(image source: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/latinlife/files/legacy/braceros.jpg)

From 1900 to 1930, the Mexican population in the United States more than doubled every 10 years because of the need for laborers in the Southwest's agricultural industry with an estimated 1.5 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans by 1930. However, midway in this time period, Mexicans began undergoing intrusive health examinations at the hands of the US Public Health Service (USPHS) at the border, which marked Mexicans as outsiders before they even entered the US.

To best understand how perceived racial differences influenced disease diagnosis and response, we need to understand how throughout the 20th century U.S immigration and public health policies increasingly intersected. Thus, we will look at the following historical episodes: a 1916 typhus outbreak and its impact on the Bath Riots and the midcentury Bracero Program. 

1916 TYPHUS OUTBREAK

The connections between public health policies and the development of long-lasting representations of Mexicans as disease carriers are demonstrated by the response to a 1916 typhus outbreak in Los Angeles County. The fact that the disease spread from person to person, along with other factors resulted in the creation of policies that operated on the belief that all Mexicans spread disease. 

During this outbreak, Howard D. King of New Orleans warned, "Every individual hailing from Mexico should be regarded as potentially pathogenic." The United States' entrance into WWI inspired deep feelings of paranoia and xenophobia, especially towards the southern neighbor that was Mexico. The stigma of the typhus outbreaks marked every area where Mexicans lived as needing inspection. In 30 railroad camps in California, health officials were particularly aggressive; they used cyanide gas to destroy lice, ticks, and other pests.

Due to portraying typhus as a a unique Mexican threat, public officials helped establish the image of the "diseased Mexican" in medical and media narratives, as well as in public policy. If that was the treatment of Mexicans IN the United States, what would be done to Mexicans who were attempting to cross into the country? Although the potential typhus epidemic was contained, it resulted in widespread changes in immigration inspection procedures. General inspections at the border increased, even for laborers who crossed daily. 

The 1917 BATH RIOTS of El Paso 

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The use of toxic chemicals to delouse Mexicans in wake of the typhus outbreaks soon became institutionalized as a common practice for any Mexican seeking to cross the border into the U.S. Before being allowed to cross, Mexicans had to bathe, strip nude for an inspection, undergo the lice treatment, and have their clothes treated in a steam dryer. One day Carmelita Torres, a Mexican maid who crossed every day from Juarez to El Paso to clean American homes, was asked by the customs officials at the bridge to get off the trolley and take a bath and be disinfected with gasoline. Instead she decided to convince 30 other female passengers to protest against the humiliating process, which soon was joined by hundreds of other Mexican women, leading to what became known as the Bath Riots.

The fear of Mexicans contaminating the town (both bacteriologically and socially) was a motif present in many of the policies against them. During the year in which Carmelita Torres started the Bath Riots “1917 was a bad year for the border. It was the year that the U.S Public Health Service agents bathed and deloused 127,173 Mexicans at the Santa Fe International Bridge.” (Romo 229) As we can see, the legacy of the typhus outbreaks in the previous year meant that U.S officials were taking no chances to allow disease to enter the country, even if it meant outright discrimination against one population. 

During the riots, the El Paso Times reported that “Many laughable incidents were reported by the health officers quoting their conversations with Mexicans ordered to the baths. One argued eloquently that he had bathed well in July” (Romo 226) This media coverage perpetuates the “natural predisposition” of Mexicans to avoid baths and cleanliness, the latter theme that would continue to be echoed in later prejudices against Mexican people.

Despite the media bias and the local U.S government's threat to put all the Mexican workers in "quarantine camps", the Mexican protesters had good cause to be upset. There were incidents at the health inspection center of nude Mexican women being photographed while undergoing their physical examinations as well as complaints about the unhealthy effects that the chemicals had on the "cleansed" workers. Despite these legitimate protests about worker dignity and human welfare, the riots were eventually quelled with enhanced police response and the humiliating health procedures continued for decades. 

BRACERO PROGRAM AND HEALTH (1942-64)

The idea that Mexicans were likely to spread disease continued to shape immigration policies in the following decades, notably in the Bracero Program.  The Bracero Program was a guest worker agreement between the U.S and Mexico that brought four million Mexican men to the United States to work in agriculture and other industries such as railroads to fill  labor shortages. 

Braceros were recruited in Mexico and underwent health screenings in both Mexico and the United States.Mexicans seeking to participate in the program were required to pass a physical examination by both US and Mexican public health doctors in accordance with US immigration policies and railroad company regulations. Officials required every prospective bracero to undergo a physical examination, with chest x-rays to check for tuberculosis, serological tests to check for venereal disease, psychological profiling, and a chemical bath. 

This recruitment took place in the wake of deportation programs carried out just a few years earlier. During the Great Depression, everyday citizens and government officials alike scapegoated Mexican immigrants as both drains on the US economy and cultural outsiders. These attitudes led to deportations (voluntary and involuntary) that sent an estimated 1.6 million Mexicans back to their homeland. 

The paradoxical coexistence of the deportations and guest worker program illustrates how the uneasy relationship racist ideology and economic necessity creates a logic that could view Mexicans as liabilities and resources simultaneously. Therefore, the next sections will first examine the idea of Mexicans as liabilities before discussing how Mexican labor became resources in the NAFTA age.

Discussion Questions

1. What are your thoughts on the Bath Riots? Given the context of the event, could there have been any other alternatives?
2. Even though the United States needed the labor of the Mexican people, the treatment against them was horrible. What do you think could have motivated the Mexican workers to agree to come to the United States despite these drawbacks?
3. Look at the pictures of the health inspections of the Mexican people. Is this really the best way to check for disease? To what degree do you think gatherings like this would spread even more disease? 

Additional Resources

Further information about the Bracero Program: http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_51_5.html

U.S Deportation of Mexicans in the 1930s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ5pvg5-4Nk

Works Cited

Burnett, John. "The Bath Riots: Indignity Along the Mexican Border." NPR. NPR, 28 Jan. 2006. Web. 13 July 2013. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5176177

Molina, Natalia. "Borders, Laborers, And Racialized Medicalization: Mexican Immigration And US Public Health Practices In The 20Th Century." American Journal Of Public Health 101.6 (2011): 1024-1031. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. Web. 29 July 2013.

Romo, David D. Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez, 1893-1923. El Paso, Tex: Cinco Puntos Press, 2005. Print.

1. Border Control and Biosecurity
2. Sensationalized Media: Stirring Up Racial Fear and Blame