2Rabbit

David Cruz

As you enjoy your July 4th, a little history...

Read Bad Mexicans by Kelly Lytle Hernández, a MacArthur "Genius Giant" and Academic History Chair at UCLA — then ask yourself why no one taught you this.

The United States didn't "invest" in Mexico. It looted it. By 1910, American oligarchs owned more than 130 million acres, and William Randolph Hearst openly boasted that nothing could stop them from "owning all of Mexico and running it to suit ourselves."

Sound familiar?

The uber-rich of their day seized the railroads, laying and controlling the lines that hauled Mexico's wealth to the USA. The Guggenheims' smelting empire swallowed the silver.

In Sonora, American William C. Greene pirated one of the largest copper mines on earth. When Mexican miners struck in 1906 demanding the same wage as the Americans working beside them, the company killed them.

American politicians looked the other way and allowed armed Arizona gunmen to cross the border to spill Mexican blood on Mexican soil. At the same tine, American oil baron Edward Doheny drank up Mexico's petroleum.

When the Flores Magón brothers exposed it all in their newspaper Regeneración published from San Antonio, Washington hunted them to silence these journalists in one of the FBI's first cases. Ricardo died in a Leavenworth prison cell in 1922.

This is the history some people would rather future generations never read or learn. Knowledge is power. A person who knows Mexico's past 500 years is far harder to lie to, or shame. So read these accounts with your family. Then pass it on. Please share.

Join or support our work: https://lulac.org