Back to the Alamo, Wagons Loaded

At dawn Thursday, some 200 soldiers of the Mexican army broke camp and marched north toward the United States.

Mexican television crews followed as they crossed the border at 8:15, headed for San Antonio, site of the Alamo.

The troops were not bent on conquest, although some Mexicans felt a twinge of pride at the fact that their troops were reentering Texas more than a century and a half after Sam Houston and his band of rebels drove them out.

Instead, they carried food, water and medicine for some of the thousands of families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

“This crossing of Mexican troops into the United States hasn’t happened, according to our information, since about 1840, in the time of President Santa Anna,” a Mexican customs official told reporters as he watched the trucks roll northward out of a small border town.

“Reinventing the Alamo,” declared a headline Thursday in the newspaper Reforma.

Mexican defense officials said it was the first time a Mexican army unit had set foot on U.S. soil since the end of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848. (Rebel troops led by Francisco “Pancho” Villa raided U.S. border towns in 1916.)

The mission was the first time the army had participated in relief efforts outside the country’s borders, said Efren Martinez Guzman, a spokesman for Mexico’s Defense Ministry.

“The entry of the Mexican army into United States territory to provide humanitarian aid is a proud moment and shows the solidarity of the people of Mexico,” President Vicente Fox said.

Some Mexican lawmakers criticized the mission when it was announced, saying Fox’s government should have sought approval from the Senate before sending military assets abroad. Fox later asked for and received approval from the Senate.

Mexico is one of dozens of countries to offer support to the United States after Hurricane Katrina.

Cuba offered to send doctors, and impoverished Sri Lanka sent cash to the Red Cross, in part to recognize Americans’ generosity to the victims of last year’s tsunami.

The Mexican troops are specialists in providing aid to victims of floods and other disasters.

Among other things, they carry water purification equipment and field kitchens.

“Good luck with the gringos!” some soldiers shouted to their colleagues as the troops left Mexico City’s Military Base No. 1 this week for the 800-mile drive to the border.

“We’re happy to go and help people,” soldier Manuel Diaz Torres told Mexican television. “Our principal training is in [relief work] and not war. We think we’ll be useful there.”

On Wednesday, as they prepared to cross into the U.S., the troops received “a massive vaccination against tetanus, hepatitis, cholera and other diseases,” wrote Victor Hugo Michel, a reporter for the Mexico City newspaper Milenio and one of several Mexican reporters traveling with the caravan.

“It’s as if we were headed for a tropical country, one without First World health services,” Michel wrote.

The caravan consists of about 50 trucks.

The vehicles crossed the Rio Grande near Nuevo Laredo, some with large Mexican flags draped over the roofs of their cabs.

“We will stay in the United States until our president orders us to return,” said Gen. Francisco Ortiz, the commander of the convoy.

By Thursday afternoon, the troops were at their destination: the now-closed Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio.

Mexican officials said a second caravan could leave for the U.S. within days.

A Mexican navy ship, the Papaloapan, also joined the relief effort.

The ship, which dropped anchor about 20 miles offshore from Biloxi, Miss., on Wednesday, is staffed with several dozen doctors.