DIPLOMATIC WORK IN WASHINGTON
From the inception of the Constitutionalist revolution, Carranza
appreciated the necessity of having a representative in Washington.
Alberto Pani and Roberto V. Pesqueira organized a junta which would
counteract the campaign waged against the Constitutionalists by the
Huerta agents in conjunction with the American interests, in the
vain hope of a recognition of the Huerta régime by the Democratic
administration. Pesqueira paid the expenses of the office out of his
own pocket until Carranza was able to devote some of the money at the
disposal of the revolution, to other purposes besides the buying of
arms and ammunition.
The intelligent and effective work done by the two constitutionalist
ambassadors concentrated the attention of the American public upon a
struggle which had appeared one-sided and hopeless.
After a succession of defeats by the federal generals in the
north, Huerta recognized that the great army at his disposal was
swiftly crumbling to pieces, and the three divisions under the
Constitutionalist generals were determinedly closing in upon him,
he became afraid, and with the same unscrupulousness of former
reactionary despots in Mexico, he plucked a leaf from the history of
Mexico, attempting to repeat the feat successfully carried out by the
clericals in 1847, when American intervention was forced, and in 1861
when French intervention was deliberately invited, to save clericalism
from utter annihilation.
Carranza foresaw the move, as the members of Huerta’s cabinet had
openly boasted to bring about American intervention to save their
interests and their lives. With Carranza in Hermosillo was a Mr. Rafael
Zubáran Capmany, a young Mexican lawyer from Campeche, who acted as his
Secretary of the Interior in the Provisional Cabinet. Carranza picked
out Mr. Zubáran as the one man in Mexico to play the diplomatic game in
Washington which would ward off American intervention, even after the
American troops had occupied Vera Cruz.
It is quite true that the landing of American marines meant
intervention, but President Wilson had declared that it was done
against General Huerta, the Dictator, and not against the Mexican
people; that American soldiers would be satisfied to occupy the Mexican
port until the usurper was driven out.
To make the average Mexican understand this complicated situation,
and to convince the Americans that Carranza’s protest was not only
necessary but was the only manly and patriotic act possible for any
Mexican leader, was the task which befell Sr. Zubáran.
The lifting of the embargo on arms and ammunition at the border,
without arousing the hostility of the War Department in Washington, was
another difficult mission.
To prevent the Mexican constitutionalists from crossing the American
border, thereby playing into the hands of Huerta, was as perilous and
risky a game as putting out a lighted fuse near a powder magazine.
A talented writer and lawyer, Don Luis Cabrera, ably assisted Rafael
Zubáran. The sympathetic attitude of President Wilson and Secretary
Bryan helped to crown the efforts with success. Also, the unofficial
and friendly co-operation of ex-Governor Lind was of incalculable value
to the Mexican diplomats.
But any other less experienced and less discreet personality, a mind
less acute, keen and masterly, would have failed ignominiously.
Americans as well as Mexicans are discovering that diplomatic
victories, although silent and modest, are as effective and useful as
military achievements.