Bath Riots
by Danielle Gallo
I
t is not common knowledge in West
Texas that it was accepted govern-
ment practice to corral all
Mexicans and “second class citizens”
wishing to enter the United States
across the Mexican border and cause
them to strip, be shaved and be doused
with chemicals before they were
allowed to continue on their way—
which for most of them was to work, as
day laborers and housekeepers.
The madness that was taken as a
matter of course along the
Texas/Mexico border for almost half a
century began in 1916, as the U.S. was
preparing to enter World War I. As so
often happens in times of war, patriot-
ism mingled with anti-foreign senti-
ment ran wild through the population
at large—sauerkraut became liberty
cabbage and frankfurters became hot
dogs. It was in January of 1917 that
the Mexican border at El Paso closed
with a bang: for the first time anyone
entering the U.S. was required to have
a passport, take a literacy test and pay
an eight dollar head tax. It was also the
year that the United States Public
Health Service published its Manual for
the Physical Inspection of Aliens, outlining
procedures for the exclusion of “unde-
sirables” from the United States—
from homosexuals and “physical
defectives” to contract laborers and
anyone over the age of 16 who was
illiterate.
1917 was also the year that El Paso
mayor Tom Lea, Sr. saw the opening
of his grand disinfection plant on the
border. Lea was mortally afraid of con-
tracting typhus, and was forever send-
ing telegraphs to Washington, D.C.
asking permission to quarantine the
city. (There were in the years of Mayor
Lea’s term fewer than ten cases of
typhus in the region.) In June of 1916
he wrote to Rupert Blue, the Surgeon
General: “Hundreds of dirty lousey
(sic) destitute Mexicans arriving in El
Paso daily/will undoubtedly bring and
spread typhus unless a quarantine is
placed at once.” In the summer of
1916 he sent health inspectors into
Chihuahuita and other south El Paso
22
Cenizo
communities. Wherever lice were
found, the inhabitants were forcibly
deloused and the adobe huts were sim-
ply demolished. Hundreds of homes
were destroyed and entire city blocks
wiped out. The El Paso Times remarked
that “Those places were cleaned up
and disease stamped out”—in spite of
the fact that in visiting over 5,000
homes, the health inspectors had
uncovered nothing more than one case
of chicken pox, two cases of typhus,
one case of rheumatism and one case
of tuberculosis.
Lea obtained permission to build his
disinfection plant in 1916, and the
doors opened on January 23, 1917.
Dr. B.J. Lloyd, the U.S. Public Health
killing vermin in clothing, bathing
rooms for men and women, a vaccina-
tion room, a “gas chamber” for fumi-
gation with pesticides and inspection
rooms. Every person (except “first-
class citizens”) passing from Mexico
into the U.S. was made to strip com-
pletely naked and turn in their clothing
and personal effects to be steamed and
fumigated with pesticides. They were
then searched minutely in their “hairy
parts” for any sign of lice. If lice were
found (or imagined), every scrap of
hair would be shaved off the body and
the person would be made to bathe in
a mixture of kerosene and vinegar.
This process would merit the recipient
a certificate showing that he or she had
been bathed, which was good for eight
days—after which the process had to
be repeated.
Over the years many different
chemical agents were used to “disin-
fect” Mexicans seeking entry into the
United States: gasoline, sodium
cyanide, sulfuric acid and, in the 40s
and 50s, DDT, which was sprayed lib-
erally on the naked bodies of the
formaldehyde and creosote, before
bathing in a second tub in a mixture of
gasoline, coal oil and vinegar.
Someone struck a match; no one in the
building escaped unscathed. Of the 27
fatalities, 19 were Mexican nationals.
So it was with rather a sense of relief
that hydrogen cyanide was settled
upon as the fumigation agent of choice
for the delousing of Mexicans.
Hydrogen cyanide had been devel-
oped as a pesticide in the 1920s; when
the El Paso delousing stations began to
use it to fumigate the clothing and per-
sonal effects of Mexican maids and day
laborers, they had no idea of the role
they were playing in history. The El
Paso Herald boasted to its readers in
August of 1920: “Hydrocyanic gas, the
most poisonous ever known, more
deadly even than those used on the
battlefields of Europe, is employed in
the fumigation process.” The trade
name of the gas was Zyklon B.
It was this innovative use of the
deadliest poison gas ever invented that
earned El Paso the kudos of Dr.
Gerhard Peters, a German scientist
The old El Paso border crossing, complete with electric tram, was the site of the 1917 bath riots after mayor Tom Lea, Sr. instituted a policy of
delousing Mexican day workers and "second class citizens." Photo courtesy Beincke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
official stationed in El Paso, suggested
delousing stations rather than a full
quarantine, writing to his superiors
that he would “cheerfully bathe all the
dirty, lousy people coming up from
Mexico.” When the plant opened its
doors it boasted a hot steam dryer for
First Quarter 2014
migrant workers. Gasoline was one of
the earliest insecticides used, until
Mayor Lea’s disinfection campaign
caused a fatal blaze in the El Paso City
Jail in 1916. Inmates about to be disin-
fected had to soak their clothing in one
tub, filled with a mixture of gasoline,
and one of several researchers respon-
sible for later patenting Zyklon B in its
stable solid form. Peters wrote an arti-
cle in 1938 for a German magazine
which praised El Paso for its delousing
stations. The article included photo-
graphs of the El Paso disinfection