Border Chinese: Making space and forging identity in Mexicali, Mexico

Through the lens of a Chinese restaurant, I examine the overseas Chinese community in Mexicali, B.C., Mexico, a city located at the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Adopting Gloria Anzaldua's 'hybridity model,' that treats borders as 'open wounds' where cultures mix and new one forms, I explore the ways in which Chinescos construct an identity that is uniquely neither Chinese nor Mexican. Chinescos is a term that I use to refer to those that refuse to be categorized, or who are asked to choose an identity, who struggle to economically and socially survive at the border, but who also live a moral life (Kleinman 2006)---a life with a set of values that will protect themselves, their families, and what matters most to them. Specifically, Chinescos are ethnic-Chinese Mexicans existing in communities near the borderlands. This study includes a history of Chinese in Mexico. It examines the social relations among Chinese and Mexicans, analyzes violence as an ever-present aspect of life, and compares Chinese business practices. It does this through the study of food as a window into the local and political (Watson and Caldwell 2005, Bestor 2004).;Chinescos tell us much about border cities that is not captured by Anzaldua. People who are not Anglo-Saxon, Mexican, or Indigenous can also contest the identities that are thrust upon them. They also use assumed identities to strategically navigate their social experience. Both border scholars and diaspora scholars have overlooked Chinescos and Chinese-Mexican immigrants. It is my view that these immigrants provide a way to contest anthropological understandings of cultures in a nation that is bounded by multiple forces. More specifically, Chinescos are both long-standing residents of the city (who have converted their citizenship to Mexican) and Mexican-born Chinese who are called "Chinos" [Chinese] because of their physical appearance. Both sets of people understand the habitus (Bourdieu 1972), the politics of identity and citizenship in Chinese and Mexican cultures. The goal, then, of recent Chinese immigrants is to become Chinescos, a group that accommodates to local community norms without surrendering their core identity and values. They struggle to negotiate the economic, social, and cultural challenges presented to them. The transformation of recent Chinese immigrants into Chinescos takes place in Mexicali's 300 Chinese restaurants, cultural arenas where people, culture, food, money, and events converge. Chinese restaurants thus constitute the critical focus of this study, and serve as dynamic frameworks for the analysis of borders and transnational migration.