AmaryllisTV

nezua:

zuky:

This is a caravan of 500 Chinese Mexicans, fleeing from Mexico to the US in 1917, in an episode of North American history that is all but forgotten, part of a social phenomenon known at the time as el movimiento antichino. In the early 1900s, Chinese Exclusion Laws were in full effect in the US. Many Chinese laborers and merchants had settled on the Mexican side of the southern US border. These Chinese were targeted in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign led by Mexican revolutionaries such as Pancho Villa. The purported rationale for this xenophobia was that the Chinese were taking Mexican jobs. Some theorists believe that anti-Chinese sentiment was a key component in the creation of a racialized Mexican national identity. Hundreds of Chinese were murdered, thousands were put on ships back to China (often with Mexican wives).

In 1916, US General John J. Pershing led 10,000 troops across the Mexican border on a mission to hunt down and kill Pancho Villa. He sought and received field assistance from certain Chinese communities in northern Mexico. Chinese restaurants and laundromats fed and clothed Pershing’s troops. In the end, the mission failed and Pancho Villa got away. For the Chinese who had aided Pershing, staying in Mexico was probably unwise. Pershing received a special exception to Chinese Exclusion Laws from the US president himself, and brought a bedraggled column of 500 Chinese refugees into the US southwest in 1917.

i suddenly remember my father always saying that there was chinese in our family line. it was sort of a joke i think he told, or a way of laughing at something people would say about him, not sure. when i asked him about it in the last few years trying to figure out all the elements of my background, he backed off. said something noncommittal. he’s a poet, so you have to be careful about quoting him directly. the saddest part of my family histories, i feel, is how the roots faded or were burned away as we moved sideways or upways or around the forces that affected our destinies. i always enjoy kai’s history reminders as well as any others i happen across. the stories must not be stolen or hidden. we are here to make sure they are told, they live on, and our truths resound.