The General and the Jaguar (33 page)

Several hours later, Obregón, now known throughout Mexico as
el manco de Celaya
—the one-armed man of Celaya—appeared on the platform, freshly shaved, wearing a dark gray uniform buttoned up to his chin
and a gold fountain pen in his pocket. Surrounded by his aides and his personal bodyguard, who wore red bands on their sombreros
and trim gray uniforms made in New Jersey, he strolled over to the customhouse and waited for General Scott and General Funston,
who were to pay him a courtesy visit.

As the two cars bearing the U.S. generals rolled over the international bridge and toward the customhouse, Mexican troops
stood at attention and trumpets and drums were played. The visit was strictly social in nature and one of the first things
that Funston did was express condolences to Obregón for the loss of his right arm. Obregón smiled graciously, looking every
part the war hero, and said that at least he hadn’t lost the rest of his body.

The following morning, the Mexican general returned the courtesy call at Scott’s private railroad car in El Paso. Accompanying
him were General Plutarco Elías Calles, the governor-general of Sonora, who had defeated Villa at Agua Prieta; General Gabriel
Gavira, who commanded the Juárez garrison and had warned Pershing of Villa’s approach to the border; and Consul Andrés García,
the amiable civilian, who acted as interpreter and master of ceremonies.

Now it was the U.S. troops who were lined up smartly along both sides of the street. Obregón was saluted with a volley of
nineteen guns and several bands played “The Imperial Potentate” march. As soon as the automobiles crossed the international
line, the bands switched to the popular march “Under the Double Eagle.”

Obregón stepped from his automobile and began walking toward the railroad car where General Scott awaited him. He swung up
onto the platform using his good arm. He extended his left hand sideways from his body and General Scott clasped it with his
right hand, which itself had been crippled from an old bullet wound.

Scott and Funston had been given detailed instructions from the War Department on how to handle the negotiations. They were
to open the discussion by emphasizing that the expedition’s presence in Mexico was for the sole purpose of “removing a menace
to the common security and the friendly relations” of both countries. Then the two generals were to suggest to Obregón that
their armies work cooperatively to capture Villa, with the Carrancistas driving Villa’s band north into the arms of the U.S.
troops. “The government of the United States has no pride involved in who makes the capture, and its only interest is that
it should be done expeditiously so that American troops can be withdrawn and the peace of the borders assured.”

The War Department emphasized that under no circumstances were Scott and Funston to address the question of the withdrawal
of U.S. troops. If Obregón broached the issue, they were merely to say that any withdrawal of troops was a diplomatic matter.
The two generals were also to make clear to Obregón that “so long as the possibility of further depredations by Villa exists
the withdrawal of American troops would increase the danger and in any event be very difficult.”

At the insistence of the Mexican government, the first official negotiating session was held at five o’clock on April 29 in
the green room of the Juárez customhouse. The two U.S. generals took a seat below a painting of Benito Juárez, Mexico’s liberator.
Outside, a throng of reporters gathered, trying to discern through the windows what was being said. One of the windows had
a “very clean cut” bullet hole. Several bands played and the crowd listened appreciatively. “The music was psychological,”
a reporter wrote. “It was sweet and sensuous and disconcerting to ill feelings and hostilities. The spell of Mexico settled
down upon the group. Who could quarrel with ‘Samson and Delilah’ ringing in their ears and the melodic folk songs of the Mexican
people?”

But a quarrel did occur, almost immediately, when Scott and Funston brought up the problem of supplying their troops and pressed
Obregón for use of the railways. Obregón, working from an entirely different script, politely turned aside the request and
demanded the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. troops. He maintained that Villa was dead, or had been rendered innocuous, and
his troops also killed or scattered. “There is no one to seek for now,” he said, adding that the presence of U.S. soldiers
was only making his job more difficult. As the meeting wore on, the reporters peering through the windows noticed Funston
gesticulating in an excited manner. With a deadlock imminent, the Americans ended the conference. The meeting had lasted two
hours.

Afterward, Obregón talked with journalists, tapping his foot impatiently during the question-and-answer session and dodging
questions about the purpose of the conference. When asked if his troops could capture Villa, he responded, “It is not a question
of troops. Now it is only a question of a hunt, not a campaign. There is no need for a great column of troops to catch a single
man.”

The negotiations might have ended there, but a mutual friend arranged a second meeting between General Obregón and General
Scott at the Paso del Norte Hotel. (Funston was not present, Scott later wrote, because “he allowed his real sentiments to
be expressed so brusquely that he lost his influences in those conferences, and he thought it best for him not to attend anymore.”)

The Paso del Norte Hotel was the city’s pride and joy. Fake marble, which could be manufactured in any color of the rainbow,
had just come into use and the hotel’s builders had taken full advantage of the technological breakthrough. The dome in the
lobby was “turquoise blue,” the pillars were “rice-field green,” the walls “ox-blood red” and the “yellow found in underdone
boiled eggs,” and the whole mess trimmed in “delicate French mochas and ‘Ladies Home Journal’ frosting,” wrote James Hopper
of
Collier’s.

In order to evade reporters, Scott strolled uptown, occasionally stopping to purchase small items. When he was certain he
was no longer being followed, he hailed a laundry wagon and asked to be dropped off at the service entrance of the hotel,
where he took the elevator up to the eighth floor. Somehow, though, he wound up in the wrong corridor. “A Hearst correspondent,
coming out of his room unaware of my presence, spied me and called out, ‘I got you!’” In just a few minutes, twenty-seven
reporters were standing outside the room where he was to meet Obregón. Scott ducked inside and slammed the door. Wrote the
El Paso Herald,
“The closing of that door at the ‘mystery room’ started the longest diplomatic session and the longest drawn out siege of
newspaper men since Francisco Madero received the peace envoys from Mexico City in the little ‘casa blanca’ across the river
from the smelter.”

Scott was determined to get Obregón to sign an agreement that would allow Pershing to stay in Mexico “without his being assaulted
by the Mexicans” for as long as President Wilson wanted. The two generals talked nonstop, pausing only long enough to devour
sandwiches at 2:00 p.m. and steaks and salads at dinner. Hotel employees carried up pitchers of ice water and pots of strong
coffee. In the hallway, the reporters waited, pitching pennies and shooting craps with the house detective. When one of the
generals would go to the door to clear his head or receive telegrams, the reporters would leap up from their gambling games
and ask for news. Downstairs, a bellboy walked through the fake-marble lobby carrying a silver tray in his hand and shouting
at the top of his lungs, “Francisco Villa! Francisco Villa! Call for Mr. Villa.” After he had paged the grill, the smoking
room, and the dining room, someone told him to go up to room 828 and ask for General Obregón, who might be able to shed some
light on the whereabouts of the rebel leader.

Behind the closed doors, documents were drawn up in English and Spanish, argued over, changed, and rewritten. At 12:30 a.m.,
after twelve solid hours of “mental struggle,” the two generals arrived at an agreement. Only one page and eight paragraphs
long, the document acknowledged that Villa and his band had been destroyed or dispersed. That said, the de facto government
promised to aggressively patrol the border, and in exchange, the U.S. agreed to pull back its troops “commencing the withdrawal
immediately.” Although the Mexicans still refused to allow U.S. troops to use their railways, Obregón nevertheless promised
Scott that his Mexican troops would not “molest” the U.S. soldiers while they remained in Mexico. “So, instead of ending up
with a clash,” Scott wrote in a letter to a friend, “we are on better terms now that we have been since the Columbus raid.”

Scott told Newton Baker that the conference was “not equaled by any similar struggle with the wildest and most exasperated
Indian heretofore encountered.” In a letter to a colleague, he added, “I could not afford to let him get away from me without
signing my papers because he would fall into the hands of a very hostile Mexican sentiment and I would lose everything I had
gained. I do not know how I held him, for if he had said he was tired and wanted to go home and go to bed I could not have
held him, but somehow or other I managed to keep him and he finally signed the papers.”

The two men opened the door and walked down to their parked cars on San Antonio Street. The moving-picture operators lit their
torches, illuminating the street in a ghostly splendor. “General Obregón,” wrote one reporter, “sat in his big automobile
like a fighter under fire. The brilliant light gave his olive skin a ghastly look and brought out his finely chiseled profile.”
Obregón allowed the movie men to take their pictures, then he gave a sharp order to his driver, slouched behind the wheel
in a cape coat, and the car leaped forward into the darkness.

Scott, red eyed and drained, returned to his railroad car, where a stack of messages from the War Department awaited him.
He sank into his chair and began to read. “I had not known how intense my concentration had been until it was over and I began
to relax, to find that every muscle was taut, my fingers clenched and my teeth likewise. Both hands and jaws ached with the
intensity of the effort.”

But Scott’s effort turned out to be futile. The United States approved the agreement on May 4, 1916, but the de facto Mexican
government did not. Carranza continued to insist that the U.S. troops withdraw immediately or face the military consequences.
A memo, which had been intercepted by U.S. officials, suggested that he meant it: “Dispose your troops that they shall be
in a position to cut off American expeditionary forces now in Chihuahua. The action must be sudden and will take place after
the Scott-Obregón conference. It will make no difference what else may be decided upon in conference unless there is absolute
withdrawal of American troops the above plans will be carried out. The Sonora troops will be assisted by troops in Chihuahua.”

Funston, in a defensive mode now, ordered Pershing to withdraw north to Colonia Dublán. Pershing balked, saying he would no
longer be able to supply the troops hunting Pancho Villa and that such a withdrawal would result in a “serious loss of American
prestige.”

Two days later, on May 5, a group of Mexican raiders crossed the border and attacked two tiny settlements in the Big Bend
area of Texas. Three troopers and a seven-year-old boy were killed at Glenn Spring and six hostages were taken at Boquillas.
A smaller version of the Punitive Expedition was hastily organized and spent two weeks in Mexico hunting the marauders. Convinced
now that Carranza was dealing with them in bad faith, President Wilson called up the National Guard troops in Texas, Arizona,
and New Mexico and ordered them to the border. In response to the events, Funston dictated a forceful memo to Pershing:

War with de facto government almost inevitable. You are liable to be attacked at any time by large force reaching Chihuahua
by train from central Mexico as well as by Sonora troops. Your line is too long and troops scattered too much. For a time
we cannot support you. Fall back along your line of communications with view to general concentration of entire force at Colonia
Dublán. Such action imperative. No question of prestige can be entertained as military considerations must govern. If attacked
do not allow any preliminary success to induce you to advance too far as danger meeting overwhelming force and having your
line of communications cut is too great. Acknowledge and report daily.

On May 19, Funston telegrammed him again, warning of the anti-American sentiment and the heavy movement of troops north “for
ostensible purpose of suppressing bandits but movements suspiciously large for needs.” He continued, “If any part of your
forces is attacked by an organized body of de facto government troops you will attempt to destroy all of their forces within
reach taking care not to become too deeply involved or exposing your line of communications. . . . In case of such attack
on you rush information to me without waiting to give details as it is essential that we learn of it before Mexicans.”

Carranza’s generals were daily becoming more bellicose. General Luis Herrera in Parral stated publicly that he would begin
attacking Americans still in the country on June 1. And General José Cavazos, who had shared his whiskey with Major Tompkins,
had verbally abused the expedition’s civilian scouts and ordered his men to fire on any American soldiers they saw. Funston
urged Pershing to avoid anything that would bring the two sides into conflict. “You are instructed to act conservatively.”

Seething, Pershing nevertheless obeyed orders. Penned up in northern Chihuahua, he suffered alongside his troops through the
sandstorms, the growing heat, the flies, the boredom. “We have been very idle,” George Patton confided in a sad letter to
his father. “It is most tiresome sitting out on a bluff over a river in the sun and dust. We can’t go to town because they
shoot at us now and then and the gen. does not want to start something unless he can finish it.”