Pershing’s Mission in Mexico by Haldeen Braddy (review)

306 Western American Literature every advance is limited by a corresponding BUT. . . . Mexico is still a land of fantastic extremes. The well-known Edward H. Spicer in his section on “Ways of Life” makes some interesting observations. The population of Mexico is biologically, basically Indian. Some three million Indians speak forty-five major Indian languages with many dialects. Yet the proportion of mixed-bloods — mestizos or latinos — has been increasing rapidly. Dr. Spicer does not confine the term of mestizo to the biological mixture, but includes all those who identify themselves as non-Indian. A mestizo, whatever his genes, speaks Spanish. He is city-oriented and future-oriented, aggressively ready to promote all changes leading toward a better material life. He contrasts with the passive Indian who is deeply, religiously rooted in the land and the past-oriented harmony between man and the universe. It always boils down to this: a difference between Indian time and modem time considered as a flowing horizontal stream. “One may raise the question,” says Dr. Spicer, “what influence will Indians, increasingly aware of the modern world and not taught to despise their own, have on the course of development of Mexican culture-?” One might desire, after reading this book, a seventh section resolving all these six faces, aspects, or images, into one face, one national persona. But perhaps this is too much to ask from any editor. Mexico is still an enigma. As Gruening quoted Woodrow Wilson: “The Mexican question has never, anywhere been fully stated, so far as I know, and yet it is one which is in need of all the light that can be thrown upon it, and can be intelligently discussed only by those who clearly see all that is involved.” The question poses the future not only of enigmatic Mexico, but of all undeveloped new nations in South America, Africa, and Asia, with their indigenous peoples, historical traditions, and unplumbed resources and hu­ man foibles, facing a new age in a continually shrinking one-world. F r a n k W a t e r s , Taos, New Mexico Pershing’s Mission in Mexico. By Haldeen Braddy. (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1966. xvll— 82 pages, $5.00.) Haldeen Braddy is a no-nonsense researcher. He is no sentimentalist. Yet he comes out of an exhaustive study of Pershing’s mission in Mexico with something akin to a feeling of hero-worship of the man who was to become the Commander of American Expeditionary forces in World War I. One might suspect that Mr. Braddy had been an old professional soldier, but it Reviews 307 is not so. He is an English teacher, and a productive one. His respect for Pershing is quite impressive. One sees in this study many of the qualities in General Pershing which were seasoned by his campaign in Mexico and which, by the very frustra­ tions he had to cope with, helped to prepare him for the responsibilities of the war with Germany. The frustrations were many and various. First was the fact that the Carranza government did not want him and his forces in the country at all and grew increasingly uncooperative and belligerent as the months went by. Second was the problem of supply. From the very outset Pershing was denied the use of the railroad to supply his men, and he had to observe a strict prohibition against entry and use of Mexican towns and settlements for billeting, or even recreation. Third, the terrain was that of northern Chihuahua, rough, hot, and dry, and the roads were primitive and generally totally unimproved. Fourth, the enemy was fighting a guerrilla war on his own ground, and the leader, Pancho Villa, enjoyed the reputa­ tion of a folk-hero among the masses of his countrymen. Braddy’s purpose is to give an accurate report of the course of Pershing’s experiences while pursuing Villa in the state of Chihuahua. To begin with, Braddy sketches the political situation in Mexico in 1915 and early 1916 and portrays briefly the characters of the three individuals who played the leading roles in the course of the Expedition, Francisco Villa, President Carranza, and General Pershing. Then he...