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The Picture Postcard as Historical Evidence: Veracruz, 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Paul J. Vanderwood
Paul J. Vanderwood*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University, San Diego, California
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Extract

When you look at these picture postcards, you sense how they felt — these invading U.S. sailors and marines at war with Mexican soldiers and civilians defending their territory. These photos are not the work of professionals, although a number of salaried photojournalists in 1914 recorded the American landing at Veracruz for their respective publications. Instead, these are, by and large, simple snapshots, unplanned, some unfocused, taken at a moment's opportunity by the participants themselves. They picture the way in which common combatants hoped to remember the event, and how they wanted others to view it. All the more so, because these are not simply photographs, but also postcards, the images reinforced with handwritten messages and mailed elsewhere to share the experience of Veracruz and to indicate how they felt about it. Americans full of bombast and arrogance in their display of Old Glory, disdain the enemy. Mexicans, returning the fight (some of it in posed pictures), eager to display the destruction caused by the foreign intervention and to mourn their dead. Picture postcards such as these beg analysis, yield insights, raise questions; they are a new and fascinating piece to be fitted into the puzzle of history.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , October 1988 , pp. 201 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1988

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References

1 The writer of this essay has recently co-authored a book entitled Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of the Mexican Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness Along the Border, 1910–1917 with his friend and colleague, Frank N. Samponaro, who teaches Mexican history at the University of Texas at the Permian Basin. It was published by the University of New Mexico Press in May. Some of the material which appears in this article was researched for that book. Analysis of picture postcards often requires technical expertise. Toward that end, personnel at San Diego’s Aerospace Center helped to identify the U.S. naval aircraft used at Veracruz; specialists at Hiram’s Guns and Spirits shop in El Cajon, California, described the characteristics of rifles employed by the Mexicans. Owners of personal postcard collections — Andreas Brown, John Hardman, Carter Rila, James Sobery — all explained special details of their cards. My friends Rosalie Schwartz and Glenn Syktich read the essay for content and style. Thanks to you all.

2 The best books which treat the history and sociology of the picture postcard are: Staff, Frank The Picture Postcard and its Origins (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966)Google Scholar and Ryan, Dorothy B. Picture Postcards in the United States, 1893–1918 (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1981).Google Scholar Prairie Fires and Half Moons, The American Photographic Postcard: 1900–1920 (Boston: David R. Godfine, 1981), by Hal Morgan and Andreas Brown is an imaginative and original work which features beautiful reproductions. For technical improvements in photo postcard production see: Morgan and Brown, Prairie Fires, pp. xiii–xiv, and Beaumont Hall, The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964), p. 88. A good book which studies history through the medium of the picture postcard is: Evans, Eric J. and Richards, Jeffrey A Social History of Britain in Postcards, 1870–1930 (London: Longman, 1980).Google Scholar

3 Vanderwood, Paul J. and Samponaro, Frank N. “Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico’s Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness Along the Border, 1910–1917” (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), p. 18.Google Scholar

4 There is no one volume that covers the entire mobilization per se. However, facets of the event have been studied. For the Pershing expedition to “Get Villa!,” one might start with a rousing, popular rendition: Mason, Herbert Mulloy Jr., The Great Pursuit (New York: Random House, 1970).Google Scholar Woodrow Wilson’s Mexican policy is intelligently approached in: Gilderhaus, Mark T. Diplomacy and Revolution: US.-Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977),Google Scholar and several border issues are well-considered in Coerver, Don M. and Hall, Linda B. Texas and the Mexican Revolution: A Study in State and National Border Policy, 1910–1920 (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1984).Google Scholar Eyewitness reports of the event include: Batchelder, Roger Watching and Waiting on the Border (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917)Google Scholar; Lewis, Tracey Hammond Along the Rio Grande (New York: Lewis Publishing Company,Google Scholar 196 ), and Gibbons, Floyd P. How the Laconia Sank: The Militia Mobilization on the Mexican Border (Chicago: Daughady and Company, 1917).Google Scholar Finally the author has written extensively on the Mexican Revolution. For example, see his: Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police and Mexican Development (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981).

5 The Mexican picture postcards consulted in this study are located in the Centro de Información Gráfica of the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City.

6 The standard, but now conceptually outdated, book on the Veracruz affair is: Quirk, Robert An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1962).Google Scholar Sweetman’s, Jack The Landing at Veracruz: 1914 (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1968)Google Scholar heroizes the invaders but carries some important insights and splendid anecdotes. A popular Mexican version, which uses several picture postcards as illustrations, is: Martínez, Andrea La intervención norteamericana: Veracruz, 1914 (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1982).Google Scholar For the Mexican position see also: Palomares, Justino M. La invasión Yanqui en 1914 (published by author, 1940).Google Scholar

7 Katz, Friedrich The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 195–202.Google Scholar

8 Hart, John M. Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987),Google Scholar ch. 9.

9 Examples of some of these cards with their individual credits appear in the photo section of this essay.

10 Examples are included in the photo section of this article.

11 Quotations taken from cards in the Andreas Brown, New York City; John Hardman, Warren, Ohio; Carter Rila, Gaithersburg, Maryland; and James Sobery, Atlanta, collections.

12 From the collection of Andreas Brown.

13 Martínez, , Intervención norteamericana, p. 62.Google Scholar

14 From the collection of James Sobery.

15 Collections cited in footnote #11.

16 Sandos, James A. “The Mexican Revolution and the United States, 1915–1917: The Impact of Conflict on the Tamaulipas Texas Frontier Upon the Emergence of Government in Mexico” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1978), p. 145.Google Scholar

17 From the collection of Andreas Brown.

18 From the Jodie P. Harris Postcard Collection, Archives of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas.

19 This information is taken from cards held by Brown, Hardman, Rila and the Walter Horne Collection, Southwest Room, El Paso Public Library.

20 Staff, Postcard…Origins, passim; Rigan, Postcards…United States, passim; and Morgan and Brown, Prairie Fire, pp. xiii-xiv.

21 The best-known postcard collector’s newsletters in the United States are: Barr’s News, a weekly published in Lansing, Iowa, and The Postcard collector, issued monthly at lola, Wisconsin.

22 Author’s personal correspondence with U.S., Local History and Geneology Division, New York Public Library, New York City, 6 April 1987.

23 From the collections of El Archivo General de la Nación and John Hardman.