Crossing boundaries, claiming a homeland: The Mexican chinese transpacific journey to becoming Mexican, 1930s-1960s

Pacific Historical Review

Volumn 78, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 545-577

  Camacho, Julia María Schiavone ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ASIAN IMMIGRANT; CULTURAL IDENTITY; DIASPORA; GREAT DEPRESSION; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION; INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION; NATIONALISM; NINETEENTH CENTURY; POPULATION MIGRATION; SETTLEMENT HISTORY; SOCIAL EXCLUSION; SOCIAL HISTORY;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; MEXICO [NORTH AMERICA]; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 70350721827     PISSN: 00308684     EISSN: 15338584     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/phr.2009.78.4.545     Document Type: Article

References (154)

1. Oral history interview with Alfonso Wong Campoy, Oct. 10, 2004, Navojoa, Sonora, in author's possession. The oral history interviews conducted for this project will eventually be available to other researchers at the Oral History Institute of the University of Texas at El Paso. All translations from Spanish into English are by the author; the original recordings or copies of the archival documents and unpublished papers are available from her.
2. Ibid.
3. See Erika Lee, "Orientalisms in the Americas: A Hemispheric Approach to Asian American History," Journal of Asian American Studies, 8 (2005), 235-256.
4. I address these movements in my as-yet unpublished book manuscript, Julia María Schiavone Camacho, "Becoming Mexican Across the Pacific: Expulsion, Gendered Citizenship, and Diasporic Imaginings, 1930s-1960s."
5. It is difficult to estimate how much of their love for Mexico was heartfelt and how much was strategic. A seemingly genuine love for the homeland emerges in the many communications of the Mexican Chinese, as well as the oral history interviews I conducted. I explore this further in my book manuscript. Relations between China and Japan became increasingly hostile in the early 1930s as Japan seized control of parts of northern China, beginning with Manchuria in September 1931. Such actions eventually led to the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937-1945 (the First Sino-Japanese War was in 1894-1895).
6. See Hsi-Sheng Ch'i, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937-1945 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1982), 27, 40, 42-43
7. Yun-han Li, "The Origins of the War: Background of the Lukouchiao Incident, July 7, 1937," in Paul K. T. Sih, ed., Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 (Hicksville, N.Y., 1977), 3-5.
8. See Lok C. D. Siu, Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama (Stanford, Calif., 2005)
9. Jeffrey Lesser, ed., Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism (Durham, N.C., 2003)
10. Lesser, A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy (Durham, N.C., 2007)
11. William Safran, "Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return," Diasporas, 1 (1991), 83-99
12. and James Clifford, "Diasporas," Cultural Anthropology, 9 (1984), 302-338.
13. Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore, 1991)
14. Wang, "Sojourning: The Chinese Experience in Southeast Asia," in Anthony Reid, ed., Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese (Honolulu, 1996), 1-14
15. Wang, Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese (Singapore, 1981).
16. The Chinese who traveled to the Americas emigrated largely from the city of Canton (today Guangzhou) and surrounding areas in Guangdong Province, not only because of population growth, economic transformation, political turmoil, religious persecution, and natural disaster in the region, but also owing to this region's key role in Chinese history, especially China's relationship with the external world. Chinese emigrated from Taishan County in particular. See Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston, 1991), 5-8
17. Madeline Yuan-yin Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882-1943 (Stanford, Calif., 2000), 1-5
18. and June Mei, "Economic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850-1882," Modern China, 5 (1979), 463-501.
19. Until 1960 over half of all Chinese in the United States came from Taishan County. See Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home, 3,
20. and Mei, "Economic Origins of Emigration," 465.
21. Sonora was the Mexican state with the highest numbers of Chinese in every census year between 1900 and 1930, with the exception of 1927, when the state had the second-highest Chinese population. The following are the numbers of Chinese men in Sonora listed for each census year: 1900: 850; 1910: 4,486; 1921: 3,639; 1927: 3,758; 1930: 3,571.
22. See José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, El movimiento antichino en México (1871-1934): Problemas del racismo y del nacionalismo durante la Revolución Mexicana [The anti-Chinese movement in Mexico (1871-1934): Problems of racism and nationalism during the Mexican Revolution] (Mexico City, 1991), 77, 78, 109, 127, 150,
23. and Kif Augustine-Adams, "Making Mexico: Legal Nationality, Chinese Race, and the 1930 Population Census," Law and History Review, 27 (2009), at ssrn.com/abstract=1033061, accessed June 1, 2009.
24. Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003)
25. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, "La comunidad china en el desarrollo de Sonora" [The Chinese community in the development of Sonora], in Cynthia Radding de Murrieta, ed., Historia General de Sonora, Tomo IV, Sonora Moderno, 1880-1929 [General history of Sonora, Vol. 4, 1880-1929] (6 vols., Hermosillo, Mex., 1997), 4: 198-202
26. Hu-DeHart, "Coolies, Shopkeepers, Pioneers: The Chinese of Mexico and Peru (1849-1930)," Amerasia, 15 (1989), 91-116.
27. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, "Latin America in Asia-Pacific Perspective," in Arif Dirlik, ed., What is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea (New York, 1998), 251-282
28. Hu-DeHart, "Coolies, Shopkeepers, Pioneers" Siu, Memories of a Future Home; Isabelle Lausent-Herrera, "Mujeres olvidadas: Esposas, concubinas, e hijas de los inmigrantes chinos en el Perú republicano" [Forgotten women: Wives, concubines, and daughters of Chinese immigrants to republican Peru], in Scarlett O'Phelan Godoy and Margarita Zegarra Florez, eds., Mujeres, familias y sociedad en la historia de América Latina, siglos XVIII-XXI [Women, family, and society in Latin American history, eighteenth to twenty-first centuries] (Lima, 2006), 287-312.
29. Wong Campoy interview.
30. Gerardo Rénique, "Race, Region, and Nation: Sonora's Anti-Chinese Racism and Mexico's Postrevolutionary Nationalism, 1920s-1930s," in Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, eds., Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003), 219-226
31. Rénique, "Anti-Chinese Racism, Nationalism and State Formation in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1920s-1930s," Political Power and Social Theory, 14 (2000), 95, 97, 102
32. Robert Chao Romero, "The Dragon in Big Lusong: Chinese Immigration and Settlement in Mexico, 1882-1940" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003)
33. Chao Romero, "'El destierro de los Chinos' [The exile of the Chinese]: Popular Perspectives on Chinese-Mexican Intermarriage in the Early Twentieth Century," Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 32 (2007), 113-144
34. Augustine-Adams, "Making Mexico. See also Julia María Schiavone Camacho, "Traversing Boundaries: Chinese, Mexicans, and Chinese Mexicans in the Formation of Gender, Race, and Nation in the Twentieth-Century U.S.-Mexican Borderlands" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at El Paso, 2006).
35. When Chinese first migrated to Sonora during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, they were concentrated in Guaymas, the port of entry, and in Hermosillo, the capital. They later moved to other areas. See Hu-DeHart, "Coolies, Shopkeepers, Pioneers," 99
36. Hu-DeHart, "La comunidad china
37. Hu-DeHart, Immigrants to a Developing Society: The Chinese in Northern Mexico, 1875-1932," Journal of Arizona History, 21 (1980), 275-312
38. Grace Peña Delgado, "In the Age of Exclusion: Race, Religion, and Chinese Identity in the Making of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands, 1863-1943" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000)
39. Peña Delgado, "At Exclusion's Southern Gate: Changing Categories of Race and Class among Chinese Fronterizos," in Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, eds., Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History (Durham, N.C., 2004)
40. and Schiavone Camacho, "Traversing Boundaries.
41. Rénique, "Race, Region, and Nation"
42. Rénique, "Anti-Chinese Racism
43. HuDeHart, "Racism and Anti-Chinese Persecution in Sonora, Mexico, 1876-1932, Amerasia, 9 (1982), 1-28
44. Chao Romero, "The Dragon in Big Lusong"
45. Chao Romero, "'El destierro de los Chinos.'"
46. Ibid.
47. The original name of the group was the Junta Comercial y de Hombres de Negocios de Magdalena. See Rénique, "Región, raza y nación en el antichinismo sonorense. Cultura regional y mestizaje en el México posrevolucionario" [Region, race, and nation in Sonoran anti-Chinese activism. Regional culture and mestizaje in postrevolutionary Mexico], unpublished paper, in author's possession.
48. On anti-Chinese campaigns in California, see Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley, 1971)
49. Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London, 1990).
50. Papers of José María Arana, Special Collections, University of Arizona Library, Tucson; Rénique, "Race, Region, and Nation"
51. Rénique, "Anti-Chinese Racism."
52. Ibid.
53. Schiavone Camacho, "Traversing Boundaries," 83-84.
54. Although I never saw a reference to La Malinche in the documents, it is possible that the popular Mexican discourse that sees women as potential traitors influenced anti-Chinese ideology and activity. See, for example, Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, trans. Lysander Kemp (New York, 1961)
55. Cristina González Hernández, Doña Marina, la Malinche y la formación de la identidad mexicana [Doña Marina, la Malinche, and the formation of Mexican identity] (Madrid, 2002)
56. and Rolando Romero and Amanda Nolacea Harris, eds., Feminism, Nation, and Myth: La Malinche (Houston, 2005).
57. On the expulsion of Chinese from Mexico, see Hu-DeHart, "Racism and Anti-Chinese Persecution;
58. Hu-DeHart, "La comunidad china;
59. Chao Romero, "The Dragon in Big Lusong"
60. Chao Romero, "'El destierro de los Chinos'"
61. Philip A. Dennis, "The Anti-Chinese Campaigns in Sonora, Mexico," Ethnohistory, 26 (1979), 65-80
62. Gómez Izquierdo, El movimiento antichino en México
63. Patricia Irma Figueroa Barkow, "El movimiento antichino en México de 1916-1935: Un caso de 'racismo económico'" [The anti-Chinese movement in Mexico of 1916-1935: A case of economic racism] (M.A. thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1976), 53-57
64. Alan Knight, "Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940," in Richard Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, Tex., 1990)
65. Moisés González Navarro, "Xenofobia y xenofilia en la Revolución Mexicana" [Xenophobia and xenophilia in the Mexican Revolution], in González Navarro, ed., México: El capitalismo nacionalista [Mexico: Nationalist capitalism] (Guadalajara, Mex., 2003)
66. Charles C. Cumberland, "The Sonora Chinese and the Mexican Revolution," Hispanic American Historical Review, 40 (1960), 191-211
67. Leo Michael Dambourges Jacques, "The Anti-Chinese Campaign in Sonora, Mexico, 1900-1931" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, 1974)
68. and Schiavone Camacho, "Traversing Boundaries."
69. Exp. [folder] 104-CH-1, caja [box] 28, Fondo [collection] Obregón-Calles, Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City. This archive has collections divided by presidential administrations, and card catalogs describe the contents of folders in each collection.
70. Trueba Lara, Los chinos en Sonora: Una historia olvidada [The Chinese in Sonora: A forgotten history] (Hermosillo, Mex., 1990), 51-60.
71. Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Albuquerque, 1995), 202.
72. See also Mercedes Carreras de Velasco, Los Mexicanos que devolvió la crisis, 1929-1932 [The Mexicans the crisis sent back, 1929-1932] (Mexico City, 1974).
73. Gómez Izquierdo, El movimiento antichino en México, 150, 161
74. Rénique, "Race, Region, and Nation," 230.
75. For example, the fathers of Luis Chan Valenzuela and Marta Elia Lau de Salazar hid in Sonora. See Schiavone Camacho, "Traversing Boundaries" oral history interview with Luis Chan Valenzuela, Oct. 11, 2004, Hermosillo, Sonora, in author's possession; and oral history interview with Marta Elia Lau de Salazar by Berenice Barreras Ayala (for the author), Aug. 19, 2004, Bacobampo, Sonora, in author's possession.
76. It is hard to quantify these movements. My book manuscript investigates them further.
77. File 55771, folders 718 A-D, boxes 514 and 515, Subject Correspondence, 1906-1932, Records of the Central Office, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Record Group 85 (RG 85), National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Case 6381, box 143
78. and Cases 6461-6462, box 145, Case Files, 1914-1947, District of Arizona, Tucson Division, Criminal, Records of the National Archives, Pacific Region, Laguna Niguel, Calif.
79. Lee, At America's Gates
80. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, N.J., 2004).
81. INS records set apart members of Mexican Chinese families by case numbers and naming patterns.
82. File 55771; Wong Campoy interview. Even though Alfonso Wong Campoy and his siblings used one of their father's and one of their mother's surnames, U.S. immigration agents recorded only their father's name, imposing on the family the dominant U.S. naming practice. INS records reveal other biases, which I treat in my book manuscript.
83. These are conservative figures based on INS files and Mexican consular and government records. The numbers of Mexican Chinese families, and the individuals they comprised, were probably higher. Archival sources suggest that between 400 and 600 Mexican women arrived in China with Chinese men. The records consistently point to the numerous children in these families. For example, those included in INS lists had an average of three to four children per family. Mauricio Fresco, a businessman and Honorary Mexican Vice Consul in Shanghai, noted in his reports that Dollar Line records accounted for at least 600 Mexican women and innumerable children who arrived in China on the steamship company's ships between 1931 and 1933 alone. The Mexican government later repatriated about 400 Mexican women and a high but unspecified number of their children in 1937-1938. Given the various figures, I have estimated that 500 families, which consisted of a minimum of 2,000 people, arrived in China. See file 55771
84. IV-341-13, Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Mexico City
85. exp. 546/3, caja 899, Fondo Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City
86. exp. 546.2/1, caja 714, Fondo Adolfo López Mateos, in ibid.
87. OM-149-5, 1960 [this is the file number], Archivo de Concentraciones, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Mexico City
88. and Felipe Pardinas, Relaciones diplomáticas entre China y México, 1898-1948, Caja 1 [Diplomatic relations between China and Mexico, 1898-1948, box 1] (Mexico City, 1982), 428-430, 461-465, 466-468, 471, 474, 475-476, 478-479.
89. File 55771
90. exp. 546.2/1. INS records and Ramón Lay Mazo's letters included the identical names for the children, without discrepancy, except for Lay Mazo's spelling of "Bentura" and the INS listing "Ventura." In this case, the children apparently used only their father's surname.
91. The outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War during the summer of 1937 prompted Cárdenas to repatriate Mexicans from China. On Cárdenas and the Sino-Japanese conflict, see Friedrich E. Schuler, Mexico Between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934-1940 (Albuquerque, 1998), 57, 94.
92. Exp. 546.2/1.
93. Wong Campoy interview.
94. Lausent-Herrera, "Mujeres olvidadas."
95. Wong Campoy interview. Similar to the relationship between Britain and Hong Kong, Macau remained a Portuguese colony until 1976, when it became a Chinese territory with a Portuguese administration. At the end of 1999, Macau came under China's sovereign control. R. D. Cremer, ed., Macau: City of Commerce and Culture (Hong Kong, 1987), 1, 103, 115, 119-120, 125
96. Steve Shipp, Macau, China: A Political History of the Portuguese Colony's Transition to Chinese Rule (Jefferson, N.C., 1997), 78.
97. Exp. 546.2/1
98. and 546.2/12, caja 714, Fondo Adolfo López Mateos;
99. oral history interview with José Serafón Anaya, Aug. 10, 2007, Kowloon, Hong Kong, in author's possession.
100. See, for example, D. A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Image and Tradition, 1531-2000 (New York, 2001).
101. IV-352-28, Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada;
102. OM-149-5, 1960.
103. China was in profound economic, social, political, and cultural transformation during most of the twentieth century. The changing dynamics of Macau, Hong Kong, and Guangdong Province during the Sino-Japanese War, World War II, the Communist Revolution, and the Cold War created complex boundaries for the Mexican Chinese to negotiate. According to Chen Jian, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong utilized "anti-foreign-imperialist propaganda ... to mobilize the Chinese masses" in the 1940s. Many Chinese probably viewed Mexicans and Mexican Chinese as foreigners during this time. Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), 13.
104. The populations of Macau and Hong Kong grew as refugees flooded into the colonies owing to war and revolution in the mid-twentieth century. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in the summer of 1937, Macau in particular experienced an overwhelming influx of refugees, especially after the fall of Shanghai in late 1937. The colony's population increased from 150,000 in the early 1930s to 350,000 by 1940. These trends continued during World War II, as thousands more refugees descended upon Macau, bringing the population to 600,000 by 1945. Although Japan occupied Hong Kong, forcing the British colony to surrender in 1941, Japanese leaders decided not to do the same in Macau. Unlike Great Britain, Portugal took a neutral stance in the war. Nonetheless, Japanese soldiers maintained a presence in Macau, and Japan's policy toward the colony became harsher as World War II progressed. During the Communist Revolution, refugees continued to enter the colony, which became a key sanctuary for people who wanted to escape communist rule. See Shipp, Macau, China, 81
105. John Hunter Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937-1945: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford, Calif., 1972), 54
106. Tsung-han Shen, "Food Production and Distribution for Civilian and Military Needs in Wartime China, 1937-1945," in Sih, ed., Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War, 168
107. and Chen, Mao's China, 17, 20, 26-34, 41.
108. OM-149-5, 1960.
109. Ibid.; exp. 546.2/1.
110. Ramón Lay Mazo referred to León Sosa Mazo as his nephew in his letters. It is common in Mexico to consider the children of first cousins as nephews and nieces. Many Mexican Chinese upheld informal Mexican social and familial practices such as these in China, which is part of why I view them as diasporic citizens.
111. Chiang Kai-shek had come to power in China during the late 1920s. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration had supported Chiang unilaterally during the period of Sino-American conflict in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Subsequent U.S. administrations would also support Chiang, against whose Nationalist forces Communists struggled during the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). In 1949 the Communists defeated the Nationalists, who fled to Taiwan. This put the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Guomindang (GMD), or Nationalist Party, in constant conflict across the Taiwan Strait, as the CCP wanted to include Taiwan in its new Chinese Communist state. See Joseph A. Camilleri, Chinese Foreign Policy: The Maoist Era and its Aftermath (Seattle, 1980), 7-8, 12, 31-34, 41, 197
112. Chen, Mao's China, 17, 165
113. and Boyle, China and Japan at War, 9-10, 20-21.
114. OM-149-5, 1960
115. exp. 546.2/1.
116. Ibid.
117. OM-149-5, 1960.
118. Exp. 546.2/1.
119. On conservative organizations and the rise of reactionary movements in Mexico, see Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Estampas de nacionalismo popular mexicano: Diez ensayos sobre cultura popular y nacionalismo [Imprints of popular Mexican nationalism: Ten essays on popular culture and nationalism] (Mexico City, 2003)
120. and Brígida Von Mentz, Ricardo Pérez Montfort, and Verena Radkau, eds., Fascismo y antifascismo en América Latina y México (apuntes históricos) [Fascism and antifascism in Latin America and Mexico (historical notes)] (Mexico City, 1984).
121. Exp. 546.2/1
122. OM-149-5, 1960.
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid.
126. Enrique Suárez Gaona, "Legitimación revolucionaria del poder en México? Los presidentes, 1910-1982 [Revolutionary legitimization of power in Mexico? The presidents, 1910-1982] (Mexico City, 1987), 75-77, 81-84
127. Héctor Aguilar Camín and Lorenzo Meyer, A la sombra de la Revolución Mexicana: Un ensayo de historia contemporanea de México, 1910-1989 [In the shadow of the Mexican Revolution: An essay on contemporary Mexican history, 1910-1989] (Mexico City, 1989), 98-99, 102, 187-235
128. Agustín Yáñez, Proyección universal de México; crónica del viaje realizado por el Presidente de México, ALM [Adolfo López Mateos], a India, Japón, Indonesia, y Filipinas, el año 1962 [Mexico's universal projection; Chronicle of the trip realized by Mexican president, ALM (Adolfo López Mateos)], to India, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the year 1962] (Mexico City, 1963), 8
129. Yánez, Misión económica, política y social en el Oriente: Una gira de trabajo y buena voluntad en favor de la amistad y la solidaridad por la India, el Japon, Indonesia y Filipinas, con base en los principios de la democracia, de la cultura y de la paz/ALM [Adolfo López Mateos] [Economic, political, and social mission in the Orient: A work and good relations tour in favor of friendship and solidarity in India, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, based on the principles of democracy, culture, and peace/ALM (Adolfo López Mateos)] (Mexico City, 1962)
130. Jörg Faust and Uwe Franke, "Attempts at Diversification: Mexico and the Pacific Asia," Pacific Review, 15 (2002), 299-324.
131. OM-149-5, 1960.
132. Exp. 546.2/12.
133. Schiavone Camacho, "Traversing Boundaries," 63-111.
134. See also, Juán Ramón Gutiérrez, "José María Arana y el comercio chino de Magdalena" [José María Arana and Magdalena's Chinese commerce], Historia de Sonora, 91 (1994), 2-3.
135. Alfredo G. Echeverría's organization continued to exist well after the expulsion of Chinese in the early 1930s. Indeed, the Campaña Nacionalista celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 1955. A banner commemorating the event is housed at the Museo de la Universidad de Sonora in Hermosillo. See oral history interviews with Leo Sandoval, Nov. 14 and 17, 2003, Hermosillo, Sonora, in author's possession. Sandoval began the interviews by showing me the banner and discussing what it represented. See also Sandoval, La Casa de Abelardo [Abelard's house] (Hermosillo, Mex., 1990).
136. When I gave a paper on this topic in Hermosillo, Sonora, numerous persons in the audience laughed boisterously at the absurdity of the suggestion because of the island's limited resources and historic lack of good land. Schiavone Camacho, "'Aunque vayamos a escarbar camotes amargos a la sierra, queremos México': Nacionalismo mexicano en China, 1930-1960, y la repatriación de la década de 1960 ['Even if we have to scrape bitter sweet potatoes in the sierra, we want Mexico': Mexican nationalism in China, 1930-1960, and repatriation during the 1960s], paper presented at the Simposio de Historia y Antropología de Sonora: Treinta años escribiendo la historia del noroeste de México [Sonoran history and anthropology symposium: thirty years writing the history of northwestern Mexico], Hermosillo, Sonora, Feb. 23-26, 2005.
137. On La Isla del Tiburón, see Miguel Tinker Salas, In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border during the Porfiriato (Los Angeles, 1997), 61.
138. Exp. 546.2/12.
139. OM-149-1 and OM-149-5, 1960
140. Exp. 546.2/1.
141. Exp. 546.2/1.
142. Wong Campoy interview.
143. Approximately 300 people repatriated in 1960. Alberto Antonio Loyola noted that 267 people repatriated in 1960 and 70 more remained in Communist China hoping to repatriate. Monica Cinco Basurto's father, Jorge Cinco, remembered that there were 365 repatriates in total. See Alberto Antonio Loyola, Chinos-mexicanos cautivos del comunismo: Su repatriación fue una gran proeza [Mexican-Chinese captives of communism: Their repatriation was a great exploit] (Mexico City, 1961)
144. and Monica Cinco Basurto, "China in Mexico: Yesterday's Encounter and Today's Discovery," in Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, ed., Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas (New York, 1999), 13-18.
145. "De Hong Kong vuelven mexicanos en avión" [Mexicans return from Hong Kong by plane]
146. " Repatriación de chinomexicanos" [Mexican Chinese repatriation]
147. and "Más repatriados de China, regresaron" [More repatriates from China, returned], Excélsior (Mexico City), Nov. 8, 16, 17, 1960.
148. Exp. 546.2/1
149. Wong Campoy interview. Dolores Campoy Wong Fang's two daughters stayed in Macau, making their homes there and later moving away. Irma Wong Campoy married a Brazilian in Macau and currently lives in San Francisco. Raquel Wong Campoy also married in Macau and later moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where she lives with her husband. Having established their own families, the women considered Macau their home at the time of the repatriation and did not desire to travel to Mexico with their mother and brothers.
150. Wong Campoy interview; exp. 546.2/1.
151. Wong Campoy interview.
152. Cinco Basurto vividly described the feeling of being between cultures. See Basurto, "China in Mexico," 13-18.
153. Wong Campoy interview.
154. Ibid.