This week in Texas History: Mexican Revolution too close for comfort

Bartee Haile The residents of Texas’ westernmost town awoke on Nov. 15, 1913 to the familiar sound of gunfire in the streets of Juarez.The life-and-death struggle Mexicans called a revolution began three years earlier, when Francisco Madero challenged the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. The aging tyrant responded with the iron-fisted repression that had kept him in power for 34 years and forced the mild-mannered intellectual to flee the country for the safety of San Antonio.Abraham Gonzales followed his hero into Lone Star exile but selected sympathetic El Paso for his home away from home. He recruited guerrillas, passed the sombrero for donations and established a munitions pipeline.Taking advantage of lax laws, which permitted the purchase of war material for export, Gonzales bought in bulk from an arms supplier in New York.

This excerpt comes from the named source. Read the original for the full reporting.