As an Asian person, would I be considered a gabacho? Or do I fall into the yellow bucket labeled chinito, even though I’m not Chinese? – OC Asian
Dear Chino: Like Americans assume all Latinos are Mexican, Mexicans think all Asians are chinos (Chinese). When I used to go out with a Vietnamese woman, my aunts would speak highly of mi chinita bonita – my cute little Chinese ruca. When I’d point out she was actually Vietnamese, mis tías would think about it for a bit and respond, “¡Que chinita bonita!”
But just because a Mexican calls you a chino doesn’t necessarily mean we think you’re Chinese. “Chino,” like so many of our swear words, has multiple negative meanings. In the colonial days, a chino was the offspring of a half-Indian/half-black person and a full-blooded Indian. This association with race also transformed chino into a synonym for “servant” and “curly.” The term “barrio chino” (Chinatown) also became a euphemism for a town’s red-light district. A popular schoolyard refrain all Mexican kiddies eventually chant at Asian classmates is “Chino, chino, japonés: Come caca y no me des” (“Chinese, Chinese, Japanese: Eat 屎头 and don’t give me any”).
So why the Mexican chino-hate? After all, Chinese were the Mexicans of the world before there even was a Mexico, migrating to Latin America a couple of decades after the fall of Tenochtitlán. And our most famous native dress – the billowy, colorful costume worn by baile folklórico dancers known as a china poblana – was supposedly first worn by a 17th-century Mexican-Chinese woman. Bigotry is bigotry, though; and since Mexico’s Asian population is still small and overwhelmingly Chinese, we lump Asians into the chino category. Makes the racism easier, you know?
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