The Disturbing History Of Gas Baths On The U.S.-Mexico Border

Before 1917, citizens of Juárez and El Paso could cross freely back and forth between Mexico and the United States. No one asked for identification across the Stanton Bridge and passports weren't needed. But after creating a disinfection campaign within El Paso, officials in the city turned their attention towards the border and enacted a policy of disinfection and fumigation that lasted almost half a century. Using a variety of vinegar, kerosene, gasoline, and DDT, border officials subjected people to a toxic disinfection processes under the guise of public health. During the 1920s, United States border officials were even using Zyklon B in a manner that was commended and later borrowed by the Germans during World War II.

Although the fumigation and disinfection techniques were protested from the moment they were created, the protests didn't have a lasting effect. For those who had to cross the border for work, the decision was made to submit to the procedures.

It's impossible to know how many people total were subjected to the disinfection procedures, but at one point, Texas border officials were inspecting over 5,000 people per day. And even though the gas baths were claimed to be in response to the threat of typhus, they continued long after the typhus scare had passed. This is the disturbing history of gas baths on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Although Lea was incredibly racist, it seemed that at times his classism outweighed his racism. When Victoriano Huerta, the Mexican dictator who was deposed in 1914, found himself in an El Paso jail in 1915, Lea was his official attorney. Mayor Lea also prevented Huerta's bond from being higher and arranged Huerta's release. In a report to the Secretary of State, Collector of Customs Z. L. Cobb even noted that Lea's employment as Huerta's attorney "necessarily will affect the attitude of the El Paso authorities. Business sentiment here seems strongly with Huerta."

According to Ringside Seat to a Revolution by David Dorado Romo, Mayor Lea also viewed Mexican President Carranza favorably because he considered him to support "law and order." Pancho Villa, in comparison, was disparaged by the mayor because he represented the lower classes. After a raid by Villa on Columbus, New Mexico in March, 1916, Mayor Lea proclaimed that Villa was to be immediately arrested and tried if he ever entered El Paso. In response, Villa offered a bounty of "a thousand pesos in gold for the head of Mayor Lea."

After the Columbus raid, Villistas living in El Paso were given 24 hours to leave town. The same month, Lea passed an ordinance that prohibited "Mexican" newspapers in El Paso from publishing anything that could be considered "of a political nature." Mayor Lea also passed the first U.S. ordinance to outlaw marijuana due to his association of cannabis "with Mexican revolutionaries."

On February 27th, 1916, mandatory "delousing baths" were made into an official policy. Since a steam shower disinfection plant would take several more months to build, another method of delousing was proposed using a mixture of vinegar, gasoline, and kerosene.

On March 5th, 1916, less than a week later, 26 Mexican laborers were arrested and made to take a long dip in a tub that was filled to the top in the vinegar, gasoline, and kerosene mixture. Half an hour later, another prisoner named H.M. Cross was arrested for allegedly trafficking narcotics. Still presumably under the influence of a drug, Cross lit a match for his cigarette. Since the room was full of gasoline fumes, the entire jail caught fire in a horrible explosion.

According to Ringside Seat to a Revolution by David Dorado Romo, roughly 50 naked imprisoned people caught on fire. Ernesto Molina, the youngest prisoner at the age of 17, left "blood stained footprints" as he ran to jump out a window. The floors of the metal cells were so hot that they burned off the soles of the firemen who tried to put the fire out. A few people, like Daniel Urias and Diego Aceves, were able to survive, but at least 26 Mexican prisoners and two Americans burned to death, and another 25-30 prisoners suffered severe injuries and burns. In the Mexican community, the incident was referred to as El Holocausto, or "the Jail Holocaust," for many years afterwards.

While their clothes were fumigated, people were forced to stand naked while a customs inspector checked their body hair for lice. Anyone who was found to have lice had all their hair shaved and were forced to take a bath in vinegar and kerosene. According to Militarizing the Border by Miguel Antonio Levario, rumors also started circulating that border officials were photographing women while they were nude.

In addition to delousing, Mexican people had to go through additional medical and mental examinations. People were checked for things such as conjunctivitis, clubbed fingers, asthma, bunions, and flat feet. Smallpox vaccines were also administered. People were also sometimes asked to put a puzzle together, solve additional problems, or write some sentences.

Border officials were also meant to be on the lookout for a variety of psychiatric conditions and anything from happiness to depression could keep someone from the United States. According to Regulations Governing the Medical Inspection of Aliens, "active or maniacal psychoses might be suggested by [...] smiling, facial expression of mirth, laughing, eroticism, boisterous conduct, meddling with the affairs of others, and uncommon activity." At the other end of the scale, sad faces, tearful eyes, and delayed responses could represent a "psychoses of a depressive nature."

While during the first day of protests men had mostly stood by and encouraged the women protestors from the sidelines, by the second day they joined the women protesting. But men weren't entirely absent during the first day. When José Marta Sánchez shouted "¡Viva Villa!" during the protests, he was promptly taken to the Juárez cemetery and murdered by Carranza's troops.

According to Mexico Unexplained, by the second day of the protests many had joined in order to protest the regime of President Carranza. At this point, households and businesses in El Paso could feel the effects of the protest through the lack of peoples' labor, so they asked the El Paso Chamber of Commerce to settle the issue. According to "The Bath Riots" by René Kladzyk, on January 30th, the Chamber of Commerce held an emergency meeting to discuss the gasoline baths that were occurring. But Dr. Claude C. Pierce, who had been sent from Washington to "design and oversee" the fumigation facility, repeatedly denied that kerosene was used and claimed that the baths were "merely soap and hot water baths."

On January 30th, several arrests were made on both sides and with soldiers prepared to meet protestors on the U.S. side, by the afternoon many people who needed to cross for work resigned themselves to the baths. Unfortunately, the decision wasn't complicated: "it was a requirement for anyone who wanted to work."

Unfortunately, the riots had little lasting effect. Although President Woodrow Wilson had vetoed the Immigration Act twice in 1915, Congress overturned his veto and passed Immigration Act of 1917 on February 5th, 1917. The act barred immigration from Asia-Pacific countries, and required that all immigrants entering the United States, among other things, pay a head tax, take a literacy test, and have a passport.

According to Mexico by Don M. Coerver, Suzanne B. Pasztor, and Robert Buffington, the literacy test, "$8 head tax" that the act imposed, and the prohibition of immigration for contract labor directly affected Mexican workers. Businesses in the southwest were soon pressuring the government to exempt Mexican workers from the provisions, and as the United States' entry into World War I brought up the potential for labor shortages, the government acquiesced. According to the "United States Immigration Policy Toward Mexico" by Gilberto Cardenas, this set two significant precedents of relaxing laws "when it became desirable to import Mexican workers" and invoking the restrictive provisions "when it was deemed necessary to exclude Mexicans from immigrating on a permanent basis." Before the Immigration Act of 1917, "Mexicans were legal." The exemptions lasted until 1921, but the border was never the same again after 1917.

Adolf Hitler even praised the United States' Immigration Act of 1924, noting that, "The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races."

Disinfection and fumigation were practiced as late as 1963 and was in place during the Bracero Program from 1942-1964, during which over two million Mexican workers came to the United States for short-term labor contracts.

According to Ringside Seat to a Revolution by David Dorado Romo, immigration agents made Mexican workers strip and then proceeded to spray their entire bodies with insecticide. Some would vomit due to the terrible smell of the chemical sprays and workers such as Raul Delgado remembers how "the agent would laugh at the grimacing faces we would make. He had a gas mask on, but we didn't." Sometimes, people were even subjected to disinfection multiple times. Medical exams also continued during the Bracero Program, ranging from chest X-rays to examinations for hemorrhoids.

At the end of the day, according to "Borders and Bodies" by Eve Galanis, spraying immigrants and laborers with toxic chemicals "had very little to do with typhus, and more to do with physically and psychologically controlling the flow of migrant workers."