Kelly Lytle Hernández on the 1910 Mexican Revolution

On Monday, June 6, 2022, author Kelly Lytle Hernández will speak about the magonistas, a group of agitators who challenged Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz in the early 20th century. As noted in the description of her new book, Bad Mexicans, “Their cross-border insurgency, launched from U.S. soil, was a landmark revolt against the U.S. empire and the suffocating power Anglo-Americans held over Mexican lives. Through protest and armed rebellion, the magonistas ignited the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Pursued by the nascent FBI, the rebels wrote in secret code and organized thousands of workers to their cause. Lytle Hernandez documents how the magonista uprising, and the failed Anglo-American campaign to stop them, proved foundational to the history of race, immigration, and violence in the United States.”

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 fellow, she is the author of Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands, Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol and City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles.

Hernández will be in conversation with Nancy Raquel Mirabal, Associate Professor of American Studies and the Director of the U.S. Latina/o Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Mirabal is the author of Suspect Freedoms: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Cubanidad in New York, 1823-1957; first editor of Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies and co-editor of Keywords for Latina/o Studies.

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These online classes with people’s historians are held at least once a month (generally on Mondays) at 4:00 pm PT / 7:00 pm ET for 90 minutes. In each session, the historian is interviewed by a teacher and breakout rooms allow participants to meet each other in small groups, discuss the content, and share teaching ideas. We designed the sessions for teachers and other school staff. Parents, students, and others are also welcome to participate.

Find resources below to teach outside the textbook about the struggle for liberation in Mexico.