Fighting for Control? Class, Race, Gender, and the Rethinking of the Bisbee Deportation of 1917

Abstract

This thesis examines the Bisbee deportation of 1917 that saw the forcible removal of 1,186 miners to Columbus, New Mexico in response to a strike led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the copper mines of Bisbee, Arizona. I attempt to rethink elements of the Bisbee deportation by examining the interplay of class, race, and gender, while attempting to engage with the subaltern experiences of Mexican workers. I explore the ways that men, Mexicans, and militant miners were made in the border lands, providing the historical context in which the deportation occurred -- applying a synthetic framework to understand the relationships of class, race, and gender. Moreover, I rethink the copper strike in Bisbee as a control strike, building on David Montgomery's theory of workers' control. It is argued that the strike was part of a larger syndicalist moment that empowered Mexican workers in an industrial landscape that had traditionally disenfranchised them. I attempt to show that the IWW acted as a vehicle for Mexican workers to express their grievances, demonstrating what Howard Kimeldorf has called workers' practice of resistance. This thesis further explores the process, motivations, and justifications of the deportation. Here it is shown how the deportation was not only a response to a labor dispute, but also a response to issues of race and gender in Bisbee. Finally, I explore workers' experiences in the camps and courts that proceeded the deportation, arguing that Mexicans had a qualitatively different experience of these camps and courts. It is shown that Mexicans were ignored by the President's Mediation Commission that had been established to resolve labor disputes in Bisbee, largely silencing Mexican experiences of the deportation. Secondly, despite Mexicans being the single largest group of deportees, they are significantly under represented in the legal proceedings that attempted to establish justice for the deported miners. I further argue that deported Mexican workers were also marginalized by white miners' wives who resisted the deportation by deploying a language of domesticity that attempted to protect white, but not Mexican families. Ultimately, this thesis argues for a synthetic approach to the Bisbee deportation that captures a variety of experiences and empowers the history of Mexican workers in the American West who have often been deported to margins of the historiography.