The General and the Jaguar (5 page)

He seldom spoke, and his face was always expressionless, with thin lips tightly drawn together, and his cold, black penetrating
eyes looking straight ahead. He was said to have an indomitable will, great strength, fixity of resolve, absolute ignorance
of fear and utter mercilessness. There was always the same look in his face, whether he was watching his fighting cocks, himself
facing death on the battle line, in the Hall of Congress, or at the El Globo tea rooms in Mexico City, where he was wont to
drink large quantities of cognac, during his social talks with members of his Cabinet, who, however, always drank tea.

Madero had an uneasy relationship with Huerta and twice had him removed from command positions. But on Sunday, February 9,
1913, when several army generals launched a coup in Mexico City, he accepted Huerta’s help in putting down the rebellion.
Thus the inexperienced and naive president unwittingly delivered himself and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez, into
the arms of their executioner. During this period, known as the
Decena Trágica,
or Tragic Ten Days, the avenues of Mexico City grew thick with dust and smoke as a rebel army led by dissident generals fought
Huerta’s troops. Newspapers closed their doors as artillery fire destroyed the beautiful turn-of-the century buildings and
elegant homes. Trolleys and buses ground to a halt, mobs roamed the city. Soon the air filled with the stench of decaying
human corpses and the bloating bodies of horses caught in the cross fire.

During an apparent lull in the artillery attacks, two U.S. citizens, Josephine Griffith and Minnie Holmes, who lived in a
boardinghouse on Calle Ayuntamiento, crept upstairs from the basement to make lunch. “My mother had just entered the kitchen
where there was a horrible explosion in front of us, not more than twenty feet from where we sat,” remembered Josephine’s
son, Percy Griffith. His mother’s left leg had been so shattered by the blast that her clothing was littered with small pieces
of bone. When she awoke, her son gave her sips of whiskey to blunt her pain and then ran out into the street to look for a
doctor. Eventually he was able to locate members of the Red Cross, who put the woman on a stretcher and made their way through
the streets to a hospital, their white flag ignored as artillery shells exploded around them. When they reached the hospital,
they learned no doctor was available. “We waited for probably half an hour when several men finally volunteered to search
for a doctor. They brought in a Mexican doctor. I asked him immediately to amputate the leg if that would help save my mother’s
life. He said he would amputate the leg if it were possible, but that lack of proper assistance would make the task difficult
and dangerous as well. My mother called to me several times in moments of consciousness, each time asking me to kill her.”
Mrs. Griffith survived the amputation only to go into heart failure soon afterward and die about four o’clock that afternoon.
When Percy returned to the boardinghouse, he was told the other woman had died, too.

Ambassador Wilson, in a state of high excitement over the bloodshed, asked President William Howard Taft for the authority
to help negotiate a peace between the warring factions. Taft refused, unwilling to intervene in Mexico’s internal affairs.
Still not content to sit on the sidelines, the American ambassador then urged the ministers of Great Britain, Germany, and
Spain to request Madero’s resignation. “Mr. Wilson, nervous, pale, and with exotic gestures, told us for the hundredth time
that Madero was crazy, a fool, a lunatic who could and should be declared incompetent to sit in office. This situation in
the capital is intolerable. ‘I will put in order [
sic
],’ he told us, hitting the table,” the Spanish minister said.

Huerta was eager to see Madero’s government fall and his purported defense of the capital was merely an effort to maintain
the status quo while pressure built for Madero’s resignation. Madero’s brother, Gustavo, increasingly convinced of Huerta’s
malevolent intentions, arrested him at gunpoint on February 17. Madero had Huerta brought before him and questioned him closely.
After Huerta convinced him of his loyalty, Madero gave the general back his gun and chastised his brother for his impulsive
behavior.

But Gustavo, who would be savagely murdered, was correct in his suspicions; a mere twenty-four hours later, Madero and his
vice president were arrested. The little president took the detention in stride but Pino Suárez was bewildered and hurt. Once
in custody, they agreed to resign under protest—
“Protestamos lo necesario”
—after their military captors promised that they and their families would be allowed to leave the country. The promise of
safe passage was also extended to Felipe Ángeles, an army general who had refused to support the coup and was arrested at
the same time as Madero and his vice president. The resignations led to a swift series of events that culminated with Huerta
being sworn in as the provisional president. Ambassador Wilson, by all accounts a coconspirator in the coup, sent a telegram
to Washington, exulting, “A wicked despotism has fallen.”

On the evening of February 22, 1913, while Huerta was drinking with his cronies, the two deposed leaders were taken under
guard from the National Palace and driven in separate cars to the penitentiary. The vehicles halted and a harsh voice cursed
Madero and ordered him from the car. A bullet was fired into the back of his neck and he fell dead to the sidewalk. His vice
president, who had an extra moment or two to consider his fate, was dispatched with the same efficiency. The bodies were wrapped
in rough gray serapes and taken inside and the two cars were riddled with bullets. Huerta then proclaimed to the world that
the two men were killed while allegedly trying to escape, a type of political assassination that was prevalent in the Díaz
era and known as the
ley fuga,
or literally, the fugitive law. Several days later, Abraham González, just appointed governor of Chihuahua, was also murdered.
The man he had recruited, Pancho Villa, remained at large.

With the assassination of Francisco Madero, the first, relatively bloodless phase of the revolution was over. Mexico was now
poised to embark on a second phase that would be longer and much more violent.

V
ICTORIANO
H
UERTA
often studied the newspaper photos of President Wilson while nursing a brandy at one of Mexico City’s bustling
cafés. With his gray hair, colorless skin, and long coat flapping over his knees, the American president seemed to personify
wintry El Norte. Huerta had dubbed Wilson the “Puritan of the North,” a nickname that captured the physical appearance of
the newly inaugurated president, as well as something of his zealous character and religious background. (Wilson’s father
had, in fact, been a Presbyterian minister in Augusta, Georgia, during the Civil War.) Soon the Mexico City newspapers embellished
upon the nickname, referring to Wilson as the “Wicked Puritan with Sorry Horse Teeth.” The sobriquet was no more complimentary
in the Spanish.

Wilson was sworn into office two weeks after Francisco Madero and his vice president were murdered and was deeply affected
by the assassinations. In Madero, he saw a like-minded reformer and detested Huerta for his alleged role in the killings.
Still, Wilson was not blind to the usurper’s cunning charm and at times confessed to having a grudging admiration for him.
“Our friend Huerta is a diverting brute! He is always so perfectly in character; so false, so sly, so full of bravado (the
bravado of ignorance, chiefly) and yet so courageous, too, and determined—such a mixture of weak and strong, of ridiculous
and respectable! One moment you long for his blood, and the next you find yourself entertaining a sneaking admiration for
his nerve. He will not let go till he pulls the whole house down with him. . . . What an indomitable fighter he is for his
own hand!”

Wilson was determined to help the Mexican people rid themselves of the new despot and stubbornly refused to recognize Huerta
as the president of Mexico. “I will not recognize a government of butchers,” he fumed. Sixteen nations had done otherwise,
including Great Britain, whose Royal Navy was receiving most of its oil from Mexico. Numerous business leaders in the United
States, who had substantial investments in Mexico, were also in favor of recognizing Huerta’s government, as was Ambassador
Wilson, who sent harried telegrams to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and to President Wilson, outlining all the
reasons why Huerta should be recognized. “By hesitating too long,” he wrote, “we might contribute to the weakening and possible
demolition of the present Government and re-invoke movements of disorder and anarchy.” The U.S. president believed the ambassador
had played an “evil part” in the assassination, and within a few short months he was recalled from his post.

Absent the diplomat, the relations between the Mexican government and the United States devolved to the chargé d’affaires
at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and presidential representatives. By now—superficially at least—Huerta had succeeded in
remaking himself as a gentleman. He wore a frock coat, top hat, and spectacles thick as aquarium glass behind which his two
eyes swam warily. He was married to a handsome, graceful woman, doted on his eleven children, and gave oddly appealing speeches:
“Yo soy indio”
—“I am an Indian,” he declared to a group of Englishmen. “My people are young compared to your Anglo-Saxon race, but in our
veins there are the same red corpuscles as in yours.” In another speech, he asserted that Theodore Roosevelt was “the Zapata”
of the United States.

Huerta preferred his small bungalow to the marble and tapestried salons of the National Palace and frequently conducted the
affairs of state from the backseat of his automobile or a table at the Café Colon. Breakfast often consisted of a raw egg
and a glass of claret followed by a shot of brandy. Mexico City’s urbane diplomats joked that the only “foreigners” Huerta
really valued were Hennessy and Martell.

Although far more experienced and ruthless than Madero, Huerta had an equally difficult time subduing the various insurgency
movements. The threat was most serious in the northern tier of states, where several revolutionary leaders, including Venustiano
Carranza and Pancho Villa, were amassing support. To increase the size of his federal army, Huerta’s press-gangs began kidnapping
every able-bodied man they could find. Residents were snatched on their way to the market, to the post office, and as they
were leaving the hospital. “After the bullfight on Sunday,” wrote Edith O’Shaughnessy, wife of the American chargé d’affaires,
“seven hundred unfortunates were seized, doubtless never to see their families again. . . . At a big fire a few days ago nearly
a thousand were taken, many women among them, who are put to work in the powder mills. A friend told me this morning that
the father, mother, two brothers, and the sister of one of her servants were taken last week. They scarcely dare, any of them,
to go out after dark. Posting a letter may mean, literally going to the cannon’s mouth.”

John Lind, the former governor of Minnesota, was one of President Wilson’s handpicked representatives to Mexico. He was completely
devoid of diplomatic experience and could not speak Spanish. With the help of interpreters, Lind presented the Huerta government
with a Wilson-drafted settlement that called for an immediate cessation to fighting, the holding of early and free elections
(in which Huerta would refrain from becoming a candidate), and the willingness of all factions to abide by the results.

Huerta, naturally, rejected the settlement. Lind was told to resubmit the offer and add something extra to the pot: the U.S.
government, he was instructed to say, would use its influence with American bankers to make a loan to the new government if
free and open elections (without Huerta) were held. This proposal, considered by many to be little more than a bribe, was
also icily rejected.

President Wilson then went before Congress and described his failed mission. He reaffirmed his good intentions and said there
was nothing more he could do for the Mexican people but “await the time of their awakening to the actual facts. We cannot
thrust our good offices upon them. We can afford to exercise the self restraint of a great nation.” His position in the future
would be one of “watchful waiting.”

Huerta then announced his plan to hold an election on October 26, 1913. The news buoyed Wilson and his aides, who believed
the canny dictator had been converted to the principles of democracy after all. But the hope was dashed when Huerta dissolved
Mexico’s Constitution and what remained of the duly elected congress and proceeded to invalidate the election results, saying
the returns were too small to reflect the will of the people. Huerta then announced that he would remain in office until the
rebel elements were pacified.

In response, the State Department distributed a circular to governments throughout the world, laying out in blunt terms the
new U.S. position toward Mexico: “The present policy of the United States is to isolate General Huerta entirely; to cut him
off from foreign sympathy and aid and domestic credit, whether moral or material, and to force him out.”

In keeping with that philosophy, the United States used its influence to get a loan to Mexico from a consortium of international
bankers pared down from 150 to 50 million dollars. U.S. warships were sent to Mexico, where they idled within view of the
coastlines—purportedly to help citizens who were fleeing the country, but clearly meant to intimidate the Huerta regime. And
to further weaken the government, Wilson decided to lift the embargo on munitions that had been put in place by President
Taft’s administration. Soon guns and weapons began flowing to rebel troops across the border. Wrote Secretary of State Bryan,
“Settlement by civil war carried to its bitter conclusion is a terrible thing, but it must come now whether we wish it or
not.”