steamer SS
Ypiranga. As a result, Wilson issued an immediate order to seize the port's
customs office and confiscate the weaponry. The weapons had actually been
sourced by John Wesley De Kay, an American financier and businessman with
large investments in Mexico, and a Russian arms dealer from Puebla, Leon
Rasst, not the German government as newspapers reported at the time. Huerta
had usurped the presidency of Mexico with the assistance of the American
ambassador Henry Lane Wilson during a coup d'état in February 1913 known as La
decena trágica. The Wilson administration's answer to this was to
declare Huerta a usurper of the legitimate government, to embargo arms
shipments to Huerta, and to support the Constitutional Army of Venustiano
Carranza. The arms shipment to Mexico, in fact, in
part originated from the Remington Arms company in the U.S., went to Odessa,
Russia to Hamburg, where De Kay added to the load. The arms and ammunition were
to be shipped via Hamburg, Germany, to Mexico allowing Huerta's arms dealers to
skirt the American arms embargo. The landing of the arms was blocked at
Veracruz but they were discharged a few weeks later in Puerto Mexico, a port
controlled by Huerta at the time. Initial landing
On the morning of April 21, 1914, warships of the United States Atlantic
Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher, began
preparations for the seizure of the Veracruz waterfront.
At 11:12 hrs, consul William Canada watched from the roof of the American
Consulate that the first boatload of Marines were leaving the auxiliary
vessel USS Prairie. By 11:30, with whaleboats swung over the
side, 502 U.S. Marines from the 2nd Advanced Base Regiment, 285 armed Navy
sailors, known as "Bluejackets," from the battleship USS Florida and a
provisional battalion composed of the Marine detachments of from Florida and
her sister ship USS Utah also began landing operations.
As the landing party moved toward pier 4, Veracruz's main wharf, a large crowd
of Mexican and American citizens gathered to watch the spectacle. The
invaders encountered no resistance as they exited the whaleboats, formed ranks
into a Marine and a seaman regiment, and began marching toward their objectives.
This initial show of force was enough to prompt the retreat of the Mexican forces
led by General Gustavo Maass. In the face of this, Commodore Manuel Azueta
encouraged cadets of the Veracruz Naval Academy to take up the defense of the
port for themselves. Also, about 50 line soldiers of the Mexican Army remained
behind to fight the invaders along with the citizens of Veracruz.
Battle of Veracruz The bluejackets were instructed to
capture the customs house, post and telegraph offices, while the Marines
went for the railroad terminal, roundhouse and yard, the cable office
and the powerplant. Arms were distributed to the population,
who were largely untrained in the use of Mausers and had trouble finding the
correct ammunition. In short, the defense of the city by its populace was
hindered by the lack of central organization and a lack of adequate
supplies. The defense of the city also included the release of the prisoners
held at the "La Galera" military prison, not those at San Juan de Ulúa who were
later attended to by the U.S. Navy. Although the landing had been nearly
unopposed as U.S. forces marched into the city, Veracruz quickly became a
battleground. Just after noon, fighting began with the 2nd Advance Base Regiment
under Colonel Wendell C. Neville becoming heavily involved in a firefight
in the rail yards. While the forces ashore slowly fought their way forward,
Admiral Fletcher landed Utah‍ '​s 384 man bluejacket battalion, the only other
unit at his disposal. By mid afternoon, the Americans had occupied all of their
objectives and Admiral Fletcher called a general halt to the advance, initially
hoping that a cease-fire could be arranged. That hope rapidly faded as he
could find no one to bargain with and all troops in the city were instructed
to remain on the defensive pending the arrival of reinforcements.
On the night of April 21, Fletcher decided that he had no choice but to
expand the initial operation to include the entire city, not just the
waterfront. Five additional U.S. battleships and two cruisers had reached
Veracruz during the hours of darkness and they carried with them Major Smedley
Butler and his Marine Battalion which had been rushed from Panama. The
battleship's seaman battalions were quickly organized into a regiment 1,200
men strong, supported by the ship's Marine detachments providing an
additional 300-man battalion. These newly arrived forces went ashore around
midnight to await the morning's advance. At 07:45 April 22, the advance began.
The Leathernecks adapted to street fighting, which was a novelty to them.
The sailors were less adroit at this style of fighting. A regiment led by
Navy Captain E. A. Anderson advanced on the Naval Academy in parade ground
formation, making his men easy targets for the partisans barricaded inside.
This attack was initially repulsed; soon, the attack was renewed, with
artillery support from three warships in the harbor, Prairie, San Francisco, and
Chester, that pounded the Academy with their long guns for a few minutes,
silencing all resistance. That afternoon, the First Advanced Base
Regiment, originally bound for Tampico, Tamaulipas, came ashore under the
command of Colonel John A. Lejeune and by 17:00, U.S. troops had secured the
town square and were in complete control of Veracruz. Some pockets of resistance
continued to occur around the port, mostly in the form of hit-and-run
guerrilla tactics, but by April 24 all fighting had ceased.
A third provisional regiment of Marines, assembled at Philadelphia, arrived on
May 1 under the command of Colonel Littleton W. T. Waller, who assumed
overall command of the Brigade, by that time numbering some 3,141 officers and
men. By then, the sailors and Marines of the Fleet had returned to their ships
and an Army Brigade had landed. Marines and soldiers continued to garrison the
city until the U.S. withdrawal on November 23, which occurred after
Argentina, Brazil and Chile were able to settle the issues between the two
nations at the Niagara Falls peace conference.
Aftermath U.S. Army Brigadier General Frederick
Funston was placed in control of the administration of the port. Assigned to
his staff as an intelligence officer was a young Captain Douglas MacArthur. While
Huerta and Carranza officially objected to the occupation, neither was able to
oppose it effectively, being more preoccupied by events of the Mexican
Revolution. Huerta was eventually overthrown and Carranza's faction took
power. The occupation, however, brought the two countries to the brink of war
and worsened U.S.-Mexican relations for many years. The ABC Powers held the
Niagara Falls peace conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, on May
20 to avoid an all-out war over this incident. A plan was formed in June for
the US troops to withdraw from Veracruz after General Huerta surrendered the
reins of his government to a new regime and Mexico assured the United States
that it would receive no indemnity for its losses in the recent chaotic events.
Huerta soon afterwards left office and gave his government to Carranza.
Carranza, who was still quite unhappy with US troops occupying Veracruz,
rejected the rest of the agreement. In November 1914, after the Convention of
Aguascalientes ended and Carranza failed to resolve his differences with
revolutionary generals Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, Carranza left office
for a short period and handed control to Eulalio Gutiérrez Ortiz.
During this brief absence from power, however, Carranza still controlled
Veracruz and Tamaulipas. After leaving Mexico City, Carranza fled to the state
of Veracruz, made the city of Cordoba the capital of his regime and agreed to
accept the rest of the terms of Niagara Falls peace plan. The US troops
officially departed on November 23. Despite their previous spat, diplomatic
ties between the US and the Carranza regime greatly extended, following the
departure of US troops from Veracruz, and the two nations were now on friendly
terms. After the fighting ended, Secretary of
the Navy Josephus Daniels ordered that fifty-six Medals of Honor be awarded to
participants in this action, the most for any single action before or since.
This amount was half as many as had been awarded for the Spanish–American War,
and close to half the number that would be awarded during World War I and the
Korean War. A critic claimed that the excess medals were awarded by lot. Major
Smedley Butler, a recipient of one of the nine Medals of Honor awarded to
Marines, later tried to return it, being incensed at this "unutterable foul
perversion of Our Country's greatest gift" and claiming he had done nothing
heroic. The Department of the Navy told him to not only keep it, but wear it.
Lt. Azueta and a Naval Military School cadet, Cadet Midshipman Virgilio Uribe,
who also died during the fighting, are now part of the roll call of honor read
by all branches of the Mexican Armed Forces in all military occasions,
alongside the six Niños Héroes of the Military College who died in defense of
the nation during the Battle of Chapultepec on September 13, 1847. As a
result of the brave defense put up by the Naval School cadets and faculty, it
has now become the Heroic Naval Military School of Mexico in their honor by
virtue of a congressional resolution in 1949.
Political consequences As an immediate reaction to the military
invasion of Veracruz several anti-American revolts broke out in
Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Uruguay. US
citizens were expelled from Mexican territory and they had to be
accommodated in refugee campuses at New Orleans, Texas City, and San Diego. Even
the British government was privately irritated, because they had previously
agreed with Woodrow Wilson that the United States would not invade Mexico
without a previous warning. The military invasion of Veracruz was also a decisive
factor in favor of keeping Mexico neutral in World War I. Mexico refused
to participate with the United States in its military excursion in Europe and
granted full-guarantees to the German companies for keeping their operations
open, especially in Mexico City. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson considered
another military invasion of Veracruz and Tampico in 1917-1918, so as to take
control of Tehuantepec Isthmus and Tampico oil fields, but this time the
new Mexican President Venustiano Carranza gave the order to destroy the
oil fields in case the Marines tried to land there. As a scholar once wrote:
"Carranza may not have fulfilled the social goals of the revolution, but he
kept the gringos out of Mexico City". In Mexico, the intervention "is
immortalized in Mexico's national memory as one of the ugliest deeds ever
inflicted upon the country by its neighbor to the north."
In popular culture Warren Zevon's album Excitable Boy
features a track called "Veracruz" named after this event. It depicts the battle
and chaos for what one may presume was the point of view of a resident of
Veracruz. The last verse, written in Spanish, is the character saying he will
return to Veracruz, destiny has changed his life and in Veracruz he shall die.
1914 Veracruz is also the setting for The Hot Country, a 2012 novel by Robert
Olen Butler. See also
Victoriano Huerta Mexican Revolution
Tampico Affair Theodore C. Lyster, U.S. Army's Chief
Health Officer in the conflict United States involvement in the Mexican
Revolution Footnotes
External links Mitchell Yockelson. "The United States
Armed Forces and the Mexican Punitive Expedition: Part 1". Prologue Magazine
29. Gallery, Daniel V. Eight Bells.
Paperback Library. Sweetman, Jack. The Landing at Veracruz:
1914. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
Veterans Museum & Memorial Center. Veterans Museum & Memorial Center, In
Memoriam, United States Interventions in Mexico, 1914–1917. Retrieved December
28, 2005. President Wilson's Speech in Response to
the Tampico Incident, U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign
Affairs, 1914, pp. 474–476. The Tampico Affair and the Speech from
Woodrow Wilson to the American People – from the PBS Special The Border, about
life on the Mexico–United States border von Feilitzsch, Heribert. Felix A.
Sommerfeld: Spymaster in Mexico, 1908 to 1914. Amissville, Virginia: Henselstone
Verlag LLC. ISBN 9780985031701. Sweetman, Jack. "‘Take Veracruz at
Once’", Naval History Volume 28, Number