If you’ve ever driven through Mexicali, you might’ve noticed something surprising: Chinese restaurants outnumber taco stands. The smell of soy sauce wafts through neighborhoods and people speak both Mandarin and Spanish. Fusion dishes like arroz frito norteño (fried rice with chile verde) have been a local staple for generations.
So here’s the real question: why does Mexico, especially in border towns like Mexicali, have such a large Chinese population? And why are Chinese Mexicans still excluded from the national identity banner of mestizaje?
The Chinese Were Welcomed … Until They Weren’t
Long before fusion food hit the streets, the Chinese came to Mexico looking for land and livelihood. Their numbers swelled after 1882, when the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and shut its doors. Mexico, with its warmer welcome and treaty with the Qing Empire, became the next best option.
As historian Rocio Gomez notes in “Chinese Mexicans: Mexico’s Forgotten and Overlooked Mestizos,” Chinese laborers were prized for their work ethic and resilience. Mexico’s finance minister at the time, Matías Romero, even argued that Chinese workers were ideally suited for farming in Mexico’s tropical south. By 1899, a formal treaty between Mexico and China allowed immigration under official protection.
But the welcome didn’t last.
They Built Businesses and Faced Backlash
Chinese immigrants work the land and bought it up. They opened shops, ran laundries, built railroads, and turned sweltering towns like Sonora and Mexicali into economic hubs.
“They came poor, got the worst land, got massacred—and still, they gave us food, culture, babies, and a work ethic that makes your cousin look lazy,” says the Instagram mini-doc from Brief Histeria, which went viral earlier this year.
But their economic success brought resentment. Gomez explains that, as Chinese men married Mexican women and raised children, Chinese Mexicans, they upended the rigid racial order. Mexicans viewed them as outsiders, even subhuman, and the government began a targeted anti-Chinese campaign.
That tension erupted violently in 1911, when over 300 Chinese were massacred in Torreón. Homes were burned. Entire families were erased.
In the decades that followed, Chinese immigrants were expelled from towns across Mexico. In response, many literally went underground. “In Mexicali, they built entire cities underground,” Brief Histeria narrates. “Homes, restaurants, even casinos with mahjong and dumplings.”
Love, Babies, and the Lost Claim to Mestizaje
Despite facing brutality and erasure, many Chinese men remained. And many Mexican women saw something others didn’t: great husbands and fathers. The children of these unions – stars like Ana Gabriel and Dámay Quintanar – became cultural icons. Names like José Wang and Maria Guadalupe Shu began to show up on honor rolls and in music credits.
One Instagram commenter wrote: “My great-grandfather came from Canton and opened Café México Moderno in Piedras Negras. My grandmother’s name is Maria Guadalupe Shu.”
Another added: “I’m half Chinese, half Mexican, born in Mexicali. I still have relatives in Mexicali, Calexico, and El Centro that speak Chinese and Spanish.”
Yet, as Gomez points out, these families were never widely accepted as mestizos, a term that today is worn with pride to describe Mexico’s ethnic fusion of Indigenous, Spanish, and African heritage. Chinese Mexicans? Still seen as outsiders.
A Long Overdue Apology—And a Rising Legacy
This exclusion isn’t just about labels—it’s about loss. According to Gomez, many Chinese Mexicans have felt pressure to hide or erase one half of their identity to fit in. Mexico celebrates mestizaje as a unifying narrative, but its Chinese descendants were systematically left out.
“Chinese influence in Mexico is significant,” Gomez writes, “but a severe lack of awareness … diminishes both their claim as mestizos and a merited role in Mexico’s proud notion of mestizaje.”
But that story is finally shifting.
On May 17, 2021, the Mexican federal government formally apologized to the Chinese Mexican community for the massacre in Torreón. The Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., joined the effort with a public commemoration hosted by Dr. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, a historian at Brown University and international member of Mexico’s Academy of History. The apology was timed to coincide with AAPI Heritage Month in the U.S., a nod to the shared struggles of Asian communities across North America.
As Hu-DeHart noted, both Mexico and the United States must reckon with their histories of racism and violence: “Together we believe… it is our shared responsibility to condemn racism and hatred, past and present.”
So maybe it’s time to rewrite the story of mestizaje—to acknowledge that the underground cities, the spicy fried rice, the mariachi Mandarin, and the kids named José Wang all belong in the heart of Mexico’s identity.
They always did.
