Bad Mexicans- Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernandez in Bloomington, MN

Long listed for the Pen- John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ""Rebel historian"" Kelly Lytle Hernandez reframes our understanding of U.s. history in this groundbreaking 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 Magon, 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 Diaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.s. 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 U.s. Departments of War, State, Treasury, and Justice as well as police, sheriffs, and spies, hunted the magonistas across the country. Capturing Ricardo Flores Magon 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.