Don’t cry until you are out of the Wood
Compared to the casualties of the Spanish-American War and the Great War – not counting, however, the victims of the American Flu – the losses in Operation Capstone were severe.
The Mexican guerrillas were intendly not aiming at killing all Americans, but tried wounding as many as possible. A killed soldier is just a dead body, but an injured one ties up his buddies for caretaking and requires a lot of resources, like special transport, drugs, hospitals, a bunch of physicians, nurses, etc. Thus, wounding a soldier puts a far greater stress on the enemy’s system than simply killing him.
Nevertheless, by the end of 1922, after the US forces had taken Mexico City and now controlled all of the area foreseen in the initial invasion plan, the number of soldiers killed in action amounted to 6,560, while more than 27,500 had already had to be evacuated from theatre because of their injuries or malady. At the same time, 738 Americans had died from diseases, 492 from ‘accidents’ and 15 had been shot after court-martial.
As these numbers could not be concealed from public, a certain disenchantment spread – especially with the hard core isolationists, who had been against the Mexican adventure from the start and now went into open opposition.
The US had not arrived in Mexico completely unprepared for setting up a new government. But José Vasconcelos Calderón, the former Minister of Education in the Obregón government, although a renowned writer and philosopher, was hardly someone who could hope to supplant Pancho Villa in the heart of the Mexicans.
Seen as a puppet of the Gringos, which he wasn’t because he had quite original own ideas about Mexico’s future, Vasconcelos never succeeded in gaining public approval. Constantly screened by American security, he and his cabinet remained obscure figures without influence.
If the guerrillas moved like fish in the pond of the people, the obvious answer was to drain the pond. There were two classical concepts how this could be achieved.
The Prussian/German one of 1870/71 and 1914 relied on terror. If one shot a sufficient number of indigenes and laid waste to enough villages and towns, resistance would soon die down because of fear of more reprisals. This had basically worked in France and Belgium, but it had made the Germans the target of a worldwide propaganda campaign painting them as brutes and barbarians.
The second, principally more intelligent, concept was that of the British in the Second Boer War. Crowding the indigenes into camps would also drain the pond of the guerillas without killing too many people. Unfortunately, because of British incompetence, lacking sanitation and health care and failing supply, this method had caused far more fatal casualties with the Boer Population than the beastly behaviour of the Germans in France and Belgium had caused to the Belgians and Frenchmen.
The US were now determined to better the British effort and make the camp system work. They called them ‘Shelter Facilities’ (SF) – carefully trying to avoid all allegation with the infamous British ‘Concentration Camps’.
Run be the American Red Cross (ARC), the facilities were large tent camps of up to 25,000 inhabitants, each family been given an own tent. There would be schools, workshops and hospitals inside the camps – as well as adequate sanitation and sports facilities, camp newspapers, etc.
The inner perimeter would be run by the ARC, the outer – security – perimeter by National Guard units.
What looked good in theory, had some problems in real life.
First of all, the Mexicans didn’t like to be cooped up. It would force them to leave their houses, prevent them from tilling their fields and caring for their animals. The notion that they could be transported quite peacefully into the SFs soon had to be dropped. There was spontaneous fierce and well armed resistance with whole villages in open combat against the oppressors.
Secondly, the capacity to set up SFs was rather limited, if the supply system was to run steadily, the tempo had to be slow, only gradually progressing from north to south and along the littoral.
Thirdly, the capability to keep the Mexicans inside the SFs also proved inadequate. Once arrived, most people did nothing but plot and dapple in escape, leading to many more casualties when the guards used their rifles. But on average, from five Mexicans interned, two escaped again, mainly younger persons.
Needless to mention that the press coverage of the SF system by the Luxemburg/Goldman ODIM painted the US as black beasts and brutes à la outrance.
With escaped internees coming back to their villages, the death toll was rising even further. The US troops were under order to open fire on everyone encountered in the ‘evacuated areas’. Yet, most of their victims were not guerrillas, but ordinary farmers and village men.
Of course, neither Leon Trotsky nor Emma Goldman had been captured when Mexico City was occupied. And there was absolutely no indication that Mexican resistance was going to falter in the near future.
It also was clear that the US did not have sufficient troops to occupy and control all of Mexico.
By New Year’s Eve 1922, the Owen Administration was coming under considerable domestic pressure to either produce a quick success or abandon the Mexican adventure.