to change the direction of a given society. >> call in to talk with david farber about the social movements of the '60s leading up to woodstock and its legacy. woodstock, 50 years, sunday at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span's washington journal and also live on c-span3. twoem c-span3's american history tv as we look at archival film that real puts events of today in context. we'll look at silent film produced back in 1916 titled "uncle sam watching the mexican bothered." here joining us in the studios with context and analysis is julie prieto who is the author of "the mexican expedition, 1916-1917" put together by the u.s. army center of u.s. history. put this time period into context. exactly what was happening during these two years and its

importance today. >> yeah. so the mexican expedition and the border itself really needs to be understood in the context of the mexican revolution, and that's a conflict that begins in 1910 with the ouster of the long-standing dictator diaz who is ousted by morero and he's killed soon afterwards and after he's killed several revolutionary faxes emerge from that and one of the faxes is under veentsia carranza and one of the people involved with that is franz copancho villa. carranza and his constitutionalists have become successful. they managed a large part of the country and at this point of success pancho villa breaks with the constitutionalists and he's successful militarily.

he goes from having an army that's about 30,000 to 50,000 people operating mostly in the north of mexico, mostly in the chihuahua to having about 5,001 troops under his command and it's sort of a low point in his military career that he decides to start attacking americans at the border. he does this for a couple of different reasons. one is to stay relevant in the fight, in the revolution. the other is that woodrow wilson, who is president of the u.s. at that time, recognize the mexico is the right government and pancho villa believes that this is due to a corrupt bargain, that essentially carranza has given woodrow wilson secret claims to mineral rights or to land rights in northern mexico next change for being recognized by the government this.

allows carranza to actually buy arms from the united states whereas pancho villa can not, so that's why he starts stepping up attacks on the border. first attacks at train and then leading to the loss of life of americans and then in march 1914 his forces attack the town of columbus in the middle of the night. they largely burn down the downtown and one column attacks an army garrison at camp furlong right outside of town. >> so we're going to watch the film in just a moment, but in order to better understand the border and what it was like back then, clearly it's in the headlines today with the debate over the wall, but what was it like in 1916? what would we have seen if we traveled to that area. >> on the u.s. side you would find a remarkably safe border considering there was a very large war going on right over the other side. much of the mexican battles,

take place in chihuahua and the north. many revolutionary leaders come from sonora and the north of mexico is a very dangerous place and there aren't many refugees coming over the bothered at that time to escape the fighting in northern mexico, but on the u.s. side there are actually not that many attacks considering the danger and the long-standing conflict that happens very, very close by to american soil, so there's the columbus-new mexico raid, ten civilians are killed in that raid and eight soldiers are before the mexican expedition is sent into northern mexico to essentially try to capture and kill pancho villa in retribution, and there's also in a small town close by to columbus, not a whole lost other raids that happen around that time. there are some shots that sometimes make it into -- that

make it into the u.s., but it is actually shockingly safe considering the scale of the conflict. >> and yet do you find it ironic that a century later a different type of conflict but still some of the same issues? >> yeah, it's definitely interesting that we're having a lot of the same issues today. of course, the border is a very different place. at that time, too, there was no border fence. there was no border wall. the border was -- there's even places in el paso and bars straddling the border so you could walk into the bar on one side and drink on the other on the other side of the bothered so it's really open back and forth trouble between the two countries. >> let's roll the silent film and if you're in the move house in 1914 in the audience who do you think the theater-goers would have thought about this? what would have been going through their minds? >> i think they would have thought it was a grad adventure actually because it's the -- the

mexican expedition is a unique and interesting transitional point for the u.s. army because it's really the last major army operation that uses horse cavalry so you have horses hitting the trail, camping for months at a time, really independently as opposed to world war i which happens right afterwards which is large major operations in trenches and in ways doesn't have that sort of front year field. this is real the first time that the army uses trucks and airplanes in the field so i think that people would have been interested in the sort of spirit of adventure and change that it embodies. >> and all of this cron called, the cover of your book, is that a camp, and do you know where that is taken? >> it is, and i don't know exactly where it was taken. it is marked 1916 in northern mexico so it would have been somewhere in chihuahua. but you can see in the film there is a similar sort of

vignette of men around a camp fire. >> the film begins with the march to one of those encampments, so as we watch this, give us a sense of what we're look at. >> mm-hmm. we're looking at infantry and mounted artillery. i think we'll see cavalry first. this is what i'm talking about. in terms of the sort of adventure that the mexican expedition would have held for people because horse cavalry had been used very extensively in the indian wars in northern mexico and the southwest of the u.s. from the 1880s to about this time, but this is really the last major army operation that used them, and you can see the units are -- although this looks like a lot of people having 100, 200 people together in a group of horse cavalry is a much smaller unit than would have been used in say world war i, so it's a small number of men on horses on the trail. >> arriving from where?

where do the recruits come from? >> these are probably not recruits. these are probably regulars in the u.s. army, so these are career people and they would have been coming from probably elsewhere in the southwest at first, so initially in the expedition you have 4,800 troops. by the end you have about 10,000 come down, so some of them might have come from somewhere else besides the southwest, but at least initially that's where they are coming from. the other thing is that the army at this time is much smaller than it is during world war i. there are only about 25,000 troops in the continental u.s. at this time regs, and the whole army is somewhere around 120,000, 130,000 people compared to the millions who are fighting in france. it's actually a very small force. >> and i ask you this in terms of context as we see these men arriving at their camp. the civil war ended 1865. world war i was beginning to hover in europe in 1913, 1914.

what was the u.s. military like? how prepared were we for these kinds of conflicts? >> well, like said, it's very small. a lot of the army is actually in sort of far-flung remote places. a lot of them are in the phillipines. a lot of them are in the panama canal zone, so you had these very small units in far-flung small camps in the united states, oftentimes in the west so you had these sort of small garrisons that in the southwest at least are really focused on -- on capturing indian tribes, so in the 1880s they are crossing the border back and forth between the u.s. and mexico trying to capture the last of the apaches. >> this appears to be a training mission, is that correct? >> this does look like training. so before you could see the

signal corps and they were -- they seemed to be setting up a portable telegraph machine, and now you see cavalry training, so, again, this is a relatively small unit, probably training and practicing how to move together in the feel, probably outside either on the bothered at ft. bliss or at the main camp that general pershing set up in northern mexico which is the main headquarters through most mexican expedition. >> and, again, this is how they saw it back in 1916 in movie houses, correct? >> that's a good question. so this -- this might have been seen in movie houses. it might have been seen as part of a newsreel. it was filmed by the signal corps so they -- and they do seem to have cut this together in a way that essentially shows the material both at the u.s. army used during the mexican expedition and the material that they needed going forward in

world war i, so part of the point of this film streams also have been to show some of the deficiencies in averagements and materiel and to make a case presumably for receiving more of it and for receiving more funding. >> do you have any insights into how they trained the horses to carry the arsenal and the personnel? >> you know, that's a good question. i really don't know how they trained all of the horses. they used horses pretty extensively. they also used mules. you can see earlier in the film, they used a lot of pack mules as well. now you don't see them but anyway you do see a lot of pack mules as well so there's a lot of animal power that went into the old army and the functioning of the old army, although i will say that pack mules, even though they were used extensively in the expedition, were pretty problematic in terms of what they could do because they could, of course, carry large amounts of materiel down from the corner to the advanced headquarters for pershing, but

because chihuahua is a desert, it's very dry. the mules actually had to carry their own fodder down to mexico so they couldn't carry as much materiel which is why pershing ultimate ultimately turns to use trucks for the first time as part of the expedition even though relying on animal power. >> and general pershing, general john blackjack" ber shing. he's a significant player in the development of the modern military, correct. >> >> very important. up until now he had a pretty illustrious career, governor of the philippines, but this is the first time that he's really given a large army to command, so this is sort of a testing ground also, not only for new materiel for the army but for john pershing himself. he's able to prove himself in the field and he's able to command large units. he -- like i said, he tests new

material and he's able to really show that he's an innovative leader and that he's able to attract a large degree of talent to him and loyalty from the soldiers which was something that not every commander could do in the field. >> as you said just a moment ago, their morning bath and being their own barber. looking at all of this there had to be a tremendous amount of support staff to handle the horses and all that came with that, of course, and, of course, just the basic needs of the men in military and they were all men at that time. >> they were all men. there's a huge amount of support staff and they have to gear up so quickly that they actually have to hire some civilians to do the jobs because civilians do ultimately have so do things like drive trucks and they are paid more than the soldiers at first so pershing tries to eliminate civilian labor as much as they can. >> vaccination is key because they were in close quarters and during the time of the year when

there could have been infestations of mosquitos and hot temperatures along the u.s.-mexico border. >> right. there are really extremes of temperatures in chihuahua because chihuahua is a desert but it also has very high elevations so the men also encountered snow, cold weather, dust storms in addition to desert weather later on in the year and they would have been inokay rated against typhoid fever and possibly small pokz and there's a small rate of disease. >> did civilians learn from the vaccination programs? >> i think so, yes. it was a testing ground for the efficacy especially when you have a lot of people in close quarters. >> and these soldiers needed three meals a day? >> they did, though the horse cavalry was sent out with only three days of rations, very

little food and very little supply. they are responsible for providing for themselves. they had to find cattle, slaughtering cattle or purchasing things in the field n.hard currency sometimes they have to issue ious which makes it very hard for mexicans to receive compensation. >> is this a form of hazing back in 1916. i hadn't actually seen this before. i would say a lot of these sorts of regulars that were career army soldier who are coming into the national guard for the first time, lots of young men who are looking forward to the adventure. >> the army has dogs. the navy, you know, always adopts. too. they always seem to adopt

animals on the trail. >> nathan landow keep them motivated. it seems like that there was a lot of down time but not owls a about theal this they have to go. very spend most of their time training, especially after june so from march to june they are on the trail actively searching for pancho villa and until then they spend a lot of time in camp training. that's true for them the nine months they are there. they don't see any action but they do spend every day usually hike, doing six to seven miles of hiking a day, doing drills and that kind of thing. >> i just want to jump in because as we look at the modern air force and navy pilots today and what they operate, this was only 100 years ago. >> right. >> and yet look how far we've come. what is in? >> this is -- this is kind of interesting because this is indeed captain fuloy who was the

commander of the first heir squadron. you can see him there in the center, sitting down in the half. but this plane was not on the expedition. this looks like a wright brothers model-a and the fact that they took were jennys from the curtis company and even so this was an older plane, a plane six, seven years older than that, so this is not a plane that had a lot of military use but even the jn 3s, the jennys, they came in with eight to begin, and they are only in service in mexico for about a month and a half. six of them crashed and two are cannibalized for parts and they don't do well in the field and the reason for that is that they go into spins very easily. they can't climb past 10,000 feet.

in fact, the peaks in chi hau w a -- chihuahua are 10,000 feet and they can't crest the mountains and because that have they do crash relatively quickly. >> we move from the planes to another part of the silent film. we look at this screen and these gentlemen sitting front and center outside their camp. explain this office and what they represent. >> the two men sitting there, one of them is general hoyt. he is in command of the department of texas for a time. he retired i believe right after this, so he's -- as you can see, he's quite aged already, but the department of the south is commanded by frederick funstan. he's not in here but who have been the superior of hoyt. >> now we move from that and the supply wagons and the equipment as they try to november from one part of country to the training camps and then the front lines.

>> yeah. so here you have wagons that are drawn by horses. wagons, like i said, are used in the early part of the expedition. wagons, pack mules. wagons are used later. wagons can only carry a certain amount of material, a little over a ton, but can't carry it up steep grades which is why pershing turns to trucks rather than wagons. >> hand how coming were the trains used by the military? >> trains were used north of the bothered but can't use them south of the border. after a week not expedition they are prevented from doing so by president carranza so they actually do have to use -- to have to use pack animals instead. >> we go from that to the bogue boys which many would associate with those troops in ward war

one and also associated with the troops along the u.s.-mexico border. >> yeah. they have an explanation for the term dough boy came from. the term, it's unclear what the oregon is, seems to be older than the civil war and there's a lot of stories about how they get that name. some say it's because of the flower, the fried dough that they ate, not entirely clear where that comes from. >> generally speaking, were they well taken care of? were there complaints, or did most of the soldiers feel that they have what they needed? >> had -- troops don't have proper uniforms.

going to fight in the desert so the army doesn't supply them with wool blankets the first few weeks and it's cold in the north and they do have deficiencies early on, but later on they are able to get large amounts of materiel into northern mexico to supply the troops, so i would say by may or so they real very enough of what they need. they really become much more comfortable, and, in fact, they have a lot of -- a lot of what he need in camp. a lot of what they don't note is -- you have locals selling things like alcohol and sundries if in ft. bliss. >> this is training that took place in large part in southern texas. >> that's most of what they did is try to get these people up to and these are people who did not have any military experience

before they came to the border. oftentimes they are brand new recruits and they come through having a lot of military experience afterwards. spent nine months on the bothered drilling, training, going out on hikes that were sometimes days, weeks at a time and patrolling the border, so going back and forth across their zone of the border, making sure that nothing was going on. of course, most of them don't run into any trouble on the border. it ends up being purely a training exercise. >> and when is that the tenth cavalry and the ninth cavalry that they showed us earlier means that african-american men commanded by white officers, so there is -- he's only the third

african-american to have graduated from harvard. they don't show him in the film. it's ill fated because you do see the skitchish. they are to walk through and eight of them are killed and 23 are captured, so 23 of them spend about a week, week and a half as missers in in chihuahua city before their release is negotiated. by all accounts they were very well treated in chihuahua estimate they are actually visited on a daily base by the british consul and the u.s. consul so they are well taken care of. >> it looks windy there with a lot of dust. >> here you can see the difficulty of the terrain because you have the desert that

rises up from the central plane so you can see here that there's not a lot of roads to get through. i mentioned railroads running through the state at that time north-doubt, and there are a unl of -- not a lot going south, someone you xwut so it's really a very challenging hand scape to get across. >> and limited munitions at the moment. >> yes. they had very limited ammunition. they don't use that much artillery in the expedition itself, but they have very -- they do have very little of it in the army in general. again, in that regard, because they are not using artillery too much for the expedition, this is one part where i think they are

looking ahead towards world war i and they aring aloy and determine they are quite lacking in terms of the ma materials being used in france. >> we're setting up for some sort of a battle. how did they know where to go and what kind of reconnaissance in addition do they have. they have a very poor reconnaissance and don't have a lot of people they can speak to, people who they can talk to to get accurate information to have them tell them where to go. that's what it looks like, he may also be trying to get the feel for the land. many of the maps dated from the mexican-american war, 1848, so they really go in with poor maps

and some of the to beography of mexico and they go in with wrong unifarms in some cases. they go in with summer uniforms and they need woolens to deal with the mountain weather so in a lot of senses they have challenges in terms of the. but in terms of intelligence also, they don't have a lot of attention on the ground. he's spent years evading capture. he's very goose at -- he hides in a -- it's actually very difficult to find him. >> when did he pass away, by the way? >> 1923, so he actually makes it through the whole revenue.

>> a very cursely information to get across from where they were back here in washington, d.c. they would rather to, and would also have wanted to communicate with ft. bliss and some of the areas around the border as well and to see where ma materials are coming so they would have wanted both. chihuahua, again, is so remote and underdeveloped and has seen so many years of war and destruction that there's really very few telegraph poles running through that area of the country so soldiers did have to set up telegrat lines and things like telephone poles and then running buzzer wire, unprotected cooper

wire you put across the desert from point a to point b and very vulnerable to horse crossing or man crossing over. >> and. >> it does look like an infirmary. again, this is -- you can see they don't yet have a moans to transport them in necessarily in trucks so they are still using wagons to transport people over to the main settlement where people spend most of the time actually on their expedition and the pershing headquarters which was actually put there in part because it's close to a bhormon village. that was 19ed in the 1970s. >> and then they had to have the

construction of the pontoon bridge. >> here they are building pontoon bridges. these are temporary bridges where you use a float. can you see that you put planks essentially or pre-formed platforms on top of it as a temporary message, and you can drive over it or have people go over it. >> we earring seeing a lot of the film. a lot of training taking operation but not the actual context itself. >> it's -- there are certainly conflicts and there are happen throughout but they happen early on. they really kappa trolling.

on june 21st they really stop patrolling outside of the headquarter areas, and part of the reason for that is that they have clashed a couple of times by then with the currency forced and with the government forces and wilson really doesn't want to risk a larger conflagration with mexico because he sees that the u.s. is probably going to enter world war i, and he cannot spare the troops. >> about did the munitions come from? where were they made. >> okay. it meeting -- this would essentially be practiced in demonstration of munitions not really trip for something like the mexican expedition but they are looking ahead towards world war i and, again, the expedition ends. come over the border in february

of is 1917 and war is declared in april 1917 so they know this is something that will likely happen as time goes on and woodrow wilson is really looking fords the start of armaments an training. >> as a militaryian his tore i don't know, did this inspire men to sign up? was that part of the motivation? >> part -- so being on the trail, the new earlier and yes. you fire directly. you don't fire indirectly it. probably did hold less romans for people i think a lot of younger men who volunteered to go down to the border see this as sort of a chance to join the

old army versus this which is the new army. >> well, just in that last scene it looked like the technology was getting better. >> yes, yes. it's getting much better. artillery is getting much longer ranges so you do have the ability to fire much greater distances which allows you to fire not only at things that you can see by -- i'm not allowed to use say airplanes to fly and spot, and then you would lies -- for athe thof -- it seemed very spring and that wasn't the army. the old army was the horse cavalry army which is really passing away after the mexico expedition. >> let's talk about the backs

but things-ins. who are they? >> become, -- you have african-american soldiers commanded by white soldiers in the field. there are african-american soldiers as i mentioned on the expedition, but there aren't a lot. >> the apache scouts. >> yes. this is the last hurrah of the apache scouts. the apache scouts were not just apaches. they were native americans from a variety of different tribes who enlisted into the army essentially to be guides in the southwest so during the indian wars as trackers, they work as trackers to try to find food and water to try to make sure that the u.s. army cavalry could survive on the trail and they would be able to find what they need to find. again, they go into the field

oftentimes with bad maps or with a poor sense of the land and the topography but the apache scouts knew the land very well. they knew the people really well. they were able to guide u.s. soldiers on the trail, and this is the last time they are used in the field. >> there was no draft in 1916, correct? >> mm-hmm, that is correct. >> what about the national guard and what changes took place as a result of all of this with the national guard? >> yeah. so the national guard, the call-up that wilson does originally in may is only of three stratsz along the border. he calls up texas, arizona and mexico's guard but only 3,000, 4,000 soldiers show up. that's not enough to protect the length of the border. the border obviously is very long. he needs many more troops than that so they actually extend the call-up to the rest of the states, so 49 states show up and send troops which ultimately ends up being about 110,000 on

the border. because of this they need to vastly increase the amount of money that goes to the national guard and the amount of training, so the national security act of 1916 is passed and that brings in the much-needed infufgs money. it increases the number of training days that the national guard gets per year, and it makes sure that they receive materiels, at least in parity, with the u.s. army, the regulars. >> why was general pershing such a significant prayer in this time period? >> he's a significant player for a number of different reasons. one of them is because he really does prove himself in the mexican expedition. there were very few that the u.s. army encages in, and he

take 10,000 regulars into the field for a very extended period of time, for 11 months, and that makes him very unique in the u.s. army. he's also able tone gender a lot of loyalty from the u.s. troops. his troops really like him. he seems to attract talent. there's a lot of subordinates who he mentors who seem to really thrive under him so he is maybe not the first most obvious choice afterwards to lead the american expeditionary forces of world war i, but his nearest rival frederick funstan who is the commander of the southern department dies also right after the expedition so that clears the way for pershing to rise and to become the commander of the aef. >> and from the book the establishment what have were described as sanitary villages. >> yes, yes, yes. we saw typhoid and smallpox inoculation. this is part of the reasons why the men on the expedition were

so healthy and the other was there as a -- pershing's system where he does designate an office to control with a he called a sanitary village, an area where they set up huts for women and women were allowed to stay in the huts and stay essentially a clean place where they had access to medical care. the officer would do scheduling for them and make sure that they were paid on time so they were able to have relatively good working conditions while at the same time the men were able to have a safe environment. >> seems pretty incredible though. >> yeah, and he was really -- some people were very angry with pershing over the system of prostitution. again, they were right next to a mormon town. i think a lot of mormon elders were not very happy about the system of regulated prostitution. a lot of medical officers were not very happy about it, but pershing stuck with it because

it gave results. >> and let me go back where we began, really adding context to all of this, because world war i was going on throughout europe. the u.s. entered after 1916 and 1917, but how did all that have play in what we were seeing along the u.s.-mexico border, the fact there was a war in europe? >> they were always cognizant of the fact there's a war going on and they are looking for one person in a huge state that's vast and allows them to car small positions, but they know very soon they will join world war i. it's increasingly clear that that's the next fight. a much different fight. a much more stationary fight,

along the trenches along northern france so they know that even though they are doing -- they are essentially engaging in one type of warfare they will very quickly have to transition to a very different kind which is why you see in the film so much artillery even though they don't use it really in mexico too much. they know that that is where they are headed to places to do things that are much more stationary. artillery pieces are big. they are heavy. you can't really drag them around the trail in northern mexico, but they are very useful in france when you have stationary trenches, so -- so there's that. there's also -- i think in a couple of places you can see in france, the few that the u.s. has there are pretty bad, out

dated but we know that's where they were headed. >> underscore your point they provided a training ground for those troops who fought in europe. >> even though fighting a different type of war they are able to do things like hike for several miles of day. they are able to shoot and the practice on all these vehicles. there aren't that many trucks in the u.s. army when the expedition starts and there's not many drivers because they need to drive trucks and fix them and to mix the materiels. they need to find airplanes that are better than the ones that they had. they need to spend a lot of case

in the case of the regulars and nine months in the case of the national guard on the border. a lot of that time was spent doing that, training people to do these jobs that really hadn't existed in the army up until this time. >> and, of course, one. reasons we wanted to existed in army up until this time. >> of course, one of the reasons we wanted to look at this film is to add some context to where we are today. you write, wilson's invasion of mexican territory and intervention in the mexican revolution created an environment of suspicion and distrust that took decades to repair and caused a general decline in relations between the united states and latin american republics. can you elaborate? >> it causes a decline in u.s./mexican relations. i say it takes decades to repair. it really may not have ever been repaired because the wilson government, when he decides to actually intervene in mexico to go find poncupoponcho villa, he

not receive the approval of the government of mexico. even though koranza and poncho villa are not allies, they're enemies himself. koranza has troops in the field trying to find poncho villa also. he has 10-12,000 troops in mexico fighting against forces because woodrow wilson goes in without the permission of mexico. this really causes a rift between the u.s. and the mexican government. there's already a rift but it deepens the problems that already exist and it deepens the problems with what becomes the government of mexico for the next several years. this really continued too. the rift continues with the government of mexico, but also in northern mexico, poncho villa throughout much of his career is

very popular as well. so this causes a lot of bad blood also among people in northern mexico against their neighbors just over the border, because they're trying to capture or kill a man who for them is a folk hero, is someone who they look up to and someone who was to be admired. the u.s. and in fact they show it in the film. they call him the bandit. but one person's bandit is another person's freedom fighter. >> to that point, what intrigued you or fascinated you the most about poncho villa? there's a picture of him in your book. it looks like he's ready for any type of military of roiperation. >> this was a low point in his career. this was a time in which he had a very small number of troops at his disposal, 500-1,000.

he had had 30,000-50,000. he's still able to operate very effectively in the field. he's still able to drum up support. he's very charismatic so he's able to go into towns and give speeches and rally recruits. he's still really effective at drumming up support even though he does have to go into towns and impress people which he had never had to do before. he takes people into service forcefully also to fill out his ranks, but it's remarkable how he remained popular and how he remained such a polarizing figure but a figure who engendered so much support and admiration among many people in chihuahua even at a time where much of the time during the expedition he's injured. it was very possible he was going to die.

he could have died from his injuries, but instead he's able to rebuild his army to a remarkable degree. >> the mexico expedition 1916-1917. julie, thank you very much for being with us. >> thank you. all week we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span 3.

african-american history. >> they were not content with their lot. they wanted to resist their enslavement and they tried to run away. unfortunately, they were not successful. they were captured. and as punishment for their attempt to escape, robert carter got permission from the court in 1708 to have their toes cut off.

on march 17th, 1980, president jimmy carter signed the refugee act after it was unanimously passed by the senate and had bipartisan support in the house. it established the office of refugee resettlement and created a process for addressing refugee emergencies. next on american history tv, former government officials and refugee rights advocates discuss the history of refugee policy prior to 1980 and the legacy of the refugee act since that time. this is an hour and 15 minutes. good morning. i am dr. meredith evans. i am the director ofhe