I've always had an interest in history, in particular military history. The following is a condensed version of a research paper I
wrote on the 1911 battle for the city of Juarez. The campaign won the revolution for Madero.
As the American West disappeared, the El Paso-Juarez area remained wooly with gunslingers and adventurers well into the turn of the century. The last hiccup of "slapping leather" was the Mexican Revolution. It called out and attracted an endlessly fascinating and diverse group of men.
As the American West disappeared, the El Paso-Juarez area remained wooly with gunslingers and adventurers well into the turn of the century. The last hiccup of "slapping leather" was the Mexican Revolution. It called out and attracted an endlessly fascinating and diverse group of men.
The bulk of the research material came from the El Paso Public Library’s Southwest Collection, with the help of the librarian (at the time) Mary Saber. I later used the paper as part of a military professional development talk I gave while I was assigned to Ft. Bliss as a U.S. Army officer.
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| President Diaz in all his splendor |
Prelude to the
Battle: The Context of Why and How.
The battle for the city of Juarez on May 8, 1911 was the successful
culmination of the Madero Revolution; a rebellion against the thirty-year-old
regime of President Porfirio Diaz.
President Diaz had done much for Mexico during the years he held
power. He stabilized the finances of Mexico through the use of foreign capital
and expanded various industries including mining and textiles. He also
constructed the important necessary infrastructure of railroads and telegraph.
But with the good, there were problems. After thirty years,
his regime had grown long in the tooth and had created many domestic enemies.
The wealth of Mexico continued to be held in the hands of a relatively small
number of landowners, and poverty and illiteracy were widespread.
Critics also claimed any vocal dissatisfaction was
suppressed by a “decisive iron hand.”
One such critic was Francisco Madero. Madero was educated at the University of California and came from a
family of wealthy landowners. Their wealth came from land, mines, banks, and miscellaneous holdings. He favored reform, but as a member of the upper class, within boundaries.
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| Francisco Madero |
When President Diaz called for an election in 1910 and
parroted he welcomed political opposition, Francisco Madero (showing incredible naivety) actually took him seriously
and ran against him. Not surprisingly,
Madero only succeeded in being thrown in jail under the charges of “fomenting a
revolt.”
After President Diaz found himself safely re-elected, he
released Madero from prison. Instead of moving on with his life, as Diaz had
probably expected him to do, Madero instantly fled to Texas and proclaimed a
revolution against Diaz.
The revolution took a life of its own, and Madero returned
to Mexico to take command of several newly organized groups that had rebelled
against Diaz. The hodgepodge collection of men consisted of peasants,
criminals, foreign mercenaries and adventure seekers. The fact that this group
of brawny hard-bitten men actually followed the banner of a soft spoken
idealist like Madero was a minor miracle and a historical oddity.
The rebel army formed under Madero was also an interesting
opposite of the federal army against which it fought. Giuseppe Garibaldi, an
Italian mercenary and adventurer who fought for Madero, expressed the
following:
“The rank and file of the federal army was…different from
ours. They were drawn mainly from the peon class in the south, and lacked the
independence and initiative of our mountaineers and plainsmen from the north.
They were accustomed to the authority of the Church and the hacendados on whose
land they worked.”
Garibaldi, the namesake and grandson of the famous
Italian Red-Shirt General Garibaldi, also noted a fatal flaw
in the federal army:
“The federal officers, though ordinarily brave, were
recruited from the wealthy classes and had been given only the most cursory
military training and that not of the sort to help them cope with the problems
of guerrilla warfare. Family influence and political preferment accounted for
their commissions. Being cientificos they felt themselves far above the common
soldier, with the result that they could not hold their men in a crisis.
Neither the officer nor the soldier had confidence in each other.”
It was these two different kinds of men, these two different
types of armies that met at Juarez.
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| Italian Adventurer Garibaldi, 3rd from left. His 1935 autobiography, "A Toast to Rebellion is a good read. |
II. Skirmish at
Bauche: Setting the Stage, and a Bank Robber Redeems himself.
Madero wanted to take Juarez for tactical reasons. He
recognized Juarez was a treasure house in logistics, weapons, ammunition, as
well as an excellent base for operations.
Meanwhile, the federal government found itself spread thin,
and in a difficult situation. Rebels were making gains everywhere, and the
federal government was having difficulty maintaining, much less expanding, the
army it already had in the field. President Diaz decided to concentrate his
northern forces in the city of Chihuahua, not Juarez. He ordered the Eighteen Infantry
Battalion from Casas Grandes, General Rabago from Juarez, and some battery and
cannon from Mexico City to Chihuahua City in order to reinforce it against
rebel attack.
Upon hearing of these orders, Madero’s spies gleefully
rushed the news to their patron. Juarez was now open to attack.
In March of 1911, Madero and Orozco broke camp at Bastillo
and began their movement to Juarez. The plan of movement went as follows. An
advance party under the command of Garibaldi moved out by rail and horse
mounts. The main body of the rebel army would remain under the command of Madero
and Orozco and move out at a tactical speed awaiting the report of the advance
party. The rear column would be followed by a force of seven-hundred men under
the command of Pancho Villa. Villa’s job was to discourage pursuit by federal
forces either force or misleading.
Commanding the advance guard, Garibaldi proceeded along the
Northwestern Railway to Juarez. The advance group consisted of five-hundred men
on train, and five-hundred men on horseback. In addition, the group carried
extra horses for the men riding the train. Under Captain Creighton, an American
mercenary and former bank robber, fifty men on horseback preceded the train by several miles. Captain
Creighton, in turn, was followed by two flanking units.
When nearing Juarez, Garibaldi reversed order and had the
train advance ahead of the mounted troops. At Bauche, a small watering hole
some ten miles south of Juarez, federals under the command of Colonel Tamborel
engaged Garibaldi’s forces with light artillery and what Garibaldi described as
a “strong party” of men. This was at nine a.m. on April 14th. Garibaldi sent
out flanking parties hoping to capture the entire federal force. The federals,
however, held their ground stubbornly, disabled Garibaldi’s train, then
retreated quickly abandoning their dead and wounded. By eleven a.m. the first
clash ended.
By noon, reinforcements for both the rebels and the federals
arrived. At two p.m. rifle fire and federal artillery began again. This time,
it was the federals who launched frontal attacks and rebels who held ground.
An interesting anecdote occurred at this time, which should
be recorded for posterity. During the heaviest part of the fighting, an
American adventure seeker on foot went up to Garibaldi and asked for a rifle so
that he could join the battle on the rebel side. Garibaldi, busy with the
battle, quickly and succinctly told him to grab a rifle from the first dead man
he found. Garibaldi’s words finish the story:
“A few minutes later he returned with both hands smashed by
federal bullets. Many Americans persisted in believing that it was a comic
opera war we were fighting south of the Rio Grande.”
As the federal forces continued their attack, Captain
Creighton noticed a rebel defense line wavering on the crest of a small hill.
Rushing up to steady his men, and refusing to take cover, he stood fully erect
on the crest, “with his poncho blowing in the wind,” and maintained a steady
stream of fire at the federals with his Winchester Rifle. One of the rebels
described him at that moment as a “brave and beautiful sight." He kept
this heroic, if not somewhat foolish, stance until a federal bullet struck his
heart, instantly mortally wounding him. This enraged his men who then sprang up
from the hill and charged the federal troops. Other rebel lines followed their example;
and under charge, the federal troops began a hasty retreat to the Juarez
Garrison. The rebels chased the federal troops to the outskirts of Juarez
before their officers finally brought them back under control. For his military service on this day, Captain Oscar Creighton (real name Oscar Wheelock) was awarded the Legion of Honor by the Mexican Government on November 5, 1951.
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| Captain Creighton, on left. |
After the initial Bauche battle, Garibaldi advanced his
forces to the U.S. border and secured his forces directly across from the El
Paso Smelter and just west of Juarez. He also rushed a report to Madero.
On April eighteenth, Madero’s main army column arrived at
the smelter encampment and immediately began to take positions around Juarez.
Madero formed his headquarters in an adobe hut at Rancho Flores across from the
El Paso Smelter and sent message to General Navarro, the commanding general of
the Juarez Garrison. In the message Madero asked the General to surrender the
city. General Navarro replied via messenger that he was “not authorized to take
such action.”
General Navarro was a crusty old man who had served under
the Benito Juarez Revolutionary Legions against the French puppet dictator
Maximilian. At eighty years of age, General Navarro had the hard determined
character of most senior army officers the world over.
Upon being joined by Villa’s rear guard, and thus completing
his army, Madero wavered. Instead of attacking Juarez as the majority of his
troops wished, he called a five-day armistice on April 24th. Armistice meetings
were held in Madero’s headquarters, an adobe hut which was “jocularly referred
to as the Grey House.”
Madero extended the armistice talks, and his men including
his three main military officers, Orozco, Villa and Garibaldi, grew resentful.
The rebel foot soldiers in particular resented the presence of politicians in
their camp, and the general feeling that ran across the lines was that valuable
time was being lost, thus allowing the federals to better barricade the city.
Amid all this displeasure, an incident made things worse.
Colonel Tamborel, the ranking artillery officer and second in command under
Navarro, voiced his opinion of his recent battle against the rebels at Bauche.
In an open letter to the English language newspaper on Juarez, he accused the
rebels of being cowards.
Upon hearing of this, Villa, Orozco, and Captain Blanco (an
American mercenary) grew furious. They quickly responded with their own letter
to the El Paso Norte Newspaper, the Spanish language newspaper in El Paso.
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| Madero's Advisors at Juarez |
On May 7th, exasperated at last by the lack of progress from
the armistice and perhaps catching the general mood of his men, Madero finally
called an end to the talks. The men rejoiced, believing Madero meant to finally
attack Juarez. They were wrong. Under the urgings of Dr. Vasquez Gomez, one of
his senior political advisors, Madero held off an attack because of fear of
U.S. intervention. Madero knew his army could engage the Juarez Garrison, but
he had no false hopes about his ability to engage the U.S. Cavalry from Fort
Bliss. Nor did he wish to anger the American Administration who he already knew
to be concerned about American holdings in Mexico. Instead he prepared to move
his forces south away from the border.
For his military leaders, the situation had become
intolerable. Unknown to Madero, Orozco, Villa, and Garibaldi plotted to attack
Juarez without his permission. On the night of May 7th, rebel military officers
and sergeants began moving their troops gradually tightening their enclosure of
Juarez. Under the pretext of southern troop movement the next day, the battle
for the City of Juarez would begin.
III. The Battle
Begins.
Madero’s wavering on the obvious made the situation
intolerable for his military commanders. Unknown to Madero- Orozco, Villa, and
Garibaldi plotted to attack Juarez without his permission. On the night of May
7th, rebel military officers and sergeants began moving their troops gradually
tightening their enclosure of Juarez. Under the pretext of southern troop
movement the next day, the battle for the City of Juarez would begin.
The plan of attack consisted as follows.
Garibaldi would attack from the west following the Rio
Grande. He would break through the federal trenches, then meet up with Orozco’s
men at the Customs House. Eventually their combined forces would make contact
with Villa’s troops.
Pancho Villa would attack from the south following the main
road up to the Cathedral in the center of Juarez, and then link up with
Orozco’s men on his right.
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| The infamous Pancho Villa. I think this photo captures his essence better than most. |
Orozco, with the largest body of men, would attack from the
east following the Rio Grande, reach the international bridge, and then push
towards his objective the Plaza de Torros (Bullfight Ring).
The signal for the attack would be the engagement of
Garibaldi’s forces. This was perhaps because Orozco hoped that, once engaged
from the west, federal troops would over defend their western trenches and
leave their eastern defenses in a weakened state for his attack.
Garibaldi, worried about a well fortified machine gun
position in his line of attack, committed an act which no doubt would have
greatly disheartened his conspiracy partners. Disregarding, or perhaps not
fully appreciating the dangers of U.S. intervention, Garibaldi sent a small
number of men across the Rio Grande to the U.S. side. Armed with short
Winchester Carbines, which they had hidden in their trouser legs in order to
avoid U.S. detection, these men were tasked with attacking the federal machine
gun position from the U.S. side (the Rio Grande). This small number of men was
meant to be more of a distraction than an actual attacking force.
The distraction worked. Garibaldi’s men running across the
shallow Rio Grande and firing their Winchesters, caught the machine gun
position by surprise. Turning their fire into the Rio Grande, the machine
gunners left their position open to attack from their gun’s western flank.
Garibaldi’s main force attacked and quickly subdued the position. While taking
the machine gun position, Garibaldi heard firing from a distance indicating the
Orozco and Villa attacks had begun as well.
Although Garibaldi’s force was to initiate the attack, it is
highly doubtful that his group fired the first shots. Pancho Villa’s men had
been especially angered by Colonel Tamborel’s newspaper letter calling them
cowards. Villa, shrewdly for he did not wish to disobey Madero’s orders
directly, sent a trusted sergeant by the name of Salacas Vaca to incite his men
in the trenches by reminding them of Tamborel’s letter. His plan worked.
Once Villa’s men had begun firing into the federal trenches,
Villa called his sergeants together and explained his plan for taking the first
federal trench. Under protective fire from his infantrymen, Villa and his
sergeants ran halfway towards the federal trenches and then threw TNT with
six-second-fuzes. Some TNT charges fell short of their objectives, others long.
Regardless, immediately upon TNT detonation, Villa’s infantry charged the
federal trenches and succeeded in securing them.
Hearing the firing of weapons, and knowing that the city was
under attack from both west and south, Orozco launched a frontal attack on the
weak eastern side of the city.
The first shots were heard at 10:30am on May 8th, 1911; by
10:50am it was a full fledge battle.
Madero fearing U.S. intervention, frantically sent messages
to his military commanders ordering them to call off the attack and restrain
their forces. He also sent a messenger under a white flag of truce to General
Navarro advising him that the attack was “unauthorized,” that he was trying to
restrain his forces, and requesting that General Navarro do the same.
Understandably, all military men concerned ignored his
messages.
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| Rebel Officers, Right to Left- Orozco, Unknown, Villa, Garibaldi |
General Navarro, being an experienced military man, had not
wasted the time granted to him by Madero’s armistice. He had indeed reinforced
the city’s defenses, as the rebel troops had feared he would. Originally, the
city’s defenses had consisted mostly of rough trenches and some barbwire. All
this had changed when General Navarro realized that an attack was imminent.
During the armistice, General Navarro turned the roofs of the more massive city
buildings into machine gun nests with overlapping fields of fire on all major
intersections. Because the city houses were built wall-to-wall, General
Navarro’s defense was described as, “like a ship with plentiful bulkheads.”
The rebels, no fools either, used the fact that the houses
were built wall to wall to their advantage. Upon penetrating the first federal
trenches, they would enter the houses and dynamite the inside connecting walls;
hence, minimizing their exposure to federal fire by boring through the adobe
houses. They would in this manner, dynamite passed federal barricades then
simply attack them from behind.
The boring of the inside walls was no easy task. Too little
dynamite and heavy adobe walls would remain intact. Too much TNT, and the
rebels would blow themselves up in the process or bring the house down upon
themselves. Fortunately the rebels had excellent engineers that did the work
quickly and effectively.
By 3pm, four hours into the battle, rebel forces had
captured the federal front lines defense trenches and had driven the federals
back to their secondary positions. At 4pm, Madero resigned himself to the
situation and committed the rest of his forces. Fighting continued into the
night and by 11pm on May 8th, the rebels had captured four blocks in northern
Juarez. The federals had consolidated their forces and formed a “quadrangle
defense” bounded roughly by the Custom House, the bull ring, the Cathedral, and
the main federal troop barracks.
On the morning of the 9th, the rebel army again prepared for
an all out attack. In El Paso, El Pasoans stood on rooftops and hills to watch
the revolution. A “carnival type” atmosphere prevailed.
As the day progressed, the rebels began consolidating their
positions. The Fort Bliss U.S. Army Cavalry Commander, Colonel Stevens, offered
to let both federal and rebel forces send their seriously wounded to El Paso
for medical attention. Unfortunately, the ferocity of firing gave medical
personnel from both armies as well as the American Red Cross little opportunity
to retrieve and care for the wounded. Many men, who might have otherwise
survived, died from lack of proper medical attention.
American rebel mercenaries led by Orozco succeeded in
capturing the bullring, which turned out to be General Navarro’s Jefatura de
Armas (Headquarter’s Arms Room). After the loss, Colonel Tamborel ran from
federal defense point to defense point trying to re-establish a federal defense
perimeter. Major portions of Juarez were on fire.
Concerned about the deaths of five El Pasoans by stray
bullets and the wounding of fifteen others, El Paso Mayor C.E. Kelley ordered
roofs and buildings cleared of sightseers and established a line in south El
Paso off limits to Americans.
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| El Paso sightseers during the battle. A "carnival atmosphere." |
Colonel Stevens, the U.S. Cavalry Commander, sent warning to
the rebels and threatened to send his troopers across the border if stray
bullets continued to enter El Paso. Concerned about U.S. intervention, the
rebels began an all out push to take the Customs House. The rebels were
fighting with their backs towards the U.S.
and Rio Grande, hence any stray bullets entering El Paso would be from
the federals.
The right flank of the rebels tried unsuccessfully to cut
off communications between various federal defense points and the troops
barracks.
By nightfall of the second day, the Custom House had fallen
and the rebels began concentrating on the Cathedral. At one point the rebels
set a nearby building on fire in a vain attempt to drive the federals out of
the Cathedral. At midnight of the 9th, a three-man rebel commission was sent to
demand the surrender of the Cathedral Plaza. Not surprisingly, General Navarro
refused. He was determined to hold his ground.
IV. Battle’s End.
The morning of the third day, May 10th, was the bloodiest. The central plaza in front of the Cathedral was taken at last by the rebel troops. Federal machine gun nests were turned against their former owners.
At city hall, federal soldiers were barraged by continuous
machine gun fire and point blank cannon fire.
Realizing his men would be defeated in pocket groups,
General Navarro ordered his men to retreat into the federal barracks. The
federal barracks was also the ammunition supply point and had a blocked water
well, from which the General hoped to get some water.
Despite the logical reasons for the order, the retreat was a
disaster for the federal army. Federal troops ran in a panicked, unorganized
manner to the barracks. Rebel sharpshooters shot them as they ran, and most
federal deaths occurred at this time.
During this retreat fiasco, another reckoning of sorts
occurred.
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| Artillery from the time period |
Colonel Tamborel, who had angered the rebel soldiers with
his open letter to the newspaper in which he had called them cowards, was
driven and cut off from his artillery. He made his last stand inside a small
privately owned adobe house. When the rebel troops realized whom they had
trapped inside the house, they brought in rebel artillery and leveled the house
with the officer inside.
Editor Tamborin, the man who published the letter, met a
similar fate along with his print shop.
Despite the inexorable rebel gains everywhere, rebel troop
command and organization remained sloppy. Villa had not followed instructions
to advance on foot occupying houses. Instead, he had tried a mounted attack
only to be met by federal machine gun fire. At no time during the fighting did
Villa’s men form a usable link with the other rebel forces. This was typical of
the hotheaded Villa whose defining characteristics were always impulsiveness
and recklessness.
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| General Navarro's Juarez Troops |
Shortly after twelve noon, General Navarro decided he had
enough; and he sent a white flag of surrender up the federal barrack’s
flagpole. Rebel troops in anger continued firing and cut the flag pole rope
sending the white flag down.
After a short delay, Garibaldi brought rebel troops under
control. At 1:30pm, on May 10th, 1911, Garibaldi sent a hastily written note to
General Navarro. It read, “General Navarro, I am giving you ten minutes to
surrender. G. Garibaldi.” The note was written on the first thing he could
find, grocery store wrapping paper.
General Navarro and his officers walked out unarmed and
formally surrendered to Garibaldi. They were promptly taken back into the
barracks under rebel guard. The rest of the rebel troops began disarming the
remaining federal troops.
Because of disordered troop advance, neither Orozco nor
Villa was present at the surrender. Later this would greatly rankle both
leaders, as they felt it cost them prestige.
The atmosphere immediately after the surrender was ugly and
some of the rebel soldiers wanted to execute federal prisoners on the spot.
Garibaldi quickly posted guards, and sent for Madero.
All around the city, rebel soldiers went around kicking
bodies to determine whether they were dead or not. Some of the dead were
buried, others simply burned.
Madero, after safely securing General Navarro and his staff
in the Jufatura Politica (Political Headquarters), ordered his military
commanders to establish civil control of the city. Orozco and subordinate
officers quickly posted guards at every drinking place and established patrols
at street intersections to prevent looting. The quick establishment of law and
order was praised by Juarez businessmen who had assets to safeguard. One day
after the battle, the international bridge between El Paso and Juarez was
reopened, and curious El Pasoans flocked to Juarez to see the damage first
hand.
V. Post Battle Drama:
Navarro Flees North
On the first night after the battle, a newsman by the name
of Timothy G. Turner heard a drunken group of Orozco’s men yelling, “Moura
Navarro!” (Death to Navarro!)
Mr. Turner wrote, “I figured that to be in at the kill, if
there was to be one, I had better find Navarro first and wait where he was.”
The enterprising young journalist quickly barrowed an
automobile and driver from an El Paso woman and learned where General Navarro
was. He went up to an expensive looking residence on 16th of September Street
(also known as “Mansions Row” in Juarez) and explained to the rebel officer at
the gate what he had heard. The rebel officer quickly went into the residence
and returned with Madero. Madero, upon hearing the journalist’s story, brought
out General Navarro and instructed the journalist and driver to take Navarro to
the Rio Grande and insure his safe crossing to the U.S. side. The battle had
taught Madero that his men were not always controllable, and he wisely feared
for Navarro’s life.
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| Gen. Navarro and his key officers during better days. |
Upon safely crossing into El Paso, General Navarro was
hidden in the Popular Dry Goods Store. From there, he was moved to Hotel Dieu
Hospital and was admitted under an assumed name. Plenty of revolutionaries were
still looking for him.
When Orozco and Villa heard about Madero’s part in allowing
Navarro to escape, they were furious and burst into a meeting of Madero’s
provincial cabinet. After a dressing down by Garibaldi, and a soothing speech
on justice by Madero, both angry men were promoted. Orozco was promoted from
Colonel to Brigadier General, and Villa was promoted from Captain to Colonel.
Madero’s promotions apparently satisfied both men, and they left without
further incident.
A week after the battle, the Treaty of the City of Juarez
was signed in front of the Aduana Building (Customs Building) by the headlights
of a car filled with journalist.
The Treaty of Juarez established the resignation of
President Diaz and his vice president, the interim Presidency of Francisco Leon
de la Barra, a call for general elections, and the disbanding of revolutionary
forces thereby ending hostilities.
Madero had succeeded. He had toppled Diaz.
JP
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| The revolutionaries enter Juarez. The building with the dome on the right is the Custom Building by which the Treaty of Juarez was signed. It still stands today. |
