How Anti-Chinese Propaganda Helped Fuel the Creation of Mestizo Identity in Mexico Freddy Martinez - Remezcla | |
go to original June 15, 2017 |
Chinese Mexican pilgrims march to the Basilica de Guadalupe, Mexico’s holiest shrine (Pilar Chen Chi)
Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940 by Jason Oliver Chang Check it out on Amazon.com |
Like most revolutions, the one Mexico fought at the beginning of the 20th century was brutal. Over a million people, both civilian and revolutionaries alike, died in the span of ten years. And although, by its end, a new constitution guaranteeing indigenous civil rights was enacted, life was still no better: assassination, disease, and violence left the Mexican state nearly ruined.
Yet even the bloodiest revolution has its icons. Mexico’s quintessential revolutionaries, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, have become so recognizable today that it’s easy to take their politics at face-value and romanticize what they fought for. Jason Oliver Chang, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, wants to change that. Speaking in late May at the Museum of Chinese in America, he gave a lecture prepared from his most recently published book, Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940.
Uncovering the forgotten history of anti-Chinese propaganda and violence documented in the years around the revolution, the book reads like a dossier of state secrets. In one chilling example, you’ll read how Pancho Villa gave orders to execute 60 Chinese prisoners by throwing them down a mineshaft. Magonistas, along with many other revolutionary parties on the left and right, used antichinismo — anti-Chinese rhetoric and policy making — to popularize their own movements. But those incidents pale in comparison to the massacre that occurred in Torreón, Coahuila, during one of the first battles of the revolution. There, 303 Chinese men, women, and children were killed — some even butchered — by both civilians and soldiers, marking the bloodiest incident of anti-Chinese violence ever recorded in the Americas.
Chang, who spent the past ten years researching his book, argues that not only are revolutionaries like Villa implicated in racist, propagandistic bullshit – so is the Mexican state established after the revolution and by extension so too, as he calls it, the state-sponsored nationalistic identity of Mestizo. To Chang, Mestizo identity of the 1920s and 30s was nothing more than colonial leftovers from Spanish rule. It centered white Europeans while ignoring the basic social fabric of Mexico (an argument, incidentally, also advanced by the Afro-Mexican activists who pushed for recognition on Mexico’s national census). What better way, then, to integrate a rebellious indigenous community than establishing a collective identity made in opposition to Mexico’s Chinese? As Mexico’s ultimate Other, the Chinese were easy targets.
After his lecture, Chang and I spoke at a Thai restaurant in Chinatown to further discuss his book and talk about its implications.
Read the interview at Remezcla
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