21 April 1912

I almost forgot what today is.. and I live in a naval town too.

Lieutenant José Azueta Abad, the 18 year old dorm monitor at the Naval Academy in Veracruz, organized a heroic, and doomed, defense of the city when the United States Marines occupied the Port on 21 April 1912. Wounded, he refused treatment from U.S. medical teams, and died just after his 19th birthday, on 10 May, 1914.

The “Veracruz incident” isn’t much known in the United States (I wrote about it at length in my book, Gods, Gachupines and Gringos, and posted an early version of my chapter on the invasion here), but looms larger than U.S. policy makers realize in Latin American thinking. It’s inevitably brought up any time some “well-meaning” (i.e., uninformed) policy wonk suggests “helping” Mexico with “it’s” problem (whatever the “it” of the day is… usually a problem FOR the U.S.: oil exports then, narcotics exports today) with “boots on the ground”.

Azueta happened to be on the “wrong” side of the Revolution, and his family were supporters of the usurper, Victoriano Huerta. Not that it mattered. The Constitutionalists, the Zapatistas and Huerta’s government all rejected the U.S. “assistance” and recognized Azueta for the national hero, and Latin Americans recognize him for the anti-imperialist hero, he was.