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Por NathanJones |

Mexican women also immigated to China to marry Chinese men.
At least that was the story my mother told me. She said the prospective brides were led to believe they would live a certain way, but that many wound up as concubines, or worse.

Supposedly, average Mexicans raised millions of silver pesos to repatriate the women who arrived in Acapulco in ships with stories to tell.

Pancho Villa was notorious for his anti-Chinese fervor. I've heard he executed all Chinese in his territory.

When I was in Hong Kong and Macau I saw many Mexican pesos with "chop" marks. The Chinese, as well as Persians, Arabs and many other people in Asia and Africa used the peso as their currency.

They hammered into the coins chop marks, incised markings to indicate they were currency in their particular jurisdiction.

Around 1905 Mexico changed the legend on its coins to "Estados Unidos Mexicanos.," and switched to the current peso.

But people all over the world believed "Republica Mexicana" meant pure silver. So Mexico continued, still continues, to issue Ocho Reales silver coins labeled Republica Mexicana for export with the date 1898.

Many people use the silver Ocho Reales for body adornment. Necklaces of money, such as they wear in Burma, and Thailand. It's their form of savings.

There was a large wave of Chinese and Japanese immigration into Mexico at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In fact, the first border controls between the US and Mexico were put in place only in 1892 and then it was basically one guy in El Paso named Leonidas Giles that comprised the border patrol.

When the U.S. government realized that a lot of the people crossing the Mexico-U.S. border where actually Chinese and not Mexican, they tightened up inspection along the southern border. This was around 1901 and was the first time there were real controls on the Mexico-U.S. border and then only to keep out the Chinese, not the Mexicans.

Arturo, sounds like the Chinese were even more feared and discriminated against than the Mexicans! When I was in Manzanillo in 2003 I went into a mercantile store and owners were Chinese speaking Spanish. I have to assume there were other Chinese heritage families to keep their lines still appearing Chinese. I asked if they had been born in Mexico and they said their family had been in Mexico as long as they could remember. I had forgotten about them until this discussion.

In El Durazno, Jerez Zacatecas I remember my father saying when he visited in 1936 they asked him about "colored" people, if they really were black? These were people not traveled or educated and who had no idea the history of the peoples of Jerez or Zacatecas in general. Slavery in Mexico was something they knew nothing about. Their world revolved around subsisting in their immediate community in those days. They were still in the survival mode and to this day still discuss the revolution that broke up their community and scattered their families. Now they have children and grandchildren living stateside so the world is much larger to them now. I found listening to the seniors in their 80's and 90's was the highlight of my visit there. I found the families there still very clannish. We attended a De la Cueva wedding and the comment was made the bride's family was new to El Durazno, they had only been there 50 years. The old ways still prevailed, the groom was 37
living stateside and the bride was 18 living at home in El Durazno. He had to prove he could provide for her before her parents would consent to the wedding. Some things take a long time to change...
Linda in B.C.

Arturo Ramos wrote:
Emilie:

There was a large wave of Chinese and Japanese immigration into Mexico at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In fact, the first border controls between the US and Mexico were put in place only in 1892 and then it was basically one guy in El Paso named Leonidas Giles that comprised the border patrol.

When the U.S. government realized that a lot of the people crossing the Mexico-U.S. border where actually Chinese and not Mexican, they tightened up inspection along the southern border. This was around 1901 and was the first time there were real controls on the Mexico-U.S. border and then only to keep out the Chinese, not the Mexicans.

In reference to the Chinese in Mexico.

In 1890 a hotel and restaurant was open in Torreon, Coahuila by a man by the
name of Foon Chuck. This man immigrated to Tamaulipas where he had a
hacienda called the "Hacienda Canton".
The Chinese were thrown out of the US. These Chinese went to Mexicali,
Guaymas, Mazatlan, Chihuahua and Tampico to name a few. They went to work in
the haciendas and the railroad.

By the 1910's many Chinese had married mexican women. In 1925 a law was
passed prohibiting mexican women marrying Chinese men.

There is a great story about the Chinese and Torreon, very interesting!

Mickey

Genealogy Research