The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940 / Robert Chao Romero.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Romero, Robert Chao, 1972-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chinese--Mexico--History.

Chinese.

Race discrimination--Mexico--History.

Race discrimination.

Immigrants--Mexico--History.

Immigrants.

Mexico--Race relations.

Mexico.

Mexico--Emigration and immigration--Government policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Tucson : University of Arizona Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

An estimated 60,000 Chinese entered Mexico during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, constituting Mexico's second-largest foreign ethnic community at the time. "The Chinese in Mexico" provides a social history of Chinese immigration to and settlement in Mexico in the context of the global Chinese diaspora of the era. Robert Romero argues that Chinese immigrants turned to Mexico as a new land of economic opportunity after the passage of the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. As a consequence of this legislation, Romero claims, Chinese immigrants journeyed to Mexico in order to gain illicit entry into the United States and in search of employment opportunities within Mexico's developing economy. Romero details the development, after 1882, of the "Chinese transnational commercial orbit," a network encompassing China, Latin America, Canada, and the Caribbean, shaped and traveled by entrepreneurial Chinese pursuing commercial opportunities in human smuggling, labor contracting, wholesale merchandising, and small-scale trade. Romero's study is based on a wide array of Mexican and U.S. archival sources. It draws from such quantitative and qualitative sources as oral histories, census records, consular reports, INS interviews, and legal documents. Two sources, used for the first time in this kind of study, provide a comprehensive sociological and historical window into the lives of Chinese immigrants in Mexico during these years: the Chinese Exclusion Act case files of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the 1930 Mexican municipal census manuscripts. From these documents, Romero crafts a vividly personal and compelling story of individual lives caught in an extensive network of early transnationalism.

Contents:

Introduction: Chinese immigration to Mexico and the transnational commercial orbit

The dragon in Big Lusong: Chinese immigration to Mexico and the global Chinese diaspora

Transnational journeys: transnational contract labor recruitment, smuggling, and familial chain migration

Gender, interracial marriage, and transnational families

Employment and community: coolies, merchants, and the Tong wars

Mexican sinophobia and the anti-Chinese campaigns

Conclusion: re-envisioning Mestizaje and "Asian-Latino" studies.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-299-19159-2

0-8165-0819-4

OCLC:

759000865