"Bad Mexicans": Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández on Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

We speak with historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez, whose new book Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands" tells the story of the often-overlooked men and women who incited the Mexican Revolution and how it relates to the rise of U.S. imperialism. The movement included intellectuals, workers and others who opposed Mexico's dictatorial President Porfirio Diaz, who ruled for decades with support from the U.S. government and U.S. business elites. What we have is Latinx protagonists at the center of the American story," says Hernandez, who teaches history, African American studies and urban planning at UCLA. If you want to understand the rise of U.S. empire, you want to understand U.S. immigration history, you want to understand the issues of policing we are confronting today, we have to know that these are Latinx histories."