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Yeah, when I stayed in GDL my host family and the other tenants (all Mexican) in their big house were very frank about their dislike of the Korean expats in Mexico, and for the very reasons you just mentioned. I kind of dismissed it as xenophobia at the time, but upon hearing the same story over and over again from different sources, it surely must at least have some truth to it.
Is it Koreans or Vietnamese who did the same in Guatemala?
Koreans. I don't think there are many Vietnamese in Guatemala. There is how ever a visible Korean presence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. They own many of the textile sweat shops in those countries . There is also some Taiwanese owned sweat shops but its the Koreans ones I have heard some real horror stories about.
Koreans. I don't think there are many Vietnamese in Guatemala. There is how ever a visible Korean presence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. They own many of the textile sweat shops in those countries . There is also some Taiwanese owned sweat shops but its the Koreans ones I have heard some real horror stories about.
That makes sense. I had a friend growing up whose mother was born in Guatemala, but of Swiss ancestry, lots of money. They´d spend summers in some elite gated neighborhood of the capital, and he kept telling me stories about some "Vietnamese people" but it probably was something else, the thing was when we were kids in New Orleans, just about any Asian living there was Vietnamese so he probably didn´t know better. Long story short, these guys in his grandparents´neighborhood were into organized crime, one day people saw a bunch of mattresses going into their mansion and they thought maybe they ran a mattress factory and needed storage or something. Nope, they turned the house into a brothel and paid the cops off for years, much to the horror of the monied white and Ladino people living there. I get the impression that Guate in the 90´s wasn´t an easy place to live, even if you had the money to mostly shut yourself off from the ills outside the gated community. I´m sure you know much more about it than me though.
In a book I wrote about the southern US/MX border (can't share the name of the book, as it's against TOS) I had a chapter on the ethnic cleansing of Chinese that was done in the Sonora area (border by Nogales) by the Mexican government. One woman I interviewed told me of her grandmother, married to a Mexican national, and a Mexican citizen herself, who was sent back to China (it's a very long story).
Pretty dismal part of Mexican history. The ejection of such a large number of productive people almost brought that part of Mexico to it's knees financially.
Location: San Diego CA>Tijuana, BC>San Antonio, TX
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My ex neighbor in Tijuana had the last name Chŏng but he did not look Asian at all, I would describe him as a typical looking Mexican man. He introduced me to his relatives and many of them looked very Asian, some with very light skin and others even spoke Spanish with an Asian accent. A few of his female cousins even greeted me with a small peck on the cheek which is more of a Mexican custom and not an Asian custom as far as I know. His family was part Korean decent, he described his own grandfather looking like Mr Mayagi although I never met the grandpa.
From time to time I will see Spanish speaking Asians at our local Asian Markets here in San Diego, they will typically have Baja California plated vehicles when I see them in the store parking lot. There is a sizable Asian population in Baja California today although not as big as Southern California, mostly Chinese and Koreans.
That makes sense. I had a friend growing up whose mother was born in Guatemala, but of Swiss ancestry, lots of money. They´d spend summers in some elite gated neighborhood of the capital, and he kept telling me stories about some "Vietnamese people" but it probably was something else, the thing was when we were kids in New Orleans, just about any Asian living there was Vietnamese so he probably didn´t know better. Long story short, these guys in his grandparents´neighborhood were into organized crime, one day people saw a bunch of mattresses going into their mansion and they thought maybe they ran a mattress factory and needed storage or something. Nope, they turned the house into a brothel and paid the cops off for years, much to the horror of the monied white and Ladino people living there. I get the impression that Guate in the 90´s wasn´t an easy place to live, even if you had the money to mostly shut yourself off from the ills outside the gated community. I´m sure you know much more about it than me though.
Yeah Guatemala is a mess. It was a mess in the 70s and 80s due to all the political violence and after that it was just chaos. It's pretty sad. I don't even like going back there anymore. Hurts me to say but It's pretty much a lost cause.
It was kind of bold to open up a brothel in a gated community, though I am not surprised. Koreans are also known to own brothels and small casinos. Though I think quite a few casinos have been shut down over the past decade or so.
I was talking to some Filipino guys a while back and they said Koreans were known for those things in the Philippines as well.
Here's a bit of what I wrote in my book about the US/MX border area (Specifically, Nogales, Lochiel and Sasabe, which I referred to as being part of our country's "third nation") and Chinese. I chopped it up a bit, had to due to size issues:
Her family’s history (Teresa Leal, lovely woman, died a few years ago) began, on her great grandfather’s side. The man, his name was Cha, an immigrant from China, came to the United States sometime during the middle to latter part of the 19th century. The country he had fled from was in shambles. Bringing his wife and baby daughter along on the journey, it was either flee China or die. The young family, more by accident than design, first entered the United States in Boston. Although devoid of any understanding or knowledge of the American culture the family had just entered into, Teresa’s great grandfather immediately found work in the building of our nation’s railroad system. The route of the construction took the family out west.
During the journey, which lasted some years, their first baby died. Overtime newly born siblings slowly took her place. And, upon finding themselves in Nogales, where the eastern end of the railroad system finally met the western part of the line in 1882, Cha was, with neither fanfare nor afterthought, terminated from his work. Luck was with him once more as the Mexican government needed experienced laborers to complete the rail route that nation were building south of where he and his family found themselves. Cha was yet again employed in railway construction.
Once that construction project came to a halt in Guaymas, Cha, along with many other Chinese, found themselves unemployed in a strange country. They discovered that the nearby area of Rio Mayo had very inexpensive land due to the fact that the location suffered from frequent floods, making the locale virtually useless in the eyes of the locals. However, the Chinese recognized the area for what it was, perfect for the farming of rice.
These industrious people soon had a successful enterprise in the growing and selling of this new crop. What they did not do, however, was to permit themselves to be absorbed by their new country nor did they readily adapt to the surrounding cultural norms. They remained separate, foreign and misunderstood by their jealous and less successful Mexican neighbors. This insularity would cost both the Chinese and the Mexicans dearly in the future.
By the 1930s Chinese merchants had opened laundries, restaurants and farms, prospering as a result of their labors. The people around them resented the success of the Chinese. As so often happens when one group does well within a culture yet is clearly and easily distinguished from those around them, this brought deep and dangerous prejudices to the surface.
The Mexican government decided, for the flimsiest of reasons, mostly bowing to popular pressure after the then fairly recent populist 1910 revolution, to eject the Chinese workers from Mexico.
Around 1920, Cha being an old man by then, decided he wished to die in his native China. Following the Chinese custom, prior to departing Mexico he “sold off” his five daughters. Teresa’s grandmother, Episania, went to a Mexican man.
Episania was married to a man of Spanish (European) heritage, a worker in ebony wood who created violins, guitars and furniture. She soon had a family of her own to look after. The young woman, a Mexican citizen, had five children. During this period in her life she also worked as a seamstress. Because she was a bonafide Mexican citizen neither she nor her husband held any concern over their country’s xenophobic attitude toward the Chinese. After all, they couldn’t very well deport a Mexican.
The couple at that time were living in the town of Alamo and didn’t involve themselves with the political situation of the period. One day in the early 1930s Episania went shopping at the local market as was her custom. Mexican troops, sent there to round up Chinese people, grabbed her as well. Despite her protestations that she was a citizen, without having any documentation on her the soldiers refused to believe Episania. She wound up in a cattle car, loaded with all the other Chinese people seized from that area, and was shipped off in the direction of Mexicali.
Hearing of his wife’s plight, her husband went after the train on horseback, eventually catching up to his wife when they stopped in Guaymas. The soldiers refused to believe the man, who had brought none of the papers demanded of the soldiers that would have been needed to prove her Mexican nationality. All he could do was give his wife some money and bribe the soldiers to permit her to stay at a hotel once they got to their destination and not be herded into a concentration camp with all the other Chinese who had been rounded up along with her. He left her and told her he’d return with the required paperwork.
It took the man quite a while to secure the proper papers. During this time Episania, after remaining in Mexicali for some weeks, was marched nine hundred miles to La Paz, a trip resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Chinese along the way and referred to by Teresa as the Path of Sorrow. By the time Teresa’s grandfather got to La Paz his wife had already been deported to China. A letter had been left for him by her, basically saying that she no longer wished to live in a country that didn’t want her. She’d rather go to China, a land she’d never set foot in.
Over a period of years Teresa’s grandfather, along with Episania’s five children, visited China to see Episania every two years. Eventually Teresa’s grandmother made a life for herself in China and the visits ended.
It was a tragic story of a monstrous injustice which took place during a period of irrational hysteria and intense racial and ethnic prejudice. The unintended consequence to this insanity was the virtual destruction of the Sonoran economy due to the loss of such a large number of its prosperous and hardworking Chinese inhabitants.
Most Asians here in GDL are either Korean or Chinese, although most of the Chinese I see are working in Chinese restaurants as opposed to Koreans who are more often customers somewhere. I did have a friend comment that Chinese are very dirty people, not sure if that's the prevailing opinion among Mexicans or just him.
There are some pretty good Korean restaurants though. Most Chinese food here is buffet style garbage, including such authentic Chinese dishes as a pan full of hot dog pieces.
I don't know about other areas, but most Asians in Mexico City are Chinese or Korean, with smaller groups of others. As far as I know, no one causes them any problems and they don't seem to have negative reputations. That might a different story in other cities and parts of the country, but I haven't see any of that there. I've also personally known a few Asians from the US and other places who lived here and they loved it and ended up staying longer than intended. Again, it might be different other places, but I'd definitely recommend Mexico City. It's not the coast, though, if that's what you want.
In a book I wrote about the southern US/MX border (can't share the name of the book, as it's against TOS) I had a chapter on the ethnic cleansing of Chinese that was done in the Sonora area (border by Nogales) by the Mexican government. One woman I interviewed told me of her grandmother, married to a Mexican national, and a Mexican citizen herself, who was sent back to China (it's a very long story).
Pretty dismal part of Mexican history. The ejection of such a large number of productive people almost brought that part of Mexico to it's knees financially.
Rich
1931-32 The Explusion.
I know it well...
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