Democrats, slavery, Irish, and Indians

[ilbegone]

You know how "Latino activists" like to harp on such things as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and other such that no one alive today had anything to do with?

Yep, just like like the blather about pre-1865 slavery in the U.S and all that hot air about slavery being outlawed in Mexico by this clause from the 1820 Plan de Iguala and the very short lived 1st Mexican Empire:

Todos los habitantes de la Nueva España, sin distinción alguna de europeos, africanos ni indios, son ciudadanos de esta monarquía con opción á todo empleo, según su mérito y virtudes.

When the truth is that inherited involuntary servitude (perpetual multi-generational peon slavery) continued on Mexican haciendas until the late 1920's. Cesar Chavez's grandfather escaped slavery from an hacienda in the 1880's by fleeing to the United States. There were continued slave raids on northern frontier Indian tribes for the southern Mexican "domestic servant" trade to at least the mid 19th century.

So, it should come as no surprise that people with Chinese ancestry had a rough time in Mexico up until the mid 20th century, including deportation and splitting up families - not across a mere border, but across an ocean.

I need to look at it more and flesh it out a little better than this offering...

However...

I knew that the railroad companies were recruiting in Mexico for laborers for U.S. railway construction and maintenance during the 1880's, and I knew that the Chinese Exclusion Act was in 1882, but I didn't know that American railroad builders took Chinese into Mexico to work on railway construction and in American owned mines in Mexico beginning in the 1880's. It all fits into the puzzle - Chinese imported from the U.S. and China to Mexico and Mexicans into the U.S. where they had never geographically been before.

I also knew about some of the race hatred towards Chinese in Mexico, but not much beyond a couple of local family anecdotes and some documentation concerning Chihuahua. However, I had no idea of why any Chinese would ever go to Mexico, of all places.

There was a lot of resentment in Mexico over the presence of foreign labor, and it appears that what happened to Chinese in California in the mid to late 19th century also happened with more vehemence to Chinese in the late 19th to the early to mid 20th century in Mexico. There was a lot of murdering of Mexican Chinese during the 1910 Mexican revolution, with Pancho Villa's bunch probably the most sanguinary, I think they killed every Chinaman they found. I believe this had not just to do with taking jobs from the locals, but suspicion about those who, in a land of rich and poor with no one in between, moved from foreign laborer to prosperous foreign merchant in a relatively short period of time.

Then there were the mass deportations where almost 3/4 of the Mexican population of Chinese, their Mexican wives, and their mixed Mexican/Chinese children were simply dumped across the northern border (with a U.S. re-deportation to China) or directly put on ships headed from Mexico to China. Some of these deportations were as late as the 1930's.

There was eventually some repatriation of the Mexican women and their mixed children, but those of unmixed Chinese blood were not allowed to return (I believe this to also be true for native born Mexican Chinese, but there would probably be few of those - Just like in the United States they generally didn't bring women with them, which in the United States begat a trade in Chinese prostitutes - unless they were the children of Chinese prostitutes also brought to Mexico. There was 50 to 70 years of this stuff).


An article I found just now Chinese-Mexicans celebrate repatriation to Mexico http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-mexica...064302534.html

A review on a book titled “The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940” I'm going to order has these statements:

...“There’s this rich history of the Chinese in Mexico that’s been forgotten for the most part,”...“It’s been forgotten because it’s a dark chapter in Mexican history, unfortunately.”...


...“Despite the violence perpetuated against Chinese immigrants, they continued to persevere and have contributed to Mexico’s diversity,” Romero said. “It is a great testament to their courage and will to survive in spite of great adversity and prejudice against them.”...


...Maderista forces entered Torreón on May 13, 1911, and two days later, they defeated the Mexican army. On May 15, Madero’s forces and civilian mobs targeted Chinese homes and businesses.

Many Chinese residents were killed and robbed. Their private residences and business were ransacked and destroyed. About 300 Chinese lost their lives. Romero said that this was the worst [single] act of violence committed against any Chinese diaspora of the Americas during the 20th century...

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla...ed-179351.aspx

Another book that might be interesting:

MAMI


by Rebeca Lau

Mami: My Grandmother’s Journey is the unconventional story of a Chinese woman in the southern border city of Tapachula in Mexico in the 20th century. Her arranged marriage, her escape from the Japanese Army, her life in a country so distant and so different from her own, her struggles and successes, her internal conflicts. It is a story that interweaves the past and present of three generations living under one roof filled with cultural clashes between Chinese and Mexican traditions.

Rebeca Lau

Another one:

Chinese Mexicans: Transpacific Migration and the Search for a Homeland, 1910-1960

At the turn of the twentieth century, a wave of Chinese men made their way to the northern Mexican border state of Sonora to work and live. The ties--and families--these Mexicans and Chinese created led to the formation of a new cultural identity: Chinese Mexican. During the tumult of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, however, anti-Chinese sentiment ultimately led to mass expulsion of these people. Julia Maria Schiavone Camacho follows the community through the mid-twentieth century, across borders and oceans, to show how they fought for their place as Mexicans, both in Mexico and abroad.

Tracing transnational geography, Schiavone Camacho explores how these men and women developed a strong sense of Mexican national identity while living abroad—in the United States, briefly, and then in southeast Asia where they created a hybrid community and taught their children about the Mexican homeland. Schiavone Camacho also addresses how Mexican women challenged their legal status after being stripped of Mexican citizenship because they married Chinese men. After repatriation in the 1930s-1960s, Chinese Mexican men and women, who had left Mexico with strong regional identities, now claimed national cultural belonging and Mexican identity in ways they had not before.

There's another book I found about Chinese in both the U.S and Mexico but it had the cliche "vibrant community" and what appeared to be excessive race baiting rather than presentation of a study in the review (reminiscent of Howard Zinn), so it's probably a sensationalist crock of far left, frothing at the mouth ethnic studies professor, "social justice", masturbating to the mirror bullshit.

To conclude, just about anything negative about American history trotted out by "Latino activists" to make a case about long term, persistent, continuing white racism can find an equal or more negative parallel in Mexican history, and no one has to cherry pick, exaggerate, or manufacture the facts.