[2] Villa believed that Calles had received tactical and strategic support from the United States since the town is located across the border from Douglas, Arizona[3] and launched his raid on Columbus, New Mexico partly as a reprisal.

Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa reconciled their differences during the Convention of Aguascalientes, and as a result were often referred to as the "Conventionalistas", but they came into conflict with the so-called "Constitutionalistas", or "Carrancistas", of Venustiano Carranza, who saw himself as the legitimate president of Mexico and leader of the revolution.

As a result, by October 1915 Villa was in control of only his home state of Chihuahua, which left him just the city of Juárez as a connection with the US through which he could illegally import arms.

[3][4] More crucially, President Wilson gave his permission for Carranzista troops to cross through American territory in order to strengthen the garrison at Agua Prieta.

About 3,500 fresh, veteran troops traveled through Arizona and New Mexico and arrived in the town in early October, bringing the total number of defenders to 6,500.

[1] The defending troops at Agua Prieta were led by Gen. Plutarco Calles and many of them were veterans who had already defeated Villa at the Battle of Celaya earlier in the year.

[1][3] Calles, building on Gen. Alvaro Obregon's experience at Celaya, had built extensive fortifications around the city, with deep trenches, barbed wire and numerous machine gun nests.

[5] The next day Villa began his attack with an artillery barrage in the early afternoon, which only managed to detonate some of the land mines around the town that had been placed there by the Carrancistas.

[5] This actually ended up causing the attack to fail, as his men almost immediately turned to looting and rape rather than fighting, which allowed the defending forces to reorganize and drive the Villistas out.

Some sources attribute the raid to American support for Carranza, while others point to the fact that some Columbus residents had cheated Villa out of money he had paid for armaments.

[8] This decision proved to be both a tactical and strategic failure; with Villa's forces were repelled by the town's defenders who inflicted heavy casualties on the already depleted revolutionaries.