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

Kelly Lytle Hernández

Aga 2022 · Highbridge Audio · Kuchazwe ngu-Joana Garcia

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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, the rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of US authorities vested in protecting the Diaz regime. The US Departments of War, State, Treasury, and Justice, as well as police, sheriffs, and spies, hunted the magonistas across the country. 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 listeners to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of US history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas' story integral to modern American life.

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Kelly Lytle Hernández holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. A 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient, she is the author of the award-winning books Migra! and City of Inmates. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Joana Garcia is a retired military officer with twenty years of active duty under her belt. She spent most of her adult life fixing fighter jets on aircraft carriers as a US Navy aviation maintenance officer. Her warm, rich, and graceful voice can be heard in over sixty titles in multiple genres, fiction and nonfiction.