Big Bend Gazette :: A Death in Hudspeth County

Everyone knows that the Mexican Revolution of 1910 – 1936 had significant repercussions in the Big Bend, but few people realize that one of the most significant and ironic events of the Revolution took place just west of here, in Hudspeth County, in the summer of 1915: the killing of General Pascual Orozco.

Orozco’s death derailed a German plot to gain Mexico as a North American ally in the midst of World War I and brought a final end to Mexican and North American conservatives’ attempts to reverse the course of the Mexican Revolution.

Orozco is sometimes described in local histories as a “bandit leader,” but he was far more than that. He was a political leader of national prominence in Mexico, and his death had a significant effect on that nation’s history. Before the revolution against Mexican president Porfirio Diaz broke out in 1910, Pascual Orozco was a well-to-do businessman and mine owner in the state of Chihuahua.

When the revolution started, Orozco threw his support behind Diaz’s opponent Francisco Madero and raised an army in the district of Guerero, in western Chihuahua. He became the first military hero of the Madero revolution by defeating Diaz’s troops in a pitched battle at Canon del Mal Paso in January, 1911. After the battle he had his men gather up all of the clothing of the dead Diaz soldiers, which he sent to Diaz with the message, “Ahi te van las hojas, mandame mas tamales” (“Here are the shucks, send me more tamales.”).

A few months later, in May, 1911, he guaranteed the success of Madero’s revolution by capturing Ciudad Juarez from the Diaz forces.

But after Diaz resigned and Madero became President of Mexico, he and Orozco had a falling out and Orozco withdrew his support from Madero. In February, 1913, one of Madero’s army officers, General Victoriano Huerta, with the support of the American ambassador and most of the American business community in Mexico, led a coup against Madero’s government which resulted in Madero’s arrest and assassination.

Huerta, a career army officer who had been a general in Porfirio Diaz’s army, was about as sinister as they come. He even looked sinister. He shaved his head in Prussian-officer fashion, and he wore little purple-tinted glasses to protect his weak eyes. He was an alcoholic, addicted to brandy, and after he proclaimed himself president in Madero’s stead he quickly became notorious for imprisoning and executing his political opponents. But the conservative groups within and outside of Mexico who had benefited from the thirty-year Diaz regime looked for him to restore order and their favored positions in that country. Pascual Orozco declared his support for Huerta. Three of Madero’s other early supporters, Alvaro Obregon, Venustiano Carranza, and Pancho Villa, declared themselves against him, calling themselves Constitutionalists. By the spring of 1913 four armies were on the move across Mexico.

Orozco’s army scored a number of initial successes against the Constitutionalists in the north, but by the late fall of 1913 Pancho Villa’s forces had gained control of most of Chihuahua and Orozco and his troops were forted up in Ojinaga with their backs to the border. On January 1, 1914, Villa successfully attacked Ojinaga and 5,000 Huertista soldiers skedaddled across the river into Texas, voluntarily interning themselves in the United States. But Orozco disappeared. One story is that friends in Texas hid him in a mine at Shafter, where he was supposed to have buried a considerable amount of money. But he was also reported to be in Mineral Wells, Texas; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and New Orleans – all on the same day. Eventually he turned up in Mexico City, but he was too late to save Huerta, who resigned the presidency in July, 1914, and went into exile in Spain., arriving there the week that World War I started.

But the Huerta-Orozco story was by no means over. Conservative elements in Mexico, Mexican exiles in the United States, and Americans whose interests had suffered when the Diaz government was overthrown immediately began plotting Huerta’s return. They found a friend in the German government, which was seeking a sympathetic ally in North America. German agents contacted Huerta in Spain and eventually sunk $12,000,000 into buying arms and ammunition for his supporters. Pascual Orozco traveled around the United States on Huerta’s behalf, purchasing weapons with German money and meeting with important Mexican exiles. The guns he purchased were stashed in warehouses in El Paso and in key spots across the border in Mexico. Luis Terrazas, who had owned 14,000,000 acres of land in Chihuahua before he was forced into exile, supported the movement, and his son-in-law Enrique Creel went to Spain to invite Huerta to come back to Mexico.

In April, 1915, Huerta and his family and servants – thirty people and a hundred trunks – arrived in New York and moved into a leased estate on Long Island. On June 24 Huerta boarded a train in New York, telling reporters that he was going to San Francisco to visit the Panama-Pacific Exposition. On June 27, the day before the day set for the revolution, he got off the train in Newman, New Mexico, a tiny station 20 miles north of El Paso, where he was met by an automobile driven by Pascual Orozco. Both men were immediately arrested by U.S. government agents, who had been watching Huerta since his arrival in New York, and were taken to El Paso and charged with violating the Neutrality Act.

When they left the El Paso courthouse after making bond, a huge crowd gathered to cheer them, and Tom Lea, mayor of El Paso and father of the artist, agreed to serve as their lawyer. Six days later Orozco slipped out of the house he was staying in, got past the Federal agents who were watching it, and disappeared. Huerta’s bond was revoked and he was placed under guard at Fort Bliss, but Orozco was loose and everyone expected him to raise the revolution in Huerta’s name.

Orozco, however, was fully occupied trying to evade the Mexican and American authorities. He managed to dodge them through July and most of August, but on the morning of August 29 Orozco and four companions rode up to the isolated Dick Love ranch, southeast of Sierra Blanca between the Rio Grande and the Eagle Mountains. There was no one there but a couple of cowboys and the cook. Orozco asked the cowboys if there were any Texas Rangers nearby, and when they said no he asked the cook to fix him and his companions a meal. The cook set a table for them on the porch of the ranch house, which had a good view of the road to Sierra Blanca. While they were eating a car came into view. Orozco and his men grabbed their rifles, jumped on their horses, and galloped away toward the Eagle Mountains, leaving most of their food on the table.

The men in the car were Dick Love, Tom Bell, Will Schrock, and Earl Yarbro. They were coming to the ranch to start the fall roundup work. Twenty years later one of them, probably Will Schrock, told Alice Shipman of Marfa what happened next, and she published the story in some detail in the October, 1933 issue of her magazine, Voices of the Mexican Border. According to Shipman, when the cook told Love that there were armed Mexicans on the ranch Love concluded that they were bandits, and he and his three companions saddled horses and took out after them.

They caught up with them in the foothills of the Eagle Mountains, near the Black Hill Mine, but Orozco and his men started shooting and Love’s party withdrew, unsure of how many men they were facing. They went back to the ranch house and phoned to Sierra Blanca for reinforcements. The next morning a dozen men from Sierra Blanca and Van Horn, including Cattle Inspector Dave Allison, a crack shot, showed up at the ranch, and they followed the Mexicans’ trail up into the Eagle Mountains, across the Devil’s Backbone, and down the other side into the Green River Bolson. Here they spotted their quarry’s horses through the brush, and Allison, George Love, and a customs officer named Carnes left the posse and circled around behind the Mexicans, who were on a low rise watching the men in front of them. As Allison’s men came up the rise George Love’s horse fell on him, Carnes stopped to help Love up, and Allison emerged at the top facing five armed men by himself. He immediately shot three of them, the firing became general, and when it was over all five intruders were dead.

Love and the other members of the posse had no idea who the dead men were. One of them was wearing a pocket watch with the initials “P.O.” engraved on the back , and as someone in the party held it in his hand he said, “Is it possible that we have killed Pascual Orozco?” As Shipman tells the story, “Filled with sorrow at the very thought, the men sent a courier to Van Horn to telegraph to El Paso and ask that someone familiar with Orozco come immediately to Green River Canyon to establish the identity of the slain men.” Luis Holzman, an El Paso customs inspector, came out on the train the next day and confirmed that the dead man with the watch was Pascual Orozco, the last hope of the conservatives who wanted to put the Mexican Revolution back in the bottle.

Orozco’s widow, who was living in El Paso, arranged for his burial in Concordia Cemetery there. A huge crowd attended his funeral. His coffin was draped with a Mexican flag, and attached to it was a silver plate inscribed, “General of Division Pascual Orozco – You have fallen tragically when the hope of the country was dependent on you.” Victoriano Huerta died five months later, still under house arrest in El Paso. The German government was out twelve million dollars and had no North American ally, and the Mexican Revolution went on to devour its own children for twenty more years.

Photos courtesy of the Wheelan Collection of Mexican Revolution Photographs, Texas A & M University & University of New Mexico.