MEXICO, PUNITIVE EXPEDITION INTO

MEXICO, PUNITIVE EXPEDITION INTO (1916–1917). On 9 March 1916, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, with 485 men, crossed the Mexican border and raided Columbus, New Mexico, killing eighteen people. The raid was the culmination of a series of border troubles resulting from the Mexican Revolution and possibly from Villa's mistaken belief that President Venustiano Carranza had traded Mexican independence for American military support. In hopes of quelling border unrest and punishing Villa, Brigadier General John J. Pershing was ordered into northern Mexico with a force that eventually numbered over 11,000. Initially, the United States concluded an agreement with Mexico, giving each country the right to cross the boundary in pursuit of bandits. Mexico understood the agreement to take effect in the event of future raids, whereas the United States interpreted it retroactively, to authorize the Pershing expedition. Carranza's government considered the uninvited Pershing force an infringement on its sovereignty, and Mexicans generally were hostile to the expedition. On two occasions American and Mexican troops clashed, and for a time, war seemed imminent. President Woodrow Wilson called out the National Guard of three border states on 9 May and that of the whole United States on 18 June. Negotiations between the governments took place from September 1916 to January 1917 but ended without a settlement. The United States ordered Pershing's force withdrawn in February 1917. Though Pershing never apprehended Villa, whose supporters had dwindled to a small band even before the expedition, the venture provided the U.S. military with training, served as a testing ground for equipment, and vaulted Pershing into his next post as head of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Braddy, Haldeen. Pershing's Mission in Mexico. El Paso: Texas Western College Press, 1966.

Clendenen, Clarence C., The United States and Pancho Villa: A Study in Unconventional Diplomacy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961.

Katz, Friedrich. The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998.

DonaldSmythe/f. b.

See alsoABC Conference ; Mexico, Relations with ; Villa Raid at Columbus .