Cuba, Mexico, and the Rise of China Adrian H
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DIASPORA AND TRUST DIASPORA AND TRUST CUBA, MEXICO, AND THE RISE OF CHINA ADRIAN H. HEARN Duke University Press Durham and London 2016 © 2016 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Typeset in Warnock Pro and Trade Gothic by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, GA Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Hearn, Adrian H., [date] author. Diaspora and trust : Cuba, Mexico, and the rise of China / Adrian H. Hearn. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-6057-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-6073-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-7458-9 (e- book) 1. China—Foreign relations—21st century. 2. Chinese diaspora. 3. China—Relations—Cuba. 4. Cuba—Relations— China. 5. China—Relations—Mexico. 6. Mexico— Relations—China. 7. Chinese—Cuba—Ethnic relations. 8. Chinese—Mexico—Ethnic relations. I. Title. ds779.47.h44 2016 303.48'251072—dc23 2015031596 Cover art: Chinatown in Havana, Cuba, 2015. The building is the historical headquarters of the Wong Family Association. © Elisabeth Blanchet / Alamy Stock Photo. CONTENTS vii Illustrations ix Acknowledgments 1 introduction 29 chapter 1 Cuba, China, and the Long March to the Market 65 chapter 2 Mexico, China, and the Politics of Trust 99 chapter 3 Havana’s Chinatown and the Quest for Synergy 163 chapter 4 Trust and Treachery in Mexico’s Chinese Diaspora 209 conclusion China and the Future of History 223 Notes 227 References 255 Index ILLUSTRATIONS figure 1.1 Chino and his wares, Havana 30 figure 1.2 China’s trade with Cuba, 1992– 2014 32 figures 1.3– 1.6 Over the hump: Chinese- made Yutong buses and their predecessors, known as “camellos” (camels) 48 figure 1.7 Tourist arrivals in Cuba, 2000– 2013 57 figure 2.1 Selected countries’ export competition with China, 2000– 2009 73 figure 3.1 Paradigma Entre las dos Culturas (Paradigm between two cultures) 107 figure 3.2 The symbolic entrance of Havana’s Barrio Chino 119 figure 3.3 The founding members of the Grupo with the author 120 figure 3.4 Balancing the forces: Roberto Vargas Lee 128 figure 3.5 Bust of José Martí in the courtyard of the Cuban School of Wushu 129 figure 3.6 Celebrating at the Cuban School of Wushu 131 figure 3.7 General Moisés Sío Wong delivers a speech at the Cuban School of Wushu 132 figure 3.8 A window into the future? The entrance of the Cuban School of Wushu 132 figures 3.9– 3.12 The changing face of Shanghai Park 140 figure 3.13 A sign erected by the Office of the Historian in Barrio Chino 141 figure 3.14 Tourist brochure for the altar of San Fan Kon 144 figure 3.15 Watch this space: The Chinese pharmacy under construction in 2013 151 figures 3.16 and 3.17 Guillermo Chiu and the Chinese printing blocks he arranges by hand 152 figure 4.1 The coat of arms of UNAM 167 figure 4.2 The informal market of Tepito 183 figure 4.3 Eduardo Auyón Gerardo’s renowned mural on the outside of a Mexicali nursery school 191 figure 4.4 The headquarters of the Chinese Association of Mexicali 193 table 3.1 Members of the Casino Chung Wah in May 2013 101 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The time and insight of many people guided this work. I especially thank my Chinese- Cuban and Chinese-Mexican colleagues for encouraging me to see current affairs in the light of historical tradition; María Teresa Montes de Oca Choy, Enrique Dussel Peters, and Catalina Velázquez Morales for connecting me with their friends and colleagues; Gisela Fo- sado, Valerie Millholland, Danielle Houtz, Jeanne Ferris, and the Duke University Press team for steering the project to publication; the manu- script reviewers for foregrounding the interplay of local and global in- fluences; the Australian Research Council, the Worldwide Universities Network, the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, and the Uni- versity of Melbourne for funding the research and writing; my family for tolerating my long periods away collecting information and writing it up; and Echú Alaguana for keeping me on track. INTRODUCTION Three booking agents and two assistants were on duty at 4:30 pm when a brick shattered the window of the China Viaje travel agency in Tijuana’s business district. At 6:00 pm all five were sitting in a row before their manager and two representatives of the Chinese Association of Tijuana. Pedro, the owner of the business, spoke to me in a surprisingly calm voice: “Now do you see? This is what I was telling you about: it’s been happening more and more to Chinese businesses. This has been a bad year. Is it because our employees are Chinese? When these things hap- pen we try to hold our heads high and carry on without retaliating, and without drawing attention to ourselves. You’re the anthropologist, so you tell me, what’s going on? Have we done something wrong?” (interview, October 16, 2008). The incident at China Viaje was not isolated. In November, a month earlier, a Chinese supermarket three blocks away had been vandalized and robbed, and the owners of a local department store specializing in imported Chinese home appliances discovered the words “pinche Chinos” (damn Chinese) spray painted on its front window. When the mayor announced his support for the establishment of a Chinatown in downtown Tijuana, the opinion pages of local newspapers showed strong opposition: “How ridiculous, the damn Chinese have already inundated us with commercial piracy, and now they want to put a Chinatown in Tijuana” (Salinas 2008). A similar comment appeared in relation to the newly established Chamber of Chinese Enterprises in the nearby city of Mexicali: “First they invade us [and] now they are getting organized to demand guarantees?? I hope the people of Sinaloa don’t plan to do the same” (Minor 2010). Comments like these, and the hostile actions that accompany them, reveal profound insecurity about China’s cultural and economic impact in Mexico. Eighteen hundred miles away a distressed group of Chinese descen- dants convened at a popular restaurant in Havana’s Cuchillo Lane, the heart of Latin America’s oldest Chinatown. Public hostility, inadequate legal protection, and official neglect were not among their concerns. On the contrary, they were worried about the growing attention and inces- sant commercial regulations they had attracted from the Cuban state. The goal of their meeting was to appraise, five years on, the 2006 dissolu- tion of the district’s coordinating body, the Grupo Promotor de Barrio Chino (Promotion group of Chinatown) and the assumption of its ad- ministrative responsibilities by a government institution called the Of- fice of the Historian of the City. Everything from foreign donations to proposals for cultural festivals and tourism development had since been assessed and regulated by the Office, signifying a total reorganization in the conduct of local business and politics. Attending the meeting were Yrmina Eng Menéndez, Julio Hun Calza- dilla, and Carlos Alay Jó, three founding members of the Grupo Promo- tor. Each had been instrumental in the revival of Havana’s Chinatown (hereafter Barrio Chino) in the 1990s and early 2000s, and each believed that the Office’s centrally devised plan for growth and development had weakened the district’s cultural and economic potentials. The irony of their predicament, they said, was plain to see: “The tourists come here to see the new gift shops, the restored restaurants, and streets with fashion- able cafés. What they don’t see is the human cost below the surface. Our social activities are not supported, our elderly residents are neglected, and our restaurants are paying higher taxes than ever. The bureau- crats behind all this become suspicious whenever we try to do something really useful for our community” (interview, February 22, 2011). In both Cuba and Mexico, Chinese immigrants and their descendants are confronted by a common problem: their commercial activities are believed to be strongly bound up in ethnic favoritism and therefore ad- 2 INTRODUCTION verse to national interests. It is a recurring narrative that has resurfaced in both countries during times of economic hardship, most powerfully in the 1930s when the Great Depression provoked the forced closure of Chinese businesses in Cuba and the expulsion of some ten thousand Chi- nese people from Mexico. Today the narrative is fueled by China’s grow- ing global influence and the role that overseas Chinese communities are thought to play in it. It is striking that similar preoccupations should emerge in Cuba and Mexico, countries at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of economic openness and political ideology. A combination of downward coercion and upward nationalism continues to maintain the Cuban state’s firm grip on civic and economic administration. In contrast, three decades of privatization in Mexico have eliminated nearly all forms of state in- tervention. China’s growing impact has exposed problems with both ap- proaches. In Cuba, nascent bilateral trade and investment agreements have provoked a grudging awareness that uncompromising state control is ill suited to post– Cold War economic rationalism. In Mexico, unre- lenting Chinese commercial competition has fueled new accusations of inadequate industrial policies and insufficient state support for manu- facturers. China’s rise and the so-called Asian Century it heralds are forcing pol- iticians, businesspeople, and researchers to debate and formulate fresh solutions to an old problem: what balance of state, market, and civic inputs can best harness the world’s shifting economic currents? While Cuban and Mexican policy makers approach this question from con- trasting ideological systems, all of them recognize a need for forms of public- private cooperation that diverge from conventional development models.