Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

by Kelly Lytle Hernández

Overview

Winner of the Bancroft Prize • One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 • A Kirkus Best World History Book of 2022
One of Smithsonian's 10 Best History Books of 2022 • Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History prize • Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize

“Rebel historian” Kelly Lytle Hernández reframes our understanding of U.S. history in this groundbreaking narrative of revolution in the borderlands.

Bad Mexicans tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and American dissidents—to their cause. Determined to oust Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.S. imperialists such as Guggenheim and Rockefeller, the rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of U. S. authorities vested in protecting the Diaz regime. The U.S. Departments of War, State, Treasury, and Justice as well as police, sheriffs, and spies, hunted the magonistas across the country. Capturing Ricardo Flores Magón was one of the FBI’s first cases.

But the magonistas persevered. They lived in hiding, wrote in secret code, and launched armed raids into Mexico until they ignited the world’s first social revolution of the twentieth century.

Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas’ story integral to modern American life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324064411
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/09/2023
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	93,401
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kelly Lytle Hernández holds The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. A 2019 MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, she is the author of the award-winning books Migra! and City of Inmates. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction: We Stand Between 1

Part 1 El Porfiriato

Chapter 1 If We're Not Careful 17

Chapter 2 Order and Progress 29

Chapter 3 Den of Thieves 40

Chapter 4 We Won't Be Silenced 59

Chapter 5 The Constitution Is Dead 68

Part 2 We Will Be Revolutionaries

Chapter 6 The Brown Belt 77

Chapter 7 Send the Secret Police 89

Chapter 8 We Return to the Fight 98

Chapter 9 What I Believe 106

Chapter 10 Cananea 116

Chapter 11 No Alarm in Mexico 130

Chapter 12 Send Five Dollars for the Machine 143

Chapter 13 The Jiménez Raid 155

Part 3 Running Down the Revolutionists

Chapter 14 Something Unusual 163

Chapter 15 The Death of Juan José Arredondo 170

Chapter 16 The Dead Letter Office 176

Chapter 17 We Knew His Whereabouts Continuously 185

Chapter 18 The Kidnapping of Manuel Sarabia 191

Chapter 19 El Alma de Todo 196

Chapter 20 The United States vs. Ricardo Flores Magón 215

Part 4 ¡Tierra y Libertad!

Chapter 21 The People's Cause 229

Chapter 22 An Attempt to Precipitate a General Disturbance 241

Chapter 23 The Bureau of Investigation 249

Chapter 24 A Tremendous Shock to the American People 261

Chapter 25 The Revolution Begins 279

Conclusion: Always a Rebel 297

Appendix: Rebel Pseudonyms and Code Names 311

Acknowledgments 312

Notes 314

Illustration Credits 355

Index 357

Editorial Reviews

"There is no Hollywood movie about the magonistas, although reading “Bad Mexicans” is like watching one....Like Flores Magón, Lytle Hernández’s pen is her sword; her writing is a monument to the belief that language can change the world."

New Yorker - Geraldo Cadava

"Kelly Lytle Hernández writes history and makes history. She is one of the most admired and respected historians of Mexican-American history and the United States. Conveying deep archival research in a compelling, accessible narrative, she breathes life into history."

Vicki Lynn Ruiz

"What is profound about Hernández’s portrayal is the way it reverberates outward from Mexico, through the borderlands, and deep into the interior of the United States and even Canada, casually brushing aside the notion that this era of upheaval was in any way confined by our frontier and framing it instead as part of a truly American story. . . . For a region saddled with so many grimly narrated histories, Bad Mexicans is great fun, full of the joyful resilience and tenacity that make the borderlands and its people so distinct."

The New York Review of Books - Francisco Cantú

"An award-winning, internationally acclaimed scholar, Kelly Lytle Hernández delivers historical analysis with clear relevance in today’s sociopolitical climate. A leading voice on issues ranging from immigration to policing to the criminal justice system more broadly, her work is known for empowering a wide range of communities, providing the necessary historical framing to build synergy among some of today’s most daring social movements."

Heather Anne Thompson

"Kelly Lytle Hernández is one of the most compelling historians in her field. Synthesizing the complexities of race, gender, and ethnicity into the fabric of living history, her work sheds light on today’s crucial issues and her passion has the capacity to not only inform but to change minds."

Michael Eric Dyson

"Lytle Hernández is a natural storyteller, and her writing shines throughout "Bad Mexicans." And while it reads like a novel — she proves to be masterful at building narrative suspense — it's also meticulously researched, and the author provides ample context to help readers understand the history of Mexico and its relationship with the U.S."

Star Tribune - Michael Schaub

"In this sweeping cross-border narrative, Lytle-Hernández places the Magón brothers and the Mexican Revolution squarely at the heart of U.S. history—revealing not only the centrality of Mexicans to the U.S. story but also the currents of imperialism, racial violence, and political suppression that have shaped the United States as we know it today. In Bad Mexicans, Lytle-Hernández displays the skills of a deep thinker, a powerful storyteller, and an assiduous and implacable researcher."

Natalia Molina

"I’m mad at Kelly Lytle Hernández. Every time I pick up something she’s written, I can’t put it down. I’ve lost hours, days, sleep, missed deadlines and appointments, made my kids late to school reading Migra! and City of Inmates, and, now, Bad Mexicans. Her writing is like a drug, riveting, intoxicating, vivid. And she’s a damned historian! I come away from reading Kelly’s writing exhilarated and inspired."

Robin D. G. Kelley

"Hernandez’s staggering, essential study argues that 'he history of the United States as a global power' can’t be told without Mexico, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans as central actors."

Boston Globe - Walton Muyumba

"Fantastic....absorbing....Hernández masterfully weaves it all together into a compelling narrative, parts of which I will read again and again."

Austin-American Statesman - Michael Barnes

"Kelly Lytle Hernández is one of the most compelling historians in her field. Synthesizing the complexities of race, gender, and ethnicity into the fabric of living history, her work sheds light on today’s crucial issues and her passion has the capacity to not only inform but to change minds."

Michael Eric Dyson Michael Eric Dyson

"Fantastic...absorbing….Hernández masterfully weaves it all together into a compelling narrative, parts of which I will read again and again."

Austin-American Statesman

"Hernandez’s staggering, essential study argues that ‘the history of the United States as a global power’ can’t be told without Mexico, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans as central actors.”

Boston Globe

While it reads like a novel―she proves to be masterful at building narrative suspense―it’s also meticulously researched."

Minneapolis Star Tribune

★ 2022-02-15
An astute historical analysis of how Mexican resistance to longtime authoritarian President Porfirio Díaz resonated on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border.

In her latest, Lytle Hernández, a MacArthur fellow and professor of history and African American studies at UCLA, delivers a gripping cross-border study. Díaz installed himself as president in 1876 and, for close to three decades, invited U.S. investment in Mexico at the expense of his country’s most disadvantaged and marginalized citizens. In response, brothers Jesús and Ricardo Flores Magón, whose family suffered financial ruin at the hands of Díaz and his policies, organized a grassroots resistance movement called the magonistas, a group the president disparaged as “malos Mexicanos.” While the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) is usually discussed in the context of its influence on Central America, the author argues convincingly that it “also remade the United States.” Indeed, the magonista movement had headquarters in San Antonio, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, and its members were partially motivated by the mistreatment of Mexicans in the U.S., especially the consequence-free murders of immigrant laborers, “act[s] of racial terror akin to the lynching of African Americans in the South.” As Lytle Hernández shows, the U.S. government continued to provide support to Díaz’s corrupt regime, including the hiring of spies to infiltrate the magonista movement. Eventually, Díaz made a series of tactical errors that resulted in the loss of American support—and, ultimately, an end to his dictatorial rule. All of these events shaped not just the formation of modern Mexico; they also defined the tenor of Mexican-American relations that continues to this day. The author combines a masterful grasp of archival material and accessible prose, transforming what could have been a dry academic work into a page-turner. Lytle Hernández fully develops each character and thoroughly contextualizes each historical event. Furthermore, her inclusion of Indigenous and feminist voices is both refreshing and necessary.

A beautifully crafted, impressively inclusive history of the Mexican Revolution.

Kirkus Reviews