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San Antonio's cultural experience museum..
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Chinese Texans: El Paso The El Paso Chinese Colony The El Paso Chinese story from 1880 until 1940 is an example of a people in a border area faced with exclusion and limited opportunity for jobs. The Chinese in these years were seen as good workers, illegal immigrants, drug-crazed heathens, and responsible community members-at the same time. The Chinese themselves left very few words of self-evaluation but succeeded in founding a community and achieving individual successes. The story is an earlier example of border immigration—legal and illegal, welcome and feared—that is the same story today. From about 1880 El Paso became a point of entry for Chinese into Texas—as it did for many other Asians—legal and illegal. Chinese, particularly during the years of the United States' exclusion laws, found entry into Mexico relatively easy. Mexico law was often receptive to immigration, and cross-country railroad passage was usually possible. And the Texas border at Juárez was a much easier entry into the United States than leaving ship in California. Other Chinese arrived in the El Paso area as part of railroad construction crews from the West Coast. A few stayed. Soon a somewhat diffuse community was present in El Paso. Chinese lived on both sides of the international border and engaged in arranging labor contracts, vegetable farming, laundry and restaurant businesses, and—according to reports in El Paso newspapers—smuggling of illegal workers and opium dealing. First, U.S. law made entry for Chinese workers illegal and therefore profitable. Then, since the "Opium Wars," which included the forcing of Indian opium into China as part of British "trade relations," the Chinese were stereotypically seen as opium users. Some were. Problems did exist. Opium "dens" were obvious in El Paso until just after 1885-although apparently more "white men and women entered" a certain "Chinese den of iniquity" than Chinese. And an unknown number of illegal migrants were brought through what was called an "underground railway"—but one that led to only limited freedom. Much easier to observe, living conditions were poor. In 1893 a traveler observed that "surrounding the American city are hundreds—yes, I should say thousands of adobe houses with just one, or at the outside—two, rooms, all of them one story high, inhabited by Mexicans, negroes, and Chinamen." Prejudice, especially against illegal immigrants, was high. Certainly on the West Coast, small numbers of Chinese diplomats, businessmen, students, and the occasional visitor were admitted, but the stereotype remained. In 1917 T.K. Fong, Consul General of China (based in San Francisco) came to El Paso, where he met and spoke to many Chinese. Also visiting often in Juárez, Fong made one unfortunate border crossing—walking because of a delay in streetcar service—and without his usual translator. In spite of his formal business suit, and probably because of his reply in Chinese to a border guard, Consul Fong was hustled to the police station as an illegal immigrant. Fong was quickly identified and eventually pacified. The United States State Department forgave the arresting officers, and two weeks later Fong had as his dinner guest Police Chief B.J. Zabriskie of El Paso. A very few resident Chinese, such as the Sam Hing family, became prosperous and built fine homes in El Paso. Hing dealt in real estate and labor contracts. Shortly after marrying a woman the local newspaper Lone Star described as a "New Orleans Creole," Hing and his new family were ostracized by all. Ugly rumors circulated that he had simply purchased the daughter—or maybe the wife—of a Frenchman who liked the offer. Hing moved into Mexico and, according to reports, made another fortune. By 1920 the El Paso Chinese were in decline. For one thing, revolutionary activity in Mexico had disrupted the national railway and caused the United States to tighten border patrols. Meanwhile, legal immigrants—German, Hungarian, Irish—arrived, and the Chinese community was no longer seen as unique, no longer in the newspapers as often. Community leaders—calling themselves the "Chinese Colony"—supported efforts at acculturation into the main society. In 1938 Chen Din and other merchants united the old tong associations. These fraternal organizations, in the eyes of outsiders, had been associated too often with gang violence. Chen Din worked to end the older "tong wars," and, for the most part, the new Chinese Colony Association was successful. The association asked members to remember that "before you lay down a new carpet, sweep off the old floor." Not too far behind this advice was the typical Chinese belief in practicing "the honesty taught by Confucius, the chaste living taught by Lao-Tze." This feeling was echoed by Chinese across the state. Today they still have one of the lowest crime rates of any cultural or ethnic group. Copyright 1998 |
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