Arizona’s long history of racism and violence T southern Arizona became part of the United States under

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... TUCSON (continued from page 12: “[TUCSON, Ariz. —This state has become a symbol…]”) than words when, after the signing of SB 1070, he sent thousands of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, as if to say to the racists, “Yes, this unauthorized immigration is terrible and must be stopped by any and all means, including military violence.

In addition to what we have outlined above, another crucial aspect of this dreadful event in Tucson should be stressed. The mentally disturbed assassin was also, in a very real sense, a victim of the current economic crisis of the bankrupt capitalist system. Cutbacks in social services—while trillions go for war and bailouts of banks—had a ghastly outcome in this case.

Although Loughner obviously needed treatment for his mental disorders, and should perhaps have been in a mental institution, the social services to accomplish that were not available—particularly because massive cuts to mental health programs, along with all public health programs, have been made in Arizona, as in other parts of this country, since the economic crisis broke out in 2008. n ucson and a long strip of territory along the border in the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, in the wake of the U.S. war against Mexico. That war had taken half of Mexico’s territory, adding all or part of seven new states to the USA.

Under the Gadsden purchase, the territory acquired by the U.S. for $10 million (under pressure and the threat of renewed U.S. war against Mexico) was particularly desirable because it was suitable for construction of a transcontinental railroad by a southern route from New Orleans, through El Paso, through Tucson, to California. The Southern slaveholders, who in the 1850s still dominated the U.S. government and its policies, were interested in such a railroad to help them extend their slave-labor, cotton-producing economy through the southern part of the newly acquired, former Mexican territories.

When the U.S. Civil War began, the slaveholders moved aggressively to occupy the southern part of what is now New Mexico and Arizona (all of it was then called New Mexico). They made Tucson the “western capital” of the former Mexican territory they had taken, and hoped to link up with proConfederate forces in southern California. But California had established itself as a free state, and a column of anti-slavery troops from southern California marched east and liberated Tucson from the slave power after a skirmish now referred to as the Battle of Picacho Peak.

After the Civil War, Arizona became part of the booming industrial expansion of U.S. capitalism as a whole, with the wage-slave system triumphing over the slave-labor system. In Arizona, the capitalist class wrote a brutal record of violence and harsh treatment against workers and oppressed nationalities, especially Mexicans and American Indians.

The notorious Bisbee, Ariz., deportations occurred in July 1917. Copper mining was a major source of profits for enterprising capitalists in Arizona, and with copper prices booming because of World War I, the Phelps Dodge corporation was making money hand over fist with its copper mine in Bisbee. Workers there, led by the IWW, sought to organize to win a larger share of the wealth their labor was producing.

When the workers went on strike in July 1917, the company used the excuse of “wartime emergency.” (The Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, had just taken the U.S. into the World War.) Phelps Dodge circulated the absurd charge that the striking workers and their organizers were “aliens” and “German agents.” Some 2000 pro-company vigilantes raided the homes of more than 1200 workers, deported them from Arizona in cattle cars, and left them stranded in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. Most of those workers—including Mexicans native to the area—were never able to return.

Similarly, in the copper mine strike of 1983-84 against Phelps Dodge, which also included many native-born Mexican American mine workers, the Arizona governor—again a Democrat, Bruce Babbitt—called out the National Guard and broke the strike with the use of harsh and violent police and military measures.

Capitalist violence was present, in fact, throughout the Southwest and West. One has only to recall the 1914 Ludlow massacre in southern Colorado, near Pueblo, in which dozens of organized mine workers and their families, many of them Mexicans, were killed or wounded. Thus we see that the culture of violence, the glorification of military action, the almost knee-jerk resort to military measures have long been a central, officially approved feature of life in these United States. (“Violence is as American as apple pie.”)

— GEORGE SHRIVER Socialist Action FEBRUARY 2011 11

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Charlie Riedel / AP