Immigrants to a Developing Society. the Chinese in Northern Mexico, 1875-1932

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IMMIGRANTS TO A DEVELOPING SOCIETY: The Chinese in Northern Mexico, 1875–1932 Author(s): Evelyn Hu-DeHart Source: The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Autumn 1980), pp. 275-312Published by: Arizona Historical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42678263Accessed: 06-11-2015 21:22 UTC

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IMMIGRANTS TO A

DEVELOPING SOCIETY

The Chinese in Northern Mexico,

1875-1932

by

Evelyn Hu-DeHart

Wr been hile

truly

the

expansionist

Middle Kingdom or imperialist

has never in a been truly expansionist or imperialist in a

national way, has never accumulated large over- JOL seas colonies or built extensive overseas empires, y the Chinese people have wandered far beyond the confines of their country. Especially active during the nineteenth century, Chinese immigrants reached many corners of the world; most ^n37 went as coolies or contract laborers, but some went as colonists. They ended up in Southeast f Asia, in Africa, and in the Americas - North, JLX South and the Caribbean.1 They were attracted /jy primarily to frontier or developing areas, where emerging economic needs and activities offered JĚL them new and greater opportunities to make a better life.

The Chinese overseas worked hard, lived frugally, and usually prospered, though often only in a modest way. They also acquired a repu- » J tation for being resistant to acculturation, pre- » - ferring to cling to their own kind and their own ^3» ways. They often incurred the deep resentment of local populations who perceived them as un- duly wealthy and clannish. When strong senti- Cj ments were translated into violent action, the Chinese suffered severe persecution.

Born in Chungking, China, and raised in Hong Kong and California, Dr. Hu-DeHart holds degrees from Stanford and the University of Texas at Austin. She is an assistant professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis, and has recently completed a book to be published by the University of Arizona Press on relations among Jesuits, Spaniards and Yaqui Indians during the colonial period.

[ 275]



THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY

The Chinese in Mexico, while reflecting the typical pattern of their experience elsewhere in the world, were also distinctive in several ways.2 During the first quarter of the twentieth cen-

tury, they had become an important social and economic group in northern Mexico. In the late twenties and early thirties, however, their prospects for continuous prosperity ended when thousands of them were expelled from the northwestern state of Sonora, which had the largest and most influential Chinese

colony. Since then their presence in Mexico has been insignifi- cant, their early history all but forgotten.

When they first arrived, the poor but enterprising Asian

immigrants found themselves better able than local Mexicans to take advantage of certain new economic opportunities opening up in a developing region. While North Americans, Europeans and some Mexicans with large capital invested in mines, trans-

portation and commercial agriculture - leading to urbanization, population increase and growth of the wage labor sector - the Chinese moved into a lower level of the economy, that of local trade and commerce. By the end of the Porfiriato, they had become the dominant component of the new petit bourgeois class. The Chinese did not so much displace Mexicans or other foreigners as they met new demands for goods and services in a greatly expanded society. The turning point was the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which gave rise to a new nation and new nationalism. To the humble, dispossessed masses, it promised social justice; to all Mexicans, it promised national control of the country's resources and economy. Chinese domi- nation of local businesses in much of the north, notably Sonora, became a national embarrassment. Most of all, the Asians blocked the immediate advancement of middle and lower class northerners who possessed newly enhanced social and economic aspirations. Ultimately expulsion was viewed as the only solution to this intolerable situation.

Although Chinese did not immigrate to Mexico in significant numbers until the nineteenth century, they began entering the country two centuries earlier, when it was still a colony of

Spain. This handful of tradesmen came to the New World on the ships of the Manila luxury trade between Acapulco, Mexico

City and the Philippines, probably as personal servants of

[276]



Immigrants to a Developing Society

Spanish shipmasters or merchants. While they could hardly be considered an important social group at this time, it is interesting to note that the reactions they stirred among Mexicans presaged their later troubles in this land: Spanish barbers complained of competition ("excesses" and "inconveniences," in their words) from their Oriental rivals and succeeded in having them segregated on the outskirts of town; Chinese shopkeepers were accused of not employing enough Spanish apprentices. Little more is known of these early Chinese arrivals.3

With the ascension to national political power of General Porfiro Diaz in 1876, Mexico embarked on a course of rapid economic growth predicated upon foreign money, expertise, technology and markets, and firmly based in political unity and stability. The cost, however, was dictatorship and foreign immigration into Mexico. To Mexicans the most desirable colonists were European Catholics; but in the absence of available land or well-paying jobs, they could not be enticed to come in large numbers. Mexico agreed, therefore, to accept some less attractive settlers, including Asians, who had a reputation of being docile, hard-working people. In the beginning, the Diaz government also had hopes of improving trade with countries such as China and Japan. In 1893, after several false starts, Mexico and China signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce which included a "most favored nation" clause. Since the United States had virtually terminated Chinese immigration by the Exclusion Act of 1882, Mexico became an attractive alterna- tive. Actually, by the time the treaty was signed in 1893, Chinese colonies were already established in several northern states: Baja California (then a Territory), Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Sonora. In 1890, Governor Ramón Corral of Sonora reported in a name-by-name census that of all foreign residents in his state 229 were Chinese, second only to the 337 North Americans and well ahead of the Germans, English and Spanish in the state. The total population for the state at that time was about 56,00o.4 From that early date on, the Chinese in Sonora would rank as the first or second most populous foreign group.

Not surprisingly most of the Americans on the Corral census were listed by occupation as minero, mine speculator or

[ 277]




owner, followed by rancher, railroad employee, manufacturer, merchant, and skilled tradesmen - such as carpenters, machinists, assayers, doctors. One cook was included. Among the Chinese there was only one minero. Over half of them (161) were zapateros (shoemakers), tailors or ironers, who were

employed in the few Chinese-owned shoe and clothing factories in the state. Two of these plants - Siu Fo Chon and

Tung, Chung, Lung, both of Guaymas - were established as

early as 1873. 5 Other occupations listed for Chinese were day worker, truck farm laborer, cook, baker, and even cirujano or

surgeon (probably a traditional Chinese healer). Only twenty, or less than ten percent, were comerciantes, merchants or businessmen. No Chinese was specifically noted as a mine or railroad laborer, two lines of work typically associated with Asian immigrants in the American West and Southwest in the nineteenth century. In the case of northern Mexico, where most of the mines and railroads were located, Indians and native Mexicans appeared to have met the labor requirements sufficiently.

During the rest of the Porfiriato, a small but prominent group of Chinese entrepreneurs continued to advance their interest in the manufacturing of cheap shoes and clothing for local consumption by the emerging working class. By 1903, Chinese owned at least ten of thirty-seven shoe factories in Sonora, producing over $100,000 (U.S.) in goods each year.6 The Chinese profile, however, was still low in comparison to other foreign groups and to native Mexican businessmen. When John R. Southworth of Nogales, Arizona, conducted his commercial survey of Sonora in 1897, listing all the important enterprises by district, he included only one Chinese establish- ment, the shoe manufacturer Siu Fo Chon of Guaymas.7 Ger- man, Spanish, French, American and Mexican houses all fig- ured much more prominently as leading retail and wholesale merchants. North Americans, as usual, operated most of the mines. What Southworth considered unworthy of mention was a lower level of local economic activity: door-to-door peddling; small grocery and variety sales; sewing, laundry and cooking services. Poor Chinese immigrants became adept at all of these.

Rather than displacing established houses, the Chinese

[278]




apparently moved quietly and quickly to fill the commercial demands created by the opening of mines, the construction of railroads, the growth of towns and the expansion of internal markets. In the 1903 census more than 3000 Chinese residents in Sonora were noted, and although they were spead over a

large number of towns, their greatest numbers were concentrated in dynamic urban centers, such as Magdalena, Her- mosillo, Guaymas and the mining town of Cananea.8

Cananea is a good example of exactly the kind of town that attracted droves of Chinese at the turn of the century for the

simple reason that it provided many opportunities to make a decent living. Out of a total population of around 4000, the Chinese numbered 800. It was a typical company town, owned and operated by the Greene Consolidated Copper Company. In good times it had all the features of a boom town. Most of the residents were Mexican mine workers, who were also at the bottom of the social scale. At the top of the hierarchy was a small group of American managers and skilled workers. The

large Chinese population does not seem to have been actively employed in the mines. If they worked for wages it was likely to have been in American homes as cooks, houseboys and clothes washers. Many opened small stores that required a very low initial investment and provided necessary goods and services to an urban, salaried population.9

By 1907 Chinese merchants had become more visible in local commerce throughout Sonora. A poll of the state's "most

important businesses," conducted between 1905 and 1907, noted Chinese merchants operating in twenty-one out of

eighty-seven towns, accounting for fifty- two of 968 listings. "Business" was defined loosely to include doctors, lawyers, landowners (hacendados) and other individuals of economic means, thus explaining the long roster of names. All the Chinese were described as comerciante. 10 Small businesses, however, were left out and the directory included no Chinese names under the Cananea heading. Oversight based on a certain degree of prejudice might partially explain their exclusion since elsewhere in the same directory it was noted that the

prominent Chinese department store Juan Lung Tain of Mag- dalena had two branch stores in Cananea.

[ 279]




The well-stocked interior of a Chinese store in Hermosillo. Chinese grocers carried a great variety of merchandise that appealed to urban consumers.

[ 280]




A few of the large establishments took out advertisement

space in the 1905-07 commercial directory. Ranging from

full-page to quarter-page, these were replete with handsome illustrations, flowery prose, and some information. The full-

page spread on the firm of Quan, Gun, Lung y Cía. is especially revealing about the nature of a big Chinese business, as well as reflective of at least official Mexican attitudes towards these merchants at the beginning of the twentieth century. Estab- lished in 1894, this company was one of the principal commercial houses of the town of Alamos in southern Sonora. It sold a wide variety of goods, ranging from groceries and canned

goods to clothing and notions; dealing in imported as well as domestic products, it had its own "well mounted factory" to manufacture shoes. In addition, the company served as the

agent for Pacific Beer, Pochutla and Pluma Hidalgo coffee

(products of Oaxaca in southern Mexico), "La Violeta" cigars (from Veracruz state in southern Mexico), and "El Dorado" rum. Quan, Gun, Lung y Cía. traded directly with New York, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Hamburg, Germany. Within Mexico, its sphere of operation extended beyond Sonora to the adjacent states of Chihuahua to the east and Sinaloa to the south, where a new branch had recently opened.

The owner and general manager of Quan, Gun, Lung was Guillermo Leytón, whose name had been hispanicized. The advertisement described him as:

... an excellent Chinese who enjoys general popularity in the locality.

... In particular he is well loved by the working people, because he willingly and readily helps them out, especially when a poor harvest or some other cause raises the prices of basic necessities; at which time Leytón - making only a little profit or perhaps none at all - sells them these articles of primary need at prices they could afford, thereby averting the specter of hunger. . . .

This sympathetic depiction of a generous, sensitive Chinese merchant contrasted sharply with charges, soon to become

widespread, that Chinese proprietors were rapacious, mean and exploitive of Mexican employees and consumers alike.

From the advertisement it is apparent that Mr. Leytón had

[281]




a Chinese assistant manager, Francisco Chon, but a Mexican chief clerk, Modesto J. Lozano, "a conscientious and intelligent employee." That Leytón employed Mexicans contrasted with later accusations that Chinese businesses hired practically no native nationals. Finally, the fact that Leytón hispanicized his name was certainly an indication of some inclination to adopt Mexican ways, and to acculturate, even if the primary motive was to promote his business.

Another Chinese firm that took out a full-page advertisement in the directory was Juan Lung Tain of Magdalena in northern Sonora, a town with over 300 Chinese residents. As with other large Chinese general merchandise stores, this too had its own adjoining shoe factory. Founded in 1896, the firm opened branches in Hermosillo and Cananea; the Hermosillo store had its own shoe and clothing factory and in Cananea the oudets were located in the American section called Ronquillo. The lengthy description concluded with the positive observation that the company conducted business with "the best good faith."

Little is known about the small Chinese businesses that seemed to proliferate throughout Sonora and the north during the Porfiriato, but whenever urbanization and population growth appeared, Chinese could be found participating actively in the local economy. Ironically, more information became available when the Mexicans turned against the Chinese at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Before then, only the most progressive political group - the radical, pro-labor Mexican Liberal Party - had targeted Chinese immigration as detrimental to Mexican welfare. The party members reserved their most virulent xenophobic attacks, however, for the imperialist North Americans, against whom they organized the famous Cananea labor strike of 1906. 11 Before the Revolution, racist stereotypes of the Chinese also appeared muted, although such characterizations were not unknown. They were occasionally caricatured as criminal, indolent and cruel by nature; as prone to spread horrible diseases such as trachoma and beri-beri; and as addicted to pernicious vices such as opium and gambling.12

At the end of the Porfiriato in 1911, it was estimated that

[282]




some 35,000 Chinese had entered Mexico. Only about half set- ded in Mexico; the rest found their way illegally to the United States, returned to China, or transshipped elsewhere in the Americas. Contemporary surveys, however, disagreed on the extent of Chinese immigration. One source counted 13,203 Chinese in Mexico at this time, with a third residing in Sonora. United States consuls in Mexico estimated somewhat higher figures that ranged between twenty and forty thousand. In any case, it is apparent that they had become the most numerically prominent foreign colony in Mexico.13

In 1910, Francisco Madero, a northern landowner and in- dustrialist, led a broad coalition of nationalistic middle-class

entrepreneurs, petit bourgeois elements, peons, workers and

peasants, to unseat the increasingly repressive dictator Diaz. Besides many legitimate grievances, most Mexicans, especially those in the north and hence close to U.S. investments and influence, felt that Diaz had sold the country to foreign interests. There was a strong racist undercurrent to the Revolution from the beginning. After Diaz fled the country in mid-1911, the loose coalition fell apart, throwing Mexico into a decade of almost constant civil war.

In this protracted period of chaos and violence, the Chinese tried to stay neutral, but under the uncertain, volatile conditions of a revolution, neutrality was not a tenable position. In the end they had no friends and no protectors among the Mexicans, and the breakdown of law and order that Diaz had

masterfully maintained for over three decades allowed latent anti-Asian sentiments to surface. Moreover, in the north, Mexi- cans began to focus a widespread, general hatred of foreigners more narrowly on the Chinese, who were numerous and visible in their capacity as small local merchants, yet totally vulnerable because of China's own internal chaos and weak international

position.14 With no consular representation of its own, the Asian colony in the north had to rely on U.S. consular person- nel for protection, a dependence that added an ironic twist to

general American-Chinese relations. In 1882, discrimination and resentment against Chinese immigrants, predominantly in California, resulted in the enactment of the Exclusion Act ban-

ning further Chinese entry. In Mexico, however, both Ameri-

[283]




can and Chinese were aliens in an increasingly hostile environment. Many were bound together by employer-employee, patron-client, or landlord-lessee relations, prompting a sense of responsibility on the part of Americans for the defenseless Chinese.

The experiences of Fong Lewis exemplify the closeness of this relationship. From 1905 to 1908, he cooked for the Booker family in Casa Grande, Chihuahua; later he went to work for the American-owned Madera Company. When the company mills closed down and the Americans fled to El Paso shortly after the Revolution broke out, Fong was thrown out of a job. In 1914, his former employer pressed the U.S. Immigration Service to grant Fong temporary refuge at El Paso. The supervisor of the El Paso station remarked that the Americans were motivated not only by humanitarian concerns, but also because they were loath to lose sight of a good, faithful and cheap servant.15 Similar requests by Americans on behalf of their present or former Chinese employees for temporary asylum in the United States were common during the Revolution. How Fong's case was ultimately settled is not known, but in situations of real emergency, suspension of the Exclusion Act was usually granted.16

Even when Chinese were not directly employed by Ameri- cans or American companies, they tended to follow U.S. capital in the sense that heavy U.S. investments in mines and railroads stimulated the kind of growth that provided economic opportunities for them. By 1912, for example, the Chinese colony in Cananea had grown to between 1500 and 2000 people - half or more (800 to 900, according to U.S. consular agent George Wiswall) were "merchants," a broad category that included everyone in business for himself. Other Chinese continued to work for American families, or were also engaged in truck farming on the outskirts of town.17 Many of the stores, such as the two branch outlets of Juan Lung Tain, were located in Ronquillo, probably on rented American property.

Another possible relationship between Americans and Chinese is suggested by an example from the Saltillo area in Coahuila: Fong Sing's restaurant was located within the territory of the Mazapil Copper Company in Concepción del Oro.

[284]




In fact, Fong Sing owned only half of the restaurant and the American company controlled the rest of the inventory, so the upstart Chinese businessman and the wealthy American company, whose workers the restaurant probably served, formed a

partnership.18 Similar arrangements may have existed in Cananea.

With such a large concentration of foreigners around the Mexicans - wealthy, privileged, powerful Americans; inscru- table, thriving Orientals - it is no wonder that anti-foreign feel-

ings ran deep in Cananea. Before the Revolution, the Mexican workers directed their hostility primarily toward the American owners and managers - as was clearly the case during the 1906 strike - but during the Revolution, they also turned on the

large Chinese colony with a vengeance. Besides arousing resentment by their own activities, the Chinese might well have suffered a "guilt by association" with the much-hated Americans.

Most of the demonstrations in Cananea that resulted in

personal or property injuries started out as general anti-foreign rallies, which somehow degenerated into anti-Chinese mob actions. One such incident took place on February 24, 1914. Fol-

lowing an "open letter" in which two Mexican labor leaders accused the managers of the copper company of thievery, a band of Mexican women - wives of the mine workers -

gathered at the Ronquillo district "making speeches attacking all foreigners." The group grew into an angry mob of almost

500 men and women who marched to a Chinese laundry, ransacked it inside and out, and beat up three Chinese workers trapped on the premises. The police arrived late and did nothing, probably because there were only eight of them. Finally, thirty mounted soldiers managed to disperse the Mexicans.

The gravity of this incident immediately prompted U.S. Consul Frederick Simpich of Nogales to make an on-spot in-

spection of Cananea, which fell within his jurisdiction.19 Follow-

ing State Department instructions to protect Chinese under attack, he made provisions to evacuate them in the event of a crisis to the copper company's "meat packing building ... an extensive steel and concrete structure." Upon receiving a long

[285]




list of grievances and abuses from the Chinese community -

including seizure of property and excess taxes imposed by revolutionary factions - Simpich urged them to stay open rather than to close down their businesses. He also noted that should the American company cease to operate - the managers threatened to do so if Mexican unions became more demanding - the situation of the Chinese would become "most perilous." In his report to the State Department, Simpich offered this final observation:

. . . the feeling against all foreigners and against Chinese in particular is very strong; the continued depreciation of money, and the subsequent rise in the cost of food ... and the mistaken idea of the ignorant miners that American capitalists and Chinese merchants are in some way very responsible for this condition, is driving the people to increasing unrest.

Justifiably or not, because the Chinese grew much of the vegetable crop and owned many of the local foodstores, when food became scarce or too cosdy, they inevitably got the blame. Frequently, hungry Mexicans reacted by looting Chinese stores of everything they could consume, in one case leaving behind only some exotic drugs. In some small communities where the Asians virtually monopolized local food supplies, desperate mobs sacked the entire town.20 When well-stocked shops were looted, losses could be substantial. In July, 1915, while revolutionary soldiers and poor Mexicans raided forty large Chinese businesses in Cananea, the proprietors reported losses totaling more than $530,000 (U.S.).21 Local authorities usually stood by as the pillaging took place, afraid to intervene. Perhaps this was their way to defuse tension. One prefect re- portedly advised his people to "help themselves" at Chinese stores if merchants withheld produce in expectation of higher prices.22

Besides these mob attacks on their persons and properties, the Chinese suffered another kind of abuse during the Revolu- tion that can be best described as extortion. In search of constant cash to pay for armies and guns, revolutionary generals of every faction imposed forced loans or contributions on wealthy

[286]



This advertisement for the Magdalena branch of the fuan Lung Tain stores appeared in the Mexican publication Mexico y sus progresos during the early 1900s.

i Juan Lung Tain y Compañía, b

Kn !.i plaza de >an I-ranci-co. d punto ira- centrico ■ "c '..i >':'laCíón. -orprende á la vi-ta cl edificio «jue pre- «entaV/.o- en esta parte «le nuestra obra. por >er el «¡ue cv.a ira :r.e'>>r al objeto á que e^tá destinado. K-t.i. í">r lo qUc rcs¡>eCta al exterior: «me. en cuanto ala jjkf '

La t'.enda y e-eritopo ocu- " "• ^ ̂ * fjjpp >¿ran extensión á lo '

da. í*or el laîo de mayor lotigi- f . tu l. hay enormes -alones dedi- jaya .- .... „ - *.ado- a la fabricación de cal/.a- iTT| i""1*

«¡ue "cupa un número J¿|j « . i v'i:>:<:er.i' le de operario«.. BTM 1 I

exten-:-ima-. ili-- con veniente tut 11 te.

contienen t<»ia cla-e de telas • le lana, ele algodón y lino: 'T~r? -or.ibnlla*. chale-, rebozo-: perfumería fina y corriente: . articulo- <le mercería y lence* -v^jTÌS^! r:a: calzado de todo- tamaño-» •< y eali>lad variada: -ombrerò- ' y corbata-, etc.. y cuanto abar- ca el ramo de abarrote-. -

Los Sre-. Lr.tig Tain y Compania, p-opietarios de esta Ca-a Comercial, estableciéronse el año de i v.,6. de- -arr«'la: do una labor constante, basada en la mejor buena t^: y -u- negocio«» han prosperado de manera

tal. ijlle tra-pa-alldo Ir»- limite- de e-te I >i -trit ■ fueron á e-tal »lecer sucur-aie- á la- iin]x>rtantc- ¡»la/a- de Her molilo y Cananea. Kn la de Hermo-ilio. situada en la calle de l'on Lui-,

Exterior «1*? lem trente al Seminario Conciliar, fundaron una fábrica de

I calzado ' otra de ropa, cuyos productos alcanzan .^ran demanda |>or >u- precios y calidari razonables, j La Sucursal ''e Cananea îra bajo la razón -ocia! de I Juan Chon y Cia. y está situada en la Comisaria del

Ronquillo. Kn misma población

e,l>iinchi4<^í >ll> Venta- en díiferell- tcS ârr*os> P°r tllcdio de do- >u-

: gU- * cur-ales No. ; y No. 4 411e -e hallan en las calle- de San Loren- zo y Principal. respectivamente. *" ' Los escaparate- y a j -ara« lores

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Mexicans and foreigners. In the north, Pancho Villa and his lieutenants appeared especially adept at this practice. Since

powerful governments backed up the fierce protests of Ameri- cans, Englishmen and other Europeans, only the Chinese could be squeezed with virtual impunity. As early as August, x 9 1 1 , a Mexican newspaper reported that 216 Chinese had complained of forced loans.23 Another fairly common pressure revolutionary generals applied on Chinese storekeepers was to force them to sell food and goods at less than cost, that is, at a loss, to appease hungry soldiers and the poor.24 Faced with the loss of

property and profits, Chinese merchants responded by limiting orders for new supplies, thereby aggravating already severe shortages. Frustrated mobs often mistook an actual lack of merchandise for the deliberate withholding of goods.

The frequency and intensity of these assaults generally reflected the ups and downs of the Revolution in the north, especially in the camp of Pancho Villa and his allies. When on the winning streak, their armies supported massive numbers of otherwise unemployed Mexicans, alleviating some of the mis- ery caused by the ravages of war. With the decline of Villa from mid- 1914 on, anti-Chinese hostility mounted. In the face of all the violence, however, the Chinese persevered and continued to stay in business, even with the loss of lives. In most cases, one or at most a few unfortunates caught in the wrong place at the wrong time perished at the hands of trigger-happy revolutionary soldiers.25

There was, however, a painful incident in which over three hundred Chinese were killed during the course of one bloody afternoon. To Chinese all over Mexico and through time, the tragic massacre of Torreón on May 15, 1911, served as a fright- ful reminder of their extreme vulnerability as unwelcome aliens in a war-torn country uncertain of its own future and identity.26 Torreón in the northeastern state of Coahuila was an important commercial and industrial town of over 30,000 residents in 1910. The 700 Chinese residents constituted the most prominent foreign colony, in both number and property. Be- sides the usual small businesses, they operated hotels, department stores, even a bank, housed in its own building.27 Chinese investment also extended to urban real estate and the city tramway line.

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When Maderista soldiers took the city from the federales on the fifteenth, they quickly attracted an unruly mob of four thousand lower class men and women, descended upon the central business district, and pillaged the commercial establishments. In the wake of total havoc and destruction were 303 dead foreigners, almost all Chinese. The looting caused estimated property damages of $850,000 (U.S.), and the Chinese community sustained, by far, the greatest losses, destroying at the outset of the Revolution what had been Mexico's most

prosperous Asian colony. It was never to recover. What could possibly have unleashed this sudden, uncon-

trollable fury on an outwardly peaceful, law-abiding, hard-working alien immigrant group? Emilio Madero, who commanded the invading army, could never substantiate a

charge that the Chinese had invited the massacre by firing first at the rebels. Nor did the unarmed Chinese put up any kind of resistance when the Mexicans sacked their premises. The massive killings were wanton and without direct provocation. The answer to the Mexicans' rage lay not in what the Chinese did to them, but simply in what the Chinese had made of themselves in Torreón. Many Mexicans probably found it intolerable that a relatively recent, upstart, nonwhite immigrant group became so successful in so short a time, and with so much facility. Un- like North Americans and other Europeans who tended to in- vest in capital intensive enterprises beyond the reach of most Mexicans, the Chinese engaged primarily in modest economic activities that Mexicans could readily identify with. The resentment was made evident in a speech that Jesús Flores, a Maderista, delivered on May 5, ten days before the massacre, at the plaza of Gómez Palacio near Torreón.28 The Chinese

monopolized the garden industry, he charged; they were not

good citizens because they sent money earned in Mexico out of the country, "instead of spending it here as other foreigners do." Worst of all, in running laundries and restaurants, they took traditional work away from Mexican women. Flores called for their expulsion from Mexico.

Poor, lower-class Mexican women were particularly sus-

ceptible to the kind of inflammatory messages Flores preached. They struggled to take care of their families during the difficult times of the Revolution, when so many of the menfolk were

[289]




away fighting. Chinese businesses probably did preempt them from taking in laundry and sewing, or cooking for others. In Cananea, a Women's Union was at the forefront of the anti- Chinese persecution.29

After Torreón, anti-Chinese hostility occurred mainly in the states of Chihuahua and especially Sonora. Although no other single incident even remotely approached the tragic proportions of Torreón, the assaults were frequent, widespread and arbitrary, creating for the Asians what amounted to an atmosphere of terror.30 By 1916, it was conservatively estimated that a hundred Chinese had lost their lives in Sonora alone. The northwestern state had the largest Chinese population, estimated as high as ten to fifteen thousand, including those born in Mexico, those who were naturalized Mexican citizens, and those with Mexican wives and children.31 Not surprisingly, it was in Sonora that the persecution was most intense and innovative.

In 1916, a new way of waging the racist campaign emerged in that state - one which proved in the end more devastating than sporadic murders. For the first time a "studied and deliberate" political movement organized local communities to use legal means in harassing Chinese. Essentially, this consisted of "intolerable discriminatory" local ordinances, some ostensibly intended for everyone but in fact designed with the peculiar conditions of the Chinese in mind. The purpose was to make life so difficult, business so unprofitable, that the Chinese would not want to stay any longer in Mexico. Again, much to the Mexicans' frustration, the Chinese level of tolerance was quite a bit higher than they had anticipated. This campaign moved forward in spurts until it petered out temporarily in 1920, and it failed to achieve the ultimate goal of expelling the Chinese, but it did establish the pattern for all subsequent movements, including the final successful one in 1931.

Early in April, 1916, in reporting the nature of this new campaign to the State Department, Consul Simpich included a list of the kind of local ordinances designed to harass the Chinese communities only. He received the accounting from Francisco L. Yuen of Nogales (Sonora), a prominent businessman and president of the Chinese Fraternal Union, a

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mutual aid society. Simpich prefaced his report with the omi- nous warning that these "illegal" laws were in obvious violation of international treaties, property rights and personal liberty, and "if allowed to stand unchallenged by outside governments . . . are likely to establish troublesome precedents and encour- age the present despotic military government of Sonora to adopt an even more prejudicial attitude towards all foreign interests."32 Simpich made quite clear his conviction that such discriminatory actions hurt all foreigners, hence the United States should intervene to discourage their implementation.

The ordinances that Yuen enumerated were varied. Some were discriminatory taxes levied specifically on Chinese merchants, such as those in Agua Prieta that raised municipal taxes on Chinese stores from $5 to $30 per month. Some tried to exclude Chinese from engaging in certain economic activities that they had come to monopolize: the Magdalena ordinances, for example, forced Chinese to abandon all truck farming after

May 1, 1916, and, in addition, prohibited them from leasing land for agricultural purposes; in Cananea and Nogales, Chinese were ordered to quit dealing altogether in meats, fruits, vegetables, and to cease laundry work. Other laws were aimed at Mexicans doing business with or renting property to Chinese: in Magdalena, Mexicans were authorized to break contracts with Chinese at will and with impunity; in Cananea and Magdalena, the Chinese were to cease occupying premises legally rented, and Mexican landlords were warned not to lease property to Chinese on penalty of confiscation of that property. El Tigre passed an outright expulsion decree; Agua Prieta lim- ited the number of times a Chinese businessman could travel from one town to another, and forbade them to visit each other's houses without prior authorization from the local

police. Finally, some laws were aimed at humiliating the Chinese, such as the one in Agua Prieta that required them to take public baths before municipal officers.

Yuen's list certainly did not exhaust the variety of ordinances that local municipalities came up with to intimidate the Chinese business community. Because the merchants, their partners and employees (especially if all were single men), tended to live, eat and cook on the store premises, and because

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Chinese stores usually doubled as warehouses for the excess stock, some towns passed sanitation regulations ostensibly to improve general health conditions, but, in fact, the ordinances were directed at undermining certain Chinese business practices that saved them money. Another innovation was the Ley de Trabajo or Work Law, commonly known as the "80 percent law," enacted statewide in 1919. It stipulated that the work force of all foreign enterprises must be at least eighty percent Mexican. Mostly the Chinese were affected, for it was well known that they hired few Mexicans. Reminiscent of the regulation proposed in the seventeenth century, segregation laws attempted to restrict Chinese residents to their own barrio or ghetto outside town.33

Spearheading the campaign from 1916 to 1919 was José María Arana, Magdalena businessman and schoolteacher, who insisted that their methods were strictly legal. He and his as- sociates organized the small Mexican businessmen, with support from local consumers and the working class, to act as a political pressure or lobby group. It was largely through their efforts that town councils passed such discriminatory measures. These propaganda organizations took various names, each

quite revealing about its membership and ideology. Arana's own pioneer group in Magdalena was named the Junta Comer- cial y de Hombres de Negocio, or "Commercial and Businessmen's Junta." In Caborca, a similar organization was called the "Junta of National protectionism"; and in Culiacán, Sinaloa, the group was called the Junta Central Nacionalista "En Defensa de la Raza." In Cananea, the anti-Chinese league also had an interesting name, the "Fraternal Union of Salaried Workers of Cananea," which clearly reflected the dominant Mexican social class in the

company town. By 1917, Arana claimed he had inspired the foundation of seventeen juntas, with a combined membership of 5000 in Sonora and several neighboring states such as Sinaloa, Nayarit, Chihuahua, the Territory of Baja and as far south as Oaxaca.34

In addition to these juntas or leagues, Arana and his fellow believers - appropriately self-named co-religionarios - used another effective instrument of propaganda, the weekly tabloid. The most famous was probably Arana's own Pro-Patria. Printed on each issue was the following rousing statement:

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José María Arana, Magdalena businessman who led the 1916- 1919 campaign to suppress Chinese competitors through discriminatory legislation.

An early photo of Ramón Corral, the governor of Sonora who ordered a census of foreign residents living

in his state in 1890.

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Improvement of the race is the supreme ideal of all civilized nations, so that if the Chinese are corrupting our race, we ought to restrict them. The Chinese produce on the towns the same effect that the locust has on the crops: they destroy them. The Mexican that defends the Chinese with detriment to the national good, is a traitor to the country.35

In loud and clear terms, these words unequivocally equated the anti-Chinese campaign with patriotism, or, more accurately, with a new nationalism.

The local politicians and revolutionary generals in com- mand of Sonora, center of the Arana movement, reacted dif- ferently, even as they all agreed in principle to the validity of the Chinese issue. Native Sonoran Generals Plutarco Elias Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta, leaders of the victorious Con- stitutionalist faction, were generally sympathetic. But in the face of pressure from the United States, transmitted through its consular agents, they were forced to rescind or at least not to pursue vigorously the discriminatory legistlation. Cesario Soriano, interim governor during 1917, was quite outspoken in his condemnation of Arana's inflammatory rhetoric and scan- dalous tactics. He publicly denounced the shrill and vulgar Pro-Patria language, and its cheap appeal to base chauvinism, which amounted to emotional exploitation of untutored lower-class Mexicans. He regarded Pro-Patria "diatribes, in- sults and parochialisms" as a potential international embarrassment, as well as violations of constitutional guarantees to all

persons, including the alien Chinese.36 In short, outside pressure and internal voices of moderation prevailed, thereby sof-

tening the impact of the legalistic campaign. Still, one undeniable result of the Aranistas' crude emo-

tional appeal was to generate and intensify anti-Chinese racism. The movement reinforced old and existing stereotypes, created new ones, and fanned antagonism. Besides the internationally known "yellow peril" image, propagandists depicted Chinese

immigration as "an avalanche that has inundated us," or as "an obnoxious octopus." A typical derogatory term for Chinese was chinacate - chink or chinaman; milder but more sarcastic names were celestials and sons of Confucius. For those who protected

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or defended the rights of the harassed Chinese was reserved the name chinero or chink-lover.37 Racism more than anything else underlay the prejudice against Chinese- Mexican mar-

riages. Aranistas charged that such unions debilitated the Mex- ican race, specifically by producing "feeble, pale and slit-eyed" offspring. In some cases, they actively intervened to ruin a relationship. Miguel Moo and his Mexican fiancée, Francisca Acuña of Nacozari, were so intimidated, for example, that their planned wedding in late 1917 never materialized. The critics claimed that the bride "was not in her right mind," because Moo had numbed her senses with morphine and other narcot- ics.38 Bizarre charges, perhaps, but actually quite in conformity with the prevailing stereotype of the evil, drug-wielding Chinaman.

This first anti-Chinese political campaign did not succeed for a number of reasons. First, there was insufficient unity among the Aranistas, state politicians and national political leaders, meaning that the discriminatory ordinances could not be consistently or persistently carried out to their logical conclusion. Second, the United States Government, through its consular representatives, successfully applied pressure on high echelon state officials not to cooperate with the campaign. Third, the Chinese themselves did not stand idly by, but responded immediately with strongly worded protests to high state and federal authorities, alerted their own government and, more significantly, the American government, upon each assault, and retained aggressive legal counsel. Frustrated in turn by the Chinese ability to thwart their efforts at displacing them, Aranistas charged that the merchants greased the palms of corrupt Mexican officials with "el oro chino" - Chinese gold. Such charges were difficult to substantiate, but they were entirely possible. Also, Chinese storekeepers reminded Mexicans none too subtly that should they be forced out of business, local and state treasuries would suffer drastic decline in revenues with the abrupt cessation of Chinese taxes.39 Arana died in 1921 (one fantasy had him poisoned by the Chinese), thus de- priving the movement of its original inspiration, its dynamic, charismatic and demagogic leadership.

Undaunted by the setback, anti-Chinese forces vowed to

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try again, no doubt goaded by the galling fact that after 1920, the Chinese were in a stronger commercial position than ever before. Neither the Revolution nor the campaign seemed to have crippled their ability to prosper. In January, 1920, Martin Wong, President of the Guaymas chapter of the Chinese Fra- ternal Union, acknowledged to U.S. Consul Bartley Yost that "Chinese business has recently increased a hundred percent." Yost himself added that "the trade in groceries, dry goods and general merchandise in Sonora is largely controlled by Chinese." In 1923, U.S. Trade Commissioner P. L. Bell noted that, except for two old Spanish houses in Mazatlán, the Chinese entrepreneurs were the largest food dealers on the Mexican West Coast. Moreover, they dominated the general retail trade in large cities such as Guaymas, Hermosillo and Nogales, and were becoming more influential in Culiacán and Mazatlán in Sinaloa.40

Another cause for alarm among the Mexicans was the re- surgence of Chinese immigration into the country after a decline during the revolutionary period. From 1919 to 1921, more than six thousand Chinese arrived, twice the number during the years 1914 to 1918. In Sonora, the total Chinese population had fallen from 4468 in 1910, to 3639 in 1920, but still com- posed the largest foreign colony.41 Nevertheless, in places where the campaign had been particularly virulent, negative consequences were definitely visible. Cananea, for example, witnessed the mass flight of its Chinese residents, many of whom had liquidated their properties and left town by 1920, when only 400 out of a high of 2000 remained.42 The exodus could also have reflected the slowed-down operations of the copper company.

In May and June, 1922, and briefly in 1924, the Chinese themselves provided Mexicans with a ready excuse to renew the campaign. During those times, rival Chinese political factions fought out their differences openly in the streets of Mexico. The two parties contending for overseas support represented ideological splits in revolutionary China: the republican Kuomintang (KMT), and the Chee Kung Tong (CKT), an old masonic order that followed the waves of Chinese immigration in the nineteenth century. The KMT hired gunmen in an effort

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Arana! s map , drawn to symbolize the aggressive threat he felt the Chinese posed.

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to dislodge the older established CKT and they terrorized the Mexicans and the majority of the Chinese community, most of whom were not involved. The rash of shoot-outs and street wars punctured the long, peaceful record of unarmed Chinese, while adding to the stereotype that these chinacates were by nature criminal and murderous. At the end of the tong wars in 1922, over twenty Chinese bodies were recovered from the streets;43 significantly, not a single innocent Mexican was killed.

The disturbances provided the pretext for the Sonoran government to round up some 300 Chinese for deportation, with charges that they were aliens engaging in illegal political activities on Mexican soil. Obviously not all those jailed could be implicated in the armed conflict. Yet Sonoran Governor Fran- cisco Elias, an ardent anti-Chinese nationalist, wanted to expel all of them as a prelude to the resumption of the interrupted campaign. Fortunately for the Chinese, the federal government was still not secure or stable enough to support such a movement. President and General Álvaro Obregon, himself a native Sonoran and undoubtedly sympathetic to the common sentiments at home, was still waiting for U. S. recognition of his regime, withheld pending proof of its sense of responsibility. After dispatching a commission to investigate the tong wars, Obregon decided on a compromise. He ordered the deportation of only the handful of known leaders, while releasing the many arbitrarily jailed, some of whom had been imprisoned for over three months.44

As expected, when the crisis broke out in 1922, U.S. consuls on the Mexican West Coast immediately stepped forward to protect the Chinese and represent their interests. Again, the reasons were not simply humanitarian, but economic as well. As Consul Yost made clear to the state department, the round-up of innocent Chinese merchants was "proving injurious to American trade, both in the sale of merchandise and collection of accounts owed by imprisoned or threatened Chinese to American export firms." In the 1920s, Chinese businessmen had become the major clients of American exporters to the Mexican West Coast. The ever alert Yost made another significant observation during the aftermath of the tong wars. Certain Mexicans wanted to expel these Orientals from the country, he remarked, "as the native merchants are incapable

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of competing with them."45 The Mexicans' sense of economic impotence had become more acute with time. Why native Mex- icans could not compete effectively with the Chinese - and hence felt compelled to eliminate them totally - was the crux of the Chinese problem. Besides their legendary diligence and

frugality, the Chinese developed competitive business practices, some culturally rooted, that the Mexicans found impossible to emulate. While not illegal, the Mexicans believed that many of these practices were ethically questionable. They even objected to certain aspects of the Chinese lifestyle as promoting unfair

advantages. Most of the immigrants were young and once they arrived

in Mexico, they readily found help from prominent members of the established Chinese community to start them off finan- cially in some very small business, most likely vending or hawk-

ing groceries on the street. They could find employment with Chinese-owned enterprises, such as the truck farms and the coarse shoe and clothing factories established in Sonora as early as the late nineteenth century. American mine owners and railroad builders, while not inclined to hire Chinese for strenuous or skilled labor, did favor them for service jobs as cooks, laun- derers and domestics. These workers received extremely low wages, even by Mexican standards. One leading anti-Chinese activist claimed that the Chinese worked for one-third the

wages of the poorest-paid Mexican.46 This led to charges such as those voiced by the radical Mexican Liberal Party in 1906, that these foreigners further debased the already severely exploited Mexican workers.

Even more incredible to the Mexican was the Chinese ability to save money from these abysmal wages and open up their own stores. Mexicans quickly perceived that one Chinese secret was to rely heavily on his family, relatives, co-villagers or other Chinese for help, before he would consider hiring Mexi- cans. If the proprietor, his partners and employers were all single men, they usually lived on the store premises, thereby saving money on rent and other living expenses. Mexicans as- sailed both these customs - as unfair business practices, which furthermore underscored the secretive, clannish, arrogant Chinese character.

Another typical tendency of the Asian merchant was to

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keep his store well stocked with a great variety of items, ranging from fresh produce to imported luxury goods. Most Chinese mercantiles were listed as variety or general merchandise outlets, but even the groceries, drugstores and bakeries, sold more than just one type of product. Extra supplies were also crowded into the store, rather than warehoused elsewhere, thus saving on overhead expenses. All these practices that Mexicans found deplorable enabled the Chinese businessmen to undersell their Mexican competitors by offering lower prices, and to outsell them by presenting more choices. For the Mexican consumer then, shopping at Chinese establishments meant savings in time and money.

Mutual aid societies were another secret to Chinese success. The Chinese Fraternal Union had several chapters in Mexico and was connected to the headquarters in San Fran- cisco. The same was true of the Chee Kung Tong. These associations served several functions: they provided a social and cul- tural oudet for the Chinese immigrants, as well as facilitating cooperative business activities among themselves and between Mexico and the United States. The reputable old Chinese firms of San Francisco extended credit and financial capital to their

counterparts in Mexico. They also acted as clearing houses for the Mexican stores. Merchants in Mexico purchased most of their merchandise in the United States via the main offices of their mutual aid or commercial associations, taking advantage of the good credit ratings the California firms had built up over time. To the Mexicans these international connections again constituted another unfair advantage for the Chinese.

Even in the best of times Mexicans would have found it difficult to compete in their homeland with any foreign group. They lacked commercial experience, credit and business con- tacts. The Revolution and civil wars eroded what little chance they had in the late- nineteenth century to improve their fortunes. Before the arrival and the entrenchment of Chinese in local retail trade, Spaniards and Germans had dominated this sector of the economy. After World War I, however, their con- tacts with suppliers in Europe were seriously disrupted. The Chinese, who did most of their business with North Americans, successfully closed in on the Europeans. In the process, Ameri-

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can exporting firms extended their virtual monopoly over the West Coast. Again, this mutually dependent relationship was one major reason why Americans felt so responsible for Chinese welfare.47

Sonorans launched their final and successful campaign against the Chinese in 1929 during the Great Depression, which had severe repercussions in northern Mexico.48 Ameri- can investment in Sonora's key economic sectors - mining, cat- tle, commercial agriculture - all dropped sharply. Mexicans who had previously found work in the United States were thrown back across the border, exacerbating an already explo- sive unemployment crisis. The rebellions of Generals Manzo and Topete in late 1929 intensified the desperate conditions in the state. Ten years after the Revolution, the Mexicans' lot was still miserable and they deeply resented the relative prosperity of the alien Chinese. The continuous Asian presence became absolutely insufferable.

In Governor Francisco Elias, the anti-Chinese forces in Sonora found their most zealous supporter in the government. Equally significant in finally unifying local and national solidar- ity behind the movement was the Sonoran who held sway in Mexico City, General Plutarco Elias Calles. If, during 1916, when Calles was military governor, he had felt politically con- strained, he rested assured in 1929 that conditions could not have been more propitious to prosecute the campaign to its conclusion.

The leaders of the revived movement realized that their task was really quite a simple one: all they had to do was to dust off the old discriminatory legislation. Consequently, among Governor Elias' first acts was the resurrection of the "80 percent law." One of the campaign's most ardent and outspoken promoters was José Ángel Espinoza, one-time state senator and publisher of El Nacionalista, a leading anti-Chinese propaganda tabloid. According to him, there were 1 1,000 Chinese residents in the state, 4000 of whom could be considered proprietors of the 2000 or so businesses. The rest, or 7000, he concluded had to be employees.49 Consequently, application of the law would result in 5000 new jobs for needy Mexicans. Since other sources never noted more than 4000 Chinese in the state, Espinoza

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Arana addresses a crowd of enthusiastic supporters .

appears to have grossly exaggerated the figures; perhaps he did so to make his point more forcefully, and to underscore the gravity of the situation for Mexicans. In May, 1931, the gover- nor amended the law to define all partners as employees, and hence subject to the quota. This was in response to a perceived Chinese practice of defining their compatriot employees as "socios," or partners, in order to circumvent the regulation.

Also revived were the equally infamous Código Sanitaria and the ban on Chinese-Mexican marriages. To enforce the health code with more vigor, the state government created the new General Public Health Agency in 1930. Admitting that its vigilance concentrated "above all" on the Chinese, the agency enacted restrictions on their establishments. They were to limit their stores to selling one principal item - groceries, meats, drugs, bread - but not a mixture of these. To curtail the Chinese ambulatory trade in foodstuffs, new sanitary laws barred meat and vegetables from being sold other than in properly inspected and licensed central market stalls. To

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undercut Chinese frugality and hence savings, other laws

prohibited anyone, even the proprietor, from sleeping on the premises, while stipulating that stocks of merchandise must be kept in rented warehouses, not jammed into stores or residences.

Moving full steam ahead, in June, 1931, Governor Elias directed all municipal presidents to fix a date for the Chinese in their jurisdiction to comply with the Work Law. Most of them set a limit of fifteen days to one month for all Chinese merchants to submit a list of employees, Mexican and foreign. Another decree specified the amounts of fines for each infrac- tion or delay in compliance.

During the 1929-1931 campaign, popular support was more fully mobilized than ever before. Local juntas or ligas antichinas organized loud and massive demonstrations; even

vigilante groups surfaced to terrorize Chinese storekeepers - to help enforce the law, according to these thugs. In the face of international criticism and even some from Mexico City, this time Governor Elias and his successor, Rodolfo Calles, did not even flinch. Instead, they defended the campaign as entirely legal, moral and in the highest national interest. For the first time, Chinese appeals to both Mexicans and Americans were no

longer effective. Sympathetic Mexicans felt politically con- strained to intervene on behalf of the Chinese. The United States, on the eve of its new Good Neighbor Policy of noninter- vention in the internal affairs of Latin American countries, insisted that the Chinese government must begin to take care of its own nationals overseas.50

Unable to comply with the work and sanitary laws, intimidated by the ban on marriage and harassed by Mexican

immigration officials, the Chinese who had survived so many persecutions in Mexico admitted defeat in 1931. In August, they announced plans to abandon the state, as soon as they could sell their goods, lands and properties. For fear that de-

parting Chinese would drain all of Sonora's liquid wealth, the state dealt them the coup de grace: they had to sell before a quick deadline at wholesale prices, consequently at a great loss. Still, some were able to withdraw savings from Sonora and Arizona banks.51

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The venomous tone of anti-Chinese propaganda is apparent in the illustrations for José Angel Espinomi El ejemplo de Sonora. Above , a cruel caricature of Chinese business practices and living conditions. Below , Mexicans boycott a Juan Lung Tain store in support of the "80 percent law."




By October, 1931, with most of the Chinese out of the state, new Governor Rodolfo Calles triumphantly declared the campaign successfully concluded. Throughout early 1932, however, vigilante groups rounded up remnant Orientals, took them by the truckload to the border, and dumped them on U.S. soil. As many as 225 Asians were counted in the Nogales, Arizona, jail in March, 1932. Faced with this unexpected influx of "illegal immigrants," the United States bore the heavy cost of

deporting them to China from San Francisco.52 Although Sonoran and federal authorities denied that they expelled the Chinese, by leaving them no choice but to abandon the state, the persecution by legalistic means was tantamount to an expulsion. Internationally the Chinese exodus was certainly charac- terized as such.

It is difficult to trace the course of the dispersal. With the Exclusion Act still in effect in the United States, that route was

legally closed; the number of Chinese who managed to slip across the border cannot be easily counted. The United States

government did grant the refugees temporary transit visas to cross from Mexico to San Francisco, there to catch the slow boat to China. Some returned to their homeland with Mexican wives and children, creating the curious Mexican barrios outside certain south China villages. Many probably fled to other parts of Mexico, such as Mexico City, Sinaloa and Chihuahua -

although these other northern states were definitely not

hospitable - and especially to the district of Baja California Norte, which already had a sizeable Chinese colony. According to one propagandist, 6000 of the 15,000 residents of Mexicali in

1932 were Chinese. For obvious reasons, this border town picked up the anti-Chinese movement where the Sonorans had left off, forming in 1932 a Partido Nacionalista Anti-Chino; the campaign did not, however, end with the expulsion of the Asians.53 Although the persecution spread momentarily, the impact of the campaign in Sonora was sufficient to neutralize any further Chinese influence on local Mexican economies.

For the Mexicans of Sonora, eliminating the Asians did not instantly improve their conditions. The local economy, in fact, went through a difficult transition period, during which

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In Cananea , members of a women's union demonstrate against the Chinese presence. It was not unusual for women to be at the forefront of the anti- Chinese campaign.

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certain small communities were forced into a system of barter when severe shortages of supplies, caused by the sudden clos- ing of Chinese stores, became apparent. Also, just as the Chinese had predicted and warned, the state treasury suffered a drastic reduction in revenues when the destruction of Chinese businesses cut off a lucrative source of taxes. Neverthe- less, the Mexicans gradually moved into the vacuum and nationalized th e petit bourgeois class of local society.54

In the late nineteenth century, northern Mexico provided exactly the kind of environment that attracted Asian immigrants. It was a frontier region in the process of rapid social and economic development, made possible primarily by foreign capital, technology and markets. On the top of this relatively simple society was a landed elite, some of whom also owned mines and engaged in commerce. For the most part Mexican, its ranks included a number of Europeans and North Americans. At the base of this society was the bulk of the population, Indians, peons, workers and landless peasants who were the wage laborers. The subsistence agrarian culture was in a time of transition toward a more modern cash economy, which included expanded domestic and international markets and led to population growth and urbanization. When the Chinese first arrived on the scene, the niche they quickly occupied did not entail displacing any well established social group, which would surely have provoked violent reaction. Rather, they answered the need to expand an incipient petit bourgeoisie - small capitalists and businessmen - a class they dominated in a short time.

If the Mexican population was unaware of what was happen- ing at first, the 1910 Revolution woke them up and instilled in them a much stronger sense of racial and national identity, and they protested strenuously. Ironically, the very modesty of Chinese economic success made them ready targets; unlike large American and European capitalists, what the Chinese had attained was within the grasp of most Mexicans by the 1930s. After the Revolution had raised their hopes and their position in society, it became socially feasible, if not politically expedient, to displace and replace the Chinese, to sacrifice them for the sake of Mexican nationalism. For the Chinese, theirs was a small success story with a tragic ending.

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NOTES Chinese immigration to Southeast Asia and to North America has been relatively well studied and there are numerous monographs on them in specific Asian countries and within the U.S. Their experience in Central America, the Caribbean and South America, however, has not been well covered. There are a few works of note: Anita Bradley, Trans-Pacific Relations of Latin America (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1942); Duvon C. Corbitt, A Study of the Chinese in Cuba , 1847-1947 (Wil- more, Ky.: Asbury College, 1971); Watt Stewatt, Chinese Bondage in Peru: A History of the Chinese Coolies in Peru, 1849-1874 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1951); Luis Millones Santagadea, "Los Chinos en el Peru: cuatro siglos de migración y adaptación en el area andina," in Minorías Étnicas en el Perú , Serie de Antropología, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú (Lima: 19/3); Arnold J. Meagher, "The Introduction of Chinese Laborers to Latin America: the 'Coolie Trade,' 1847 - 1874" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California at Davis, 1975); E. Chang-Rodriquez, "Chinese Labor Migration into Latin America in the Nineteenth Century," Revista de Historia de América, Vol. 46 (December, 1958), pp. 375-397. 2The pioneer study of the Chinese in Mexico, specifically the State of Sonora, is Charles Cumberland's "The Sonoran Chinese and the Mexican Revolution," His- panic American Historical Review, Vol. 40 (1960), pp. 191-211. A more recent and comprehensive study is Leo M. D. Jacques' "The Anti-Chinese Campaign in Sonora, Mexico, 1900-1931" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, 1974). From this dissertation Jacques derived two articles: "The Chinese Massacre in Torreón (Coahuila) in 1911," Arizona and the West, Vol. 16 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 233-246; and "Have Quick More Money Than Mandarins: The Chinese in Sonora," Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 17 (Summer, 1976), pp. 208-218. There is a Mexican thesis on the Chinese in Tampico: Beatriz Ramirez Camacho, "Los chinos en México. Esbozo de la comunidad de Tampico," (Masters thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1975). According to Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 10-11, in the 1860s some Chinese entered Mexico from the United States to work on northern construction projects and mines. Several colonization companies also drew up plans to import cheap Chinese labor to Mexico, but these never materialized. 3Bradley, Trans-Pacific Relations,. pp. 1- 12; H. H. Dubs, "The Chinese in Mexico City in 1635," Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 1 (1942), pp. 387-389. 4Ramón Corral, Memoria de la administración pública del Estado de Sonora, presentada a la Legislatura del mismo por el Gobernador Ramón Corral, 2 vols. (Guaymas: Im- prenta de E. Gaxiola, 1891), Vol. 1, pp. 586-602. According to one observer, by 1897 there were 56,741 residents in Sonora: John R. Southworth, El Estado de Sonora, Mexico. Sus industrias, comerciales , minerías y manufactureras (Nogales, Arizona: Oasis Printing and Publishing House, 1897), with bilingual text. By the end of the nineteenth century, there were probably Chinese in every Mexican state and the federal district (Mexico City), but most were definitely concentrated in the north and the northwest. In several southern states - Veracruz, Chiapas and Yucatan - where commercial agriculture had taken hold, Chinese in considerable numbers were brought in as contract laborers on the Yucatan henequen plantations; see John Ken- neth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969). 5Jacques, "Campaign," p. 45. Hbid., pp. 50-51, citing U.S. Department of Commerce figures. 7Southworth, Sonora, p. 47. Out of oversight, or perhaps bias, Southworth failed to take note of at least two other Chinese commercial houses already well established by 1897, when he published his survey: Fon Qui and Juan Lung Tain. 8Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 48-50. 9The definitive study of this important frontier, mining and American company town has not been written yet. A history of Cananea, actually a biography of Colonel Greene, who built the Cananea Copper Company, is C. L. Sonnichs en's Colonel Greene and the Copper Skyrocket (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974).

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Immigrants to a Developing Society 10Federico Garcia y Alva, Mexico y sus progresos, " Album- director io del Estado de Sonora " (Hermosillo: Imprenta Oficial, 1905-1907), no pagination. nFor a general account of the 1906 strike, see James D. Cockcroft, Intellectual Pre- cursos of the Mexican Revolution , 1900-1913 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), chapter 6. 12Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 54-56, traces first signs of anti-Chinese propaganda to as early as 1890. North Americans who employed Chinese also subscribed to certain racist stereotypes of the Chinese. See, for example, Mildred Young Wallace, "I Re- member Chung," Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 20 (Spring, 1979), pp. 35-46. Ac- cording to the author, her family had a series of male Chinese servants, all whom her mother called "Chung." Since they all looked alike, she didn't see any point bothering to learn new names. Leading Porfirian intellectual Francisco Bulnes espoused a more subtle racist theory couched in pseudo- scientific terms and pseudo-historical analysis. See, Francisco Bulnes, El Porvenir de las Naciones Latino-Americanas (Mexico, D. F.: El Pensamiento Vivo de América, n.d.), chapter I: "Las tres razas humanas," pp. 9-42. 13 Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 38, 51, quoting Mexican immigration figures. Cumber- land, "Sonoran Chinese," p. 12 (citing U.S. State Department figures), feels that a realistic number would be 30,000, but somehow did not take into account the large population of Chinese who probably did not stay in Mexico. 14 This is the central theme of Cumberland's article, "Sonoran Chinese"; his major sources of information are the U.S. consular reports. Because of U.S. interest in Chinese affairs, the close relationship between Americans and Chinese in northern Mexico, and later, the active American involvement in protecting the Chinese during the Revolution and afterwards, consular agents reported extensively on Chinese activities, holdings and Chinese- Mexican relations. The National Archives in Washington, D.C., has microfilmed these dispatches from Mexico up to 1929. Moreover, it has collected the bulk of the dispatches that pertain to tne Chinese question on one roll of microfilm: "Records of the Department of State Relating to the Chinese Question in Mexico, 1910-1929," frames not numbered; hereafter cited as NA " Chinese . "

15Supervisor of El Paso Station to Commissioner General of Immigration (Depart- ment of Labor), Washington, D.C., May 20, 1914, inM4 "Chinese." 16InN>i " Chinese " there are numerous requests by Chinese and Americans addressed to the U.S. Government to [jrant asylum in the U.S. to harassed Chinese. See, for example, Chinese Legation in Washington, D.C., to State Department, requesting transportation for thirty-nine Chinese from Ojinaga, Chihuahua, to Cd. Juárez on the border, October 6, 1913; State Department informs Chinese Legation that, should it be necessary, Chinese in Durango would be evacuated to El Paso, and the 400 at Ensenada to San Diego, April 28, 1914. After 1916, however, the U.S. Gov- ernment appeared more hesitant to aid the Chinese; see State Department's cautious reply to Consul Edwards of El Paso, Washington, D.C., November 10, 1916, regard- ing Edwards' request for financial aid to 200 destitute Chinese refugees gathered at Cd. Juárez. State replied that it had no "relief fund," but in case of "real need," will "endeavor to obtain assistance from the Six Companies and their fellow countrymen in the U.S." 17U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson to Secretary of State, Mexico City, April 29, 1912; and George Wiswall to Alexander Dye, consul at Nogales, April 27, 1912, in NA "Chinese." The nigh number of 2000 was reported by the Chinese Chargé d'Affaires in Mexico City to Ambassador Wilson; it may not be very reliable, as the Chinese government had no consular representatives in the north. In 1914, Consul Frederick Simpich of Nogales, whose jurisdiction included Cananea, reported there were about 1500 Chinese in Cananea; Consul Simpich to State, Naco, Arizona, February 26, 1914, in NA "Chinese." Besides merchants, many of these Chinese were truck farmers, who frequently reported their mules and wagons commandeered by revolutionary forces; see Simpich to State, Nogales, April 21, 1915, in NA "Chinese."

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18Vice-consul John Silliman to State, Concepción del Oro, January 19, 1914, in NA " Chinese . " 19Consul Simpich to State, Naco, Arizona, February 26, 1914, in NA " Chinese 20 In NA " Chinese " there are numerous consular reports on Mexican attacks on Chinese stores. Soldiers, Yaqui Indians and lower class women appeared especially active in these raids. In some small towns, such as Cócorit in the Yaqui River Valley and Torres, a small railroad town, where Chinese merchants practically monopolized local business, the entire place was sacked. The year 1915 was especially hard on the Asians, probably because of declining fortunes of revolutionary Pancho Villa and his subsequent difficulties in paying his soldiers. See, for example, Consul Louis Hostet- ter to State, Hermosillo, May 21, 1915; Consul Simpich to State, Nogales, January 29, 1915; Chinese mercantile Associations of Arizpe, Moctezuma, Cumpas, Nacozari, Fronteras to Chinese Minister, on abuses against them perpetrated by Maytorenista and Villista troops, March 18, 1915; Consul Simpich to State, Hermosillo, January 7, 1915, on sacking of Cócorit and Torres. All dispatches are in NA " Chinese . " 21 Consul Simpich to State, Nogales, July 31, 1915, in NA "Chinese." Simpich suspected that the Chinese merchants exaggerated their losses in order to underscore their plight. 22Consul Hostetter to State, Hermosillo, May 23, 1915, in NA "Chinese." 23Jacques, "Campaign," p. 85. 24NA " Chinese " contains numerous reports on such extortions. Another common abuse was to force Chinese merchants to sell at less than cost, thus at a loss. See, for example, Consul Hostetter to State, Hermosillo, May 23, 1915, reporting that the prefect of Hermosillo ordered Chinese merchants to sell their provisions at much less than actual cost, and that Maytorenistas had imposed numerous forced loans on these merchants. 2s na " Chinese " contains numerous accounts of Chinese murdered wantonly by undis- ciplined, hungry or frustrated soldiers of all revolutionary factions. See, for example, Consul Simpich to State, Nogales, June 23, 1913, on a Chinese storekeeper killed by a "Mexican soldier" over the price of cigarettes; Consul Marion Letcher to State, April 9, 1915, on execution of Pablo Wong of Chihuahua by revolutionaries who accused him of circulating counterfeit money; Consul Simpich to State, Nogales, April 21, 1915, on murder of two Chinese by Maytorenista troops at Ojo de Agua near Cananea; Consul Homer Coen to State, Mazatlán, April 19, 1915, on murder of Joe Wong of Durango, employee of American W. C. Casey, and himself owner of a huerta or truck farm within the city walls. 26For a more detailed account of the Torreón incident, see Jacques, "The Chinese Massacre in Torreón." The present discussion is based primarily on consular agent George C. Carothers' lengthy investigation and report on Torreón, transmitted by Consul Charles Freeman of Durango to State, June 19, 1911, in NA "Chinese." A brief eyewitness account of the massacre is contained in Tulitas Jamieson, Tulitas of Tor- reón: Reminiscences of Life in Mexico (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1969), pp. 1 19- 121. 27 The Compañía Bancaria Chino y Mexico was founded by K'ang Yu-wei, Chinese monarchist and reformer who personally carried his Save-the-Emperor-Society (Pau-Huang Hui, also translated as Chinese Constitutionalist Party or Chinese Re- form Association) to Mexico in 1906, settling on Torreón for special attention because of its influential Chinese colony. K'ang selected leading Coahuila businessman Wong Foon-chuck to be the bank's manager. Wong owned hotels, restaurants and a large truck farm in Torreón, the "Chinese Gardens," which employed 38 Chinese workers at the time of the massacre. See, Jung-Pang Low, editor and translator, Kang Yu- Wei: A Biography and, a Symposium (Tucson: University of Arizona Press for the Association of Asian Studies, 1967), pp. 180-203. Consul Luther Ellsworth to State, July 23, 1913,inJV/i "Chinese." 28Speech quoted in Carothers' report on Torreón, June 10, 1911, inNA "Chinese." 29Jacques, "Campaign," p. 88.

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30Only one report has been located on another assault resulting in a relatively large casualty count. In July, 1915, Yaqui looters killed twenty-three Chinese in a raid on a large Guaymas store. Admiral Howard of U.S. Navy to Chinese Minister, wrote that Yaqui soldiers killed twenty-three Chinese at Guaymas, dated July 28, 1915, in NA " Chinese ." No further details are available. 3 Consul Simpich to State, Nogales, April 10, 1916; Consul E. M. Lawton to State, Nogales, September 21, 1917, in NA "Chinese." 32Consul Simpich to State, Nogales, April 10, 1916, in NA "Chinese." 33Consul Francis Dyer to State, July 14, 1919; also Consul Hostetter to State, Her- mosillo, May 9, 1916, in NA "Chinese." 34 Various correspondence to José María Arana, 1917-1919, in Papers of José María Arana, Special Collections, University of Arizona Library, Tucson; hereafter cited as Arana Papers. Jacques, "Campaign," p. 132. 35Translation provided by Consul Lawton in his report to State, Nogales, September 21, 1917, inM4 "Chinese." 36Interim Governor Soriano to Arana, Hermosillo, December 4, 1917, in Arana Papers. 37Such derogatory terms and negative stereotypes abound in the voluminous correspondence to and from Arana, in Arana Papers. 38José Braufel to Arana, Moctezuma, September 12, 1917, in Arana Papers. For the Moo-Acuña case, see report of Francisco Ibáñez of Nacozari to Arana, October 21, 1917, followed by letter from the bride's mother to Arana, November 9, 1917, and several follow-up letters by Ibáñez, in A rana Papers. 39These alleged bribes and threats are contained in a handwritten history of Arana's anti-Chinese campaign, unsigned but apparently written by Arana himself, dated Magdalena, April 4, 1918, in Arana Papers; José Angel Espinoza, El ejemplo de Sonora (Mexico, D. F.: 1932), pp. 34, 103-104; Consul Bartley Yost of Guaymas to State, February 10, 1920, voicing fears that should harassment lead to decline of Chinese businesses and hence taxes, the state revenues would shrink drastically, in NA "Chinese." 40 Consul Yost to Chinese Minister in Washington, D.C., Guaymas, January 21, 1920; Yost to State, Guaymas, July 10, 1922, in NA "Chinese"; P. L. Bell, Mexican West Coast and Lower California: A Commercial and Industrial Survey (Washington, D.C.: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1923), pp. 32-34. Trade Commissioner Bell compiled this survey largely with the help of the U.S. consular agents on the Mexican West Coast.

41Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 156-160. Some of the Chinese probably came from Baja California, which had some 5000 Chinese working on the cotton fields of the Mexi- cali Valley. The bottom fell out of the cotton market in 1920, and many Chinese probably went to Sonora, as they were still barred from the U.S. For a brief history of the cotton plantations, see section on "Lower California" in Bell, Mexican West Coast. 42 Consul Dyer to State, Nogales, April 20, 1920, in "Chinese." 43For accounts of the "tong wars" see Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 163-175, and reports of Consuls Yost and Dyer to State, May-June, 1922, in NA "Chinese." For a virulent anti-Chinese perspective, see Espinoza, Ejemplo, pt. 2, chapters 1 and 2. 44 Consul W. E. Chapman to State, Mazatlán, December 13, 1922, in NA "Chinese." 45 Consul Yost to State, Guaymas, July 10, 1922, iniV/4 "Chinese." 46 Espinoza, Ejemplo, pp. 22-25. According to the 1928 national census of all foreign residents in Mexico, Chinese men outnumbered women thirteen to one. Jacques, "Campaign," p. 202.

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47Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 202-242; Espinoza, Ejemplo, despite its obvious biases, is still a good source of information on Chinese business practices. It also contains copies of the major anti-Chinese legislation. Espinoza, a state senator and publisher of El Nacionalista , a leading anti-Chinese tabloid, was a key figure in the 1920s Sono- ran campaign. Another good discussion of Chinese business practices and relation- ships is Bell , Mexican West Coast, pp. 32-34. 48 In between the "tong wars" and the 1929 campaign, there were several attempts to revive the persecution. In the summer of 1925, state senator Espinoza founded Pro-Raza committees throughout the state. To give an idea of the severity of the repatriation, in November- December, 1931, an estimated 37,000 Mexicans were returned to Mexico; Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 191, 246-247. 49 Official national statistics during the twenties noted the Chinese population vary- ing from 3500 to 3800; Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 201-206. 50 Espinoza, Ejemplo , pp. 50-109; Sumner Wells of U. S. State Department to U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels, enclosing copy of his note to Chinese Am- bassador in Washington, D.C., April 22, 1932, inAf/i "Chinese." "Jacques, "Campaign," pp. 248-249. 52Consul Yost to State, Nogales, March 19, 1932, remitting copy of article from Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) headlined "Mexico Unloads on Uncle Sam," in NA "Chinese. " 53 "Partido Nacionalista Anti-Chino del Distrito Norte de Baja California. Programa de Acción," Mexicali, Baja California, 22 September 1932. Document included in a collection of materials commemorating the successful anti-Chinese campaign, published by the Hermosillo Chamber of Commerce [1969?]. Since the expulsion, the Chamber of Commerce has issued a number of such volumes. 54 Included in the back of the commemorative volumes is a list of Mexican businesses in Sonora, which does not include a single Chinese name, demonstrating how com- pletely native Mexicans have taken over the local business sector of the economy.

CREDITS - photographs from the University of Arizona Library Special Collec- tions, Tucson, appear on pages 293 (top) and 297; from the Arizona Historical Society (AHS), Tucson, on page 293 (bottom); from the University of California at Berkeley on page 306; from José Angel Espinoza'sis/ ejemplo de Sonora (Mexico, D. F.: 1932), on pages 302 and 304; from Federico Garría y Alva's Mexico y sus progresos (Hermosillo: Imprenta Oficial, 1905-07) on page 287 (copy at AHS); and from Albelardo Juanz Ley, Hermosillo, Sonora, on page 280 (copy at AHS).

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Documents

Immigrants to a Developing Society. the Chinese in Northern Mexico, 1875-1932