Prelude to the Columbus Raid of 1916: The Battle of Naco

Abstract

Prelude to the Columbus Raid of 1916: The Battle of Naco Heribert von Feilitzsch (bio) When “constitutionalist” revolutionaries ousted the Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta in July 1914, the political situation in Mexico was far from stable. The rivalry between the victorious Mexican rebel commanders Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza coincided with the outbreak of World War I. Because of its oil wealth and proximity to the United States, Mexico became a strategic interest in the war. German agents, most notably Felix A. Sommerfeld, Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller, and Frederico Stallforth, infiltrated the inner circles of the Villa and Carranza factions, as well as the large community of exiled Mexican leaders.1 In the fall and winter of 1914, the imperial German government had not yet decided upon a strategy to use the unsettled political situation in Mexico against the United States. However, as the United States began supplying Germany’s enemies on a massive scale at the beginning of 1915, the German naval intelligence agent Felix Sommerfeld proposed to his German superiors in May to single-handedly create an American military intervention in Mexico.2 Sommerfeld argued that the intervention would cause the American military to consume arms and munitions for its own forces, thus curbing the exploding exportation of military supplies to Germany’s enemies. American military operations along the border with or within Mexico would have also limited the United States to actively participate in the European war on the side of the Allies. Sommerfeld stated to the former German colonial minister turned propaganda chief in Washington, D.C., Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, that he, Sommerfeld, had had the chance to create such an intervention in the winter of 1914–1915, at the height of the border tensions between the U.S. and Mexico at Naco, Arizona.3 The only reason he refrained, declared the agent, was that he was unsure of German intentions. Dernburg wrote to Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, “Felix A. Sommerfeld had misgivings at the time to force an intervention through [End Page 473] General Villa since he did not know the intentions of Germany towards the United States.”4 Historians have indeed overlooked Sommerfeld’s central role in the standoff at Naco.5 He used his connections to the highest echelons of the U.S. government as well as his status as Pancho Villa’s representative in the United States to precipitate the end to the crisis. One year later, between January and June 1916, after the German government had accepted Sommerfeld’s offer to create a U.S. military intervention in Mexico, the German agent used his experience and connections from Naco to the opposite effect, namely to bring the two countries to the brink of war.6 After the ouster of the common enemy Victoriano Huerta in the middle of July 1914, the rivalry between Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza ignited later in the summer of that year.7 The revolutionary factions in Mexico split along several political lines. Pancho Villa, now at the zenith of his power, commanded the largest army of the revolution. Although he personally had no interest in becoming president of Mexico, Villa deeply mistrusted Venustiano Carranza’s commitment to land reform, redistribution of wealth, and constitutional government.8 In 1914, the governor of Sonora, José Maria Maytorena, aligned himself with the fortunes of Pancho Villa against Carranza’s regime.9 The large northern Mexican state played a critical strategic role in the renewed civil war because of the proximity to the United States. Maytorena was less a military man than a cunning political boss.10 After Victoriano Huerta toppled President Francisco Madero in February 1913, Maytorena declared himself against the usurper. He did not await the fate of his colleague in Chihuahua, Governor Abraham González, who was brutally murdered by Huerta’s henchmen. Rather, Maytorena fled to Tucson, Arizona, and from there to Los Angeles. He returned to Sonora in July 1913 and reclaimed the governorship after the forces of Álvaro Obregón liberated Chihuahua from Huertista control. Widely regarded among revolutionaries as a coward, the Sonoran politico now depended largely on the military power of Obregón’s army. Even while in exile the governor only...