Looking Like the Enemy: Japanese Mexicans, the Mexican State, and US Hegemony, 1897–1945

Chapter Three: The Japanese and Post-revolutionary Mexico, 1920s and 1930s

74 chapter three The Japanese and Post-revolutionary Mexico, 1920s and 1930s If the immigration of Orientals is not soon checked, it will drive Mexican labor completely out of the Mexican Pacific coastlands, said a member of the Mexican Congress. —Chicago Daily Tribune, March 13, 1928 By the 1920s it had been over a decade since the Japanese government created a self-imposed restriction of labor to the United States, which in turn developed a diplomatic entanglement between Mexico, Japan, and the United States. Newspaper articles and the general sentiment continued to preach that the United States was better off without Japanese and the Japanese were best suited with a people more like them, such as Mexicans. One US paper stated, “We offend the Japanese, They Hurt Us . . . Mexicans and Japanese evidently do not conflict.”1 In the decade 1910–20 very little had changed with regard to the Japanese presence in North America. The economic viability of the Japanese in the United States remained challenged and the racialization of the Japanese at the hemispheric level persisted. As the violent period of the Mexican Revolution contracted, the Japanese community emerged psychologically traumatized but intact and stronger in some locations. During the post-revolutionary era there were numerous Japanese merchants who ran small businesses throughout Mexico that contributed to local, regional, and international markets. During the 1930s one particular Japanese Mexican rose to prominence within Japanese and Mexican business circles. Dr. Kiso Tsuru was considered the most important Japanese entrepreneur in Mexico in the decade leading up to the World War II.2 A popular magazine of the early twentieth century concluded, “If one could credit any single person with attempting to advance Japanese trade in Mexico, it would be Dr. Tsuru.”3 This chapter discusses the Japanese experience during the complex period known as post-revolutionary Mexico, roughly the two decades before The Japanese and Post-revolutionary Mexico, 1920s and 1930s • 75 World War II. Mexico’s attempt to rebuild was multifaceted and included reconfigured concepts of identity, nationhood, and debates on whether Mexico saw the need for immigrants during this period of reconstruction. Similar to other countries in the Americas, a discussion ensued regarding which type of immigrant best suited Mexico’s needs and posed the least risk to its identity. Mexico, like other countries, was swept up by new scientific and pseudoscientific (scientific racism) ideas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Ideas such as social Darwinism, positivism, and eugenics were discussed by many leading elites, some known as cientificos , in the hope that Mexico could shed its so-called backwardness caused by its indigenous past and the hybridity or mestizaje that resulted from the mixing of Indians, Spaniards, blacks, mestizos, and mulattos.4 This chapter examines the challenges faced during the postrevolutionary era by the established Japanese population in Mexico. Although this period represented a time of change and upward mobility for the settled Japanese community, it was also a period of vulnerability as the economic crisis of the 1930s was coupled with an increase in nativism directed toward the Japanese. This chapter also covers the emerging formation of the Mexican state, which was not a hegemonic force, but rather, due to strong local and regional grassroots organizations, peasants, and caciques (chief or local leader), the government allowed substantial autonomy to many regions in Mexico.5 As a result I argue that the “decentered ” political apparatus created in Mexico after the 1920s contributed to a unique Mexican political apparatus, which directly affected the Japanese Mexican experience. The two decades leading up to World War II also epitomize the triangular relationship between Japan, Mexico, and the United States that continued on a collision course. Post-revolutionary Mexico: Reconstruction, Indigenismo, and Mexicanidad When the violent period of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) came to an end, 1 million Mexicans were dead, millions had been displaced, hundreds of thousands sought refuge in the United States, and overall, Mexico’s industrial complex was virtually destroyed. As the decade of the 1920s emerged, Mexico remained mired in revolutionary zeal, full-scale combat transitioned to localized upheavals, and the country began the arduous process of reconstruction. The new decade also tested Mexico on the diplomatic front as it engaged the United States on important issues 76 • Chapter Three that ranged from land and oil expropriation to its cordial and friendly relations with Japan. During this post-revolutionary era Mexico entered...