Mexico’s Huertista Rebellion of 1923: A Veteran’s Chronicle

This book is the first English translation of Texas-born Abel Guerra’s El Movimiento Libertario de la Huertista memoir. His book details his experiences during the years 1913 to 1934 as he crossed the border to become a Mexican War veteran, assistant to Mexico’s Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, and later an exile. The book offers a glimpse of this Hispanic American’s experiences and thoughts as he makes a life for himself in Mexico, Honduras, and Cuba. The appendix includes the original untranslated Spanish text of Guerra’s typewritten memoir which he completed in 1978. Abel probably would have remained in the Lower Rio Grande River Valley with its large Hispanic population if it had not been for world events. The first was the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in the fall of 1910 followed by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. As required, Abel registered for the draft when he was 21 years old in June 1917. Abel decided that rather than being forced into conscription, he would go to Mexico, and ended up fighting in the Mexican Revolution instead. When Abel’s boss, Adolfo De la Huerta, launched the De la Huerta Rebellion in 1923, Abel joined him and paid the consequences. President Obregón soon crushed the rebellion and ordered that all rebel officers captured above the rank of Major be executed. So by 1924 Colonel Abel Guerra, forced to flee Mexico, became an exile in Belize, then Honduras, and finally Cuba.