Second Mexican American War in 1919

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Carl Schwamberger
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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#31

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 10 Jan 2021, 20:47

& a friend just pointed out the rather obvious. There was a strong anti war sentiment in the US post WWII.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#32

Post by History Learner » 10 Jan 2021, 22:41

Carl Schwamberger wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 17:26
We'd have to find some strong economic incentive for annexation. Note that the oil boom of the 1920s in Mexico was not enough to bring back the US Army. & neither was the nationalization of the profitable Mexican based oil industry. Standard Oil just wrote off the loss. Until the anti foreign & socialist movement gained control the model of nominal independence/economic control worked for US policy in Mexico.
The motive for the 1919 war agitation was based on the threat of the Mexican Government to nationalize the oil industry, with said American owners having back in Congress led by Senator Fall of New Mexico. Later on in the 1930s, they did accept the nationalization, but FDR was President and firmly shut down any effort to oppose such. In general terms, I do agree coming out and just directly annexing Mexico is probably unrealistic, based on what you and others have said. My thinking has thus turned to the U.S. establishing a new Government based on the Commonwealths of Puerto Rico or the Philippines (i.e. a Protectorate).


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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#33

Post by maltesefalcon » 10 Jan 2021, 23:16

Puerto Rico and The Philippines were taken from Spanish occupiers during the Spanish American War and the treaty which ended it.
Neither of these island nations had the wealth nor the military power to stand on their own at the time. If the US did not set up a caretaker arrangement one of the other great powers was bound to get involved somehow.

The same could not be said for Mexico. They were a sovereign nation, and installing a Protectorate regime by force would not be regarded in the same way.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#34

Post by History Learner » 10 Jan 2021, 23:32

maltesefalcon wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:16
Puerto Rico and The Philippines were taken from Spanish occupiers during the Spanish American War and the treaty which ended it.
Neither of these island nations had the wealth nor the military power to stand on their own at the time. If the US did not set up a caretaker arrangement one of the other great powers was bound to get involved somehow.

The same could not be said for Mexico. They were a sovereign nation, and installing a Protectorate regime by force would not be regarded in the same way.
Part of the fear at this time was Mexico going Bolshevik; not the same as a hypothetical Japanese Philippines, say, but equally terrifying and opposed by U.S. political and economic elites for very obvious reasons. That Mexico had just came through a 10 year long Civil War would add precedent to the belief they can't be left to their own devices, in addition to directly fighting the United States in the first place.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#35

Post by maltesefalcon » 11 Jan 2021, 03:54

History Learner wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:32
maltesefalcon wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:16
Puerto Rico and The Philippines were taken from Spanish occupiers during the Spanish American War and the treaty which ended it.
Neither of these island nations had the wealth nor the military power to stand on their own at the time. If the US did not set up a caretaker arrangement one of the other great powers was bound to get involved somehow.

The same could not be said for Mexico. They were a sovereign nation, and installing a Protectorate regime by force would not be regarded in the same way.
Part of the fear at this time was Mexico going Bolshevik; not the same as a hypothetical Japanese Philippines, say, but equally terrifying and opposed by U.S. political and economic elites for very obvious reasons. That Mexico had just came through a 10 year long Civil War would add precedent to the belief they can't be left to their own devices, in addition to directly fighting the United States in the first place.
Per the title, this thread is supposed to be focused on 1919. The Mexican Communist party did not exist until November of that year. I'd like to see a citation that indicates the Communists had enough power to seriously form a government at that time, let alone overthrow the existing one.

For what it's worth the Bolsheviks didn't even have full control of Russia in 1919.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#36

Post by Futurist » 11 Jan 2021, 09:22

History Learner wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:32
maltesefalcon wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:16
Puerto Rico and The Philippines were taken from Spanish occupiers during the Spanish American War and the treaty which ended it.
Neither of these island nations had the wealth nor the military power to stand on their own at the time. If the US did not set up a caretaker arrangement one of the other great powers was bound to get involved somehow.

The same could not be said for Mexico. They were a sovereign nation, and installing a Protectorate regime by force would not be regarded in the same way.
Part of the fear at this time was Mexico going Bolshevik; not the same as a hypothetical Japanese Philippines, say, but equally terrifying and opposed by U.S. political and economic elites for very obvious reasons. That Mexico had just came through a 10 year long Civil War would add precedent to the belief they can't be left to their own devices, in addition to directly fighting the United States in the first place.
When did the US begin exhibiting a fear of a Japanese Philippines?

Also, off-topic, but could you please also take a look at and respond to this thread of mine? :

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=254630

Thank you. :)

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#37

Post by Futurist » 11 Jan 2021, 09:23

maltesefalcon wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 03:54
History Learner wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:32
maltesefalcon wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:16
Puerto Rico and The Philippines were taken from Spanish occupiers during the Spanish American War and the treaty which ended it.
Neither of these island nations had the wealth nor the military power to stand on their own at the time. If the US did not set up a caretaker arrangement one of the other great powers was bound to get involved somehow.

The same could not be said for Mexico. They were a sovereign nation, and installing a Protectorate regime by force would not be regarded in the same way.
Part of the fear at this time was Mexico going Bolshevik; not the same as a hypothetical Japanese Philippines, say, but equally terrifying and opposed by U.S. political and economic elites for very obvious reasons. That Mexico had just came through a 10 year long Civil War would add precedent to the belief they can't be left to their own devices, in addition to directly fighting the United States in the first place.
Per the title, this thread is supposed to be focused on 1919. The Mexican Communist party did not exist until November of that year. I'd like to see a citation that indicates the Communists had enough power to seriously form a government at that time, let alone overthrow the existing one.

For what it's worth the Bolsheviks didn't even have full control of Russia in 1919.
I've heard that the Bolsheviks were only truly secure in the Russian Civil War after their victory at the Battle of Oryol in late 1919.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#38

Post by Futurist » 11 Jan 2021, 09:24

maltesefalcon wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:16
Puerto Rico and The Philippines were taken from Spanish occupiers during the Spanish American War and the treaty which ended it.
Neither of these island nations had the wealth nor the military power to stand on their own at the time. If the US did not set up a caretaker arrangement one of the other great powers was bound to get involved somehow.

The same could not be said for Mexico. They were a sovereign nation, and installing a Protectorate regime by force would not be regarded in the same way.
The US could have formed alliances with Puerto Rico and the Philippines without formally taking them over.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#39

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 11 Jan 2021, 19:49

maltesefalcon wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 03:54
...
Per the title, this thread is supposed to be focused on 1919. The Mexican Communist party did not exist until November of that year. I'd like to see a citation that indicates the Communists had enough power to seriously form a government at that time, let alone overthrow the existing one.

For what it's worth the Bolsheviks didn't even have full control of Russia in 1919.
Politics are as much about perception as reality. The Red Scare was also ramping up in parallel. The US itself had a history of leftist, Socialist, Progressive unrest & the business leaders were a bit sensitive to anything hinting of socialism.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#40

Post by maltesefalcon » 11 Jan 2021, 21:00

Carl Schwamberger wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 19:49
maltesefalcon wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 03:54
...
Per the title, this thread is supposed to be focused on 1919. The Mexican Communist party did not exist until November of that year. I'd like to see a citation that indicates the Communists had enough power to seriously form a government at that time, let alone overthrow the existing one.

For what it's worth the Bolsheviks didn't even have full control of Russia in 1919.
Politics are as much about perception as reality. The Red Scare was also ramping up in parallel. The US itself had a history of leftist, Socialist, Progressive unrest & the business leaders were a bit sensitive to anything hinting of socialism.
I merely asked History Learner to back up this statement with a citation:

"Part of the fear at this time was Mexico going Bolshevik"

Note it says Bolshevik, not socialist. I'm merely asking for a reference that indicates there was a genuine fear (real or perceived) that the Mexican Communist Party was about to take control of the country in 1919. (There may indeed have been greater risk a few years later, but that is not the time period under discussion.)

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#41

Post by maltesefalcon » 11 Jan 2021, 21:11

Futurist wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 09:24
maltesefalcon wrote:
10 Jan 2021, 23:16
Puerto Rico and The Philippines were taken from Spanish occupiers during the Spanish American War and the treaty which ended it.
Neither of these island nations had the wealth nor the military power to stand on their own at the time. If the US did not set up a caretaker arrangement one of the other great powers was bound to get involved somehow.

The same could not be said for Mexico. They were a sovereign nation, and installing a Protectorate regime by force would not be regarded in the same way.
The US could have formed alliances with Puerto Rico and the Philippines without formally taking them over.
Agreed, but alliances only help the aforementioned nations if they are somewhat self-sustaining. Neither of the island nations was in a position to fend for themselves either economically or militarily at the close of the 19th century. If the US was funding the bulk of their economy and either funding or outright providing their armed forces, then they would not be an ally in the true sense of a mutual defense pact .

Colony, dominion, protectorate, occupation, alliance call it what you will.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#42

Post by Futurist » 11 Jan 2021, 21:25

Fair enough, I suppose.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#43

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 12 Jan 2021, 03:15

maltesefalcon wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 21:00
...

I merely asked History Learner to back up this statement with a citation:

"Part of the fear at this time was Mexico going Bolshevik"

Note it says Bolshevik, not socialist. I'm merely asking for a reference that indicates there was a genuine fear (real or perceived) that the Mexican Communist Party was about to take control of the country in 1919. (There may indeed have been greater risk a few years later, but that is not the time period under discussion.)
Not sure what that will prove. The socialist, Communists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, agrarian reformers, Progressives, & what not were conflated in the dialogue of WASP leaders & voters. It was a "Red Scare" & ' Reds' was a catchall term for the devil incarnate & all his demons of that era.

But I agree Mexican Communists were not a priority that year. National Guard regiments with Federal numbers were fighting Reds south of Murmansk, watching Reds riot in Germany from their bridgehead across the Rhine River, playing chicken with Reds along the Siberian railroad. US Marines were standing guard on US interests in China as Reds agitated just down the street in Shanghai, and a couple of nations in the Caribbean. But, no one was actually sending the US Army marching back south into Mexico.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#44

Post by maltesefalcon » 12 Jan 2021, 16:36

Would it be fair to mention that the original purpose of the Allied forces near Murmansk was not to combat the Bolsheviks? In fact it was to prevent a German incursion into Russia in the latter months of 1918.

Of course the whole mission statement was turned upside down due to circumstances occurring in the ensuing months.

As an aside I'm still waiting for History Learner to back up their statement in person. Did a little digging myself and found no reference source to a US government fearful enough of Mexican Bolshevism to justify a war there in 1919.

If such a reference appears I will admit I am wrong and apologize like a gentlemen. Until then I will work under the assumption that the comment was purely speculative.

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Re: Second Mexican American War in 1919

#45

Post by History Learner » 13 Jan 2021, 01:55

maltesefalcon wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 03:54
Per the title, this thread is supposed to be focused on 1919. The Mexican Communist party did not exist until November of that year. I'd like to see a citation that indicates the Communists had enough power to seriously form a government at that time, let alone overthrow the existing one.

For what it's worth the Bolsheviks didn't even have full control of Russia in 1919.
Such wasn't the claim, though, because I was talking about American perceptions and thinking on the ground rather than any realistic prospect of a Communist Mexico. To quote from 1919: William Jenkins, Robert Lansing, and the Mexican Interlude:
To this was added, as 1919 progressed, a growing mass of evidence purporting to show the extent of pro-German sympathy which had
existed in Mexico during the war, as well as the degree to which Bolshevik and anarchist agitators were at that moment using the Republic as a haven from which to spread their revolutionary propaganda throughout the United States.' Although this information was largely disseminated by the notoriously prejudiced Fall Committee, primarily to discredit the Wilson administration, it received wide publicity.

Under these circumstances American attention naturally returned to Mexico at the end of the European conflict. In Paris Woodrow Wilson sought a just peace for Europe; at home the New York Times speculated upon conditions in Mexico and the possibility of intervention now that the war with Germany was over.'" As a result, when Woodrow Wilson returned home from Paris in June, 1919, he found congressional leaders voicing a demand for a "cleaning up" of the Mexican mess. Chief among them was Senator Albert B. Fall, long an advocator of such a policy and known as
"Petroleum Fall" because of his oil interests in Mexico. Also influential was freshman Congressman C. B. Hudspeth of Texas. After an incident in which American troops had been forced to cross from El Paso, Texas, into JuArez, Mexico, in order to protect American lives, he stated:

"Mr. Speaker, the clock has struck the hour, and it has been striking that same hour for eight long years, when this government should say to both Carranza and Villa, "You must keep your unholy hands off our citizens, and if another American life is sacrificed at your hands I will put my armies into your country, and visit upon you the wrath of a long suffering and outraged people."

In conjunction with this attitude, by mid-July of 1919 American troops had been massed along the border 60,000 strong, and a squadron of airplanes and 100 small tanks had been sent to the Southwest to assist in preparing for any event
And from Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican Interventionist Movement of 1919:
IN December 1919 Chairman Henry Cabot Lodge of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations wrote two significant letters defending the members of a controversial subcommittee which had issued a report accusing the Mexican government of circulating Bolshevistic propaganda in the United States. In both letters Lodge especially praised Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, the chairman of the three man subcommittee and the author of a concurrent resolution which had called for the United States to break off diplomatic relations with Mexico Introduced on December 3, during the crisis over the arrest of Consular Agent William 0. Jenkins in Mexico, the Fall resolution died five days later in the Committee on Foreign Relations when President Woodrow Wilson indicated that he would be "gravely concerned" to see any such resolution pass Congress.
Further, from the same:
Financed at a cost of approximately $20,000 a month, mostly contributed by the big oil companies, NAPARIM employed Charles Boynton, a former manager of the Associated Press, as its executive director and established a New York office in the same building which housed the Association of Oil Producers in Mexico.23 With regional offices in Washington, El Paso, and Los Angeles and a mounting membership of over 2,000 by the summer of 1919, NAPARIM published and distributed sensational anti-Carrancista materials which pointed out abuses to Americans in Mexico, underscored disorder and chaos in that country, and branded its government as pro-German and its Constitution as "Bolshevistic." In addition, the Association maintained constant and friendly contact with the state department, encouraged American Legion posts, local chambers of commerce, and other organizations throughout the nation to send resolutions to Congress and to the administration calling for the United States to protect the lives and property of Americans in Mexico. NAPARIM may also have subsidized the outpouring of anti-Carrancista books and articles which inundated the country during 1919.24
Further:
With substantial aid from the Murray Hill group, from NAPARIM, from the Association of Oil Producers in Mexico, and, after the illness of President Wilson, from the state department, the subcommittee settled down during the autumn and winter of 1919 to prepare and publicize its case against the Carranza government. The Murray Hill group coordinated subcommittee activities in New York, maintained contact with Mexican counterrevolutionaries, ran preliminary investigations on witnesses, and handled such confidential information as documents related to the conspiratorial "Plan of San Diego" and to the charges that the Mexican government was spreading Bolshevistic propaganda in the United States.30 NAPARIM supplied witnesses, prepared "disorder" and "murder" maps to be included in the subcommittee's report and released to the press, and employed journalist E. R. Sartwell to prepare press releases about the sensational hearings of the subcommittee.31 The large oil companies, which dominated the Association of Oil Producers in Mexico, worked largely through Walker to advise the subcommittee and to smooth its way so that cooperation would be possible with departments of the executive branch of the government.32 Beginning in October 1919, the state department provided the subcommittee with needed documentary evidence pertaining to certain instances of the Carranza government's hostility toward the United States, to the controversies related to the petroleum situation, and to the Jenkins affair, which nearly became the cause ce'le'bre of a war with Mexico.
Futurist wrote:
11 Jan 2021, 09:22
When did the US begin exhibiting a fear of a Japanese Philippines?

Also, off-topic, but could you please also take a look at and respond to this thread of mine? :

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=254630

Thank you. :)
To that, I have no idea; I was mainly using it as a hypothetical example to the points raised.

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