The Curse of Meroz: December 1916 to April 1917

Abstract

After six months spent in northern Mexico, John J. Pershing and the American forces under his command still had not caught Pancho Villa and had long since given up serious efforts to do so. On December 9, 1916, Villa issued a defiant proclamation condemning both the Venustiano Carranza government and Pershing. From El Paso, one of TR’s journalist friends covering the crisis, W. R. Rucker, sent a letter about the situation. He assumed that Roosevelt had seen Villa’s manifesto, which “we patriots sent out to the country last night.” In it Villa followed the Colonel’s lead, grouping the “barbarians of the north with the Chinese” and calling on “all good Mexicans and true to drive out Carranza and Pershing.” It looked very much like a declaration of war; the “only trouble was” that Villa at the moment had “not the numbers nor equipment to carry out his declarations.” Moving from Mexico to the recent election, Rucker jokingly asked TR to permit him “a Missouri subtlety— to congratulate you on the outcome of what happened around 7th November. Eh what? You know me. I’m a Tee- Arr- Ista from who laid the chunk.” He only hoped the country remained “in one piece till four years hence.”1