|
|
Site of a 19th century Chinese
laundry, 212 W. Overland Street. Image
provided by George D. Torok
Narrative: Chinese Settlement in El Paso
The origins of El Paso’s Chinese settlement lie in
the construction of a southern transcontinental railroad during the
1870s and 1880s. Chinese laborers were first drawn to the United
States by the California Gold Rush of 1849 but soon became an integral
part of the railroad industry and mostly young, unskilled, Chinese men
provided much of the manual labor needed. The Southern Pacific
Railroad employed almost 2000 Chinese when it reached El Paso, Texas
on May 19, 1881. They built simple wooden or adobe residences and
almost immediately an area around St. Louis Street had Chinese shops
and residences.
Unfortunately, the Chinese arrived in El Paso at a
time when a
nationwide anti-Chinese movement was underway. Efficient, inexpensive
Chinese laborers were seen as an economic threat to whites and other
ethnic groups in the West. Their culture was seen as clannish, corrupt
and decadent. For years, state and local governments restricted and
discriminated against the Chinese. This culminated in the passage of
the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It ended Chinese
immigration, put deportation measures in place for illegal aliens, and
denied the naturalization process to the Chinese.
There are no records of Chinese in El Paso before
1881. Although most of the 2000 Chinese laborers that worked on the
Southern Pacific line left the area after the Exclusion Act, a small
number remained forming a community of about 300 by the 1890s.
They worked as laborers, began small businesses, and created a small
Chinatown on the northern edge of the city. By 1889, the Chinese
monopolized the city’s laundry business driving out Mexican
competitors. Others operated businesses such as restaurants, retail
shops, small vegetable farms, and contracting.
There were soon several very successful Chinese businessmen such as
contractor Sam Hing who built a beautiful residence in the Magoffin
District. A small professional class, including several physicians was
also present.
El Paso’s Chinese preserved many of
their cultural traditions such as
language, music, and burial rites. They held traditional celebrations,
organized tongs which were regional social organizations, and
celebrated Chinese holidays. While some arranged to have friends and
family members’ remains returned to their ancestral homeland, many
also chose burial in El Paso. A Chinese cemetery still exists today in
El Paso’s Concordia Cemetery.
But the Chinese continued to be seen as a threat.
El Pasoans worried about the success of the laundries fearing they
would draw more Chinese to the city. Mexican laundries were often
driven out of business. They were associated with gambling halls and
opium dens and both were common in the small Chinese community.
Although frequented by whites as well as Chinese, these establishments
became the target of city reformers around the turn-of-the-century.
Gambling was outlawed in the 1910s and well into the 1920s local
authorities tried to control the opium trade in El Paso.
Illegal entries to the U.S. also drew attention. Following the
exclusion act, Chinese were smuggled into El Paso through Ciudad
Juarez. They were brought to Mexican ports, given a basic command of
English, guided to the border by an elaborate “underground railroad”
system, and smuggled in from Ciudad. Juarez. Many went on to other
Chinatowns of the west. An extensive tunnel system was built under the
Rio Grande to bring both Chinese alien and contraband.
El Paso’s Chinatown was located in an area extending
east to west from Stanton to El Paso Street and north to south from
present-day Mills to 4th Avenue, the northern edge of town in
the 1880s.
The major concentration was between Overland Avenue and East 2nd
Street. Excavations conducted in the early 1980s by New Mexico State
University archaeologist Edward Staski uncovered a variety artifacts in
the Cortez Parking Lot, an area on the fringe of El Paso’s Chinatown.
The small Chinese community of El Paso thrived around
the turn-of-the-century but began to decline by the 1910s. Although the
number of Chinese hovered around 300, it was reduced proportionally as
the city grew. Several factors explain the rapid demise. Few Chinese
women came to the United States and Chinese men began to inter-marry,
especially with Mexican women. Although illegal aliens continued to
enter El Paso many soon moved on to larger Chinese communities in the
West. American steam laundries replaced the hand laundries of Chinatown.
The Mexican Revolution brought a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment to
Mexico and many refugees fled north to the U.S. border but were denied
entry. The few Chinese that did remain blurred into the general
populations of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Many others left to find
opportunities elsewhere. The Chinese community became less homogeneous
and lost its distinction. By 1931 it was estimated that there were but
six surviving Chinese in El Paso who could trace their ancestry to the
period of the 1880s.
.
John A. Peterson and Mark D. Willis, The
Union Plaza Downtown El Paso Development
Archaeological Project: Overview, Inventory, and Recommendations
(El Paso, TX, 1998), 113.
.
Nancy Farrar, The Chinese in El Paso (El Paso, TX, 1972),
3-4; Edward Staski, Beneath the Border City: Urban Archaeology in
Downtown El Paso (Las Cruces, NM, 1984), 13-14; Edward Staski,
Beneath the Border City: The Overseas Chinese in El Paso
(Las Cruces, NM, 1985), 7-8, 12.
.
W.H. Timmons, El Paso: A Borderlands
History (El Paso, TX, 1990), 186-87.
.
Farrar, Chinese in El Paso,
11, 12, 13.
.
Timmons, El Paso,
187; Staski, Overseas Chinese in
El Paso, 25, 28.
.
Farrar, Chinese in El Paso,
30.
.
Staski, Overseas Chinese in El
Paso, 25; Farrar, Chinese in
El Paso,
19.
.
Farrar, Chinese in El Paso,
20-21.
.
Staski, Overseas Chinese in El
Paso, 33-34.
.
Farrar, Chinese in El Paso,
33, 35: Staski, Overseas Chinese in
El Paso, 29-30.
|
