A century ago, a border "pesticide" was an ominous foreshadowing
Opinion // Native Texan
Joe Holley April 14, 2017 Updated: April 14, 2017 7:24 p.m.
A century ago, a border "pesticide" was an ominous...
1of6Native El Pasoan David Romo considers himself a micro-historian alert to non-traditional sources of historical information.Photo: Joe Holley
2of6A border wall has separated El Paso and Juarez since the U.S. Border Patrol initiated Operation Hold the Line in 1993.Photo: Joe Holley
3of6Despite a border wall and a river, a street scene in El Paso, pictured here, and a street scene in Juarez are noticeably similar.Photo: Joe Holley
4of6Beginning in 1917, every immigrant from the interior of Mexico and every "2nd class" Juarez citizen was required to strip completely, turn in their clothes and baggage to be steam dried and then submit to fumigation with hydrocyanic acid and a visual inspection by a customs inspector.Photo: Carlos Marentes, Proyecto Bracero Archives
5of6The Stanton Street International Bridge, ca. 1910. Before 1917, Mexican citizens could cross back and forth between Juarez and El Paso without a passport.
6of6Photo: MIKEMARVINS
EL PASO - An Austin friend of mine in town last weekend for a gathering of the Texas literati enjoyed the poetry readings and the writerly conversation, but what really left a lasting impression was a visit to the Whoopee Bowl, a sprawling antique/vintage emporium in Canutillo, west of the city. As he and his wife wandered the aisles past clothes, old stoves, metal art, wagon wheels and bizarre "what in the world is that?" items, they happened to notice on a wall behind the cash register what may have been the most bizarre item of all: a framed, full-color portrait of Adolf Hitler in Nazi uniform. Price: $3,400.
It was obviously the work of an artist with talent, but who painted it and how it ended up at the Whoopee Bowl in Canutillo, Texas, my friend was reluctant to ask. ("Uhh, yes ma'am, I'm interested in your Hitler up there on the wall.") The provenance remains a mystery, but El Paso writer and historian David Durado Romo can tell you about another El Paso-Nazi connection, one that's more insidious than a portrait of Der Führer at the Whoopee Bowl.
Although the El Paso role was inadvertent, the connection had its origins on the border dividing two deeply connected cities.
As Romo notes in his book, "Ringside Seat to a Revolution," the U.S.-Mexican border was pretty much open until 1917, when the Great War prompted fears that Germany would launch bombing raids from across the river. For the first time, Mexican nationals needed a passport to enter the U.S. "From that point on," Romo writes, "El Paso and Juarez became two separate communities."
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'The gas chambers'
Allegedly to protect the nation from the threat of typhus, U.S. customs agents also began the mandatory delousing of Mexican border-crossers. Typhus was no more of a problem in El Paso than in other American cities - three cases in 1917 - but all immigrants from the Mexican interior and those deemed "second-class" residents of Juarez were required to strip so they could be fumigated. They also had to hand over their clothes to be sterilized in a steam dryer. A public health inspector examined their naked bodies. Anyone found to have lice would be required to shave all hair with clippers and bathe with a concoction of kerosene and vinegar. At the completion of the "sterilization" process - in an area called "the gas chambers" - the Mexican visitor would receive a ticket certifying them..
"It was extremely draconian. It wasn't necessary," Romo, a third-generation El Pasoan, told me a few days ago.
Romo's great-aunt, Adela Dorado, crossed the bridge daily to clean houses in El Paso. She told him over dinner years ago how it felt to be treated as a "dirty Mexican." Once, she said, an inspector ran her clothes and shoes through the secadora (steam dryer), and her shoes melted.
Regular visitors were "deloused" every eight days. Originally it was daily, until 17-year-old Carmelita Torres got fed up. The "auburn-haired Amazon" - the El Paso Times description - also crossed the Santa Fe International Bridge to clean houses and experienced the same daily humiliation, until, like Rosa Parks decades later, she said no. On the morning of Jan. 28, 1917, she refused to exit the trolley and be subjected to the procedure. She also persuaded 30 other women to resist. By 8:30, more than 200 Mexican women had joined them, blocking traffic into El Paso. By noon, the Times estimated their number as "several thousand."
The protesters lobbed rocks, bottles and insults at immigration and public health officers and jeered at soldiers called out from nearby Fort Bliss to quell the riot. They lay across the tracks, took control of a trolley and pummeled the motorman when he tried to flee. Mexican cavalrymen from the notorious "esquadron de la muerte" galloped up with sabers drawn. As Romo tells the tale, the women jeered, hooted and attacked the soldiers.
Nazi connection
If the Carmelita Torres story were a movie, we'd see befuddled soldiers retreating, exultant women demolishing the hated baths while stirring background music swells. Alas, it's not. The protesters couldn't get the humiliating procedure abolished, although after the "Bath Riots" it was no longer daily. The border disinfections would continue into the mid-1930s.
Romo, a resident scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, considers himself a "micro-historian," one who pays attention not only to scholarly sources but also to "forgotten ancestors, lost photographs and music I had never heard of before." (He's also a classically trained guitarist.) He came across the El Paso-Nazi connection at the National Archives. On Jan. 29, 1929, the medical officer in charge of the El Paso delousing station put in a requisition for Zyklon‑B as the fumigation agent of choice. A commercial form of hydrocyanic acid, Zyklon‑B was used primarily as a pesticide to fumigate agricultural shipments from Mexico. It's extremely poisonous to humans when inhaled and fatal when absorbed through the skin.
In 1937, a German scientist named Gerhard Peters wrote an article for a science journal touting the effectiveness of Zyklon‑B as an agent for killing unwanted pests. Accompanying the article were two photographs of the El Paso delousing chambers. Peters became the managing director of Degesch, one of two German firms that acquired the patent to mass-produce the chemical in 1940. In his patent application for a new "exterminating" agent he noted, "My invention relates to the extermination of animal pest-life of the most varied kinds, for instance, warm-blooded obnoxious animals and insects."
Peters' company, Degesch, would become the major supplier of Zyklon‑B to Nazi concentration camps. As Romo points out, "the Germans used Zyklon‑B in concentrated doses in the gas chambers to exterminate millions of human beings whom they considered 'pests' and 'parasites.' "
Border panic of 1917
Romo, whose degree from Stanford University is in Judaic Studies and who studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, knows to take extreme care when drawing Hitler parallels. (Ask the White House press secretary.) He's also quick to make the obvious point that the Nazis were using Zyklon‑B to commit mass murder, while border authorities in El Paso certainly were not. "There were some subtle and not-so-subtle connections between the immigration policies and practices at the U.S.-Mexican border during WWI and some of the historical processes which led to Nazi Germany," he writes.
He mentions an El Paso mayor in 1916 complaining to Washington about "dirty lousey (sic) destitute Mexicans," an eugenicist warning about threats that bastard races from south of the border posed to the nation's "Aryan stock," the medical bureaucrats whose job it was "to protect America from the dirty, the dumb, the destitute and the defective."
A new edition of David Romo's "Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez: 1893-1923" will be published in May. Contact Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso for information at info@cincopuntos.com or 1-800-566-9072.
A century beyond the border panic of 1917, Romo detects worrisome signs of history repeating itself. He speaks of fear, hatred, racial animus and a wall that's like "a barbed-wire fence right down the middle of everybody's mind."
Joe Holley
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Native Texan Joe Holley is a former editorial page editor and columnist for newspapers in San Antonio and San Diego and a staff writer for The Washington Post. He has been a regular contributor to Texas Monthly and Columbia Journalism Review and is the author of two books, including a biography of football hero, Slingin' Sammy Baugh. He joined the Houston Chronicle in 2009.
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