The US Navy Base At Pichilingue

The year was 1865 and the government of Mexican President Benito Juarez was in dire straits.

Four years earlier, his Liberal government had won a three year war that the Conservatives had initiated in an effort to overturn the Constitution of 1857, a victory that reaffirmed Mexico's adherence to it. This document essentially got the Catholic Church out of the affairs of State, a form of governing that had been inherited from the Spaniards. While monarchs needed church recognition for a veneer of legitimacy (and visa versa), duly elected democracies did not. Under the new Constitution, the government took away the Church’s political power and the funds it earned from being the keeper of the public registry and was working on confiscating the wealth in properties it had amassed since Spain had conquered Mexico.

This was bad news for the Conservatives since the Church was their principal sponsor. If the Constitution was allowed to stand, they would be out of politics for the foreseeable future. Since warfare hadn't provided the desired results, in 1861 a junta of Mexican religious leaders and members of the Conservative aristocracy left for France on an effort to overturn the elected government of Mexico by other means.

This group of conspirators meant to convince Napoleon III that a majority of Mexicans opposed the Juarez government and would welcome a move to replace it with an emperor with a bloodline traceable to European royalty. Napoleon, who readily saw the advantage of having a more French-friendly government in Mexico, obliged them, sending troops the following year to pacify the nation in preparation for the coronation of Maximilian of Habsburg as Emperor of Mexico. The new emperor and his wife were childless, so the couple adopted two relatives of Agustin Iturbide, who had briefly served as Mexico’s first emperor immediately after the nation had gained independence from Spain in 1821.

Under normal circumstances, such a bold move by a European power in the Western Hemisphere would have been met with stiff resistance from the United States, which would undoubtedly have evoked the Monroe Doctrine and threatened military action unless the offending nation removed its troops ASAP. But during the second administration of President Juarez (1861-65), the US was involved in a bitter civil war of its own and could do nothing more than lodge a protest as French forces accompanied by Mexican troops loyal to the Conservative cause conquered most of Mexico. President Juarez was forced to take refuge in the northern region of the country, governing first from El Paso del Norte (known today as Ciudad Juarez) and then from Chihuahua.

When things seemed bleakest for Juarez, the US Civil War ended and one of the first orders of business of President Andrew Johnson was to seek ways to help Mexico expel the French invaders. Since the US Congress--smarting from the recent US war, no doubt--refused to allow outright military assistance, the president ordered the Secretary of War to “lose” shipments of weapons along the US-Mexican border where they could later be “found” by the Mexican Army. He also ordered a blockade of French shipping from Mexican ports and the amassing of 50,000 US troops along the nation’s southern as a show of force.

Ironically, the most important "ally" Juarez had turned out to be the Emperor himself, who was abandoned by the Conservatives and the Church once they realized that he was even more liberal than Juarez.

By 1867 the French had withdrawn their military force, Emperor Maximiliano had been caught, tried, and executed, and Juarez was once again ruling from Mexico City.

But US help didn’t come without strings attached. Among the concessions that the Juarez government had to make was leasing the harbor at Bahia Pichilingue (just north of La Paz) to the US government. Since the 1840s steam-powered ships were becoming more important to the world’s elite navies and those with aspirations for empire had to have reliable sources of coal available at strategic places around the globe. The lease allowed the US Navy to operate a coaling station at Pichilingue from 1866 until 1925, when Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles—citing prohibitions against such agreements in the recently-passed Mexican Constitution (1917)—was able to convince the US to withdraw from the base. The first dirt trail connecting Pichilingue with La Paz (a distance of about 9 miles by boat) wasn’t constructed until the early 1940s, so the only way for the sailors stationed at the base to go on liberty was by boat.

From the late 1800s until the mid-1900s the US Navy operated as if it owned Magdalena Bay and frequently sent ships there for gunnery practice, blasting floating targets or the surrounding hills. More often than not, the Navy didn't bother to obtain official permission from the Mexican government before engaging in these training excercises. The windows in La Paz were supposed to have rattled when the big guns on Magdalena Bay let loose. These ships would often arrive at Pichilingue afterwards to restock their spent coal supplies.

The base was located on the southeastern shore of what at the time was the Island of San Juan de Nepomuceno. In the 1980s, the shallows at the island’s northern end were filled in, creating the peninsula of San Juan Nepomuceno. The old base is on the inner shore of the tiny peninsula, just south of the cement plant (the big cylindrical tower that dominates the landscape) and is visible to vehicle traffic on the road to Pichilingue. One can still see the brick walls of what use to be the warehouses where the coal was stored. There are also several smaller structures that served as housing for the Navy personnel who lived there. Until the last few years, there was a small detachment of the Mexican Navy staying there, but this no longer seems to be the case and the former base now looks abandoned. Unfortunately, access to the site is controlled, so I haven’t been able to get back out there for photo ops since going digital.

Photo of the base's warehouses


A photo taken from the same direction today, the brick walls of the warehouses from the photo above. Note the pilings where the pier use to be


A panoramic view of the old base


A surviving structure of the old base, viewable in the panoramic photo in the middle-left of frame, on the hill.


This white house can be seen in the middle of the panoramic view of the base and also in the old B&W photo above, the roofline is clearly visible about midframe on the left side of the photo.


What cruise ship passengers see today as they arrive just north of the old base.



[Edited on 3-31-2012 by Bajatripper]