The second volume of Isidro Fabela’s documentary collection on the Constitutionalist Revolution and Regime is concerned with the invasion, occupation and evacuation (April 21-November 23, 1914) of Veracruz by military forces of the United States. The heart of the volume consists of ninety-nine documents related to this problem. There is added a documentary and bibliographic appendix consisting of seventeen transcriptions from documents and published sources seeking to establish the antecedents which helped mold American criteria and actions.
Following the form established in the initial volume, the documents are arranged in chronological order and are preceded by a brief summary of the contents and an abbreviated reference to the archival source. Once again the author has failed to provide a key to these abbreviations, although most of them are identifiable by the specialist. The documents are drawn principally from the Archives of the Secretary of Foreign Relations and Fabela’s own collection.
In contrast to the first volume, each document is followed by an analytical commentary, often as extended as the document itself, prepared by the editor. Fabela assigns historic responsibility for the American intervention to Villa and Huerta. He contends that the documentation establishes the “two great, inexcusable errors” of President Wilson: his disdain for the norms of International Law relative to non-intervention in an independent and sovereign State and his “absolute ignorance of the psychology of the Mexican people.”
