SPEAKER_00: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month we're highlighting ragers, women who use their anger, often righteous, though not always, to accomplish extraordinary things. Today, our story starts in the westernmost point in Texas, on a bridge connecting the Mexican city of Juarez, the American city of El Paso. In the early hours of January 28, 1917, traffic on the bridge came to a standstill. Because there, blocking the tracks was the body of a young, redheaded girl, laying her life on the line to protest America's border crossing policies. Her name was Carmelita Torres. And on that day in 1917, she led the 1917 Bath Riots, a movement of fierce resistance by Mexican migrant women. Carmelita Torres's mornings had a familiar rhythm. She woke early, boarded a streetcar, and crossed the Santa Fe Street Bridge into El Paso, where she worked as a cleaner for white American families. Carmelita and hundreds of other Mexican women made this morning commute in an atmosphere of intense racial resentment. Indigenous and mestizo women like Carmelita were often portrayed as sexually promiscuous and criminal. And doctors had popularized the idea that Mexican immigrants were dirty and disease-ridden. So when a typhus epidemic broke out in Mexico City, American public health officials jumped into action. They set up elaborate quarantine plants on the border, low, imposing buildings filled with complicated-looking machinery. Their goal was to use these plants to get rid of any lice Mexican migrant workers might be carrying. Lice carried typhus. Officials at the border chose who would have to enter these plants. Unsurprisingly, they targeted working-class indigenous and mestizo Mexicans. When the quarantine plants began operating, Carmelita was indignant. For good reason, going through the plants was a humiliating process. Once the migrants stepped inside, they were separated by gender and forced to take off their clothes. After pushing their clothes and baggage through holes in the wall, the naked migrants would be examined by American officials for lice. If they found lice in a man's hair, they would shave it off and burn it. If they found lice in a woman's hair, they would drench her hair in a mixture of kerosene and vinegar and then wash it with water and soap. Finally, the migrants would have to take supervised kerosene baths, which meant getting sprayed with a mixture of soap, water, and kerosene. Kerosene baths were already known to be deadly in El Paso. Just the year before, in the El Paso jail, 16 prisoners taking a kerosene bath to get rid of lice had burned to death after a stray spark had entered the room they were in. 19 more prisoners were injured. Carmelita and her peers started hearing alarming stories about what went on inside the quarantine plants. There were rumors that American officials were taking pictures of the naked women and then hanging the images up at a nearby saloon. Carmelita wouldn't stand for this, and so on January 28, 1917, she refused to enter the quarantine plant. Instead, Carmelita and 30 other women got out of their streetcar and laid their bodies across the bridge's tracks, preventing cars from crossing the border. As the day drew on, the protest Carmelita had started grew from dozens of women to hundreds. The women would jump on top of the streetcars and break them apart. Then they would use the pieces of glass and metal to block the bridge. They hid motor controllers stolen from streetcar conductors in their stockings. They threw stones in bottles and also hurled insults at the immigration and health officials. By the afternoon, some sources reported that the protest crowd had reached the thousands, and the women succeeded in shutting down the border. On that day, only seven people crossed. The U.S. government eventually called in backup troops. By the end of the day, the protest had been shut down by the authorities. Carmelita was arrested. We don't know what happened to Carmelita after her arrest, but the end of the Bath Riots isn't the end of her legacy. Because in the days following January 28, the uprising Carmelita started took on almost mythical proportions. The headline of the El Paso Morning Times the morning after the riot read, Auburn-haired Amazon at Santa Fe Street Bridge leads feminine outbreak. The story made it all the way to Wisconsin, where a local paper claimed the women were screaming, death to Americans. But most of the coverage failed to mention what the women were actually protesting—the kerosene baths and the nonconsensual photography of their bodies. The quarantine plants continued to operate on the U.S.-Mexico border after the Bath Riots, even after the typhus epidemic ended. Years later, the plants were studied by Nazi Germany, where officials then implemented similar methods in their death camps. American officials would continue to operate the quarantine plants into the 1950s. Carmelita Torres's actions on that day in 1917 were a moment of fierce resistance against dehumanizing border crossings. She made the space for hundreds of women to come together and give their rage a voice. All month, we're talking about ragers. For more information, check us out on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow!
