JE #4 El Paso's Cultural Schizophrenia

This week readings from David Romo's Ringside Seat to a Revolution illustrate the many racial divisions that existed in the El Paso/ Juarez border from 1881-1917. In fact that border land went through a lot of changes to adapt to different changes. During the Chinese Exclusion Act a lot of xenophobia was reflected towards Chinese people, so much that they started crossing into El Paso by going to Mexico first. After that they started going through subterranean tunnels. In 1911 there was an attack on foreigners (most of them chinese) the newspaper reported saying that they were armed first but there was a lot of rage against the Chinese for what they made of themselves. They were doing well and there was racist anger towards that, this put Chinese people at an awkward position because they were living in a borderland where they were not welcome. 

Japanese and African Americans were also up in El Paso, a part of the reading that struck me was p. 208 "In the meantime the American military policy of pining Blacks against Mexicans on the border drove a wedge between two ethnic groups might have otherwise collaborated against Anglo hegemony. Some arguee that this was part of the plan all along." this reminded me of the Willie Lynch method. Willie Lynch was a slave owner who sent a letter to another slave owner giving him advise on how to control his slaves (aka how to keep them calm so they don't revolt) the letter just said to put the lighter skinned ones with the darker skinned ones, to get the taller ones with shorter ones.. in other words try to provoke them to go against each other so that they stay focused on tensions with each others instead of uniting together. 

The people who lived at the borderlands had many conflicts and instead of uniting together they were busy fighting with each other. Even Mexicans living in one side of the border stopped identifying with Mexico and were ready to fight with "Americans" for their country. 

To me the bath riots were really surprising to hear, I have seen pictures of it before on the internet but in some ways it was still difficult t believe. The way border crosser were seen to have to be bathed in extremity was insulting and the pictures were unbelievable. Pg. 234 there is a picture of a line of Mexicans waiting  to be bathed at the Santa Fe Bridge quarantine plant. Pg. 238 and 239 has ttwo page in depth photos of inspection they were given before being given pesticides because of lice.