Glad Enough to get Out

In the meantime, panic had spread among the American and European workers. American drillers at Pánuco heard rumors of an imminent landing of U.S. troops and did not want to be caught upriver. The Texas Company sent "a big stern-wheeler" steamboat to Pánuco. Coming downriver with a load of Americans, the British pilot, flying the Union Jack, warily floated past the federal gunboat. The Mexican gunboat did not fire. The Americans on board had been expecting to see Leathernecks scampering along the riverbanks to rescue them. None came. The Chinese employees who stayed behind at Pánuco packed up the tools and took them to the British consular office for safekeeping.^[68] Many left their personal effects behind. A blacksmith working for Mexican Gulf at Pánuco left behind his own set of tools, valued at $165. Not choosing to return, he later sent for them, only to discover that the tools had been pilfered in his absence. "At the time all the Americans were glad enough to get out themselves," the worker later wrote to the U.S. consul.^[69] The American evacuees boarded a mixed flotilla of merchant vessels and oil tankers off the coast. Naval officers came on board to draw up passenger lists, and the entire group was dispatched to Galveston. Apparently only one American had died. Weston Burwell was killed while en route from Pánuco to

Ozuluama, carrying four thousand pesos to purchase mules in order to build an earthen reservoir for La Corona. In all, some two thousand oil workers and family members had clambered aboard the ships bound for Galveston.^[70]

The recriminations began immediately. Those refugees who had either returned to their hometowns or stayed for a month at Galveston complained of the shabby treatment they had been accorded by U.S. forces in Mexico. President Wilson and Navy Secretary Daniels came under special criticism. The oil field and refinery workers grumbled about the navy's retreat from Tampico just when U.S. forces were attacking Veracruz. They felt their lives had been endangered and their personal property lost because of their government's perfidy. The refugees certainly were not philosophically against the notion of U.S. intervention in Mexico. In fact, many would have welcomed the marines at Tampico; they even demanded that U.S. military forces protect them on their return to the oil fields. Somewhat defensively, Daniels asked why these Americans were protesting a policy that had saved their lives. They had gone to Mexico to get rich, he suggested, and now expected the country to raise an army of five hundred thousand men to protect them.^[71] Perhaps no one reflected the sentiment of the American petroleum workers in Mexico better than William F. Buckley. He continued to be a bitter critic of the Wilson administration. At the 1919 Congressional hearings on Mexico, he claimed that the American troop landing at Veracruz had needlessly endangered lives at Tampico.^[72] Thereafter, the American workers in Mexico, as well as the owners, were to form a vocal lobby against what they considered Wilson's inept foreign policies.

For the moment, however, the owners of oil companies withheld their criticism, needing diplomatic support to protect their abandoned properties in Mexico. The big question concerned the oil leases. The American companies would not be able to make their rental and royalty payments to landowners during their exile. Lack of timely payment often meant breach of contract, and they feared that the British and Dutch would jump American claims. Some Americans even feared that the British gunboats might collude with British oilmen to prevent the return of the Americans. They looked to the secretary of state for help.^[73] Secretary Bryan conferred with British and Dutch diplomats in order to prevent the breach of American-held leases. The Dutch and British oilmen, as it turned out, were quite willing to agree to a policy of status quo ante. They too had evacuated Tampico and were not will-

ing to return until the Americans did. Their leases were in the same danger of being breached. The British government queried Lord Cowdray, who disclaimed any interest in taking advantage of the Americans' plight. The Dutch government also agreed to withhold any diplomatic support to Dutch citizens who sought to jump American leaseholds.^[74] Once again, the fate of the Mexican oil industry was decided outside the country.

The owners of oil properties in Tampico, of course, expected the worst. They were certain that the evacuation and lack of U.S. military protection would mean the destruction of the oil fields. A representative of the East Coast Oil Company painted a mental picture of Mexicans looting the oil fields, runaway wells catching fire, and destroyed and burning oil camps.^[75] "The oil field of Mexico is gusher country,", said a representative of The Texas Company, who warned of the danger of "unsupervised" wells filling up the storage pits and then "spreading over the lands and streams." The danger of fire grew with the oil spills. "Such a fire would burn the entire oil country and doubtless a multitude of its inhabitants," he said. Conflagration would also melt the valves of those wells that were pinched in, causing additional losses.^[76] Of course, these owners were asking, rather indirectly, for an American military escort so that the oilmen could return to Mexico.

Destruction of neither the oil wells nor the oil camps ever took place. Some oil managers had stayed on their properties. William Green of Huasteca later bragged that once ordered out to sea, he returned by boat to the oil wells in the Faja de Oro, which he managed for thirty days until the U.S. government permitted the return of the American workers.^[77] Indeed, the feared looting consisted of only a few mules and automobiles taken by Constitutionalist troops. For the most part, the refineries were untouched, and the Mexican workers in the oil fields prevented the wells from overflowing the storage capacity. The American consulate reopened in Tampico on 4 May, just thirteen days after the evacuation, protected by the forgiving attitude of the federal troops still in the city.^[78] The State Department had sought to minimize the danger to the oil zone but not by dispatching U.S. troops to protect the wells. Instead, Bryan attempted to negotiate separately with the Constitutionalists to declare the oil zone a neutral area in its revolutionary struggle with the federal forces. Carranza's answer was somewhat noncommittal. The neutrality of the oil zone, he said, depended on Huerta's leaving.^[79]

Once again, the Pearson group attempted to make friends on all sides. "I have maintained very cordial relations with [American forces at Veracruz]," said J.B. Body, "but not to such an extent as to run the risk of being called to account by our Mexican friends at some later date."^[80] All El Aguila coastal craft struck their Mexican colors and hoisted the Union Jack so as not to be captured as war prizes by the American navy. Meanwhile, the British naval officers at Tampico traveled into the oil fields, speaking to both Constitutionalist and Federalist commanders about protecting the volatile oil wells. The English managers remained in most of the oil camps; El Aguila's pipelines continued pumping crude oil, which its fleets carried to the refinery at Minatitlán. The only Pearson asset in transition during the aftermath of the Tampico incident was its Tehuantepec National Railway (TNR). Huerta's federal army took control of the TNR, which Mexican workers had operated when American workers evacuated.^[81] Operations of the British company continued.

The Americans, however, were out for most of May, during which time the Federalists had surrendered Tampico to the Constitutionalists. They began to return on 20 May, just a month after they had left, and within five days, the steam tankers resumed loading petroleum at the Huasteca terminal.^[82] In Tuxpan, June was another record-breaking month for oil exports. General Aguilar maintained order in the city for Americans and occupied himself with collecting a 15 percent tax on all Mexican properties. In Pánuco and Topila, however, in the absence of Constitutionalist troops, the local citizens greeted the returning Americans with anti-American meetings and insults. Several citizens of Pánuco demanded that Americans turn over their weapons and be treated as spies.^[83] Many Mexican citizens in the Huasteca remained hostile while the American troops still occupied Veracruz. They did not leave Veracruz until November 1914, fully four months following the collapse of the Huerta government. Like the Americans earlier at Tampico, Huerta fled to safety aboard the German cruiser Dresden. The Constitutionalists and the Federalists had shown great forbearance while American troops occupied Tampico. Both Mexican factions had found it in their interest not to destroy the oil industry, because as Navy Secretary Daniels was fond of saying, it was "the goose that laid the golden egg." Both sides needed the revenues provided by the oil fields. As for the American intervention at Veracruz, it did not seem to have accomplished very much at all except to promote the resentment of Mexican combatants toward Americans. The oil zone would never

return to normal following the Tampico incident. One colonist from Tampico said later that until the Veracruz occupation, Americans on the Gulf Coast had experienced some inconveniences.^[84] Thereafter, all foreigners were molested aplenty.