Niagara Falls Conference

Niagara Falls Conference, meeting convened May to July 1914 in Niagara Falls, Canada, after the U.S. seizure of Veracruz, Mexico, in April 1914. The conference was initiated by the government in Washington, D.C., and representatives of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, who offered to mediate the U.S.-Mexico dispute. While the mediators wished to confine the agenda to this dispute, Woodrow Wilson's administration insisted on including Mexican internal affairs.

The United States sought to use the conference to negotiate the removal of General Victoriano Huerta from power and the transfer of government control to the revolutionary forces under Venustiano Carranza. After initially seeking to confine the issue to the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Huerta offered to resign in favor of a compromise candidate if the United States pledged to support the resulting government against the Carrancistas. Carranza refused to participate, rejecting the call for an armistice, denying the legitimacy of the sessions, and sending envoys to confer only with the U.S. representatives.

The sessions produced a protracted stalemate, yielding little more than a formal armistice between the United States and the Mexican government.

See alsoHuerta, Victoriano; Wilson, Woodrow.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kenneth J. Grieb, The United States and Huerta (1969); and "The A.B.C. Mediation Conference at Niagara Falls, Ontario, in 1914," in Niagara Frontier 16, no. 2 (1969): 42-54.

Additional Bibliography

Eisenhower, John S. D. Intervention!: The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913–1917. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.

Suárez Argüello, Ana Rosa. Pragmatismo y principios: La relación conflictiva entre México y Estados Unidos, 1810–1942. México, D.F.: Instituto Mora, 1998.

                                                    Kenneth J. Grieb