By Thomas Ty Smith.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2023.
ISBN 978-0-8061-9288-8. Map. Photographs. Notes.
Bibliography. Index.
Pp. 172. $29.95.
As historian Robert M. Citino wrote recently, “One of the most overused cliches in the military history lexicon is the ‘forgotten’ battle or campaign.” Forgotten, however, seems rather accurate for the Garza War in southern Texas from 1890 to 1893. The war was a little-known campaign to control a 325-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border from Eagle Pass to Brownsville. With “Garizastas insurrectionists” using south Texas as a base to overthrow Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, the U.S. Army was called to restore order. The book The Garza War in South Texas: A Military History, 1890-1898, by Thomas Ty Smith aims to add to the scant historiography of this border conflict.
Smith is well-versed in Texas military history. A fellow of the Texas State Historical Association, Smith is also the author of two books about the “Old Army” and a contributor to a recent reprint of Major General Zenas R. Bliss’s classic memoirs. His interest in the subject began while researching his previous book The Old Army in Texas, when he “discovered a guerrilla war” not previously known “just downriver from [his] backyard.”
The nineteenth century was certainly a period of “blood on the border” between the U.S. Army and groups of irregulars. The porous south Texas international border was easy to cross for “Native Americans, bandits, or revolutionaries” and hard to control for the Army. In fact, President Diaz “came to power in 1876” by using south Texas. By June 1890, his opponents aimed to repeat his earlier success. As Smith writes, with only “2,298 soldiers” in all of Texas, the Army was hard pressed to control the region. From Eagle Pass in the northwest to the Gulf of Mexico in the southeast, only “four posts—Eagle Pass and Forts McIntosh, Ringgold, and Brown” with “twenty officers and 426 soldiers” of infantry and cavalry were available for duty.
That handful of soldiers was ordered to “arrest the revolutionists with or without warrants,” beginning with the farcical “one day” raid by Francisco Ruiz Sandoval. Subsequent raids were more serious, including the Cararino Garza Raid of September 1891, and the “critical final” San Ignacio Raid of December 1892. By then, “the United States failure to enforce the neutrality laws” forced better cooperation between the two nations against the would-be revolutionists. Reinforcements, and improved intelligence and interagency cooperation between the Army and local law enforcement kept “the bandits constantly moving” until most “voluntarily surrendered.” Also, the threat by a U.S. deputy marshal to “resign and leave [local ranchers] to their fate” helped lessen support.
Operationally, Smith describes the war as a “political insurrection that employed irregular warfare,” an exception to the Indian War standard on the frontier. He also contends the conflict was unique and a “classic case of guerrilla warfare.” To the reviewer the Garza War was won at the tactical level, and this is the strength of Smith’s book. It was a squad or platoon leader’s war and the counterinsurgency details used are fascinating. “Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts,” intelligence assets, “mobile field telegraph units,” and a successful rescue mission to free two deputy marshals all illustrate the flexibility of Army leaders and “the dedication and discipline” of soldiers.
The Garza War in South Texas is a short book of four chapters of seven to twenty-three pages. It is well researched and extensively noted and referenced with some forty-six pages of endnotes and twenty-two pages of sources. However, the photographs are of poor quality and additional maps would have helped. Of note is his roster of 210 “revolutionaries” in the appendix, culled from period newspapers, surely a useful tool for future researchers and historians. Smith is not agnostic in his writing and regards the Mexican “revolutionists of 1890-93” as heroes for “their courage against injustice” against the Diaz régime.
Thomas Ty Smith’s latest book adds to our body of historical knowledge and builds on his body of work on the Texas frontier Army. The Garza War will be of most interest to readers with a strong interest in the “Old Army” and such little appreciated efforts to maintain order on the Rio Grande border. This “forgotten campaign” is worthy of more study as an example of counterinsurgency seemingly done right.
Dr. Robert Seals
Raeford, North Carolina