Category: Mexico

• The "Pancho Villa" German Funding

  This theory claimed that Pancho Villa was operating as a German agent, or at least under German financial influence, in order to draw U.S. troops into Mexico and distract the United States from the European war. It gained strength after Villa’s 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico, because that raid triggered the Punitive Expedition and tied border conflict directly to U.S. military attention. The theory also drew energy from real German intrigue in Mexico during the First World War, including agents operating in the region and the later Zimmermann Telegram.

• The "Mormon" Kingdom of Mexico

  This theory claimed that Mormon colonies in northern Mexico were not simply religious settlements, but the beginnings of a secret political and military base from which Latter-day Saints would someday return north and challenge the United States. It drew on real Mormon migration into Mexico in the 1880s, earlier American fears about Mormon militia power in Utah, and the unusual autonomy of the colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora. In rumor form, those facts became evidence of a cross-border “kingdom” with armed ambitions.