Anthony C. Sutton (1974) - Another case of revolution supported by New York financial institutions concerned that of Mexico in 1915-16. Von Rintelen, a German espionage agent in the United States, was accused during his May 1917 trial in New York City of attempting to "embroil" the U.S. with Mexico and Japan in order to divert ammunition then flowing to the Allies in Europe.
 |
| Iconic image of revolutionary Pancho Villa in Ojinaga, a publicity still taken by Mutual Film Corporation photographer John Davidson Wheelan, January 1914 |
Payment for the ammunition that was
shipped from the United States to the Mexican revolutionary Pancho
Villa, was made through Guaranty Trust Company. Von Rintelen's adviser,
Sommerfeld, paid $380,000 via Guaranty Trust and Mississippi Valley
Trust Company to the Western Cartridge Company of Alton, Illinois, for
ammunition shipped to El Paso, for forwarding to Villa. This was in
mid-1915. On January 10, 1916, Villa murdered seventeen American miners
at Santa Isabel and on March 9, 1916, Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico,
and killed eighteen more Americans.
 |
| Columbus, New Mexico, after being raided by Pancho Villa |
Wall
Street involvement in these Mexican border raids was the subject of a
letter (October 6, 1916) from Lincoln Steffens, an American Communist,
to Colonel House [Edward Mandell House], an aide' to Woodrow Wilson: My dear Colonel House:
Just before I left New York last Monday, I was told convincingly that
"Wall Street" had completed arrangements for one more raid of Mexican
bandits into the United States: to be so timed and so atrocious that it
would settle the election [...]
 |
| Venustiano Carranza, 44th President of Mexico, First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army, 1920 |
Once in power in Mexico, the Carranza government purchased additional arms in the United States. The American Gun Company contracted to ship 5,000 Mausers and a shipment license was issued by the War Trade Board for 15,000 guns and 15,000,000 rounds of ammunition. The American ambassador to Mexico, Fletcher, "flatly refused to recommend or sanction the shipment of any munitions, rifles, etc., to Carranza." However, intervention by Secretary of State Robert Lansing reduced the barrier to one of a temporary delay, and "in a short while [the American Gun Company] would be permitted to make the shipment and deliver."
The raids upon the U.S. by the Villa and the Carranza forces were reported in the New York Times as the "Texas Revolution" (a kind of dry run for the Bolshevik Revolution) and were undertaken jointly by Germans and Bolsheviks. The testimony of John A. Walls, district attorney of Brownsville, Texas, before the 1919 Fall Committee yielded documentary evidence of the link between Bolshevik interests in the United States, German activity, and the Carranza forces in Mexico.
Consequently, the Carranza government, the first in the world with a Soviet-type constitution (which was written by Trotskyites), was a government with support on Wall Street. The Carranza revolution probably could not have succeeded without American munitions and Carranza would not have remained in power as long as he did without American help.
[...] We also identified documentary evidence concerning a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as the precursor of Mao's revolution in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries, and we have found that Charles R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the Russian Revolution.