This is the city where I'll be living just over the border from Calexico, CA.
Facts about Mexicali, Mx:
pop. - 1,000,010
State - Baja California
founded - March 19, 1903
Chinatown, Mexicali
The city claims to have the largest per capita concentration of residents of Chinese origin, around 5,000. While this does not compare to U.S. cities like
San Francisco or
New York, early in the 20th century Mexicali was numerically and culturally more Chinese than Mexican. The Chinese arrived to the area as laborers for the Colorado River Land Company, an American enterprise which designed and built an extensive irrigation system in the Valley of Mexicali. Some immigrants came from the United States, often fleeing anti-Chinese policies there, while others sailed directly from China. Thousands of Chinese were lured to the area by the promise of high wages, but for most that never materialised.
ABSA shopping center near Lopez Mateos Street
Many of the Chinese labourers who came to the irrigation system stayed on after its completion, congregating in an area of Mexicali today known as Chinesca ('Chinatown'). During Prohibition in the U.S., many Chinese laborers and farmers came to the town to open bars, restaurants and hotels to cater thier American clientle Chinesca eventually housed just about all of the city's casinos and bars, and an underground tunnel system to connect bordellos and opium dens , Calexico on the U.S. side. Bootleggers also used this route to supply the U.S. with booze purchased in Mexico.
By
1920, Mexicali's Chinese population outnumbered the Mexican 10,000 to 700. A group of 5,000 single Chinese males started the Asociacion China, a Mexicali social organisation at least partly devoted to finding Chinese wives from overseas, which remains active today. In 1927, a series of Tong wars here and other parts of Northern Mexico erupted over control of gambling and prostitution rings. Mexican alarm over the Chinese organised crime led to the government-encouraged Movimiento Anti-Chino. In the late 1920s, a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that swept the country and led to the torture and murder of hundreds of Chinese in northern Mexico--similar to what happened on a larger scale in California in the 1880s. However, the Chinese in this city were numerous enough and politically strong enough to protect themselves. After anti-Chinese sentiment faded, more Chinese arrived here, and it became the Mexican headquarters for the Kuomintang, or the Nationalist Chinese Party. After events during World War II and the Communist takeover of China, a large number of Chinese refugees came to Mexico in the mid-century. The town was the site of the Taiwan consulate in the 1960's until Mexico withdrew its recognition of the island nation, ending immigration of ethnic Chinese to this area.
Plaza de la Amistad (Friendship Plaza) pagodas, located just outside the border crossing to the USA
The percentage of Chinese was so high here that in the 1940's the town had only two cinemas, both of which played Chinese movies almost exclusively. However, in the latter half of the 20th century, steady influx of Mexican migrants here diluted the Chinese population, until once again they became a minority.
La Chinesca, or Chinatown, still survives near the border close to the intersection of Avenida Madero and Clle Melgar,although it is much smaller than in the past. However, Mexicali still boasts more Chinese restaurants per capita than any other city in Mexico, more than 100 for the whole town, most with Cantonese-style cuisine. Local Chinese associations struggle to preserve the arts and culture of the homeland through the sponsorship of Chinese festivals, calligraphy clubs, and language classes. However, much of Chinese cultural life here has blended with local Mexican and American traditions to create a unique, hybrid culture.
Like many Chinese restaurants outside of Asia, cooks here have adapted their native cuisine to local tastes. For example, restaurants here serve thier dishes with a small bowl of a sauce that is similar to a generic steak sauce, common in Northern Mexico. In many of these restaurants, it is not uncommon to see Chinese men wearing stiff straw cowboy hats, meeting over hamburgers and green tea and speaking a mixture of Cantonese and Spanish. Along with burgers and chow mein, many restaurants here also offer shark-fin tacos.
