Hi everyone. Welcome to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’m reviewing Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández. This book was published on May 10th, 2022, and it is a nonfiction account of the events that occurred in Mexico and the United States leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. These events can be summed up as follows:
- The Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821). Mexico defeats Spain and becomes an independent country. A prominent figure in this war is Miguel Hidalgo.
- Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Mexico is defeated and the United States annexes the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming, and Colorado to its territory with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of Mexico in 1848, is a key figure in this war.
- The Reform War (1857-1861). The Liberals defeat the Conservatives and the Church is stripped of its political power. Benito Juárez is an important figure in this war.
- Second Franco-Mexican War (1861-1867). This is the war in which the Cinco de Mayo battle takes place in 1862. Mexico defeats the French and Emperor Maximiliano is executed. General Porfirio Díaz is a key figure during this war. Later, Porfirio Díaz would become President of Mexico, and his first presidency in 1876 would begin what would eventually be known as The Porfiriato.
- Mexican-Indian Wars (1821-1933), where Indigenous tribes such as the Yaqui and Mayo from Sonora and Sinaloa fought against Porfirio Díaz and his cronies to keep their land.
- The Porfiriato (1876-1910).
- Mexican Revolution (1910-1917). This war removed Porfirio Díaz from power and restored democracy.
Miguel Hidalgo, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Benito Juárez, and, most prominently, Porfirio Díaz, all make an appearance in Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández but the most important figure in this book is Ricardo Flores Magón, leader of the magonistas and the most vocal dissident against Porfirio Díaz and his regime.
“The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) remade Mexico. In 1917, after seven years of fighting, Mexico adopted a new constitution that restored democratic rule, asserted public ownership of the subsoil, and increased protections for Mexico’s poorest citizens. […] The ‘precursors’ of the Revolution were the magonistas, led by Ricardo Flores Magón and today they are widely remembered in Mexico for inspiring the revolt. But the Mexican Revolution also remade the United States. The years of fighting forced more than a million Mexicans to flee northward, radically reorienting US culture, politics, and society by cementing the pathways of mass migration from Mexico and giving rise to the first generation of Mexican-Americans. […] By 1980, Mexicans had become the largest immigrant group in the United States, ending Europe’s long dominance in the US immigration story. By 2010, more immigrants had arrived from Mexico than any other country in US history and by 2045, the US is projected to be a ‘minority white’ nation, with Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants driving the shift. Yet few people in the United States know much about the Mexican Revolution. History books say little on the subject and, until recently, Arizona all but banned the teaching of Mexican-American Studies in K-12 classrooms. But the history of the United States as a global power cannot be told without Mexico.”
I highly encourage Mexicans, other Mexican-Americans, and Americans to read this book. Here’s why:
The history. Porfirio Díaz became president of Mexico in 1876. Today, he is remembered as the president who transformed Mexico from a backward country into a modern one; as the president who reduced debt and encouraged investment by foreigners. But our history books (and I mean the history books in Mexico, where I completed my basic education) don’t go into much detail as to how these investments occurred, and it wasn’t until I read this book (almost 30 years later) that I learned that Porfirio Díaz put Mexico up for sale. He said, “Pay me, and have at it.” By 1910, more than half the arable land in Mexico belonged to US citizens (and I believe that because most of the cultivable land around the city I was born in was owned by Americans decades before I was born).
Porfirio Díaz did very little for the lower classes and the poor during the 34 years of his presidency (or better said, tyranny). Anyone living on the land he sold was dispossessed and/or killed. Lynching was a widespread practice, and many Mexicans, most of them poor, died at the hands of posses seeking retribution for a crime that more often than not the accused did not commit. After 1917 posses were prohibited, but during the Porfiriato this was one of the most common forms of dispensing justice. If someone refused to leave the land they had been dispossessed of, which was common, Porfirio Díaz didn’t hesitate to send soldiers to remove them by any means possible. The Yaqui Wars (1821-1929), a part of the Mexican-Indian Wars (1821-1933), were a notable example of this. And here I will admit to a little bias. I was born close to the Hiaki and Mayo territories in Northwestern Mexico and I know people who belong to both of these Indigenous tribes. I also know a little of their respective languages, and it was a pleasant surprise to see that their history, as well as their role in inciting the Mexican Revolution, is given its due place here in a book written in English that is more likely to reach a global audience.
Racism. Black Lives Matter (BLM), a political and social movement in the United States founded in 2013 that gained international attention after the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin in 2020, highlights racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by Black people in the country. At the risk of reducing its importance here, which I am not and do not intend to, I just want to say that Hispanic people in the US are also victims of racism, discrimination, and racial inequality. And Bad Mexicans, a reference to the epithet that Porfirio Díaz once used to refer to Flores Magón and his followers, brings that to the forefront when it explains how the US sought to expand its territory to the Pacific coast and declared war on Mexico in 1846. The end of the war occurred two years later on February 2nd, 1848, when Antonio López de Santa Anna signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and Mexico ceded 55% of its territory to the United States. But racism against Mexicans and the divide between these and white supremacists in the US has been present ever since. Today, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is known as one of the most humiliating peace negotiations for Mexico in contemporary Mexican history and Santa Anna as one of the worst presidents the country has ever had.
Now on to the negatives. The first time I heard about Francisco I. Madero, I wrote his name wrong. I wrote Francisco y Madero, as in Francisco and Madero. But his name was Francisco Ignacio Madero, hence the initial of his second name (the i and y in Spanish are pronounced the same). I had just moved back to Mexico from aboard with my family, and my first lesson in history class at my new school was about the Mexican Revolution. I was in 4th grade, and I admit that my textbook was rather succinct on the details of his involvement in the revolt and subsequent war (like all other elementary textbooks, after all, there’s no need to mention all the gory details to children). I didn’t know, for example, that he was vegan, communicated with the dead (specifically his brother Raúl) or that he was rich. Very rich. All that I learned while reading Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández. And like me in the fourth grade, Kelly writes Francisco I. Madero’s name wrong: Francisco Madero. Maybe this is deliberate to make it easier for English speaking readers but if you say that name to a Mexican, he’ll most likely correct you or ask you, “Who’s that?” Because in Mexico, Francisco I. Madero is only known as Francisco I. Madero. Any other variation of his name is not used. And this is not the only name that Kelly Lytle Hernández gets wrong. When talking about the War of Independence and the priest that initiated the fighting on the night of September 16th, 1810, she says that his name was Manuel Hidalgo. It was not. It was Miguel Hidalgo. But my biggest grievance against this book is the narrator of the audiobook. Not only does she misread words in English, which itself is questionable, but her Spanish is atrocious. And this book has a lot of Spanish in it (mostly names of important people and places) and it is a trial to get past all of her mispronunciations, which you cannot understand at all, and understand what is going on. Whoever decided to hire her to read this book for its audiobook format did it a huge disservice. Please hire someone else (a bilingual speaker this time) and record it again.
Thank you for reading. My next review will be up soon.
