Family matters...

From my collection: this 1915 1 Peso banknote issued by Venustiano Carranza's provisional Constitutionalist government during la Revolución Mexicana (1910-1920).

Some historical context:

Few today are aware that the United States invaded Mexico twice during her tumultuous civil war. In response to the Mexican Army's temporary detention of nine trespassing U.S. Navy sailors in Tampico in April, 1914, president Woodrow Wilson ordered warships of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet to seize the strategic Mexican Gulf port of Veracruz.

The U.S. attack contributed significantly to the destabilization of the federal army and government of the dictatorial Mexican president, Gral. Victoriano Huerta. Wilson offered terms under which he would pull the Marines out of Veracruz if Huerta were to step down. The occupation of Veracruz – along with a series of military defeats elsewhere in revolutionary Mexico – led indirectly to Huerta's resignation as president in July, 1914.

Huerta's eventual successor – Constitutionalist forces leader Venustiano Carranza – was initially against accommodation with the Americans, but with Huerta now out of the picture, the U.S. and Mexico did quietly agree to terms. Wilson withdrew the Marines from Veracruz on November 23, 1914; Carranza thereby securing uncontested Constitutionalist control over the southeastern coastal region of Mexico.

The American occupation over, Carranza was free to return his attention to military actions in the north against Pancho Villa, and in the central interior against Emiliano Zapata. Carranza and his Constitutionalists eventually emerged the victors in the Mexican Revolution: successively defeating Villa's forces in 1915, and allied officers scheming the ambush assassination of Zapata in 1919. Carranza was himself ambushed and shot dead in 1920.

Postscript: President Wilson sent troops into revolution-torn Mexico a second time in the Punitive Expedition of 1916-1917 to attempt to capture Pancho Villa. It failed. Subsequently, in an incredible display of imperialistic hubris, Wilson actually proposed a *third* invasion to once again seize Veracruz, the entire oil-rich southeastern Gulf coast of Mexico, and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec through to the Pacific Ocean – this time with the goal of permanent annexation – but Carranza threatened to blow up his country's own petroleum installations if the U.S. were to invade anew. Unable to decide if Carranza was serious or merely bluffing, and with involvement in the war in Europe looming ever larger, Wilson prudently abandoned his Cortezian ambitions. The United States would never again intervene militarily in Mexico.