La Chinesca is a neighborhood located in the Mexican city of Mexicali. The location is home to about 15,000 people of Chinese origin, historically the largest Chinese community in Mexico. While this number does not compare to other cities worldwide with a prominent Chinese diaspora, early in the 20th century Mexicali was numerically and culturally more Chinese than other immigrant groups. The Chinese arrived to the area as laborers for the Colorado River Land Company, an American enterprise which designed and built an extensive irrigation system in the Valley of Mexicali. Some immigrants came from the United States, often fleeing anti-Chinese policies there, while others sailed directly from China.
Many of the Chinese laborers who came to the irrigation system stayed on after its completion, congregating in an area of Mexicali today known as Chinesca. During Prohibition in the United States, many Chinese laborers and farmers came to the town to open bars, restaurants and hotels to cater their American clients, Chinesca eventually housed just about all of the city's casinos and bars, and a tunnel system to connect bordellos and opium dens to Calexico on the U.S. side. Bootleggers also used this route to supply the U.S. with alcohol purchased in Mexico.[1]
By 1920, Mexicali's Chinese population outnumbered the Mexican 10,000 to 700.[2] A group of 5,000 single Chinese males started the Asociación China, a Mexicali social organization at least partly devoted to finding Chinese wives from overseas. This organization remains active to present day. In 1927, a series of Tong wars here and other parts of Northern Mexico erupted over control of gambling and prostitution rings. Mexican alarm over the Chinese organized crime led to the government-encouraged Movimiento Anti-Chino. In the late 1920s, a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that swept the country and led to the torture and murder of hundreds of Chinese in northern Mexico. However, the Chinese in this city were numerous enough and politically strong enough to protect themselves.
The percentage of Chinese was so high here that in the 1940s the town had only two cinemas, both of which played Chinese movies almost exclusively. However, in the later half of the 20th century, steady influx of Mexican migrants here diluted the Chinese population, until once again they became a minority.[1]
After anti-Chinese sentiment faded, more Chinese arrived here, and it became the Mexican headquarters for the Kuomintang, or the Nationalist Chinese Party and the Anti-Communist League.[3] After events during World War II and the Chinese Communist Revolution, a large number of Chinese refugees came to Mexico in the mid-century. Ho Feng-Shan, the Chinese diplomat known as "China's Schindler" is known to have visited Mexicali.[4] The town was the site of the Taiwan based Republic of China consulate in the 1960s until Mexico withdrew its recognition of the island nation, ending immigration of ethnic Chinese to this area.[1] For a while after 1960, Chinese Mexican community organizations continued to stay strong: at the beginning of the 1960s new Chinese Mexican seminaries continued to open, and in the 1970s a school opened to teach art, Chinese culture, and sports to Chinese Mexicans living in downtown Mexicali.[5]
La Chinesca exists near the U.S. border close to the intersection of Avenida Madero and Calle Melgar. The neighborhood boasts more Chinese restaurants per capita than any other place in Mexico, more than 100 for the whole city, most with Cantonese-style cuisine. Local Chinese associations struggle to preserve the arts and culture of the homeland through the sponsorship of Chinese festivals, calligraphy clubs, and language classes. However, much of Chinese cultural life here has blended with local Mexican and American traditions to create a unique, hybrid culture.[1]
Like many Chinese restaurants outside of Asia, cooks here have adapted their native cuisine to local tastes. For example, restaurants here serve their dishes with a small bowl of a sauce that is similar to a steak sauce, common in Northern Mexico. In many of these restaurants, it is not uncommon to see Chinese men wearing stiff straw cowboy hats, meeting over hamburgers and green tea and speaking a mixture of Cantonese and Spanish. Along with burgers and chow mein, many restaurants here also offer shark-fin tacos.[1]
Since 2000, new migrants from China to Mexicali come from many of the same areas as before 1960, with perhaps 90% from Guangdong or Hong Kong.[6]
The following are Chinese associations and organizations based in Mexicali (Auyon Gerardo 2003:89-102). The associations are formed according to regional origin, surname, occupation, religion, or other characteristics.
Other organizations include (Auyon Gerardo 2003:105-115):
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