Carmelita Torres was a "red-haired Mexican woman" known for starting the

1917 Bath riots 1917 Bath Riots occurred in January 1917 at the Santa Fe Bridge between El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Mexico. The riots are known to have been started by Carmelita Torres and lasted from January 28 to January 30 and were sparked by new immigration ...

on the

Mexico–United States border The Mexico–United States border ( es, frontera Estados Unidos–México) is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traver ...

between

Ciudad Juárez Ciudad Juárez ( ; ''Juarez City''. ) is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It is commonly referred to as Juárez and was known as El Paso del Norte (''The Pass of the North'') until 1888. Juárez is the seat of the Ju� ...

, Chihuahua, and

El Paso El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the s ...

, Texas. At the time of the riots, she was 17 years old and working as a maid in the United States.

1917 Bath riot

Background

A new policy from the US required all workers to be bathed in a

kerosene Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from el, κηρός (''keros'') meaning "wax", and was regi ...

mixture to kill

lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result o ...

that may have been carrying

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

due to an outbreak in a few major Mexican cities, including Ciudad Juárez. In addition, all workers were stripped and inspected and their clothes were steam dried. Tensions were high due to the fact that several Mexican prisoners in El Paso had recently been burned to death while being covered in gasoline and because the US health personnel running the inspections were found to have been secretly photographing the women they had stripped and posting the photos in local bars.

Riot

On January 28 at 7:30 AM, Torres resisted the process and refused to go through it. She was asked to get out of her trolley and to begin the process. Instead, she convinced 30 other Mexican women to get out and protest with her. When others saw their resistance they joined in by protesting as well. Within an hour, there were more than 200 women blocking the entrance to El Paso. By the end of the demonstration, there were several thousand protesters. Once the officers tried to break up the crowd, the demonstrators threw rocks at them. They laid in front of trains and vehicles. When police aimed their guns into the crowd, they responded by yelling louder. The police were unable to break them up and she was arrested. After her arrest, she went missing. Until this day, it is not known what happened to her.

Afterwards

Despite the riot, the inspections continued for decades afterwards.

Legacy

A migrant home across the

Stanton Street Bridge The Good Neighbor International Bridge, commonly known as the Stanton Street Bridge, is an international bridge connecting the United States-Mexico border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua across the Rio Grande (Río Bravo). ...

in El Paso, called Casa Carmelita, is being named after her.

Sergio Troncoso Sergio Troncoso (born 1961) is an American author of short story, short stories, essays and novels. He often writes about the United States-Mexico border, working-class immigrants, families and fatherhood, philosophy in literature, and crossing c ...

wrote a short story, "Carmelita Torres," in ''A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son'' (

Cinco Puntos Press Cinco Puntos Press is an imprint of publishing company Lee & Low Books. It is a general trade publisher that has received attention for its bilingual children's books and fiction and non-fiction focusing on the Mexico–United States border regi ...

), his collection of linked short stories on immigration, which describes what might have happened to her and why she should remain important to scholars and readers long after her death.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Torres, Carmelita 1900 births 20th-century Mexican women Immigrant rights activists Mexican women activists Year of death missing Mexican expatriates in the United States