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11 Surveillance on the Border American Intelligence and the Tejano Community during World War I José A. Ramírez ON MARCH 3, 1917, two days after word reached the press of the British government ’s interception and decoding of the soon-to-be infamous “Zimmermann note,” the NewYorkTimes hailed Mexico’s apparent rejection of German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann’s proposal for an anti-American alliance. Nevertheless, it warned its readers, their southern neighbor and its president, Venustiano Carranza, “will still bear watching from this side of the border.”1 Owing to reports of a considerable German presence in Mexico, attitudes of this sort, along with suspicions of Mexican intrigue, persisted throughout the World War I era in the United States.2 As wartime fears of enemy spies and saboteurs undermining the war effort gripped the public, American intelligence not only conducted operations in Mexico but also kept close track of Mexicans and Mexican Americans domestically. Even as thousands of its sons were serving in uniform, the Tejano community found itself a prime target for surveillance because of its proximity to the US-Mexico border and the pervasive unease with all things Mexican.3 In Texas as in many other parts of the country, concerns over the possibility of German-Mexican collusion often bordered on hysteria. Throughout the war, intelligence agencies received countless tips implicating Mexican-origin individuals in nefarious activity of one form or another. To say that many of these leads—particularly those alleging the most serious crimes—were fruitless would be an understatement. The isolated cases of disloyalty that emanated from the barrios, though, were more than enough to validate the anxieties of the most fretful citizens and public officials. Inevitably, the unique relationship between Mexico and the United States during the war ensured that these cases would receive extra attention from American intelligence.4 228 José A. Ramírez To be sure, the concern of Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s administration with foreign subversives was not unfounded. Germany had targeted the United States in several of its plots since the eruption of hostilities in Europe. To hinder the flow of matériel to the Allies, German agents had in July 1916 bombed the Erie Railroad docks in New Jersey, destroying thirty-four boxcars loaded with ammunition. They had also set ablaze the Kingsland munitions factory near New York Harbor several months later. These efforts, however, were sometimes downright clumsy. In one case a German consul carelessly misplaced a briefcase containing compromising evidence of espionage on a Third Avenue elevated train in New York City. Despite its success elsewhere, German intrigue in the United States, in the words of historians D. Clayton James and Anne Sharp Wells, was “[m]ore annoying than substantial.”5 As the Zimmermann affair made clear, it also to a large extent involved Mexico, whose president welcomed a German alliance to counter US aggression. Always looking to obstruct the shipment of American manpower and supplies to Europe, the kaiser’s government coveted Mexico as a base from which to wage a campaign of espionage and sabotage against the United States. Germany also hoped to produce a second Mexican-American war by fomenting anti-Americanism among the country’s various revolutionary factions and coordinating armed provocations and raids along the border. Fortunately for them, Gen. John J. Pershing’s Punitive Expedition against Revolutionary general Francisco “Pancho” Villa had quickly taken on the look of a US invasion of Mexico, making an anxious Carranza more receptive to overtures from their country, from which the so-called “First Chief” hoped to obtain financial and military aid in case of war. With the Mexican president suddenly more amenable to its needs, the German secret service in 1917 moved its headquarters to Mexico and launched a series of covert activities against the United States.6 The American government took countermeasures against this threat south of the border, albeit with mixed results. Under the direction of the military attaché, five different US secret services—the State Department, the army, the navy, the Department of the Treasury, and the Justice Department—conducted intelligence activities in Mexico. With the assistance of French and especially British intelligence , American officials were able to learn the identity and movements of most of the German agents, in large part due to Britain’s interception of several telegrams and the joint Allied effort at deciphering German secret codes. The Americans also attempted to dislodge German businesses from Mexico, a less productive endeavor impeded not only by the...

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