Bad Mexicans
Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands
13 June 2023
Description
Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction
“Rebel historian” Kelly Lytle Hernández reframes our understanding of US history in this ground breaking 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 US 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 US 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 US 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.
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." — Geraldo Cadava, The New Yorker
"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, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water
"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, New York Times best-selling author of What Truth Sounds Like
"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 in" — Vicki Lynn Ruiz, winner of the National Humanities Medal
