Henry Lane Wilson (1857 – 1932) was an American diplomat.
Wilson was born in Columbus, New Mexico; he was a witness of the fall of General Porfirio Diaz government. Wilson was one of the main actors in defining the Mexican Revolution.
He was the US ambassador to Belgium during the height of the Congo Free State controversy.
He knew some important revolutionaries as Álvaro Obregón, Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, and Gustavo A. Madero in the Mexican Revolution. As a US ambassador to Mexico, he treacherously assumed the role of catalyst for Felix Diaz, General Victoriano Huerta and General Bernardo Reyes plot against the government of and arranged the murder of President Francisco I. Madero, during La decena tragica (The Ten Tragic Days) in February 1913. He was United States Ambassador under the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) and William Howard Taft (1909-1913). New US President Woodrow Wilson, who was appalled by Wilson's assistance to the coup d'etat against Madero, dismissed Ambassador Wilson.
In summary, Wilson was a sordid, intriguing traitor that personally betrayed the Constitutional President of Mexico, Francisco Madero, and organized the military coup d'etat that brought General Huerta to power. His disdain for the lives of President Madero and Vice-President Pino Suárez in front of Madero's wife, who was requesting a safe conduct for both, is the corollary of one of the most sinister interventions of an American official in disrupting the Constitutional order of a neighbour country.
President Wilson did not immediately appoint a new ambassador to Mexico, rather sending ex-Minnesota governor John Lind as his personal envoy to report on developments in Mexico.
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Last updated on Saturday June 21, 2008 at 17:33:09 PDT (GMT -0700)
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