When David Dorado Romo was a boy growing up in El Paso, Texas, his great-aunt Adela told him about the day the U.S. Border Patrol melted her favorite shoes. Romo’s aunt was Mexican and had a visa that allowed her to commute into South Texas for her job as a maid. Every week she had to report to a Border Patrol station, in accordance with a program that ran from 1917 into the 1930s requiring most Mexican immigrants to bathe in government offices before entering the United States. She would dress up in her nicest clothing, because those who looked dirty or were thought to have lice were bathed in a mixture of kerosene and vinegar. Years later, when Romo visited the National Archives outside Washington, D.C., he found photos and records of gas chambers where the belongings of the Mexican workers had been disinfected with the chemical Zyklon B, as well as a large steam dryer of the sort that had melted his aunt’s shoes. He discovered that a German scientist had taken note of the procedures being carried out at the American border and advocated for them to be implemented in Nazi concentration camps. Eventually, the Nazis increased the potency of Zyklon B in their gas chambers, and began using it on human beings.
Romo also learned that just as the bathing and gasdousing program was winding down, the American government began using a different dangerous chemical to delouse Mexican immigrants: From the 1930s through the 1960s, border agents sprayed DDT onto the faces of more than 3 million guest workers as they crossed the southern border.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 2021-Ausgabe von The Atlantic.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 2021-Ausgabe von The Atlantic.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
THE AIRPORT-LOUNGE ARMS RACE
Inside the ever more extravagant competition to lure affluent travelers
Hypochondria Never Dies
The diagnosis is officially gone, but health anxiety is everywhere.
Miranda July's Weird Road Trip
The author's midlife-crisis novel is full of estrangement, eroticism, and whimsy.
The Wild Blood Dynasty
What a little-known family reveals about the nation's untamed spirit
The Engrossing Darkness of The Crow
Can a cult hit point the way forward for the beleaguered comic-book movie?
The Godfather of American Comedy
The funniest people on the planet think there's no funnier person than Albert Brooks.
The History My Family Left Behind
A gun, a lynching, and an exodus from Mississippi
Ozempic or Bust
America has been trying to address the obesity epidemic for four decades now. So far, each new \"solution\" has failed to live up to its early promise.
THE ART OF SURVIVAL
In living with cancer, Suleika Jaouad has learned to wrench meaning from our short time on Earth.
DEMOCRACY IS LOSING THE PROPAGANDA WAR
AUTOCRATS IN CHINA, RUSSIA, AND ELSEWHERE ARE NOW MAKING COMMON CAUSE WITH MAGA REPUBLICANS TO DISCREDIT LIBERALISM AND FREEDOM AROUND THE WORLD.