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

2. Chinos, Antichinistas, Chineras, and Chineros: The Anti-Chinese Movement in Sonora and Chinese Mexican Responses, 1910s–early 1930s

39 chapter two Chinos, Antichinistas, Chineras, and Chineros The Anti-­ Chinese Movement in Sonora and Chinese Mexican Responses, 1910s–Early 1930s In 1917, Juan R. Mexía wrote to José María Arana, the founder of the first organized anti-­ Chinese campaign in Sonora and, by extension, in Mexico to urge the leader of the movement to visit Mexía’s unnamed community . Mexía had heard Arana speak in Nogales, Sonora, and believed that one of his speeches would be advantageous in Mexía’s town, where “contented Asians are united by indissoluble bonds of friendship and caring with some Mexicans who have forgotten their true roles.”1 He hoped that Arana’s charismatic anti-­ Chinese rhetoric would inspire local Chinese-­ friendly Mexicans, whom anti-­ Chinese crusaders derided as chineras and chineros (Chinese-­ loving individuals), to break their bonds with Chinese. Destroying the strong Chinese-­ Mexican ties that had developed in Sonora over the previous decades became a central anti-­ Chinese goal. Mexicans and Chinese nonetheless sustained their relationships during the era of anti-­ Chinese organizing in Sonora, which lasted from the Mexican Revolution through the Great Depression. Antichinistas failed to recruit all Mexicans to their cause. Rather, a chasm opened in local communities and the larger state. Groups of Mexican campaigners worked against the small but highly visible Chinese population, paying special attention to Chinese-­ Mexican liaisons. Other Mexicans, by contrast, used 40 | Chinese Settlement and Local Responses their local cultural, economic, and organizational resources to maintain their connections with Chinese, often with the support of local authorities and communities. Attesting to the strength of their relationships, Chinese Mexicans carried on with their lives in spite of severe and increasing hatred and persecution. When Mexican workers began to return from the United States during the depression, some Mexicans scorned the Chinese as undesirable foreigners who took jobs and resources from “real” Mexicans—an ironic mirror of the sentiment against Mexicans in the United States. Since the Chinese had established businesses and become a visible petit bourgeois class, they were an easy scapegoat for the economic troubles that beset Sonoran communities. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Anti-­Chinese Movement The Chinese had experienced prejudice since they first arrived in Sonora in the late nineteenth century. Negative attitudes and jokes abounded, and for more than fifteen years, an anti-­ Chinese newspaper circulated.2 Some Mexicans perceived Chinese as different and foreign. North American and European immigrants were insulated from this pattern by the legacy of Spanish colonialism and by Sonoran notions of ethnic distinctiveness that privileged lighter-­ skinned foreigners. Even so, anti-­ Chinese sentiment was neither widespread nor organized in Sonora until the revolutionary era.3 The revolution set into motion vast social change, however. Among the transformations it brought were challenges to traditional gender norms. Social revolutions have often allowed people to question sexual mores. As all members of the society—men, women, and children—mobilize in support of the struggle, people become freer to forge new types of relationships . After the violent phase of a revolution ends, people engage in more “personal” conflicts over social norms.4 In this way, the Mexican Revolution made it ever more possible for Mexican women and Chinese men, as well as Mexicans and Chinese more generally, to form new connections, angering some Sonorans. The fighting and chaos of the Mexican Revolution did not forestall Chinese immigration to Mexico.5 In Sonora, the revolution allowed Chinese businesses to flourish because most Mexican men were active in civil conflicts and had no opportunity to establish enterprises to compete with Chi- Chinos, Antichinistas, Chineras, and Chineros | 41 nese shops. As towns as well as mining and railroad communities continued to need goods and services, revolutionaries of all factions relied on the provisions Chinese supplied. As foreigners, the Chinese maintained a neutral position and thus could cater to all of the revolutionary splinter groups without much difficulty. Further strengthening their position, Chinese establishments replaced German, French, and Spanish entrepreneurs who left Mexico as traditional trade connections with Europe diminished during World War I, which overlapped with the revolution.6 The Mexican Revolution and Mexican outmigration, partially as a consequence of U.S. labor shortages during World War I, set notions of race, citizenship, and mestizaje in flux. Revolutionaries repudiated the Porfirian tradition of privileging foreigners and fair-­ skinned Mexicans. Some Sonorans began increasingly to resent Chinese and their purportedly undeserved economic success...