In 1910, Antonio Rodriguez, a ranch hand in Rocksprings, Texas, was lynched and burned by a mob of white men. For historians of Texas, this is an all-too-familiar tale of Anglo violence against Mexicans, but in Bad Mexicans Kelly Lytle Hernández immediately transports us to Mexico, where people staged protests, tore down American flags, and shouted “Mueren los yanquis!” (Death to the Yankees!) in response to the brutal racist violence. Porfirio Díaz, the long-standing president of Mexico, sent security forces to squash the protests and muzzled the press, insisting that they cease to comment on the anti-American protests. This opening episode reveals Lytle Hernández's methodology. She will take us on a journey that weaves back and forth across the US-Mexico border to tell a story of a transnational anticapitalist movement at the birth of revolutionary Mexico.
Historians, as Benedict Anderson intimated, are the clerics of the nation, telling the origin...
