Go Not Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy: U.S. Intervention in Mexico

Perhaps no topic in American foreign policy has proven more captivating and yet received more criticism than the nation’s numerous interventions in other countries’ internal affairs. Time and again, the United States has intervened in another country’s domestic concerns in the name of democracy. The Philippines, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Germany, Japan, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Vietnam — all these countries and more have come under some form of American intervention. Certainly the twentieth-century prototype for these policies has been the various interventionist episodes engineered during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1921 — all under the banner of freedom.

John S. D. Eisenhower, son of the former president and author of a recent work on the Mexican War entitled So Far From God, here examines America’s intervention in the Mexican Revolution during the critical years of 1913–1917. Colorful, dynamic, and often cruel people roamed the revolutionary stage in Mexico: the liberal reformer and naive and tragic Francisco Madero; the earthy, drinking, and cunning assassin, Victoriano Huerta; the professorial, bespectacled, and bearded mediocrity, Venustiano Carranza; the daring, sadistic, and yet highly romanticized Robin Hood who stole from (and often killed) the rich (and others as well), Pancho Villa; the cold and humorless land reformer, Emiliano Zapata; and the politically astute, master of organization, Alvaro Obregòn, whose rise to the presidency in late 1920 marked the end of a decade of revolution. Among those Americans attempting to steer Mexican events were the idealistic proponent of republican ideals, President Wilson, and the realistic, somber, and sorrowful leader of the ill-fated “Punitive Expedition,” Gen. John J. Pershing.

Eisenhower’s sprightly account of this defining period in U.S.-Mexican relations is a welcome addition to the growing list of books aimed at the general, literate audience. His penetrating depictions of the people on both sides of the international border will appeal to a wide readership. His incisive descriptions of events and deft character portraits are replete with anecdotes that reveal the human side of this pivotal period. This is a finely crafted narrative, humorous and serious at the right times, and balanced in presentation — in short, a highly readable blend of domestic and foreign history. According to the author, this long period of massive social and political upheaval cost over a million lives but served as a crucible for the birth of a new Mexico, which wrote a new constitution in 1917 and declared itself free from outside exploitation.

Twice in four years, the United States forcefully intervened in Mexico, allegedly seeking to share the freedoms already enjoyed by Americans. According to Eisenhower, the roots of U.S. intervention in Veracruz in 1914, followed by the Pershing expedition’s eleven-month chase of Pancho Villa in 1916–17, lay in a combination of idealistic and realistic considerations by the Wilson administration. Democracy in Mexico and a safer American border in the southwest were the fundamental objectives of the White House. Few leaders in Washington favored a military occupation of Veracruz and a nightmarish trek through hundreds of miles of desert in pursuit of an elusive bandit. Still fewer wanted an all-out war with Mexico. But the president’s best intentions, supported by distorted, exaggerated, and often erroneous firsthand information, combined to make the twin interventionist episodes as close to inevitable as most historians would be willing to accept. Washington’s leaders got swept up in a maelstrom of activity pushing the two nations into a nearly disastrous situation that neither side wanted or expected. Wilson nonetheless considered the Veracruz intervention correct in purpose though admittedly tragic in results since the Mexican people did not recognize the righteousness of his cause and therefore put up stiff resistance. His inability to comprehend the potential for resentment resulting from the intervention becomes clear in his grief-stricken words: “I cannot get it off my heart. It was right. Nothing else...