“The United States cherish very sinister designs toward Mexico and desire that a condition of complete anarchy should supervene.” — Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary (December, 1913)

“I am going to teach [Mexico] to elect good men.” — Woodrow Wilson (November, 1913)

Comparing President Woodrow Wilson’s pious pronouncements about Mexico with his related actions and directives stretches the intellect beyond the breaking point. And it helps one to understand the utter exasperation easily perceived in the dispatches and minutes of foreign diplomats (Belgium, England, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and more) who did their best to mediate between the intransigent American president and his Mexican counterpart, who early on offered to resign with minimal conditions but whose offers were rebuffed by the rigid American. An attitude that would be repeated — with catastrophic results — in Versailles only six years later.

As explained in the prior post, Victoriano Huerta assumed the presidency of Mexico on February 19, 1913, pursuant to a 126-0 vote of Mexico’s congress, in accordance with Mexico’s constitution. Less than a month later, on March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as president of the United States.

Wilson despised Huerta — as amply substantiated by contemporary minutes and diaries, let alone actions and directives.

A brief quote by one of his allies, Robert Lansing, who would serve as Wilson’s secretary of state from 1915 to 1920, provides us a good summation of Wilson’s attitude and approach to Mexico and Huerta:

“With him it was a matter of conviction formed without weighing evidence and going through the process of rational deduction …. His judgments were always right in his own mind, because he knew they were right …. He knew it and that was the best reason in the world — no other was necessary.” 

Mr. Lansing’s diplomatic words can be summed up in one: sanctimoniousness. And that translated into desastre for Mexico and her people.

As noted previously, after Francisco Madero’s rebellion against Porfirio Díaz and the latter’s resignation, Mexico descended rapidly into anarchy, a dreadful contrast from the previous 34 years of peace. Huerta, who had served three presidents, including Madero, eventually worked to depose him to prevent further chaos and bloodletting. Wilson refused to recognize Mexico under Huerta and this refusal was blatantly inconsistent with his actions elsewhere in Latin America.

For example, in February, 1914, when a military junta seized power in Peru, the London Times reported, “President Wilson, if he lives up to his declared policy against unconstitutional government, may be unable to recognize the new regime.” However, Wilson recognized it immediately with not even an inquiry as to the prospects for a future move towards democracy.

He also, with a whoop and a holler, recognized China despite its president having murdered a rival.

Impervious to his hypocrisy, he looked kindly upon Peru and China, both of whose leaders had acquired power without even the semblance of constitutionality, while assiduously seeking the overthrow of his southern neighbor. Just how the former differed from the situation in the latter was known only to the president, other than his cryptic reply to a cabinet official who had asked whether the Chinese regime was really democratic: “…. after years of study he had only one final conviction in government, and that was that the same sort of government was not suitable for all nations.” A statement which channelled Huerta and the Mexican government but which Wilson refused to apply to them.

Clearly the president employed a double standard while refusing to heed advice from those who had worked in or with Mexico for many years and who understood the country and its people.

Throughout 1913 and up to July 15, 1914, when Huerta resigned, President Wilson supported Venustiano Carranza and his loudly self-proclaimed “Constitutionalist” rebellion.

In the first place, his rebellion had nothing “constitutionalist” about it. His uprising arose as soon as he saw that Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize Huerta. He proclaimed his “Plan de Guadalupe” signed by his own collaborators and subordinates. This “Plan” proclaimed him “Primer Jefe” [First Chief].

Carranza, like all Jacobins before and since, understood the need to appropriate language. The Jacobins tossed the term “virtue” around more than you could shake a stick at. And they kept proclaiming it from the rooftops even as the blood of thousands of decapitations flowed like rivers throughout France. Their virtue could not be questioned. After all, they said they personified virtue, no?

Likewise, nowhere in Mexico’s constitution would anyone ever see the title “Primer Jefe” nor would anyone ever discern the creation of a government on the basis of a self-proclamation signed by the proclaimer’s underlings. But the “Constitutionalist” term hit the sweet spot and it was all President Wilson needed.

And even after it became clear to any barely objective observer that Carranza’s movement was utterly despotic and terroristic, and that nothing about it was “constitutional”, the United States, directed by President Wilson, continued to aid the “Carrancistas” with materiel and moral support. Like all dictators or would-be dictators, Carranza’s actions were realized by means of arbitrary “decrees” headlined by the phrase, “In virtue of the extraordinary faculties invested in me….” A phrase nowhere countenanced in Mexico’s constitution which he purported to be defending.

Carranza’s uprising and government of areas he subjected — with United States weapons — was scandalously corrupt, as opposed to “constitutional”. His criminal hordes (there is no other way to describe his men based on their actions; to call them “troops” would be an insult to honorable soldiers everywhere) demolished vast swathes of Mexico’s civilizational patrimony. Fields were laid waste and haciendas were sacked and burned; valuable mines and business establishments were destroyed and buried; women and girls and boys were assaulted, violated, tortured, and murdered.

Bridges, works of art, trains and railroads were destroyed; prisoners of war were tortured and murdered in cold blood; civilians were accused of collaboration with the enemy — the “enemy” being the constituted government of Mexico — and were executed after indescribable torture.

And, foreshadowing the horrors that awaited Mexico, nuns and virgins awaiting consecration to the church were violently gang raped, tortured, and cruelly murdered in butchery, debauchery, and sacrilege totally unknown to any level of Mexican society. The “Carrancista” hatred of the faith had never before been seen at such a level in Mexico. Jean Meyer in his work, La Cristiada, succinctly described the Carrancistas’ modus operandi: “….upon entering a village or populated area, they confiscated the keys of the church … they took the church goblets and emptied the consecrated communion bread to the horse stalls….”

One need not be a Roman Catholic to be horrified at the actions of these vicious gangs.

But he kept being identified — even to this day! — as a defender of the constitution. It is dangerous to cede control of language to the enemies of objective truth. Such need to be called out. Not doing so will end in bewailing our silence.

Regardless, Carranza’s actions were supported by the United States government under Woodrow Wilson. He encouraged his administration to ignore the arms blockade when it came to allowing shipments of military hardware and weaponry to the “constitutionalist” while strictly enforcing the blockade against the government. He also fought against Huerta diplomatically. Seeing the futility of obtaining arms from the United States, Huerta began to buy them from Europe, but Wilson ordered the blockage and later the occupation of Veracruz.

Carranza’s allies included Pancho Villa whose cruelties were often seen across the border by horrified Texans and New Mexicans whose protestations to the president fell on deaf ears.

Veracruz remained occupied till the end of 1913 when the American commanders handed the port over to General Cándido Aguilar, a Carrancista. Later, after Pancho Villa and Carranza had a falling out, Wilson blocked any supplies of armaments to Villa, while instructing his agencies to allow shipments to Carranza’s forces.

These and other actions by a United States president explain William F. Buckley, Sr.’s sworn testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee in 1919: “… the abnormal element of the present series of revolutions is the active participation in them by the American Government.”

Space obligates me to pass over much more, including Wilson’s daily nefarious interference with the mediation efforts by diplomats from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to a peace settlement. It got to a point where the three delegations resigned, but were persuaded to return to the table. With hindsight, perhaps they should not have. 

One such outrageous interference was to insist on the participation by Carranza, against all the rules of civilized mediation efforts which forbad one of the parties who continued to rape and pillage and murder while “mediation” took place. The South Americans refused to acquiesce to this outrage, to their eternal credit. However, Wilson’s “personal representative”, John Lind, kept Carranza informed daily and, congruent with Carranza’s instructions, made unreasonable demands on the mediators, who were unaware of the daily backchannel Wilson sustained with Carranza.

In sum, the American president willfully ignored the glaring contradictions between the Carrancistas’ pronouncements and their actions and worked assiduously and, regrettably, successfully to bequeath Mexico to the Carrancistas.

The first major action by Carranza was to dispense with the constitution he had been supposedly defending by calling for an assembly to “reform” it by means of proclaiming a new constitution. The assembly was loudly hailed to be one that would express the “popular sovereignty”. Another sleight of hand with the language. “Popular sovereignty” sounded good to post-French-Revolution ears; however, the reality was quite different. To take perhaps the most egregious, not to mention foreboding, example of actions contradicting words, the fourth article of Carranza’s decree calling for the convention stated that such as “had helped with arms or served by means of public employment in the governments hostile to the constitutionalist cause…” were prohibited from participating.

Therefore, the assembly excluded anyone associated with Huerta, Zapata, Villa, or being suspected of having been — a truly elastic condition — in addition anyone who was in the slightest suspected of professing the Christian faith. 

Put another way, over 90% of the population was excluded from representation. That’s some “popular sovereignty”!

The constitutional assembly was sectarian to the utmost, composed entirely by Carrancistas named directly by Carranza or by his right hand henchman, Álvaro Obregón, but supposedly “elected” in rigged and manipulated elections. This became very clear when it was obvious that, to this day, we still do not have a bonafide number of delegates to the assembly. The number varied day by day.

The spirit that reigned was totally Jacobin, intransigent, and — at the risk of being repetitive — anti-Christian. One of the deputies, José Natividad Macías, synthesized this spirit very well:

“…there is a deep religious sentiment in this people and the customs of a people are not changed from night to day; in order to ensure this people ceases to be Christian, for a people to stop being Christian, for the sentiment that reigns today to disappear, education is necessary and not just an education of one day or two or three; it is not sufficient to have won the revolution; the Mexican people continue to be ignorant, superstitious, and completely attached to her ancient beliefs and her ancient customs, unless we educate them.”

Using another of the Left’s disarming words, education, the delegate’s expressions sound harmless to anyone reading them a century later. However, such words and sentiments led to the horrendous Cristiada.

And those were the beliefs that characterized an assembly purporting to “represent” the Mexican people. Yeah. Right.

Again, space does not permit an analysis of the constitution this rabble drafted. Suffice it to say, such was never submitted to a referendum and her anti-Christian spirit and text are totally contrary to the “sentiments of the nation”.

The constitution is openly authoritarian (it “bestows” rights, for instance) and “anti-Catholic”; however, I would caution my Protestant brethren to not dismiss the latter wording. In Mexico, as in revolutionary France, “anti-Catholic” must be read as “anti-Christian”, for that is what it is. For example, one of the revolutionary leaders, Tomás Garrido Canabal, named his son, Lenin, because he (Lenin) was an enemy of God. He had a farm with a bull named God, a cow named Mary, and a donkey named Christ. Must one be a Roman Catholic to be appalled by such blasphemy?

The Carrancista constitution went into effect in 1917. Mexico now faced an uncertainty and arbitrariness that persisted well into the latter 20th Century and beyond. But, most horribly, a mere decade later, she would face a Cristiada with untold cruelty and bloodletting occasioned by a radically atheistic president determined to “enforce” with the constitution. 

As for Woodrow Wilson, he was re-elected with the slogan, “He kept us out of war!”, meaning war with Mexico.

The only truth in that slogan was that we had not formally or officially declared war on Mexico. However, we plunged that country into a chaos which led to the horrendous bloodletting of the Cristiada. And we ourselves, under Wilson, also went to a war whose aftermath continues with us to this very day.

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), President from 1913 to 1921

Robert Lansing (1864-1928), Secretary of State from 1915 to 1920

One of thousands of decapitations during the French Revolution. They were so “virtuous” that no one dared say otherwise.

Left to right: Venustiano Carranza (1859-1920), Francisco “Pancho” Villa (1878-1923); Francisco Madero (1873-1913); Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919). Each was assassinated.