In February, the Mexican revolutionary Lauro Aguirre drafted a plan to overthrow the government of President Porfirio Díaz.

Aguirre's cause appealed to the local Native Americans, such as the Yaqui, who organized an expedition to capture the customs house in the border town of Nogales on August 12.

The war forced many of the natives to flee north into the U.S. state of Arizona, where they settled around Tucson and Phoenix, occasionally recrossing the border to fight the Mexican soldiers.

At the town of Solomonville, in southern Arizona, journalist Lauro Aguirre and Flores Chapa established the anti-Díaz newspaper El Independiente, and on February 5, 1896, they wrote the Plan Restaurador de Constitucion y Reformista.

The plan claimed that Díaz had violated the Constitution of 1857 in multiple ways and was mistreating native Mexicans, particularly by deporting them to the Yucatán.

On the day after that, a large force of Mexican Army troops, under the command of Colonel Emilio Kosterlitzky, joined in the pursuit while two companies of the 24th Infantry conducted their own separate operations.