Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

⚡️ 9 Quotes from the book

“Díaz used foreign capital to industrialize the Mexican economy, often with little regard for the rights and wellbeing of Mexico’s poorest citizens.”

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“Ricardo Flores Magón and the magonistas, however, were a threat, because they sought a wholesale political and economic revolution.”

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“During his more than three-decade rule, a period known as the Porfiriato, Díaz successfully brought what he called “order and progress” to Mexico. But it came at a cost.”

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“Regularly arrested, migrants spent many days in the Belem deathtrap. Neither the facility nor the neighborhood had a sewer system and the swampy land had poor drainage. Under these conditions, typhus, influenza, and cholera outbreaks were mundane.”

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“After the Mexican–American War ended in 1848, white settlers expected easy access to the lands long occupied by Mexicans and Indigenous peoples. But Indigenous communities refused to disappear.”

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“For many Mexicans, Díaz’s rule had always been a devil’s bargain. After Mexico’s chaotic nineteenth century, they traded democracy for “order and progress.” But they never traded their sovereignty.”

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“The Immigration Service constructed the first ever border fence to hold back the surge of refugees. It didn’t work. More than one million Mexicans entered the United States during the revolution, establishing a wide foundation for future generations of Mexican Americans.”

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“The men and women who built the PLM were ordinary people: migrants, exiles, and citizens; farmworkers, sharecroppers, miners, and intellectuals. Most of all, they were rebels.”

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“Ricardo Flores Magón and the magonistas altered the course of history, defining the world in which we live by defying the world in which they lived.”

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