The Diplomacy of Suppression: Los Revoltosos, Mexico, and the United States, 1906-1911

Abstract

B EGINNING with the latter part of the nineteenth century and continuing up to and through the Red Scare of the early 1920s, there was a merging of social traditions in American life which resulted in the screening out of both the alien and the radical. Histolians like William Preston, author of Aliens and Dissenters, have dealt with the antialien and antiradical efforts of the federal government during this period. Surprisingly, however, the fate of Mexican aliens and radicals, referred to officially by the Mexican government as los revoltosos, has been overlooked by U.S. histolians during this so-called Progressive Era of Amelican history.' From the point of view of the Mexican community in the United States, this period might more accurately be described by U.S. historians as the Repressive Era of American history. Immediately before and during this period, U.S. economic interests, in the form of capital and industrial surplus, extended into Mexico and continued to expand during the administrations of Roosevelt and Taft. This was especially the case in the northern Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas where U.S. investors controlled substantial mining, timber, ranching, and agricultural enterprises. Following the lead of Roosevelt, Elihu Root and