Biography
José Ángel Hernández was born 1885 in Tepic, Mexico.
By 1906 he was living in Los Angeles, where he became a member of the PLM-affiliated Grupo Reforma, Libertad y Justicia. By 1911 he was in Houston, Texas, serving as head of the PLM-affiliated Grupo Regeneración Solidaridad Obrera. He joined the IWW in 1913. In 1914 he married fellow PLM member Elisa Alemán, and their daughter Emancipación was born later that year. In 1915 he became an organizer for the Socialist Party’s Land League of Texas and was active in the PLM-affiliated Grupo Germinal in San Antonio. A second daughter, Susana, was born in 1916, after which Hernández separated from Alemán. In 1917 he was active in the Grupo Solidaridad in Houston and founded a mixed local of the IWW there, serving as its secretary. Arrested on August 22, 1917, for IWW organizing and illegally deported to Mexico on August 31, 1917, by an agent of the Bureau of Investigation.
Back in Mexico, Hernández was active with the IWW and the Casa del Obrero Mundial in Tampico ,and joined the anarchist Hermanos Rojos, becoming a regular contributor to their paper Germinal. In January 1918 he was elected general secretary of the Casa del Obrero Mundial in Tampico, though by March he was no longer affiliated with Hermanos Rojos. He cofounded and edited the newspaper Fuerza y Cerebro and was arrested in August 1918 for his organizing activities. In 1919 began writing for the anarchist newspaper Luz! and was arrested again as a leader of an oil workers’ strike in Tampico. In March 1920 he founded the Liga Socialista in Tampico, which endorsed electoral participation. Arrested 1921 for assisting with an IWW strike and later accused of mismanaging funds raised for a publication project. He subsequently disappeared, with some rumors suggesting he traveled to Soviet Russia.
Adapted from Kenyon Zimmer, Red Scare Deportees (kenyonzimmer.com), compiled from INS deportation case files.
