Editing Pancho Villa (section)

===U.S. Expedition to capture Villa===
{{Main |Pancho Villa Expedition }}
[[File:VillaUncleSamBerrymanCartoon.png|thumb|Political cartoon in the U.S. Press. Uncle Sam chases Pancho Villa, saying "I've had about enough of this."]]

As result of Villa's raid on Columbus, President Wilson chose to take action. Publicly it was announced that General Pershing would be sent to Mexico to capture Villa. In a private order to General Pershing, Pershing was told to cease the search for Villa once Villa's armies had been broken up.<ref>[https://www.laits.utexas.edu/jaime/jrn/cwp/pvg/punitive.html Pancho Villa, The Punitive Expedition] Stanford University Press. By Katz et. al. 1998. Retrieved November 3, 2024.</ref>

President Wilson sent 5,000 U.S. Army soldiers under the command of General Frederick Funston, who oversaw [[John Pershing]] as he pursued Villa through Mexico. Employing aircraft and trucks for the first time in U.S. Army history, Pershing's force fruitlessly pursued Villa until February 1917.<ref>{{cite book|last=Welsome|first=Eileen|title=The General and the Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa|year=2006|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|location=Lincoln|pages=177}}</ref> Villa eluded them, but some of his senior commanders, including Colonel Candelario Cervantes, General Francisco Beltrán, Beltrán's son, Villa's second-in-command [[Julio Cárdenas]], and a total of 190 of his men were killed during the expedition.

The Carranza government and the Mexican population were against U.S. troops violating Mexican territories. There were several demonstrations of opposition to the Punitive Expedition. During the expedition, Carranza's forces captured one of Villa's top generals, Pablo López, and executed him on 5 June 1916.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://content.library.arizona.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15399coll20/id/20204/rec/15 |title=Pablo Lopez Pays Grim Penalty for Career of Murder |newspaper=El Paso Morning Times |date=6 June 1916 |agency=Associated Press}} Available online at University of Arizona Libraries Digital Collections.</ref>