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The US-Mexico Border and the Final Solution
The Holocaust is best known for being an industrialized genocide perpetrated primarily by the Nazis and saw the use of Zyklon B to gas vast amounts of inmates within their camps. However, the use of this chemical on large groups of people was not originally developed by the Nazis, but instead they learned of it from the United States and our use of it at the southern border.
Before 1917, Mexican immigrants regularly and easily crossed the border primarily for job opportunities, however, in World War 1, a wave of xenophobia and paranoia consumed the nation, and some of these feelings were directed towards Mexican laborers and refugees of the Mexican Revolution that was still on-going.
Fears of typhus had also swept the nation, and many officials had placed the blame on these laborers and refugees, despite little evidence to suggest they were an extraordinary source of any diseases. In response, El Paso officials during World War 1 and later federal officials began to fumigate, spray and bathe migrants and refugees in a variety of substances, including DDT, kerosene and Zyklon B in order to clear them of parasites.
At one point, in 1916, a match was lit which caused a fire to catch and kill 27 migrants who were doused in kerosene. Nazi officials had studied the use of these chemicals and later used Zyklon B to exterminate inmates in their death camps. As part of their campaign of dehumanization, Nazis had also depicted Jewish people as carriers of parasites and typhus, just as many American officials and media outlets had of Mexican migrants and refugees. Despite knowledge of the Holocaust and its use of chemicals, the delousing practices at the Southern border, including the use of Zyklon B, continued into the late 1950s.
Sources:
Chakraborty, Ranjani. “The Dark History of ‘Gasoline Baths’ at the Border.” Vox, 19 July 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/7/29/8934848/gasoline-baths-border-mexico-dark-history.
David Dorado Romo. Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez. Cinco Puntos Press, 2021.
Khanmalek, Tala. “‘Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed’: Rumor, Racialized Sexuality, and the 1917 Bath Riots in the US-Mexico Borderlands.” National Institutes of Health, vol. 19, no. 3, June 2021, https://doi.org/10.1057%2Fs41276-021-00324-5.
“‘Less Than Human’: The Psychology Of Cruelty.” Talk of the Nation, directed by Neal Conan, 29 Mar. 2011, https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human.
Romo, David Dorado. “Crossing the Line.” Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2006, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-feb-27-oe-romo27-story.html.
---. Jan. 28, 1917: The Bath Riots. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/bath-riots.
Terrel, Jazzie. “Resistance: Forced Fumigation and Gasoline Baths at the Texas-Mexico Border.” Research Gate, Dec. 2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.22775.24485.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Propaganda Poster: ‘Jews Are Lice: They Cause Typhus.’” United States Holocuast Memorial Museum, https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/propaganda-poster-jews-are-lice-they-cause-typhus/collection/public-health-under-the-third-reich.
Walker, DeArbea. “In 1916, the US Began Forcing Mexicans Crossing the Southern Border to Take Kerosene Baths. That Tactic Was Later Studied by the Nazis.” Business Insider, 9 Nov. 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/bath-riots-el-paso-mexico-texas-nazi-germany-kerosene-history-2023-10?op=1.