If I told you someone got upset taking a bath, you might think it was a toddler, probably a boy akin to Dennis the Menace. However, it wasn’t your standard bubble bath that caused The Bath Riots on this day in 1917. It was something far worse.
We tend to think that the southern border issues are something that has happened only in recent history. However, a study of the history books shows that this has been an ongoing problem for over a century. This particular issue was caused by a health crisis.
“Scared that a recent outbreak of typhus in Mexico could find its way to the United States, the Public Health Service instituted mandatory disinfecting for all Mexicans entering the country. The process was both humiliating and dangerous—men and women were directed to separate facilities, where they were made to strip off their clothes, which would be steamed. Officials examined the nude border-crossers and frequently doused them in harmful chemicals such as kerosene, a method which had resulted in the deaths of 27 prisoners in an El Paso prison in 1916.”1
“On 28 January 1917, seventeen-year-old Carmelita Torres led a group of women who refused to comply with quarantine orders at the US-Mexico border, igniting what would come to be known as the Bath Riots. The quarantine orders—issued by Senior Surgeon Claude Connor Pierce with the full support of El Paso Mayor Tom Lea—required Mexican-heritage people to undergo a lengthy, highly toxic delousing procedure before crossing the Rio Grande River via the Santa Fe Street International Bridge that connects El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Authorized under the pretense of typhus prevention, compulsory delousing transformed the bridge into a barrier for Mexican migrants… Mexican women, many of whom lived in Ciudad Juárez and worked in El Paso as domestics and laundresses, were disproportionately affected by public health control over the border.
“According to the El Paso Morning Times, rioting began when United States Public Health Service (USPHS) officials ordered the women to get off the streetcars that
transported them to the bridge every day and enter the newly refitted disinfection plant on the other end. A closer look at newspaper coverage of the Bath Riots reveals that Carmelita Torres and her peers were not just protesting Pierce’s unprecedented border quarantine. More precisely, the Bath Riots resulted partially due to “rumors among servant girls” that officials had photographed women in the nude while subjecting them to the final stage of delousing: spraying the body with a kerosene-based chemical solution.”2
Besides the indignation of being deloused, Torres was not going to tolerate someone taking nude photos of her. The riots resulted in few arrests and minimal damage. It did not have the effect Torres had hoped for and the delousing process continued.
Man’s inhumanity to man and the disgusting treatment and exploitation of women through the years ought to sicken us. Daily, we read about this ongoing blight in our world, and we wonder how people can be so cruel. The answer is recorded in Romans 3:10-18.
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: (11) There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. (12) They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (13) Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: (14) Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: (15) Their feet are swift to shed blood: (16) Destruction and misery are in their ways: (17) And the way of peace have they not known: (18) There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
When there is no fear of God, there will no respect for that which is created by God, especially for that which is formed in His image (Genesis 1:27). Since Jeremiah tells us that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9), we should actually be shocked that we don’t see more wickedness and at an even greater level of evil.
The solution to it all is SALVATION through the SAVIOR, Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can redeem the soul of man and plant within us His love (Romans 5:5). When that love is there, our attitude toward our fellow man (and woman) changes. Consider Saul of Tarsus as a testimony of this. He committed great wickedness against humanity but salvation changed him.
Let us do all we can to protect the dignity and humanity of people. Let us share Jesus with the lost. And when someone is saved, we can watch the transformation in their attitude concerning others.
1 Thessalonians 4:9 tells us, “But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.”
1https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-28/1917-bath-riots-begin
2https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8211937/
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images or created in Windows Copilot. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
