Nathan Jennings
In the spring of 1847, at the height of the Mexican-American War, the United States Army invaded the heart of Mexico. Not content with limited victories in northern provinces, the American government hoped that a decisive campaign in the interior would compel negotiation and territorial concessions. On April 18, after seizing the Atlantic port of Veracruz and marching inland, an expeditionary force under General Winfield Scott won a convincing victory at the Battle of Cerro Gordo through superior fire and maneuver. This battlefield success shattered President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s last remaining field army and set conditions for a potential march on Mexico City. However, despite the triumph, Scott soon worried from his forward outpost at Jalapa, a town along the road to the Mexican capital, of “bands of exasperated rancheros” resorting to “the guerilla plan.”
Map courtesy of the United State Military Academy’s Digital History Center.
The American commander’s fears proved perilously correct as the Mexican government embraced the timeless strategy of occupied societies: guerrilla warfare. Pedro Maria Anaya, now serving as the substitute president, swiftly recognized that the U. S. Army’s vulnerability lay in the unconventional arena. On April 28 he accordingly decreed the creation of an elite-led program of asymmetric resistance that would employ cavalry elements to attack the invaders along their flanks and rear echelons. Santa Anna confirmed the shift when he stated his intent to organize new forces to “harass the enemy’s rear in a sensible manner.” If Mexico could not expel the invaders through Napoleonic battle, it would isolate and destroy the American army with a decentralized savagery born of nationalistic desperation.
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