Paisanos Chinos: Transpacific Politics Among Chinese Immigrants in Mexico by Fredy González

Author:Fredy González [González, Fredy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, Latin America, Mexico
ISBN: 9780520290198
Google: P1ORDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-05-16T00:48:41.208000+00:00

A “PEIPING SPY RING”

In the aftermath of the 1963 Economic and Commercial Exposition of the People’s Republic of China (see chapter 4), journalists and government agencies in the United States began for the first time to report on Chinese Communist activities south of the U.S.–Mexico border. Most immediately, they speculated as to whether the exposition implied that the Mexican government would soon establish diplomatic relations with the PRC. Other reports went further, focusing on the Mexico City branch of the New China News Agency (NCNA; Xinhuashe). Established during the planning stages of the Economic and Commercial Exposition, it was the only agency the PRC left behind after the conclusion of the exposition. Journalists and government agencies questioned the agency’s motives. FBI reports alleged that the agents spoke little Spanish and were not there for news-gathering activities.46 U.S. journalists went further, speculating that the NCNA was a cover for Chinese undercover operations, and that its agents might plan activities that could reach the United States through the porous border between the two countries.

Reports about the exposition, Chinese-Mexican relations, and the NCNA agents included Chinese Mexicans as obvious potential collaborators in PRC activities. Reporter Hal Hendrix, for example, asserted that the NCNA was actually Beijing’s “spy base in Mexico.” The five members of the bureau’s staff were “all known to be welltrained [sic] Intelligence [sic] agents, not foreign correspondents,” who met with “operatives” traveling from Cuba and collaborated with the Sociedad Mexicana de Amistad con China Popular. One of the potential dangers of the agents was that they could convince Chinese Mexicans to surreptitiously cross the U.S.–Mexico border and conduct subversive activities in the United States. According to Hendrix, the eighty-five hundred Chinese in the country, and especially the two thousand Chinese in Baja California, were “a matter of concern to U.S. authorities” because of their proximity to the U.S.–Mexico border. Even those who were loyal to the Republic of China were nevertheless suspect because “many of the pro-Western Chinese still have relatives in Red China [the PRC] and are subject to pressures from Peking agents.” Hendrix thus suggested that all Chinese Mexicans were worthy of suspicion, since their familial ties to Guangdong Province would pressure even the most loyal Chinese Mexicans to engage in pro-Communist activity. Hendrix’s article implied that any Chinese south of the U.S.–Mexico border with transnational ties constituted a potential threat to the national security of the United States.47

By 1964, the embassy no longer dismissed articles like Hendrix’s as speculation and sensationalism, as it had done during the previous decade. By the time the report emerged, the embassy was quietly conducting its own investigation of suspected Chinese Communist activities in Mexico. The embassy scrutinized Chinese who met with the PRC trade delegation and NCNA agents, as well as those who spoke out on the two Chinas and traveled to mainland China. The stories of three paisanos—Pepe Chong, Francisco Ham Cheem Jr., and Pablo Fong—help us understand how Chinese Mexicans who visited the People’s Republic of China came under increased scrutiny, even if they had been perceived earlier as steadfastly loyal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.