The Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico announces the 2022 C. Ruth and Calvin P. Horn Lecture in Western History and Culture. MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernández, Professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA, will present “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands” on Monday April 4, at 5:30 PM in the UNM Student Union Building Ballroom C.

Lytle Hernández will discuss the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Determined to oust Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.S. imperialists such as Guggenheim and Rockefeller, this motley group of rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of U.S. authorities vested in protecting the Diaz regime. Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández will put magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas’ story integral to modern American life.

Kelly Lytle Hernández is a Professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA where she holds The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration, and mass incarceration, she is the author of Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol(University of California Press, 2010), City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles(University of North Carolina Press, 2017), and the forthcoming book Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands (Norton, 2022). She also leads Million Dollar Hoods<, a big data research initiative documenting the fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. For her historical and contemporary work, Professor Lytle Hernández was named a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. She is also an elected member of the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Pulitzer Prize Board.

This event is FREE and OPEN to the public.  A reception will follow the lecture.

For more information about the 2022 C. Ruth and Calvin P. Horn Lecture, or other events sponsored by the Center for the Southwest, call 505-277-4344 or email us at cntrsw@unm.edu.  You can also follow the Center online by visiting our website centerforthesouthwest.unm.edu or by joining us on Facebook or Twitter (@cntrsw).