SYMHC Classics: Battle of Ambos Nogales

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. This week we had an episode that was focused on the Buffalo Soldiers, and we've chosen today's Saturday Classic because the Buffalo Soldiers were part of it as well. It's the Battle of Ambos Nogales, which took place in nineteen eighteen and led to the construction of the first permanent wall along the US Mexico border. We mentioned a punitive expedition into Mexico in Passing in this episode, and the Buffalo Soldiers tenth Cavalry was part of that as well. Also, please excuse how we pronounced Gadsden Purchase. I typed it wrong, not once, but twice, and our mouths just trusted that I knew what I was doing. This originally came out August twenty second, twenty eighteen, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. At this point, I think most of our listeners have probably heard that we launched a new podcast in July. I called This Day in History Class. One of the side effects of starting a show that is daily and talks about something that happened on that day in history is that as you're figuring out what to talk about, you find episodes that are also going to be good on Stuffy miss in History Class. And that's how today's episode came to be. August twenty seventh, twenty eighteen, is the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Ambos Nogiles, and that was an international incident at the US Mexico border in Arizona on the United States side and in Sonora on the Mexican side. So now you know what I'm going to talk about on the August twenty seventh episode of this Day in History Class. But we are going to cover it in way more detail here because that show is only five minutes long. Also, I know we have lots of teachers listening with their students and parents listening with maybe younger kids. There is one bit of strong language that comes up in this episode and some quoted material. I don't really consider it to be a swear, but I know other people would have the opposite opinion, like maybe my mom, so, yeah, like we spelled out the word but butt when we were children because that was a bad really yeah, so, uh, if you think that might apply to you, maybe give this one an advanced listen to just make sure that that one particular thing is not going to be an issue. But it is not the word but to be it is not. But so we walked through some very basic history of the American Southwest recently when we talked about the zoot Suit riots. But we know not everyone listens to every episode, So we're going to give you a quick recap. After Europeans arrived in North America, what is now the southwestern United States was claimed by Spain. New Spain declared its independence in eighteen ten, which kicked off a war that lasted until eighteen twenty. The war ended when Spain finally recognized Mexico as an independent nation. The Mexican state of Sonora was formally established in eighteen twenty four. Then the Mexican American War began in eighteen forty six and it ended in eighteen forty eight. After that, Mexico seeded a large stretch of land to the United States. This included a lot of what would become the Southwestern States, but it did not include the southernmost parts of Arizona or New Mexico. The United States bought that territory in the Glasden Purchase, which was finalized in eighteen fifty four, and Arizona became a state in nineteen twelve. So obviously a super quick recap that is, hundreds of years of history in two paragraphs and not even including anything about the indigenous people who were already living there. So two cities, both named Nogalis, were established, one on each side of the border after the Glasden purchase, but before Arizona's statehood. The name Nogalis is derived from the Spanish word for walnut, and collectively the two cities are called Ambos Nogals or both Nogalas. These cities were established after a railroad was planned that would connect Mexico and the United States, running from Tucson almost due south to Guimus on the Gulf of California. On the US side, Jacob and Isaac Isaacson established a trading post at the border along the proposed train route in eighteen eighty At first they called it Isaacson, but they changed the name to Nogals on June fourth, eighteen eighty three. On the Mexican side, the Mexican government authorized the establishment of a customs office at the border along the same train route on August second of eighteen eighty That train line was finished in eighteen eighty two. Soon Ambos Nogalis was the most important border crossing between Arizona and Sonora. Its population grew quickly, and by the late nineteen teens there were nearly four thousand people living on the Sonora side and a little more than five thousand people living in Arizona. These two cities were divided only by a broad boulevard that was called International Street. There were only two visible signs that International Street was really an international border. One was Boundary Monument one twenty two. This was an obelisk. It still stands today. It marks the exact position of the border, and that replaced an earlier marker that had fallen apart in eighteen ninety three. The other clue was this wide expanse of empty territory on either side of the line. Mexico had built Nogalles, Sonora with buildings that were at least fifty feet or fifteen meters away from the border. Buildings in Nogalles, Arizona were initially built a lot closer, but in the eighteen nineties, by presidential proclamation, everything that was within sixty feet or eighteen meters of the line was torn down. This was an attempt to curb smuggling, basically, with the idea that without a bunch of buildings to hide in between, it would be harder to smuggle. Did not actually do much to deter smuggling. For the first decades of the city's histories, it was really easy to cross from one Nogalles to another. You just walked across the street. That wide expanse of empty land was also a popular place for both Mexican and American children to play. Even though these were two cities, one in the US and the other in Mexico, they functioned more like one binational community that happened to straddle an international border. Citizens of one country often had families, jobs, or property on the other. This pretty much open border in Ambos Nogalles became increasingly guarded starting around nineteen ten, at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. The Mexican Revolution was a long and extremely complicated conflict that involved numerous revolutionary factions. It led to millions of deaths. Violence associated with the revolution also threatened American cities all along the border with Mexico, including Nogallas, Arizona. Mexican border cities like Nogalas Sonora also became particularly important during the revolution because controlling them made it easier for revolutionaries to cross into the United States to purchase weapons and supplies. In nineteen thirteen, Constitutionalist forces lay siege to Nogals Sonora, which meant that the Mexican Revolution was being fought literally across the street from an American city. After several days of fighting, in which several American soldiers and civilians were wounded by stray gunfire, the federal forces in Nogalles Sonora crossed the border and surrendered to the Americans. The violence continued in the area into nineteen fifteen during Panchovia's campaign in northern Mexico, and this led to troops from the United States Army being deployed all over the border to try to protect Americans against the possible spillover of violence from Mexico. During VIA's campaign, the governor of Sonora also put up a barbed wire fence through Nogles to act as a deterrent, but that was taken down after just a few months. Although Panchovia's men didn't ultimately invade Nogalles, Arizona, there was a lot of tension between Mexicans and Americans as his campaign was going on. There were understandable fears and frustrations stemming from being right across the border from an ongoing revolution for five solid years, but these tensions were also fueled by racism. This erupted into a riot in August of nineteen fifteen when a white mob in Arizona tried to force Mexicans across the border into Sonora, and then on March ninth, nineteen sixteen, Ponchovia attacked Columbus, New Mexico. Although Ambos Noogailis wasn't directly involved in this, the attack nearly took the United States and Mexico to war, and it made things even more tense and numerous American cities near the border. This was one of the factors in the Bisbee deportation, which we talked about earlier this year. After the attack on Columbus, the United States mounted what was known as the Punitive Expedition to try to hunt down Panchovia. The National Guard units were sent to cities all over the border, including Nogalas, to guard them from potential attack. Meanwhile, World War One started in nineteen fourteen, and in early nineteen seventeen, a telegram from German Foreign Secretary Arthur's Zimmermann was intercepted and decoded. In this telegram, Germany pledged to return Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to Mexico. Mexico joined the war and fought against the United States. So after nearly a decade of ongoing threats stemming from the Mexican Revolution, Americans were now also afraid that Mexico was going to go from being neutral in the war to actively fighting against the United States, even though the fact that there was still a revolution going on and it had been going on for years made that pretty unlikely. The Zimmerman Telegram was a major factor in the United States decision to finally enter World War One in April of nineteen seventeen, and when that happened, the National Guard troops that had been stationed along the US Mexico border were called up to federal service, placing them in Nogalis, where the U. S Army's thirty fifth Infantry and tenth Cavalry Regiments. The tenth Cavalry was an all black unit under the command of white officers, and was better known as part of the Buffalo Soldiers. As in other cities on the border, a rifle club was also established in Nogalis, which was meant to act as a civilian fighting force if one was needed. On January eighteenth, nineteen eighteen, a German agent named Lotharvitske was apprehended in Nogalis, Sonora. He had an encrypted letter on his person that was addressed to the German ambassador in Mexico City. It read, in part quote strictly secret. The bearer of this is a subject of the German Empire who travels as a Russian under the name of Pablo Veberski. He is a German secret agent. Please furnish him on request protection and assistance. Also advance him on demand up to one thousand pesos of Mexican gold, and send his code telegrams to this embassy as official consular dispatches. It was signed von Eckhart. That was Heinrich von Eckhart, German foreign minister, who was also the recipient of the Zimmerman telegram. Vitzka was tried in August of nineteen eighteen and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison after the end of the war, and he was later pardoned. All of this led to increasingly higher border security in Nogalles, which we will talk about after a quick sponsor break. Starting in the summer of nineteen eighteen, authorities, especially American authorities, started putting a lot heavier restrictions on what could happen at the Ambos noo Galles border. For example, suddenly there were a lot of new rules about how much and what kind of food people could take from the United States into Mexico. In the summer of nineteen eighteen, authorities in the US threatened to close the border in entirely if authorities in Mexico didn't put an end to what was described as food running, and the border itself became more controlled. No longer was it a situation where you could simply cross the street or where children could play across the borderline. Two official crossing points were established when residents on both sides balked at suddenly having only two places to cross when they had previously been completely free to come and go. No Gallus Sonora Mayor Felix B. Penaloza ordered a barbed wire fence to be placed along the Mexican side. This was a gesture of goodwill on the mayor's part. He framed it as a way to make it easier for American border agents to do their jobs. He suggested to his counterparts in Arizona that they do the same on their side of the border to contribute to the overall security. In August of nineteen eighteen, the US State Department started restricting how Mexicans could enter the United States through no galles. Mexican laborers with a passport were allowed two entries per day and that was it. Non workers were allowed only one entry per week. People really bristled at this idea, especially Mexican workers who had jobs in Arizona and people who had families on the other side of the line. There was also an immediate economic impact on businessmen in Arizona who relied on customers from Sonora and vice versa. I mean, when your town had been pretty much an entire international community where we came and went freely, people were economically really connected to each other. Duties collected at the customs houses were also a major source of revenue, particularly in Sonora, and that was greatly affected by the reduction in traffic across the border as well. And as tensions continued to escalate, Mexicans reported increasing incidents of mistreatment at the hands of US border officials. It was everything from just general rudeness to physically being shoved out of border agent's offices. It was enough for Mexican Consul Jose Garza Zertucci to write up a report to the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs detailing a range of insults and injustices. Then, on August twenty seventh, nineteen eighteen, a Mexican carpenter named Zepfarino gil Lamdrid was returning home after doing a job in Arizona. He was a well known person in Ambos Noogailes, and he was carrying a bulky package. He had already stepped onto the Mexican side of the border when a US customs agent named Arthur Barber told him to turn around and come back and have that package inspected. Guards on the Mexican side of the crossing told gil Lamdrid to ignore Barber. He was already in Mexico and he did not need to turn around, gil Lamdrid was not sure what to do. Any froze, and then Private William Clint from the US thirty fifth Infantry pointed his rifle at gil Lamdrid to encourage him to come back to the US side and have the package inspected. Somebody, it is not clear if it was Clint or someone else, fired a shot. Gil Lamadrid dropped to the ground. Apart from it being totally reasonable to hit the deck when you hear a gunshot in your vicinity while somebody had been pointing a weapon at you, at least two Mexicans had also been shot and killed at the border in Nogalis while trying to cross over the prior twelve months. The guards on the Mexican side of the border believed that gil Lamadrid had been killed. In response, one guard named Francisco Gallegos shot at the Americans, hitting Clint in the face and wounding him. Agent Barber returned fire, killing both Galagos and another Mexican guard. At that point, Gilamdrad got up and ran. There was a Mexican Federal Army garrison nearby, but most of the men stationed there were away from the area fighting rebels. When this happened, so Mexican civilians went home and grabbed their personal rifles and began trying to defend Nogalles, Sonora from the US Army. Most of them took up sniper position in homes and on roofs. In the words of Captain Roy V. Merlage of the tenth Cavalry quote, I told the men to follow me not far along before we got a lot of fire. There was so much it was hard to tell where it was coming from. Also, it seemed as though everybody in Nogalis was shooting from the windows toward the border. Became a massive gun battle. It was mainly between the US Army troops and Mexican civilian snipers, although that civilian rifle club that had been established in Nogallas, Arizona was also involved. Eventually, the thirty fifth Infantry also set up and employed a machine gun from a hill on the Arizona side. Mayor Penelosa was in a meeting at Nogalis, Sonora City Hall when all of this started. He tied a handkerchief to his cane as an improvised white flag, and he went out into the street to try to stop the gunfire. He waved his flag and he begged the civilians on the Mexican side to stop shooting. He was shot from the Arizona side, although it is not clear by whom, and he died within the hour. The mayor's death made the residence of Nogalis, Sonora even angrier. They already felt like they'd been facing months of mistreatment and abuse from overbearing American border agents, and now they were being shot at and their mayor was dead. More civilians became involved in the fighting, and women on the Sonora side painted red crosses on sheets and tried to establish a field hospital. Jose Garzaz Sertucci got in touch with the Lieutenant Colonel Frederick J. Herman of the tenth Cavalry, who was the acting subdistrict commander. Sertucci proposed that both sides raise a white flag and mutually agree to stop shooting. Herman told Sertucci to go to Hell, saying later quote American troops don't carry white flags and don't use them. Later, Herman would confirm to a Senate committee that he had told the Mexican consul to go to Hell. It's not a very diplomatic response to that request, and herman told their two that if Nogalisnora didn't raise their white flag in the next ten minutes, that the US Army was going to go across the border and burn the whole city down. Acting Mayorjesu's Palma, who had assumed that role after the death of Mayor Panaloza, ordered a white flag to be raised over the No Galisonora customs house at about seven forty five PM, although some scattered gunfire continued after it was raised. The official report on this from the Mexican Army listed the Mexican death toll at fifteen, twelve of them civilians. The civilians included at least two children and a woman who was hanging up her wash when she was shot. Also killed on the Mexican side were one soldier and two guards. Reports on the American side listed seven dead, two officers, three enlisted men, and two civilians, but the US authorities estimated that the death toll and Sonora was actually much higher than the initial report, with more than one hundred people killed and there were many injuries on both sides. When the US War Department heard what happened, they contacted Brigadier General de Rosy cable at nearby Fort Wachuka to investigate. Mexican President Vinustanio Caranza ordered the Sonorian governor Plutarco Ellis Caius to investigate as well. The border was closed for almost twenty four hours, and civilians in Nogalis, Sonora were ordered to turn in their weapons, although not all of them did. Kabo and Kayas met along with interpreters on August twenty eighth. Unlike the phone call between Sertucci and Hermann, this seems to have been an overall positive and productive meeting. Both sides expressed regret for what had happened the day before and genuinely wanted to prevent any further violence. But that night, Private Edward Stiller was on guard near the thirty fifth Infantry's machine gun. He and everybody else that was stationed there had been ordered not to respond to any shots from the Mexican side, but when somebody fired a shot from Nogalis, Sonora, the soldiers manning the machine gun returned fire. More shots were fired, and Stiller was hitting the leg and wounded. After he learned about this incident, Cabol warned Caius that if shots continued to be fired, from the Mexican side, the army would have to cross the border to pursue the culprits. But the next day, August twenty ninth, Private Stiller left the hospital, walked back to the hill where the machine gun was stationed, and started firing his gun across the line into Mexico. He hit and wounded a Mexican soldier who was standing guard, and Kabble had him arrested. During the earlier meeting between cabl and Caius, Cobble had asked Caius to stop this gun fire that kept sporadically happening from the Mexican side. Caius had said that these shots were being fired by irresponsible civilians and then it was pretty much out of his control. But after Kabil had Stiller arrested, he went back to Caius and said that he was willing to discipline his soldiers when they broke the orders not to fire, but that he also needed assurances from Kayus that he was taking steps on the Sonora side. Cayus agreed to try to apprehend the shooters on the Mexican side, and although there were a few more spray gunshots after this, that was the end of most of the fighting. We're going to talk about the investigations and the aftermath of all of this, but first we're going to pause for a little sponsor break. After the Battle of Ambosnogailes, authorities on both sides of the border tried to pinpoint and address the issues that had contributed to the incident in the first place. Kabal conducted an investigation of the customs procedures on the Arizona side of the border, and his ultimate conclusion was that the root cause of this incident was resentment from the ongoing mistreatment of Mexicans who were trying to cross the border. As a result, one US border officer was fired for improper conduct because of his ongoing mistreatment of Mexicans when they were trying to The investigation cited quote frequent cases of insolence and overbearing conduct. Then Lieutenant Colonel Hermann was also demoted and transferred out of Nogalis. Authorities in both Sonora and Arizona also changed how the border agents, the guards other servicemen at the border were armed. They started carrying side arms and sometimes clubs instead of rifles to try to defuse some of the tension. The barbed wire fence that had been placed along the border leading up to this was intended to be temporary, and at this point there were some other temporary fences along the border as well. Most of them were put up because of security fears due to the Mexican Revolution in World War One, but in a couple of cases it was to try to keep livestock from crossing the border. But after the events of August twenty seventh, nineteen seventeen, Kaba recommended that the fence in Nogalas be lengthened and made permanent, and this became the first permanent barrier at the US Mexian border. After the end of the war, Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico called for Congressional hearings into various issues at the US Mexico border. A number of businesses and political leaders really wanted the United States to intervene in Mexico, mostly to try to protect business and financial interests that were being affected by the Mexican Revolution. In Fall's case, this was interested in an oil company. The hearings were meant to try to convince President Woodrow Wilson to invade Mexico. The Battle of Ambos Nogallis was a big part of these hearings, and while they didn't entice President Woodrow Wilson to invade Mexico, they did influence how Americans understood what it happened at Nogalas for decades. Fred Herman, now a captain, gave testimony at these hearings that was at various points dishonest and disingenuous, but which continued to be repeated as fact for decades. He claimed that in the days leading up to the Battle of Ambos Nogallas, he had received intelligence reports of strange wealth supplied Mexicans and unfamiliar white men in Sonora. He said that he believed, based on these reports, that Nogalis Sonora had been infiltrated by German agents and was preparing an attack. Hermann also claimed that he had received an anonymous letter from someone claiming he was a former major in Pancho Villa's army who had grown disillusioned and disgusted with Villa and the brutalities of his fighting force. The letter claimed that there would be an attack on Nogallis, Arizona by a Mexican force with German support around August twenty fifth, but it doesn't appear that there's a copy of that intelligence report or the letter anywhere. There was no mention of either of them in Kabbel's investigation into the incident. And on top of that, Herman also described what happened on August twenty seventh in a way that was variously just not right. He said that most of the people who were fighting in Sonora were soldiers, when most of them were really civilians. He also said that the mayor who had been shot literally while waving a white flag and had a rifle in his hands at the time. When I say that, these things are still repeated as fact, like when I was doing research for this podcast, I had a lot of them written down as fact in my notes as I was reading articles about them, And then I was like, but whatever happened with that, the whole German thing like that, why didn't that ever come up in any of this resolution part? And it's because it doesn't appear that anybody said anything about that until these congressional hearings that were way after the fact. So there's suspicion that like none of that ever even really happened. In terms of getting a letter and these intelligence reports. The fence that was erected in nineteen eighteen was made of barbed wire. It was later replaced with chain link and then with large pieces of corrugated steel. The current barrier was placed in twenty eleven and it cost nearly twelve million dollars. It's between eighteen and thirty feet tall, that's between five point five and nine meters, and it's made of steel tubes reinforced with concrete with four inch or ten centimeter gaps in between. This design was meant to allow law enforcement and border patrol to see what was happening on the other side of the wall, but it also had the side effect of allowing family members and friends who lived on opposite sides of the wall to see and talk to one another. In addition to places for people to cross the border, the wall also has a port for livestock, especially on the Sonora side. There's a lot of artwork along the wall, some of its formerly sanctioned art installations and some of its graffiti. A lot of it is expressing objection to the wall into the policies that led it to still be there. There is still a lot of traffic between Sonora and Arizona, although that has waned as the border has become increasingly militarized, a process that started in the nineteen eighties and nineties, but the two cities still have a lot of overlap, with many residents having friends and family on the other side of the border. No Gallus, Arizona is much smaller. It's about twenty thousand people compared to Nogalis Sonora's two hundred and fifty thousand. Interestingly, both cities have the same surface and groundwater sources, and the wastewater for both is treated at the Nogalis International Wastewater Treatment Plant in Rio Rico, Arizona. The Battle of Ambos Noogallas is commemorated more on the Sonora side than on the Arizona side, including a ballad that was written at the time and is still sung today. There's also a memorial to the defenders of Nogallis Sonora in the Mexican customs house there, which lists the names of the confirmed dead. So the permanent wall through Ambos Nogalles was erected after a violent cross border conflict, with the intent that it would prevent something similar in the future, and officials have increasingly relied on it as a physical barrier to stop illegal border crossings by everyone from immigrants to drug and weapons smugglers, but it hasn't really stopped any of that. In spite of having been designed to deter her climbing, people still climb over it daily, sometimes carrying all kinds of contraband. Yeah, every article that you read about this wall today is like and there are still people climbing over it all the time. Also, on October tenth, twenty twelve, unarmed sixteen year old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot ten times in the back four blocks from his home in Nogalis, Sonora, by US Border Patrol agent Lonnie Schwartz. Schwartz fired sixteen times from the United States into Mexico, and he said that he was acting in self defense. Agents were in the middle of pursuing two people who were climbing over the fence with bundles of marijuana, and agents reported that Rodriguez and other people on the Mexican side were throwing rocks at them to try to distract them in their pursuit. There is some security footage though that raises doubts about that accusation and Rodriguez's family has maintained that he was not the type of kid to throw rocks at a border patrol officer. Schwartz was indicted years later, and he was found not guilty of second degree murder in April of twenty eighteen. The jury was not able to reach a verdict and to lesser manslaughter charges in the case. As a final note, Ambos Nogallas is not the only binational community in the immediate vicinity about sixty miles it's about ninety seven kilometers to the west is tahonah o Odom Nation. The tribal headquarters is in Cells, Arizona, but about two thousand tribal members live in Sonora. This has its own complexities, but the border through the tohonah Oodom Nation has at least for the past century, been much more open than the border through Ambos Nogals. Obviously, the nation is working to change that, the nation being the United States, not the tohono Odem Nation. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now Now our current email address is history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.