Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

by Kelly Lytle Hernández

The 1906 PLM platform, if enacted, promised to fundamentally redistribute political and economic power in Mexico. For Flores Magón, however, the platform was a compromise, a constellation of what he called “timid reforms.”2 Personally, he would have demanded more, committing the PLM to pursuing the total abolition of private property as well as church and state. He also likely disagreed with the platform’s proposed ban on Chinese immigration. Many Mexicans in the early twentieth century held strong anti-Chinese sentiments, believing Chinese immigrants to be racial outsiders and strikebreakers and often arguing that banning Chinese immigration would improve conditions for Mexican workers.3 Flores Magón, however, believed that all the world’s workers, regardless of race, gender, or citizenship, should claim the means of production.