Trial By Fire (33 page)

Drawing in a deep breath, Big Al looked at the corps commander, then back at Governor Wise. “In a nutshell, yes. We simply do not have enough troops and units, even with the National Guard and Army reserve federalized, to totally close down the border between the United States and Mexico.” Anticipating what was coming, Dixon threw up a slide that showed the total number of divisions and personnel the Army would require to secure the border. “As you can see on this slide, to establish a defensive system like the one I just briefed, which I repeat is by no means solid, would require fifty-two divisions, or an army of approximately two point six million soldiers. That figure is roughly five times the current standing Army authorized today. And that figure does not leave any units left to deal with other national and international contingencies.

Two divisions in Europe, one in Korea, one in the Middle East, and a rapid-deployment force of three divisions would bump the number of divisions up to fifty-nine and the total strength of the Army to just under three million.”

Before the shock of those figures wore off, Dixon threw up another slide labeled “Barrier Material.” Big Al looked at the new slide, then at Governor Wise. “Now, we all know that we cannot simply put troops out into defensive positions without some sort of barrier to protect their positions and cover the gaps between those positions. Normally, a barrier combining triple strand concertina wire—that is, barbed wire—and antipersonnel mines is used when the threat is primarily dismounted personnel. This slide shows the amount of material needed to construct a simple, continuous barrier, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific.”

BARRIER
MATERIAL

Standard Barbed Steel-Taped Concertina

611,830

rolls

Man-hours to Install Concertina

312,000

hours

Antipersonnel Mines at a 0-2-0 Density

14,508,000

mines

Man-hours to Lay Above Mines

1,810,000

hours

Truckloads Required to Haul Above Material

28,000

loads

“Please bear in mind, Governor, that these figures are approximations only and probably on the low side. Various areas, such as the mountainous area around Big Bend National Park, would require more material and time than a flat open stretch of border.” The mention of Big Bend National Park caused the governor to wince, as Big Al had expected.

After all, the vision of laying mines and stringing barbed wire through a national park was, to most Americans, a very disturbing thought. If anyone had missed the significance of Big Al’s definition of “sealing the border” before, the last series of slides left no doubt as to the magnitude of what that task would entail and, as a follow-on, what it would cost, both financially and, more important to some, politically.

Pausing to allow these figures to sink in, Big Al waited until Governor Wise was ready. “Both you and I know, General, that the American people, and Congress, are not going to give you an army of three million men. On the other hand, the same American people and Congress will not, cannot, tolerate a do-nothing attitude. Surely you must realize that?”

Folding his arms in front of his chest, and looking down at the floor, Big Al nodded in agreement. “Yes, sir, you’re right. The Army will be required to do something if our diplomats and the Mexicans don’t solve the problem.” Big Al then looked up and stared into Governor Wise’s eyes. “We know that and we understand political reality. But you, sir, and the people in Washington, must understand military reality. If we are not given an army of sufficient size to defend the United States along its established borders, then we must either move those borders south, establishing a very wide security zone that can be patrolled with the small mobile forces we have, or we must remove the current government of Mexico and replace it with one that can control its own borders. Any way you look at it, the only practical military solutions available to us all start with an invasion of Mexico.”

For the first time during the-briefing, Governor Wise remained silent as Big Al let the meaning of his last statement seep in and take root. During this lull, the corps commander caught Big Al’s eye. With a faint smile and a slight nod of his head, he congratulated Big Al for wrestling the initiative away from Governor Wise and putting him into a receptive mood. The corps commander knew that the rest of the briefing could now proceed without trouble.

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

».

1230 hours, 14 August

From the doorway of the commander’s office, Colonel Guajardo watched soldiers of the local garrison company issue members of the Rural Defense Corps new weapons. In the upcoming confrontation, the Rural Defense Corps, a force of over 120,000 men, would play an important role in the defense of Mexico. These men, peasants from the surrounding countryside, would form the core of a stay-behind force that would provide information on the activities of the invading force and harass the rear areas of that force. It would be a difficult task and, no doubt, a costly one.

After all, these men, who ranged in age from eighteen to fifty, were farmers and part-time volunteers, not trained soldiers.

Organized into eleven-man units called pelotones, they were used under normal circumstances by the governing body of the ejido, or local land-holding commune, to protect the peasants. With training that was limited, equipment which was almost nonexistent, and leadership that understood only the most rudimentary tactics, there was little that would make them an effective guerrilla force. In open combat, against a modern, well-trained, high-tech army, they would be brushed aside like so many flies. Even with their newly issued German-made H-53 rifles and Mexican-produced RM-2 machine guns, man for man, they could not hope to stand up to American mechanized infantry. Guajardo, however, had no intention of pitting them against American infantry.

There was little that Guajardo could give these men, other than the new rifles and one machine gun with 2,000 rounds per pelotdn, to improve their odds. But that was enough. What they lacked in weapons and skills, they more than made up for in spirit and will. Even without the new weapons, the men of the Rural Defense Corps would have fought. They, and not the politicians in Mexico City, were the true grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Juarez and the Revolution. From early childhood, they had been raised to revere the deeds and struggles of their forefathers, to have faith in the Virgin of Guadalupe, and to jealously protect their land and rights from all quarters. Almost all had, at one time or another, been shown a picture of a relative who had fought in the Revolution. The image of that relative, standing tall in a wide sombrero, bandoliers crisscrossed over a proud chest thrown out, and holding a rifle at the ready, was burned into their memories. Some even had the ancient Mauser rifles that their grandfathers had carried when the picture was taken. Properly used, these men could tie down enemy forces many times their size. And with the prospect of an American invasion becoming more and more likely, the question of how and when to use them, and every other military and paramilitary unit in Mexico, was a question that Guajardo had to answer.

The deployment of the Texas National Guard to the border had come as no surprise. Every member of the Council of 13 knew that the United States would, eventually, do something. The only surprise was that the move had been a unilateral one made by the governor of Texas.

There was no question among the members of the council that some type of reaction to the provocative American move was required. The only questions were what kind and how much were necessary at this time.

The session of August 12, convened late in the afternoon to discuss the issue, had degenerated into a long, heated debate that created the first rift in the council since the June 29 coup.

Colonel Barreda, minister for foreign affairs, had opened the session with a review of the responses he had received through diplomatic channels at the UN and in Washington, D.C. That the movement of American troops would act as an impediment to his ability to deal with the American government could not be denied. “How can they expect us,” he said, “to take them seriously when they offer one hand in friendship and talk of peace while they hold a gun in the other hand behind their backs?”

Barreda ended his review with an impassioned speech that was also supposed to be a warning. “Once a sword is drawn,” he said, “for whatever reason, it is hard to return it to its sheath without showing some kind of victory. And that victory can only come at our expense.” Walk ing about the table, his arms waving, and caught up in the passion of the moment, Barreda continued. “The governor of Texas, no doubt with the sanction of their president and in an effort to test our resolve, has declared, in his own words, a ‘holy war’ against us, referring to us as evil and murderers.” Barreda ended by warning that if they did nothing, if they allowed the United States to dictate policy to them, they, the Council of 13, would lose face and fall. Caught up in the heat of the moment, however, Barreda forgot about his call for moderatiqn and, instead of warning against precipitous actions, swung toward a call to arms. “As our forefathers did in 1846, so must we send our Army to the Rio Grande.

To do less would be criminal and cowardly. And so, as Major General Mariano Arista did in 1846, Colonel Guajardo must be ordered north to the Rio Grande with the Mexican Army to face an American Army sent by their government to threaten us.”

Barreda’s rhetoric began to sway some of the moderates on the council.

As Guajardo watched the foreign minister deliver his inflammatory oration, more and more members of the council began to nod their heads in agreement. To counter this groundswell of support for military action, Guajardo believed that he had to be the cold, practical realist. He therefore commenced his review of Mexico’s military situation by reminding them what had happened when General Arista went north to respond to President Polk’s stationing of Zachary Taylor’s army in Texas. Arista, with a larger force, had been defeated by Taylor at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, leaving his army routed and Mexico open to invasion. Guajardo’s task, as minister of defense, was to protect the council from all major threats, both internal, which he emphasized as he looked at Barreda, and international.

The move by the governor of Texas, Guajardo warned, could be a small-scale test to see how they, the Council of 13 and the people of Mexico, would react to an overt military threat. If that were true, then they, the Council of 13, had to do something soon, but something that matched the threat and did not result in an escalation of the crisis. Instead, Guajardo stated, “We must, in this case, play the innocent victim.

Our efforts to defend ourselves must be measured, but not provocative.

Otherwise, we stand to lose any sympathy that we might gain from other nations, not to mention providing the Americans with more justification for these moves and more dangerous ones in the future. No, we must stay the course and continue as planned.”

Referred to as the Dark One, Guajardo relied on few for counsel and provided little indication of what he was thinking or planning as he carried out his duties. With the exception of Colonel Molina, few could penetrate the mask of stone that Guajardo wore to hide his thoughts, his feelings, and his fears. Often, his subordinates were told only what they needed to know in order to execute their next mission. In part, this was a holdover from the days before the twenty-ninth of June, when secrecy had been of the greatest importance. But that was not the whole reason.

Guajardo, despite the fact that he had been raised in a society where men used boasts and rhetoric to intimidate their adversaries and promote themselves, disliked boastful men. Instead, he prized men of action, men who did, rather than bragged, men who saw things that needed to be done and did them with little fuss and no need for praise or physical reward. Action and results were what mattered to Guajardo. Everything else was, to him, a waste of time.

The plan that he spoke of staying with was one designed to fill the gaps left by the purges of the federal police and intelligence agencies. The Rural Defense Corps was a critical part of that plan, a plan that had already been accelerated as a result of the mysterious raids just north of the Rio Grande. Though the plan did call for an increase in both readiness and training of regular Army units, it intentionally avoided any increased military presence along the United States-Mexican border. Guajardo ended by stating that any movement of the Army north would only increase the tension that already was building. “I realize that it may be true that the Americans have a gun behind their back. That, however, does not mean that we must put bullets into it for them.”

Spurred on by Barreda’s stirring speech, Colonel Zavala led the faction calling for full mobilization. Guajardo’s actions to secure the northern borders and his call for moderation were, in Zavala’s words, timid, insufficient, and dangerous. “To do as our brother suggests,” Zavala stated, “is tantamount to leaving our northern border undefended. How can we expect to command the respect of our own people, let alone the Americans, if we do nothing in our own defense? This is no time for half measures.” Zavala’s conclusion of his appeal to his brothers on the council was an emotional one, one that was meant to embarrass Guajardo as much as to rally support for Zavala’s position. “Our honor as Mexicans and the Revolution demand that every inch of Mexican soil be defended. It is the only manly thing we can do at times like this.”

Throughout the night, Guajardo continued to appeal to reason and sanity. “We can no more stop the Americans from coming, if they choose, than they can occupy all of Mexico. Sending the entire Army to the border to defend our masculinity is absurd and wasteful. No, we must restrain ourselves from overreacting. We must move slowly and cautiously, or we stand to lose everything that we have gained since the twenty-ninth.” Although Molina favored Guajardo’s position, as the president of the council, he kept out of the debate, allowing Guajardo to present his position. If the matter came to a tie vote, Molina would throw his behind Guajardo.