Main Street
Marfa
Gift Shop
Tues - Fri 10 AM to 5:30 PM
Sat 10 AM to 2 PM
215 N Highland Ave • Marfa
Clipping courtesy of the University of Texas El Paso archives.
rooms and detailed descriptions of the process
used on the American border. Two years later,
Dr. Gerhard Peters became the managing
director of one of two German firms which
acquired the patent for the mass production of
Zyklon B, which they supplied to the Nazis and
which was used to exterminate approximately
1.2 million people in the gas chambers of
German concentration camps.
That first year of the closed border, 1917,
saw a difference in the El Paso/Juarez commu-
nity like night and day. Where before there had
been no “illegals,” now everyone had to have
their papers in order and submit to chemical
“sanitation.” A backlash was inevitable; it came
on January 28th, 1917, not quite a week after
the opening of the disinfection stations. It came
in the form of a 17-year-old maid named
Carmelita Torres.
The women who crossed the border daily
and now had to submit to being stripped,
examined and bathed had learned that photo-
graphs of them without their clothes had been
circulating in local cantinas. Carmelita crossed
the border every morning to clean American
homes for a living; when she was directed to
step off the trolley at the Santa Fe Bridge to be
bathed, she refused. She got off the electric car
and quickly convinced 30 other women to join
her. An hour later there were 200 women
blocking all passage into El Paso; by noon there
were several thousand.
The women terrorized the street car drivers,
sending them fleeing back to El Paso. They
threw bottles and rocks at the customs officials
who tried to disperse them, causing several to
hole up in their own bathhouses to escape the
riot. General Bell, the commander of Ft. Bliss,
sent troops to the scene; the women mocked
them and swarmed around them, injuring sev-
eral with projectiles.
Mexican General Fransisco Murguia
brought his squadron to quell the riot.
We offer free gift wrapping!
Murguia’s men, known as el esquadron de la
muerte, brandished their sabers and raised their
skull-and-crossbones insignia to no avail; the
furious women pummeled them, laughed in
their faces and sent them back into Juarez.
The El Paso Times kept a flippant tone about
the incident, stating “The immigration men
predict that as soon as the Mexicans become
familiar with the bathing process they will not
only submit to it, but welcome it.” The newspa-
per called Carmelita “an auburn-haired
Amazon” and scoffed at the idea that the baths
were in any way undignified.
There were no fatalities in spite of the size
and anger of the crowd; unfortunately, the
demonstration did nothing to change the poli-
cy, and laborers and immigrants were still
being “deloused” at some Texas border cross-
ings in the late 1950s, more than 40 years after
a wave of xenophobia had first swept the bor-
der.
Incidentally, typhus never saw an outbreak
in El Paso. It was October of 1918 when the
great epidemic hit, killing nearly ten thousand
in Juarez and El Paso—it was “Spanish”
influenza, which killed 50 million worldwide,
and it was first observed in the United States
in Haskell County, Kansas. Soldiers returning
to Fort Bliss from World War I had brought it
home—and no borders in the world could
stop it.
Monday - Saturday
10am- 2pm
Closed Sunday
209 NE 1st St. / Hwy 90
Marathon, Texas
432-386-4184
[email protected]
SHOP ONLINE:
bigbendrvsupply.com
HARPER ’ S
Hardware
Presidio’s favorite hardware store for almost a century
tools • plumbing supplies • home & garden
Monday - Saturday 7:30 am to 6 pm
701 O’Reilly Street • Presidio • 432-229-3256
2014 Chamber Events
February - Fish Fry and Valentine Dance Community Center
July - Chili Cook-off and Dance at the Post Park
September - West Fest Cabrito Cook Off at Post Park
October - Marathon to Marathon & Quilt Show
November - Cowboy Social at Ritchey Brothers Building
December - Fiesta de Noche Buena
– go to marathontexas.com for details –
Cenizo
First Quarter 2014
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