Page:Hands off Mexico.djvu/57

 press pointed to this as proof that Villa was willing "to do the right thing."

The next strikingly unneutral move of the Administration would seem to prove beyond any question that it was actuated by a determination to place the Villa party in the Mexican capital and keep it there. That move was a demand upon Carranza to agree to the "neutralization" of Mexico City, as well as of a railroad leading to it from the sea. This, of course, would render it impossible ever to oust the Villa Party.

At the same time Wilson was striking hard at the Carranza cash-box from behind. A major share of the Constitutionalist funds were coming from Yucatan, where the slave kings of hemp had remained in control throughout the Madero and Huerta regimes, and had been unseated only by the Constitutionalist Party, which had freed the slaves.

The hemp kings timed a counter-revolution perfectly with the thrusts of Wilson at Obregon, temporarily regained control, and announced their purpose to set up an independent State. As one of the measures taken to reduce them, Carranza ordered a blockade of the port of Progreso and detailed a gun-boat to enforce the order. Wilson notified Carranza that a blockade would not be tolerated, and dispatched warships to break the blockade.

The port was kept open, and the slave kings were able to import supplies and export hemp. Had they been better prepared for action, or backed by any considerable fraction of the population of Yucatan, the action of Wilson would probably have been decisive in their favor—and today Yucatan would be a slave State under the "protection" of the United States. By a swift operation of land forces, however, the Constitutionalists succeeded in regaining control of Yucatan.

 

13.

WHY WILSON FINALLY RECOGNIZED CARRANZA

All maneuvers of this sort, of course, were flagrant acts of intervention. We had no more right then to demand the neutralization of Mexico City than we have now to demand the neutralization of Cork, and no right whatever to interfere with the Progreso blockade. We were simply attempting to impose 