A Dark Chapter in American History: The 1917 Bath Riots and the Brutal Use of Gasoline Baths

Carmelita Torres, an Auburn-haired 17-year-old Amazon who led angry women in riots against American forces near the US-Mexico border in 1917. Her story is more than just a single riot: it's about American paranoia at the border and a toxic campaign of disinfection and discrimination that would be taken up by Nazi scientists.

Thousands of people cross the border between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico every day. They line up in Juarez and often wait for hours to get through the U.S. checkpoint. But the border didn't always look like this. People would come and go without a passport back when crossing this border was free and unrestricted. But after 1917, Juarez and El Paso became two separate communities, and the crossing became a formal process with a passport.

In the year 1919, tensions were high on the border between Mexico and the United States due to ongoing World War I. Meanwhile, in the U.S., a different movement was gaining strength - eugenics. Based on flawed science, this idea was to create a genetically and morally superior population by controlling immigration only allowing those considered fit to enter America. As with all stereotyping, there were dozens of film titles that used the word 'greaser' to describe Mexican immigrants.

This racist sentiment was strong at the US-Mexico border El Paso's Mayor Thomas Lea had developed an obsession with cleanliness and it defined his political platform. This obsession with not only racial purity but physical purity would literally clean up El Paso from all these bad elements and by bad elements he often meant racially bad elements.

Under the guise of improving sanitation, there was a campaign led by someone in Maryland to inspect every house in a primarily Mexican neighborhood due to the fear of a disease called Typhus, which is spread by lice. If the inspectors discovered lice, the residents were compelled to undergo certain procedures, such as having their heads shaved, taking vinegar and kerosene bags, and burning their clothing. Numerous houses were eventually destroyed. Additionally, the individual responsible for the campaign, Lea, extended the supposed health measures to include prisoners in the El Paso jail. They were required to remove all clothing, bathe in a tub full of kerosene, and on one occasion, a match was lit.

A fire broke out in the jail that resulted in the deaths of 27 prisoners, most of whom were Mexican or Mexican American. Despite this tragic incident, Merrily continued to pursue even more aggressive plans. He sent a Western Union telegram to Rupert Blue, who was the Surgeon General based in Washington DC. In the telegram, Merrily expressed concern over the hundreds of dirty, lousy, and destitute Mexicans arriving in El Paso on a daily basis, warning that they would undoubtedly spread typhus unless the area was immediately quarantined. The incident was so severe that it was referred to as the "Jail Holocaust" by the newspaper.

The government did not agree to a full quarantine because evidence suggested that typhus was not a significant threat in the area. However, they decided to fund a new disinfection plant at the border in 1916. In this facility, every immigrant who was considered a second-class citizen was required to strip naked. Their clothes were then sent to a large steam dryer and fumigated with toxic pesticides inside the gas room. An inspector would check each person's body, including private parts, for lice. If lice were found, immigrants were required to shave their head and body hair and bathe in a mixture of kerosene and vinegar. Some even had their eyelids examined for conditions like pinkeye, and many had to complete puzzles or simple IQ tests to prove their fitness for entry. After completing this process, they would receive a ticket as proof of disinfection, but they would need to repeat the process every eight days to re-enter the US.

The dehumanizing inspections and toxic baths at the border were so humiliating that many people internalized the experience and did not speak about it. This psychology of shame was pervasive. However, these conditions set the stage for a revolt led by a 17-year-old maid from Juarez, who defied the order to bathe.

Carmelita Torres was considered by some to be a less desirable part of the community. On the morning of January 28th, 1917, an electric trolley carrying mostly women was crossing the border. Carmelita convinced the majority, if not all, of the women on the trolley to refuse to undergo the dehumanizing inspection process. This led to a spontaneous protest.

According to some accounts, in addition to the dehumanizing delousing procedures for women, there were also instances of sexual humiliation.

Rumors circulated that when immigrants entered the disinfection plant and were told to strip, officers were taking their photos and displaying them in bars. The emotions of violation and outrage that must have been felt by the immigrants can only be imagined.

Although she was labeled an instigator and a ringleader, she was just a young woman who was tired of the injustice and humiliation that other women had experienced. What began as a protest with 200 participants that morning slowly grew into a crowd of 2,000.

According to a reporter, the scene resembled a swarm of bees, as the women's hands clawed at the tops of passing cars. When American officers attempted to break up the crowd, they were met with bottles, rocks, and insults. Protesters even laid down on the tracks in front of the trolley cars to block them, and men joined in what became known as the bath riots, shutting down the border for two days. Afterwards, news spread that the ringleaders were arrested and a few men were publicly executed.

Carmelita Torres, on the other hand, seems to have been imprisoned and her fate remains unknown to historians as every trace of her has been lost.

Despite the bath riots in 1917, the fumigations continued, and more than 100,000 Mexicans were subjected to delousing at the border that year. The following year, a new immigration law made border procedures even more stringent, requiring immigrants to have a passport, take a literacy test, and pay an $8 head tax.

In addition, the US Public Health Service issued guidelines to border agents about who should be denied entry into the country, including "imbeciles, idiots, feeble-minded persons, physical defectives, persons afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases."

The discriminatory policies at the border were reminiscent of horrific events elsewhere in the world. While researching, David discovered a disturbing detail - the fumigation of Mexican immigrants was not only similar to that of Nazi Germany, but it was also directly linked to it. The US began using Zyklon-B, a highly poisonous acid gas, in the 1920s to fumigate clothing at the border. In 1937, a German scientist called for the use of Zyklon-B in Nazi disinfection chambers, and included two photos of El Paso's delousing chambers as an example of how effective Zyklon-B had been at the US border to kill unwanted pests. The same scientist pushed for its use in concentration camps, where it was eventually used in concentrated doses to murder millions of people. People often argue that it is not fair to compare what happened in Nazi Germany with other parts of the world. While it is true that the Holocaust did not occur in a vacuum, the history of something like Zyklon-B on the border is a haunting reminder of the dangers of such policies.

Several decades after the Bath Riots, Mexico entered into a labor agreement with the US called the "Bracero Program", which involved sending men to work on US farms and railroads. However, even with this new program, border disinfections continued. One such facility in Socorro, Texas used a toxic pesticide called Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane also known as DDT, which was later banned for agricultural use in most developed countries. Immigrants were sprayed with DDT, even in their private parts and were often stripped naked and inspected like livestock. First-hand accounts from the immigrants in the program reveal how little they knew about the fumigations and how humiliating they found the experience. Although they were not always informed that they were being sprayed with DDT, they called it the "white powder" that was being used to fight against disease.

Many of the employees who worked in the facilities were not provided with sufficient information.

In the beginning, when I was working as a clerk, I was hired primarily because I spoke Spanish. There was a hut in the area where the workers from the Mexican side were going, and they were told it was for lice disinfection. We didn't think much about it, but we did make connections to what the Nazis did to the Jews. During lunch breaks, I heard that they were sprayed, and sometimes the men themselves made comments that they felt a burning sensation. I don't know if they knew what was happening to them, and I certainly had no idea. It wasn't until the 1960s, when the Bracero program ended, that health authorities acknowledged the chemicals were dangerous and discontinued the baths and fumigations.

While we want history to be about progress and everyone realizing the impact, that is not always the case. Unfortunately, many things on the border are never resolved; they just keep repeating themselves. Decades after the disinfection campaign ended, the language, strategy, and dehumanizing politics of fear and exclusion still persist. There is also a health issue at play. We don't know what diseases people may be bringing in, such as smallpox, leprosy, and TB, which can affect the people in the United States. Apprehensions in the El Paso area have spiked more than 600%, and many migrants, including as many as 300 children, are being warehoused in cells without adequate food, water, or sanitation. Some have referred to these detention centers as concentration camps, and while the comparison to the Holocaust is not favorable, the practices at the border are reminiscent of what led up to it. We cannot wait for another Holocaust to speak out against the injustices happening at the border between Juarez and El Paso.