The Clements Center for Southwest studies sponsored a Brown Bag Lecture on Wednesday featuring Julia María Schiavone-Camacho titled “Crossing Boundaries, In Between Homelands: Expulsion, Diasporic Identities, and Memory of the Mexican Chinese, 1910-1980s,” in the Texana Room of the DeGolyer Library. Following the lecture, Schiavone-Camacho answered questions from the audience.
Julia María Schiavone-Camacho is an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she earned her Ph.D. in Borderlands History. An expert on a subject not extensively studied, she gave an informative presentation on the plight of the Mexican Chinese, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation filled with photos of original documents. In the words of Sherry Smith, history professor and associate director of the Clements Center, “[Julia] puts a face on this [topic] in the way others have not.”
Of all the Chinese immigrants arriving in Mexico, most of them settled in Sonora, which is in the north of the country near the Mexican-American border. While some Chinese intended to cross into the United States, others found opportunity in Mexico and started new lives there. Because of United States legislation and Chinese cultural and gender roles, most of the immigrants were male.
Many men found success in Mexico in terms of both business and, as Schiavone-Camacho says, “romance.” She explained that there was no widespread fear of the immigrants until the Mexican Revolution, when “anti-Chinese campaigns came from the working and middle class” that “characterized Chinese men as abusive to women” in order “to deter women from relationships.”
After that, many Chinese men were deported to the U.S. and then to China; their families usually left with them. Once in China, many of the Mexican women found it difficult to cope with a different culture. After years of attempting to persuade the Mexican government to allow them to return, Mexican leaders finally allowed official repatriation in the 1960s.
There will be other Brown Bag Lectures throughout the semester. Students are encouraged to attend to learn more about the Southwest.
