From the Copper-Colored Sons of Montezuma to Comrade Pancho Villa: The Radicalizing Effect of Mexican Revolutionaries on the Texas Socialist Party, 1910–1917

Abstract

This article argues that differing political reactions to the Mexican Revolution, even before differences over World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, led to the initial fracturing of the Socialist Party in the United States during the 1910s. Texas Socialists had long been at odds with the dominant right wing of the SP headed by Victor Berger over how the party should be organized. But once Mexican revolutionaries began interacting with Texas Socialists, this fight expanded from one of internal party organizing to one over how a socialist transformation of the United States should be conducted. While the Berger wing of the SP took a noninterventionist stance toward revolutionary Mexico, the Texas SP went further in calling for the Mexican Revolution to be emulated in Texas as it also challenged their white supremacist views. Through common political struggle, many white Texas Socialists came to view Mexican Americans and Mexicans not as slavish peons but as fellow fighters.