The Forgotten U.S. Colony of Tabasco
Few Americans know that, briefly in 1847, the state of Tabasco in Mexico was declared a U.S. protectorate during the Mexican-American War.
During the Mexican-American War, the United States military landed forces along the Gulf Coast in an effort to disrupt Mexican supply lines and win key ports. One of their lesser-known targets was the Mexican state of Tabasco, a tropical region known for its swamps, rivers, and the bustling port town of San Juan Bautista, now called Villahermosa. The campaign in Tabasco, overshadowed by battles at places like Veracruz and Mexico City, stands out as an unusual experiment in American intervention abroad.
In June 1847, Commodore Matthew C. Perry, renowned for later opening Japan to the West, led a squadron upriver to seize the port of San Juan Bautista. The city fell with little resistance, occupied by U.S. Navy and Marine forces. However, instead of merely occupying and withdrawing, local hostilities and the strategic location prompted a unique move: the establishment of a provisional U.S. government.
Perry and his men found themselves in charge of a humid, restive, and largely unmapped tropical backwater. The local Mexican governor, Juan Bautista Traconis, had retreated with his men into the interior, but guerrilla attacks and sabotage persisted. To secure control and gain local cooperation, Perry accepted the surrender of local authorities who, fearing both American force and reprisals from Mexican central authorities for their earlier surrender, requested protection under U.S. occupation. Perry agreed to this proposal on June 16, 1847, declaring the region under U.S. protection.
For several weeks, U.S. forces administered Tabasco as a de facto protectorate. Perry instituted a civil government, collected customs duties, and attempted to restore trade—all with the tacit support of some influential local citizens who hope to avoid the chaos of war and reprisals from Mexican authorities. Newspapers in the United States back home even speculated about the region’s possible eventual annexation, comparing Tabasco’s rich agricultural land and river access to Louisiana.
Yet the experiment was fraught with difficulties. Frequent skirmishes with Mexican irregulars continued as Traconis and his partisans mounted resistance from the surrounding jungles. Disease—yellow fever and malaria—ravaged the ranks of U.S. sailors and marines unused to the tropical conditions. The heat, humidity, and isolation made the occupation both miserable and unsustainable for the Americans.
By July, military priorities shifted. Elsewhere in Mexico, U.S. generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott scored decisive victories, bringing nearer the end of the war and the focus toward central Mexico and the Mexican capital. Realizing the difficulties of holding Tabasco and with no major strategic need, Perry withdrew most U.S. forces, formally ending the short-lived American protectorate by mid-summer of 1847. Mexican control was restored, but lingering tensions and stories of the American presence echoed for decades.
Ultimately, the episode of the U.S. protectorate in Tabasco remained a footnote, barely mentioned in most histories of the Mexican-American War. It stands today as a striking example of American expansionism, an early experiment in foreign occupation, and a little-remembered moment when the boundaries of the United States briefly, if only on paper, stretched deep into Mexico’s tropics.
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