106 years after the disastrous attack on Columbus, New Mexico, of 400 to 500 villista raiders, the reasons for the attack remain murky. Countless historians published countless accounts trying to piece together the facts and determine the motivation of Pancho Villa to attack the United States.
Here are the indisputable facts:
Pancho Villa risked his very existence with this attack. He lost twenty-five percent of his troops, and he would not play a significant role in the Mexican Revolution after his attack.
The remnants of the Commercial Hotel in Columbus
The Mexican raiders were looking for the proprietor of the local hardware store, Sam Ravel, but they also were looking for the manager of the bank, and hotel owners. Ravel happened to be in El Paso for a dentist appointment. Villistas sought out the owner of the Commercial Hotel , W. T. Ritchie, and killed him with five others staying at the hotel that fateful morning. James T. Dean, the owner of the local grocery store also died in the attack.
Sam Ravel
Villa stated that he wanted to “save Mexico’s sovereignty” after he suspected that Carranza had “sold out to the Americans.”
After the attack, rumors of why Villa had targeted the sleepy, insignificant border town of Columbus for this attack, ran rampant. We know today that Villa initially contemplated attacking El Paso to make his point, but in view of his decimated forces, decided on a smaller, less risky target. Villa stated that he considered the United States an enemy after Carranza was recognized as the “de-facto” government of Mexico in the fall of 1915. The Wilson administration had then clamped down on his supply lines, causing the defeat of Villa’s famed Division of the North. There are also lots of indications that Villa was influenced by the German naval intelligence agent Felix Sommerfeld to initiate an attack on the United States.
The most discredited view of why Villa attacked Columbus is the theory that Sam Ravel, the Jewish co-proprietor of the local merchant house, incurred the ire of the Mexican revolutionary and thus was the reason for Villa’s attack. As the theory proclaims, Ravel may have sold Villa bad ammunition, or somehow cheated him. To this day, no evidence has emerged to support this thesis. The grandson of the Columbus grocer James Dean, Richard Dean, had obtained Ravel’s sales records, which showed that the merchant had not sold any ammunition to the villistas since 1914 (when Villa was a member of the Constitutionalist forces). Canvassing 70,000 pages of bureau of investigation records dealing with neutrality law violations and smuggling during the Mexican Revolution, I did not find a single report that mentioned Sam Ravel or his merchant house. These investigative files identified and covered every person and business between 1910 and 1922 that had dealings with Mexican revolutionaries. Even if one would take the view that almost everybody at the border engaged in some sort of profiteering from the revolution, there can be no doubt that Ravel played an insignificant role in the activities. The big dealers Villa could have targeted were Shelton-Payne, Krakauer Zork and Moye, and Hayman Krupp, all of whom likely had sold bad ammunition at times.
The store of the Ravel Brothers
So, why does the Sam Ravel story persist? The question of why the raiders were searching for Sam Ravel (as they were searching for other residents), appeared first in the immediate aftermath of the Columbus raid. Residents tried to make sense of the disaster. Blaming the only Jewish family in town seemed like a reasonable proposition. Although this thesis clearly is rooted in anti-Semitism, it persisted over the decades, with “historians” perpetuating the lie that Ravel had “cheated” Villa and thus caused his wrath. Taking the claim at face value, it is preposterous. Villa had agents in every border community along the border. Had he really wanted to punish, even assassinate Ravel, he would have had that done without causing a huge international incident. Why would he have risked the destruction of his remaining forces for a business dispute? Villa’s horizon was much wider, as his lieutenants testified to, he was out to save his nation, his legacy, and defeat American colonialism.
Sadly, as we commemorate the 106 anniversary of Villa’s raid on Columbus, and as we try to heal, four generations removed from the event, the anti-Semitic trope of Ravel being the cause of Villa’s attack is promoted in new films promoted by Max Grossman, Cindy Medina, and Stacey Ravel Abarbanel, a descendent of the Ravel family no less, against all evidence, historical scholarship, and common sense. It is time to lay to rest the soul of a victim, who not only lost his business, but who is also the victim of racist persecution, Sam Ravel. RIP, Sam!