Border Violence in Revolutionary Mexico, 1910–1920

Abstract

Alan Knight focuses on the relationship between the border and political violence during the Mexican Revolution. Mexico’s civil conflict spilled across the US-Mexico line during the mid-to-late 1910s, as a shift toward irregular warfare in the struggle led to a series of raids and counter raids that culminated in the Plan de San Diego in southern Texas and, more famously, Pancho Villa’s attack on Columbus, New Mexico. From the beginning, Knight argues, the border proved essential to the revolutionary struggle as norteños found themselves in the vanguard of the fight and relied on the advantages their proximity to the international boundary could provide. Being close to the border – and thus far from central Mexico – made it easier for norteños to defy federal authority, and they tapped into a long tradition of norteño military culture that derived, in part, from the long history of violent clashes with Indians along the border. More important, revolutionary norteños could use the border as a line of refuge and safe haven -- much as the Comanches of the mid-nineteenth century had used it – as well as a source for badly needed military supplies that would allow them to continue their fight.