The Battle of San Ysidro occurred in 1913 during the Mexican Revolution when Colonel Gunther Ruiz's Mexican Army armored car, cavalry, and infantry column attacked Romulo Villega's revolutionary army at San Ysidro.
In the aftermath of the Mesa Verde Uprising, the government dispatched Colonel Ruiz with a powerful detachment to attack the small revolutionary army in Mesa Verde before they could be joined by Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata's approaching armies. Villega decided to withdraw to the San Ysidro Caves, while the Irish explosives expert John H. Mallory and the bandito Juan Miranda volunteered to stay behind to hold back the Army. Mallory rigged the San Jorge Bridge with dynamite and also deployed two machine-guns on the hillside overlooking the bridge. When Ruiz's column approached, Miranda began the battle by opening fire on the soldiers despite his Maxim gun initially jamming. The two men raked the Mexican soldiers with gunfire, massacring them. Ruiz ordered his men to avoid the bridge and instead advance beneath it, but they were still showered with bullets. Ruiz then ordered his armored cars and vehicles to cross the bridge, but Mallory detonated the dynamite, obliterating the bridge and the Mexican soldiers and vehicles on it and below it. Ruiz, who had been in one of the armored cars, survived the explosion, and he managed to escape.
The Mexican Army launched a simultaneous attack on the San Ysidro Caves, where they massacred several unarmed civilians, including all of Miranda's family members. They captured Villega and several other rebel leaders, many of whom were executed after Villega was tortured into identifying them. When the Army re-entered Mesa Verde, they forced their prisoners into several pits, where they executed them by firing squad and then buried them in the same mass graves.
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