|
Chapter 5:
Revolution in Mexico
"Companeros del
arado
Y de toda herramienta
Nomas nos queda un camino:
Agarrar un trienta-trienta!"
Comrades of the plough
And all workman's tools,
There's only one road now:
To seize a .30-.30.!
-- Corrido of the .30-.30 carbine
In 1909 Mexico was a volcano about to erupt. For more than
thirty years the people of that country had suffered under the
iron fist of dictator Porfirio Diaz. Since Diaz seized power in
1876, he had done much to modernize the archaic economy of the
country by encouraging foreign capital to develop its railroads, its
petroleum and mining industries, and its primitive agriculture. But
only a few political allies had prospered, and, as foreign interests
controlled much of the economy, many Mexicans felt they were
strangers in their own land.
Among the intellectual and educated classes this foreign domi-
nation set ablaze the embers of a dormant nationalism, and soon the
cry of "Mexico for the Mexicans" began to be heard from
provincial marketplaces to salons in Mexico City. Throughout the
years of the "Porfiriato," the mass of the peasantry had lost much
of their communal land to the rich hacendados, either from legal chi-
canery or from the weapons of hired pistoleros.
Small merchants and an embryonic middle-class smoldered with
resentment, as opportunities for growth in a burgeoning economy
were thwarted by the political and economic collusion of Diaz
adherents which stifled their ambitions. Even among the well-to-do,
some of the concepts of Jeffersonian democracy had filtered down
from the northern border to offer the hope of political freedom and
an escape from a dictatorship of brutal force.
There was a whiff of revolution in the air and soon it would be
A widespread revolution that would lead to hundreds of thousands of
deaths, a revolution led by new caudillos, some modern and some
archaic,
divided ... between the ideals of the future and the roots of the
past.
There would be factions of "nationalists, democrats, anarchists,
socialists, Jacobins, devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe," combin-
ing both with and against each other. [1] Into the eye of this growing
political hurricane stepped a tough twenty-six-year-old soldier look-
ing for trouble. It was not difficult to find.
In the Holmdahl Papers in the Bancroft Library there is a typed,
unedited, eleven-page autobiographical manuscript that has never
been published, entitled "As a Soldier of Fortune and Filibuster in
Mexico." In it, Holmdahl describes his entry into the Mexican rev-
olution, "In the year 1909, I answered an advertisement in a Los
Angeles newspaper which read, 'Wanted: A man with military expe-
rience, who has nerve and is single'." [2]
Holmdahl answered the ad, listing his military experience, and
was soon invited to a midnight rendezvous in a sleazy section of
town. After several meetings and exhaustive interrogations, his mys-
terious questioners gave him an envelope containing a $100 bill and
brought him before members of a revolutionary junta. They asked
him if he, posing as a mining expert, "would purchase arms and
ammunition and smuggle it into Mexico." [3]
If this is an improbable story, it is less improbable than many of
the documented events in Holmdahl's hegiras and hair-breadth
escapes in Mexico during the next twenty )'ears. And, as will be
seen, Holmdahl had reasons to conceal the origins of some of his
early adventures and associations.
While Holmdahl later identifies the revolutionary junta mem-
bers as part of the movement led by Francisco Madero, it is highly
likely that he fell in with members of the radical Flores Magon fac-
tion. This group of plotters, led by Ricardo Flores Mag6n, were
hard-core anarchists. They were supported in the United States by
the equally radical International Workers of the World, known to
Western lawmen as "Wobblies." They were the instigators of the
bloody strike at an American-owned copper mine at Cananea,
Sonora, in 1906, which many called the "Lexington and Concord"
of Mexico.4 In 1908 they launched an abortive attempt to topple
Diaz, which was put down with much bloodshed. Operating out of
California, they were bus), subverting the Diaz regime a decade
before the liberal revolution led by Madero. As the most radical rev-
olutionaries, they hated liberals and later went to war against the
Madero government.
During 1909, their newspaper Regeneracion fanned the flames of
hatred against the Diaz regime exhorting
Throw down the plough. Slaves, take the Winchester in hand ...
Work the land, but only after you have taken it into your own posses-
sion ... [5] Forward comrades. Soon you will hear the first shots; soon
the
shout of rebellion will thunder from the throats of the oppressed ... Land
and Liberty. [6]
If Holmdahl joined this group, he undoubtedly wished to con-
ceal it, particularly since he later sought a commission in the United
States Army. The Magonistas were constantly harassed by American
officials and Mag6n ultimately died in an American prison.
Holmdahl recounted that he was given "plenty of money" by
the group. He traveled to Nogales, Arizona, crossed the border, and
boarded a Mexican train for a S00-mile southern journey to the end
of the line at Culiacin, the capitol of Sinaloa. From there, he wrote,
"I purchased a horse and saddle and lit out further south. ..over
the tortilla trail ... [it got its name] as there was nothing to eat on
the way except the tortillas you brought with you." [7]
After a 100-mile ride across the then sparsely populated coastal
plain, he arrived at the west coast port city of Mazatlan. He spent
several months there mak-
ing contacts and improving
the rudimentary Spanish he
had picked up in the
Philippines and during the
Banana Wars. From
Mazatlan he traveled to his
revolutionary objective-
Tepic, the capital of the
small coastal state of
Nayarit.
Founded in 1530,
Tepic was a sleepy colonial
village hemmed in by
mountains to the east and
the Pacific Ocean to be
west. It was noted only for
its swaying palm trees, the
Church of Santa Cruz, and
near the beaches some of
the most voracious stinging
flies and mosquitoes in the
Western Hemisphere. It is
in Tepic that Holmdahl first
demonstrated his full blown talents
as a con artist/spy and all
around dissembler.
Posing as a wealthy representative of a New York mining com-
pany, Holmdahl gained entree to the Governor's Palace by dangling
the usual lure of the Diaz era. He told the governor he was inter-
ested in purchasing "good property" and promised "good money"
would be available in exchange for official help. The governor,
charmed by the suave manners and presumed wealth of the young
gringo, invited him home for dinner. Soon, on warm evenings, they
were seen strolling arm-in-arm around the town plaza as flirtatious
senoritas batted their eyelashes above their fans as they passed the
presentable young American. Tepic was a young man's romantic
dream.
But as the revolutionary winds swept down from the mountains
to Tepic, this idyll was to turn nightmarish. As Holmdahl wrote:
"But now their hearts are chilled with fear, their souls are shrunk-
en with their pain; for death is ever stalking near."8 It was soon to
come. But Holmdahl became less sentimental for there was a job to
be done.
Winning the governor's confidence, Holmdahl soon learned the
number of men and the amount of arms and ammunition at the dis-
posal of the Diaz forces in the area. The governor, according to
Holmdahl, actually showed him a hiding place where he had secret-
ed rifles for use in an emergency. The young "entrepreneur" for-
warded this information to the Los Angeles junta. Unsettling at this
time, however, was the arrest in Tepic of several revolutionaries,
who were speedily shot in a public execution in order, as the gover-
nor said, "to put fear in the people."
Using the pretext of surveying timberland on the coast,
Holmdahl spent nine days searching for potential landing places
where he could bring in smuggled arms. Returning to the capital, a
man approached him and whispered that the governor had been
informed he was a spy, his arrest was imminent, and he should run
for his life. Apprehensive, Holmdahl went to his hotel room to
gather his belongings, only to see from his window a number of
rurales, the dreaded rural police, surrounding the building.
The former young-man-about-town slipped into the hotel patio,
used his leather lariat to lasso an overhanging water spout and pulled
himself up to the roof. Leaping onto the roofs of nearby buildings,
he reached the end of the block where lowering himself, he bumped
into a dozing policeman. The policeman awoke, began shouting,
and pulled his gun from its holster. He got off one wild shot before
Holmdahl, firing over his shoulder, made the policeman "eat dirt."
"I knew I was in for it," Holmdahl wrote, ''as I had killed this
monkey." Running to the nearby stable where he kept his pride and
joy, a blooded sorrel stallion which he believed could outrun any
horse in the area, he swung into the saddle and rode out into the
street. The rurales, now mounted, galloped in a frenzied pursuit as a
crowd, attracted by the gunfire, filled the street leading into the
plaza. Holmdahl rode into the crowd, figuring the rurales would not
shoot into a mass of people. This was a mistake as rorales never gave
a damn whom they shot, and immediately opened fire. "Bullets"
Holmdahl wrote, "came uncomfortably close."
With his characteristic ironic sense of humor, he recounted,
A fat priest came out of the church and waved his hands at me. I fired,
not at him, but at a large stained glass window just above his head, and
shattered the glass. If you ever saw a scared fat priest make a quick
retreat
that 'toad' made grand time. I bet he called me a few things not in the
Good
Book.
Laughing, Holmdahl doffed his sombrero as he galloped down
the cobbled street. Soon, he wrote, his sorrel outdistanced his
pursuers; they, however, fired a final volley, and he felt his horse
stagger. The sorrel, running full out, began to weaken after several
miles, and Holmdahl pulled up to a corral owned by a local rancher.
Dismounting and tugging off the saddle, he spotted a bullet
hole in the horse's flank, "a few inches above the tail." Saddling one
horse and leading another, he opened the corral gate and stamped-
ed all the other horses, as he galloped down the roadway. Behind
him an infuriated rancher screamed curses at the gringo ladrone. "It
was," Holmdahl admitted, "the first horse I ever stole." After a long
ride he lost his pursuers in a heavily wooded area.
After four days of hard riding, stealing horses, eating on the run,
and sleeping in the saddle, he reached a hot spring near the village
of Tuxpin, and, feeling drowsy, decided it was safe to take a nap.
Dismounting, he hobbled his horse and fell into a deep sleep. He
was torn from uneasy dreams by a sudden intense pain in his foot.
Jerking awake he saw the butt of a Mauser carbine coming down
on his other foot with great force. As he looked up he was con-
fronted by the barrels of more than a dozen rifles pointed at vari-
ous parts of his body. Managing a wan smile, Holmdahl said, "Some
race, huh?" The rurale commander responded with a hard jab to his
ribs with a carbine barrel, hissing, "Your gringo sense of humor is
misplaced."
Pulled to his feet, his hands weIe tied behind him so tightly that
he complained. Annoyed, his guard stabbed him in the leg with a
knife-a most effective way of quieting complaining prisoners. His
captors put a rope around his neck, and for a terrified moment
Holmdahl believed his career as a sp)' was to end with him dancing
on air, suspended from the limb of a nearby tree. It \vas with a small
sense of relief that he saw that the rope was tossed to a sergeant,
who hitched it to his saddle-horn and then spurred his mount.
Half-dragged along ten miles of hot, dusty, rough road,
Holmdahl was taken to the small town of Rosamorada. As he was
pulled through the town, its poor inhabitants crowding the street
were lectured by the rurale leader about the consequences of plotting
against Porfirio Diaz. Holmdahl noted, however, that while the men
stared blank-faced at his dust-covered, bloody body, many of the
women had tears in their eyes. Exhausted, beaten, and half-
strangled, he was almost glad when he was thrown into the town's
foul-smelling jail.
That night a Diaz agent, "a tall, lean, mean-looking man,"
accompanied by a priest, entered Holmdahl's cell. A written con-
fession was shoved in his face, and he was ordered to sign it and give
them the names of his fellow traitors or he would be immediately
shot. A young jailer, with a face badly scarred from smallpox, stand-
ing behind the two, caught Holmdahl's eye; he was shaking his head
from side to side.
When Holmdahl refused to sign, he received stinging slaps in
the face until the Diaz agent nodded to the priest to give this stub-
born gringo the last rites. The priest asked, "What is your religion?"
Holmdahl replied, "I have none and you can go to hell." The agent
leaned down and slugged the prostrate man, screaming, "Respect
the church." The priest, however, made the mistake of not
retreating out of range, for while Holmdahl's hands were tied, his
feet were free and he lashed out, kicking the clergyman in the belly.
For that rather foolish act of bravado, Holmdahl got the hard steel
of a carbine butt slammed against his head.
Shaken awake hours later, his head feeling like a smashed melon,
Holmdahl found the guard laying a plate of frijoles and a tamale in
front of him. Hands still tied, he gulped the food "hog style."
Whispering, the guard said; "If you had signed they would have shot
you. Now, sleep, you will need the rest."
In the early hours of the morning the guard came again. He
untied Holmdahl's hands, held his finger to his lips, and motioned
for the prisoner to remove his boots. Tip-toeing out of the cell,
down the jail corridor they deftly stepped over a sleeping guard.
They climbed the stairs and headed for the door, but as Holmdahl
eased around another sleeping guard, the man stirred, opened his
eyes, and reached out grabbing his ankle. His reward for his alert-
ness was the hard heel of Holmdahl's boot slammed into his face.
The prisoner and his friendly guard ran out the door into the night
where two tethered horses awaited them. They leaped into the sad-
dles and rode off into the darkness. It was to be the first but not
the last time Holmdahl escaped from jail and dodged a firing squad.
After riding all
night, at dawn they were camping in the moun-
tains beside the Acaponeta River, when Holmdahl spotted a gang of
laborers repairing a bridge. From the American foreman he bor-
rowed a gun, some flour and sugar, and headed back to the security
of the mountains. From several conflicting stories, as can best be
determined, Holmdahl fled to the American border. He reentered
Mexico in the summer of 1909. [9]
In an interview with southwestern historian Bill McGaw, in
October 1962, Holmdahl said he went to work on a railroad laying
track near Mazatlin, Sonora, on Mexico's west coast. [10] In a letter to
the Adjutant General of the United States Army written on
December 24, 1913, Holmdahl stated, "Entered Mexico on
South\vest coast nine months before Madero outbreak, as spy in
employ of revolutionary Junta." [11]
During that time, somehow, he obtained a commission as a cap-
tain in the Sonoran Rural Police, the dreaded rurales, commanded by
Colonel Erniliano Kosterlitzky. [12] Frightened peasants called the
colonel "The Iron Fist of Dictator Porfirio Diaz." Kosterlitzky's
main assignment was to search out revolutionaries-and kill them.
All three accounts may not be in conflict, because during 1909,
uprisings led by Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon erupted inJune
and the disgruntled peasantry in the northern states of Chihuahua,
Coahuila, and Sonora were spreading rumors of revolt. Unrest
spread by the Flores Magons was to burst into flames of revolt the
following year. As one of Diaz's most trusted officers, Kosterlitzky
acted as the eyes and ears of the dictator, sending reports directly to
the presidential palace in Mexico City. He had developed a network
of informants in every bar, bordello, and village in northwestern
Mexico. These informants funneled to his headquarters any con-
versations, movements, or rumors that could be construed as hostile
to Diaz.
Considering that Holmdahl arrived in Mexico during this critical
and suspicious time, it would be surprising if he was not approached
by one of Kosterlitzky's agents. With a key job on a strategic rail-
road, the mercenary probably became one of Kosterlitzky's spies
called zorros or foxes, by a fearful people. Playing a double game
with Kosterlitzky must have been a nerve-wracking experience for
the colonel was one of the most feared men in Mexico and a sinis-
ter legend along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Born in Moscow, the son of a Cossack calvary officer,
Kosterlitzky became a naval officer candidate as a teenager. Bored
with navy discipline, he jumped ship in Venezuela and fought his
way north to Mexico, where he joined the Mexican army and fought
Apaches, Yaquis, and Mayo warriors. In 1880, he was commissioned
an officer and rose quickly through the ranks. When Diaz needed a
band of cutthroats to control his northern border, Kosterlitzky was
put in command of the rurales. Composed of "reformed" bandits
and murderers, the rurales and their commander were the law of the
North. The Cossack reported only to Diaz whose standing orders
were "Catch in the act; kill on the spot."
During 1909, the anarchist newspaper Regeneracion was urging
peasants and workers to rise up and defeat Diaz. Hundreds of
copies were distributed clandestinely by smuggling them on board
the Mexican railway system and then dropping them off at remote
locations. They were then picked up by revolutionary agents
and funneled to the Mexican public. Holmdahl probably was
commissioned by Kosterlitzky to report these illegal operations
from his vantage point on the railroad. He was playing a double
game from the start, ostensibly spying for Kosterlitzky, while con-
tinuing to work for the regime's revolutionary enemies. Double and
triple agents were not a rare commodity during the Mexican revolu
tion.
In October 1910, Francisco Madero, a competing revolutionary
and a well-meaning, but ineffective idealist, raised the banner of
revolt against the Porfirian regime. Mexico exploded from the Baja
in the north to Morelos in the south. Soon ill-trained, but brave
recruits, marched to rebel encampments singing:
"Mucho trabajo,
(Much work
Nunca dinero
Never any money
No hay frijoles,
No beans
Que viva Madero." [13] Long live Madero.)
Because of the young ex-sergeant's military experience,
Holmdahl was given the job of guarding the railroad's gold ship-
ments. Since Mexican paper currency was distrusted by almost
everyone, workers on the line and, more importantly, landowners
selling rights-of-way, insisted on payment in gold bullion or coin.
Holmdahl recruited a "brigade" of 200 mounted men who, while
escorting the railroad's gold wagons through bandit-infested coun-
try, fought off numerous attempts to "liberate" the shipments.
Using the same ruthless tactics he had learned in the islands, he
hunted down bandidos and "never left a live enemy." Soon the route
of the railroad track was littered with bodies left to rot in the
desert,
and the Holmdahl legend was born.
One night in late October 1910, his camp was raided and more
than a hundred horses were stolen. Mounting a large posse,
Holmdahl tracked the stolen horses across the desert, finally man-
aging to surround the herd and its inept wranglers. The horse
thieves didn't put up a fight and surrendered. These men, Holmdahl
realized, were not typical bandidos. When the men were brought
before him, Holmdahl looked at them in the thin cotton pants and
shirts of the peasantry and demanded, "Why did you fools steal my
horses and why should I not hang you"?
In an excited gabble, the peons explained that Francisco Madero
had started a revolution to liberate them, and they wanted the hors-
es, not for themselves, but for the cause of liberty. To the surprise
of his brigade, who were already tying hangmen's knots and search-
ing for suitable trees, Holmdahl not only listened to the tales of
injustice and terror perpetrated under the dictatorship of Porfirio
Diaz, but he actually sympathized with the men. "Not only will I
pardon you, I will join you," he told them. Returning to the railroad
offices, he resigned his job and took his pay in horses. Now open-
ly a revolutionary, he recruited a motley band of peons to fight
against his former boss, Kosterlitzky, and Diaz.
Underneath the hard visage of the professional soldier, perhaps
there was a faint ember of the idealist that was touched by the tales
of the ragged revolutionists. Typical was the story of Encarnacion
Acosta, who in later years related
I joined the Revolution on November
20, 1910, when I was only
thirteen years old ... I joined more by ... outrage, and revenge than patrio-
tism. The landlord ... would often taunt and debase my father
... The
unfair landlord hit my father ... and hit me too ... Officials under
Diaz
... took our ranch along with the newborn harvest. [14]
Nineteen-year-old Francisco Zamora Arce complained,
The English and North Americans were the Owners and administra-
tors of the railroads, mining camps, oil sea, fruit and lumber
products. The
Frenchmen controlled the clothing industry and the Spanish
oversaw the
marketed goods. The rich and powerful Mexicans owned the ... land. We,
the poor citizens, owned nothing. [15]
From the impoverished villages enraged peasants shouted
"Venga a la presa" ("come join the fight") and "Muerte a Porfirio"
("death to Porfirio"). Some who knew the exciting young
Americano yelled, "Vimonos a Holmdahl" ("Let's go with
Holmdahl") and the revolution was on.
In early 1911, his rag-tag band attacked and captured a number
of West Coast villages held by small garrisons of federal troops.16
Whether his men were loyal to the Flores Magon anarchists or to the
Madero liberals is not known. Probably, at that time, neither
Holmdahl or his men gave a damn. They were fighting the federals
and the ricos and suddenly there was hope and a chance for glory.
After instigating a failed jailbreak in his old stomping grounds of
Tepic, which resulted in the execution of more than 300 prisoners
by the Diaz forces, Holmdahl again fled to the hills. A few weeks
later with a band of twenty-two men, he raided the Buena Noche mine
near Rosario and made off with twenty-seven cases of dynamite,
with which he started a bomb factor)' at his mountain hideout.
After a sufficient number of bombs were constructed,
Holmdahl was ready to attack Rosario. It was during this time that
Holmdahl joined the forces of Martin Espinosa, who was elected
"general" by the swarms of peasants flocking to join the revolt.
Espinosa's men quickly captured Rosario and then moved toward
Rosamorada, where Holmdahl earlier had been imprisoned.
By now their army numbered more than 3,000 men; many were
bandits and some were armed only with machetes. After a few days
of hard fighting they took the town, but Holmdahl was disappoint-
ed to find that the priest who had visited his cell had fled in terror
to Tepic. After the customary executions of captured troops some
semblance of order was restored. That night Holmdahl wrote that
the revolutionary army got roaring drunk on tequila. The bandit ele-
ment, he said, decided to liberate the almost 700 prisoners held in
the city jail.
Since only a few inmates were political prisoners and the rest
were murderers, rapists, and thieves, Holmdahl turned back the
mob, telling them the prisoners were to be freed in the morning as
soon as new clothing and funds could be accumulated to give them
a new start in life. Then he went to General Espinosa with the
dilemma-if they released most of the hardened criminals, they
would let loose a terror of rapine, murder, and theft; if they didn't
release them in the morning, many of their troops might revolt
against their leaders and attack the jail.
As Espinosa and his staff pondered, Holmdahl,
always the prac-
tical man, came up with a solution. "Why not," he said, "look at the
prison books, find out who are the worst murderers, take them out
at midnight and shoot them. We won't use regular soldiers for the
firing squad, we'll use officers." Espinosa agreed. After studying
prison records, 112 of the worst killers were selected for execution,
and six officers were chosen for the firing squad. In small groups,
those selected for shooting were told they were to march to the lit-
tle town of Acaponeta, where, if they joined the ranks of the revo-
lutionary army, their sentences would be commuted.
The happy thugs were then marched out of the prison with an
officer escort, On the road to Acaponeta they passed the local
cemetery. There they were halted and promptly shot. "This kept us
busy the whole night," Holmdahl wrote.
The next morning more than 500 of the least noxious prisoners
were released as the army cheered. They were given new clothes
looted from the town and five pesos to start a new and honest life.
When it was noticed that not a few prisoners were missing,
Espinosa casually remarked they been transferred to an army unit at
Acaponeta. One can presume as a result of the previous fighting
there were enough unburied bodies at the cemetery so that the slain
prisoners attracted no notice. Then again, probably no one gave a
damn. "Many of the freed turned out to be fine citizens but others
later had to be executed after a military court martial," Holmdahl
wrote.
After several months spent in cleaning up coastal towns that
were still loyal to Diaz, the revolutionaries entered Tepic, and
General Espinosa ensconced himself and a growing entourage in
the Governor's Palace. As things quieted down, Holmdahl became
aware that Espinosa was beginning to plot against Madero's
army. One night, he and seven other officers were brought before
the general who asked them to join his junta. They refused and that
night they wisely fled to the mountains, where they joined a band of
280 Cora Indians loyal to Madero. Shortly thereafter, Holmdahl, the
seven officers, and the Indians, armed with bows and arrows and an
old brass cannon, attacked Tepic. They had presumed that
Espinosa's men would defect and join their cause. They didn't.
After thirty-six hours of hard fighting, the Madero loyalists were
soundly beaten, and Holmdahl and his compadres again fled to the
mountains "leaving more than two-thirds of our men lying dead on
the streets of the city." [17] It was probably during this fight that
Holmdahl was wounded by a shell that burst near him, killing the
man standing next to him. The wound was not serious and within
a few weeks he was back at the forefront of the fighting.
By this time, the decisive battle of the revolution against Diaz
was building in the northeast, where Madero had his fledgling army
camped near Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. In the spring of 1911,
Holmdahl joined Madero's army of peasants, former bandits and a
smattering of American volunteers near Juarez, just across the bor-
der from El Paso, Texas.
In May 1911, Madero troops led by Pascual Orozco, a Sonoran
mule-skinner, with additional help from bandits commanded by
Pancho Villa and a brigade of American volunteers, attacked the
Federal stronghold at Juarez. By this time, Holmdahl, whether from
ideology, a sense of adventure, or for cold, hard cash, was commit-
ted to Madero's cause.
After a hard fought, three-day battle, the Federal forces surren-
dered, breaking the back of the regime and sending Porfirio Diaz
into permanent exile. As the old dictator boarded the ship taking
him to Spain, he remarked, "Madero has unleashed tigers. Let us see
if he can control them."
Following the surrender of Juarez, a biographical sketch
obtained from the Mexican Consulate in El Paso, Texas, states that
Holmdahl was named a "Captain of the rural garrison of that city."
The sketch further states that during 1911, probably in the latter part
of May and June, he fought alongside troops loyal to Madero in the
states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Tepic on Mexico's western
coast. These were military operations against the Flores Magon
anarchists who had rebelled against Madero's forces. [18] It all became
a little confusing to the outsider and American journalists often
remarked, "You needed a scorecard to keep the teams and players
straight." They might have added you needed an update regularly as
the players changed sides with dizzying speed.
Go to Next Page
|