Ypiranga Incident
The Ypiranga Incident occurred on April 21, 1914, at the port of Veracruz in Mexico. The SS Ypiranga was a German steamer that was commissioned to transport arms and munitions to the Mexican federal government under Victoriano Huerta. The United States had placed Mexico under an arms embargo to stifle the flow of weaponry to the war-torn state, then in the throes of civil war, forcing the Mexican government to look to Europe for aid. The Ypiranga tried to enter the harbor at Veracruz to unload on the first day of the United States occupation but was detained by American troops who were ordered by President Woodrow Wilson to enforce the arms embargo he had placed on Mexico. There was neither a declaration of war on Mexico by the United States nor a formal blockade on its ports, thus the detention of the Ypiranga was not legal and it was released. It proceeded to Puerto México (modern-day Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz), a port outside of American influence and was able to offload its cargo to Huerta’s officials.
Read more about Ypiranga Incident: Background, The Shipment
Famous quotes containing the word incident:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)