The Plan de San Diego: Tejano Rebellion, Mexican Intrigue

14. The Bureau Investigates

14The Bureau Investigates As these events were unfolding in the spring of 1916, the Mexican situation was deemed so serious that the bureau chief Bruce Bielaski hurried to San Antonio to coordinate the agency’s operations. Bielaski met with the special agent in charge in San Antonio, Robert Barnes, and with J. B. Rogers, the agent stationed in Brownsville. Bielaski ordered that arrangements be made to broaden the bureau’s intelligence -gathering capabilities and share intelligence with the army’s Southern Department headquarters at San Antonio.1 Accordingly, Agent Rogers dispatched William C. Chamberlain, who had been an important bureau informant in the 1911 Reyes conspiracy , to work under his direction in Brownsville.2 Chamberlain was to investigate whether Mexicans were meeting under the pretense of fraternal lodge meetings and to check on conditions in several small valley towns. Rogers also employed Fred E. Marks of Rio Grande City to work undercover at a salary of three dollars per day and five dollars for expenses when away from Rio Grande City. Marks reported in August that “When I first heard of Luis de la Rosa, it was the time that the First Chief Don Venustiano Carranza and his staff came on a special train to Matamoros and De La Rosa was on the same train and returned on the same train with the party.”3 The Bureau Investigates 157 George R. Head, the captain of the Brownsville National Guard company , made an extended journey in Mexico in April and May 1916.4 Rogers debriefed him on his return to Brownsville. Besides providing information on the Mexican Army’s dispositions, Head said that on March 8 he’d gone to Tampico, where General Emiliano Nafarrate was in command and had the city under very good control. Luis de la Rosa was in Tampico while Head was there. On April 13, Head left Tampico for Mexico City via San Luis Potosí in company with Colonel Esteban Fierros, “who has been appointed General Superintendent of the Constitutionalist Railroads of Mexico. We were traveling by special train.” Head painted a dismal picture of conditions in Mexico, not just on the railroads, which were in terrible shape and subject to frequent bandit attacks, but starvation and typhus were ravaging the population. Head was in Mexico City for about two weeks and saw Carranza several times. He was in Veracruz on April 29 and back in Tampico on May 1.5 And on May 4, a well-educated German, a certain W. H. Young, arrived in Brownsville from Tampico and immediately went to Colonel H. P. Blocksom with information about the rumored plan to invade Texas. He said that a large number of Carranza officers were in the plot and that they would repudiate Carranza unless the Punitive Expedition were soon withdrawn. According to Young, one of the plotters’ objects was to lure American troops away from Brownsville so they could loot and burn the town. In Kingsville there was a secret lodge of Mexicans, and several railroad employees planned to blow up the roundhouse there. Colonel Blocksom stated that “Mr. Rogers, Department of Justice, believes a large part of our informant’s statements are true. Mr. Rogers knows a good deal about the Tampico country.”6 Another bureau informant, José García, the businessman from Monterrey who had been a confidential informant of Agent Rogers, arrived in Brownsville on May 19, having been sent by Randolph Robertson, American vice consul in Monterrey. This was a delicate matter, for as the chief of the bureau noted, “Consul Garrett of Nuevo Laredo is characterized by our agents in Texas as the most indiscreet person imaginable and utterly unfit for this reason for the position which he holds. It is stated that he devotes nearly all of his time to drinking and talking. Recently when arrangements were made for Vice Consul Rob- 158 The Bureau Investigates ertson and one or two men from Mexico to meet agents of the Department at Laredo, Garrett apparently told everybody in the two towns of the proposed meeting.”7 Because of Garrett’s indiscretion, Robertson was confidentially directed to report to Consul Johnson in Matamoros, who was to instruct him to telegraph to the State Department any information he had concerning the Mexican situation.8 Informant García said he associated with the group planning to invade Texas and had recently talked with Luis de la Rosa himself. De la...