By 1915, with the defeat of Pancho Villa at the Battle of Celeya, Venestusio Carranza’s government pretty much in control of the government, Mexico City was still a hot mess, but life had returned to whatever “normalicy” might mean in a city that Andre Breton would later claim where the surreal was everyday life. Between a relatively safe haven for “slackers” … Brits and Gringos evading the World War draft calls.. and — having beat the Russians in a successful workers (more or less) revolution — radicals, refugees, and rogues of all sorts.

A century before the latest influx of wannabe “influencers” and “digital nomads” these old school “expats” (a term not yet coined) the English speaking foreign contingent of the late 1910s and into the 20s eked out a living by writing for magazines or newspapers (if anyone remembers what they were) like “The Masses”, or other small circulation outlets. Especially with the end of the War, the Russian Revolution and the persecution of “reds”, Sanborns — after a brief occupation by Emiliano Zapata’s troops — had carved out a niche for itself as, to paraphrase John Dos Passos, “the center of Mexico City’s Yanquilandia“.

Despite that unfortunate Zapatista interlude, Sanborns was very much trying to hold on to the “American way”… which, in that era, included segregation. While they might give a pass to M.N. Roy, the Begali nationalist who, having fled the British for the United States, had fled the US being hounded not only as a “red” but threatened by his wife, Evelyn Trent’s father — outraged that his daughter had been “seduced” by a “colored man”, Sanborns drew the line when it came to African-Americans.

Until… Jack Johnson — wanted in the US for a “Mann Act” charge, not to mention the unspecified crime of being an African American better at his trade than any white guy … was turned away one evening in 1919. Roy happened to be having his own dinner at the time, and left outside to join Johnson, button-hole a police officer and returned. The officer was more than willing to stick it to the gringos, though one might prefer to think of it as one small step in the fight against American racism, for one giant of a man.

There’s no record of whether Johnson tipped the waitstaff, but he was well-known to the slackers and radicals as a generous man. He gave the Communist writer Mike Gold ten dollars (quite a bit in those days) out of his pocket to print up some Bolshevek pamphelts… not that Johnson was all that interested in Bolshevism, but then again, he had nothing against it either. He had earlier staged a pay per view (well, pay at the door) sparring match (in Spain) with British slacker Arthur Craven (who, not quite being the “influencer” he thought being Oscar Wilde’s nephew made him) was always hard up and loathe to support his pregant girlfriend, the English poet Myna Loy, with anything so vulgar are regular work. Surprisingly, Craven somehow thought that as a revolutionary country, the Mexicans would welome the avant-garde with open arms (and wallets). He and Loy would nearly starve before moving on to Salina Cruz, and, in a even more bizarre attempt to support himself, decided to sail to Argentina. Not exactly a master boat builder, he was last seen sailing off into the sunset.

While most of the “community” would eventually return to the United States and Britain, to pursue academic or writing careers of middling success (especially during the 1930s, when leftism was again in vogue), a few — like Roy (who having been among the founders of the Mexican Communist Party, would return to India to assist in founding the still strong Indian Communist Party) and Dorothy Day, who integrated her anachist principals with her dutiful devotion to the Catholic Church, and a few seemingly at the time peripheral members of the group, like the writer Katherine Anne Porter and the poet Langston Hughes (who, thanks to Johnson and Roy… and an anonymous cop… certainly wasn’t going to be turned away by Sanborns).

(Several various sources, notably Tenorio-Trillo, “I Speak of the City” (U of Chicago, 2015) and an excerpt ” Around 1919 and in Mexico City” (CIDE, 2009).