Tuesday, September 25, 2007

More Mormons in Mexico

Mormons settled extensively in Mexico after 1885 at invitation of dictator Porfirio Diaz, but many were crowded out during the 1910 Revolution [the family of George Romney, Mitt's father, among the deportees, as I recall]. The wonderful historian Leon Metz has in the world's worst newspaper a column on the pressures on the aliens:
[R]esentments arose. Mexican Revolutionary leaders Jose Ines Salazar and Pascual Orozco insisted upon a Mexico for Mexicans, ordering out the Mormons, and daring the U.S. to intervene. (On Sept. 11, 1912, in a somewhat hysterical speech, Sala zar referred to President William Howard Taft as a "vile dog.")

Read all the fascinating column here. The whole episode is an interesting corner of history.
Chinese storekeepers were also targets of revolutionary actions. Pancho Villa threatened to hang a Chinese from every telegraph pole in Chihuahua. Blackjack Pershing brought a group of Chinese to San Antonio after his Punitive Expedition in 1916 following the Columbus Raid.

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