The bath riots Whether they are legal or illegal, immigrants have experienced discrimination from a large group of Americans citizens. I believe they should have more consideration and respect, therefore, helping immigrants to have a better life here in the US. Coming to United States represents a huge opportunity to get a better Job than what their country can offer them and their families. Trying to get into America has become a big accomplishment, specially for the Mexican population and their wish to offer a better life to their families.
Mexicans have been suffering injustice to the point of being treated with disinfectants and today being questioned by police officers Just because of their appearance. We should support the search for equality, thus putting the discrimination and racism behind. Going back in time to about the year 1917 in El Paso, TX, Americans were afraid of Mexicans, when crossing the border because of the fear of catching typhus, and the possibility of it becoming epidemic.
The type of disinfectant used on immigrants was, spreading gasoline and vinegar over them, believing that would kill any type of ease. Jose Bracing is a witness and he explains the situation by it being a white burning substance that they’d spray over them. He also said they were shaving everybody’s heads, putting their clothes in a large steam dryer, and were required to get naked for a inspection.
The women complained about undressing so they started making women to take the bath under the Santa Fee bridge, but the officers were secretly taking pictures of naked women and posting them in a local cantina. The process was abusive and an act of total ignorance, due to the lack of access to more plopped scientific methods, and at the time these ideas, were thought to be the best to protect the US. One morning at 7:00 a. M, a 17 year old girl named Carmela Tortes crossed the border into El Paso to work cleaning Americans homes.
On this particular morning she resisted to take the required bath, alleging it was a humiliating and degrading process. Convincing the other workers to do the same, the rest of the Mexicans Joined her within an hour about 200 people Joined her. By noon there were thousands of them giving this time in history the name of the “Bath Riots”. After this incident Carmela was arrested and the US and Mexican troops put end to the riot. Even with confrontation about abuse and humiliation, Americans kept exercising the same delouse process.
A year before the Carmela Tortes incident, there were a group of prisoners killed inside an El Paso Jail when a fire ignited while they were taking their gasoline baths. Finally, authorities stopped the process after a US surgeon general stated that Typhus fever was not a serious illness to the population, discontinuing this dangerous practice. The forgotten process and story of the bath riots is being made aware now by David Dorado Room, autumn AT ten KICK ‘Railings set to a revolution’.
HIS KICK NAS sparked interest to many people by telling the story of what Mexicans immigrants had to go thought in the early sass’s. This is the sad reality of what poverty made Mexicans immigrants do while looking for a better life in the US. Today the process of becoming a legal immigrant is different from the process of the early sass’s, but in many ways it is still very similar, in ways that very strict physicals are required for your immigration application. In the end, the rules are still the same, only the methods have changed.
