The Migration of Chinese Women To Mexico City Ximena Alba Villalever Full Chapter

The Migration of Chinese Women to
Mexico City Ximena Alba Villalever

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-migration-of-chinese-women-to-mexico-city-xime
na-alba-villalever/
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL
INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN
LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA
The Migration
of Chinese Women
to Mexico City
Ximena Alba Villalever
Historical and Cultural Interconnections between
Latin America and Asia
Series Editors
Ignacio López-Calvo
University of California, Merced
Merced, CA, USA
Kathleen López
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ, USA
This series is devoted to the diversity of encounters between Latin America
and Asia through multiple points of contact across time and space. It welcomes
different theoretical and disciplinary approaches to define, describe, and explore
the histories and cultural production of people of Asian descent in Latin America
and the Caribbean. It also welcomes research on Hispano-Filipino history and
cultural production. Themes may include Asian immigration and geopolitics, the
influence and/or representation of the Hispanic world in Asian cultures, Orien-
talism and Occidentalism in the Hispanic world and Asia, and other transpacific
and south-south exchanges that disrupt the boundaries of traditional academic
fields and singular notions of identity. The geographical scope of the series incor-
porates the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Pacific Rim and the Caribbean
region. We welcome single-author monographs and volumes of essays from
experts in the field from different academic backgrounds.
About the Series Editors

Ignacio López-Calvo is Professor of Latin American Literature at the Univer-
sity of California, Merced, USA and director of the UC Merced Center for the
Humanities. He is author of several books on Latin American and US Latino
literature. He is co-executive director of the academic journal Transmodernity:
Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World.
Kathleen López is Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean
Studies and Department of History at Rutgers, The State University of New
Jersey, USA. She is author of Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History (2013)
and a contributor to Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought
(2015), Immigration and National Identities in Latin America (2016), and
Imagining Asia in the Americas (2016).
Advisory Board
Koichi Hagimoto, Wellesley College, USA
Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University, USA
Junyoung Verónica Kim, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Ana Paulina Lee, Columbia University, USA
Debbie Lee-DiStefano, Southeast Missouri State University, USA
Shigeko Mato, Waseda University, Japan
Zelideth María Rivas, Marshall University, USA
Robert Chao Romero, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Lok Siu, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Araceli Tinajero, City College of New York, USA
Laura Torres-Rodríguez, New York University, USA
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15129
The Migration
of Chinese Women
to Mexico City
Lateinamerika Institut
Freie Universität Berlin
Berlin, Germany
Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia

ISBN 978-3-030-53343-4 ISBN 978-3-030-53344-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53344-1
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgments
This research would not have been possible without the help and support
from the Chinese and Mexican traders working on the streets of Mexico
City. My most sincere thanks to all the people who opened their world to
me and allowed me to have a small glimpse of what it is to work within
the popular economy. Particularly, I want to thank all of the women who
figure in this book, these are part of their stories and I hope I managed
to stay faithful to them. Special thanks to María Rosete and An Lan, who
helped me enter the world of women in trade; and to Armando Sánchez,
who took his time in showing me how the Tepito market has changed in
the last decades.
Many people guided, enriched and invested time and effort in this
work. Especially, I thank the IRTG “Between Spaces,” the Institute
for Latin American Studies of the Free University of Berlin and all of
its academic and administrative staff, for giving me the best conditions
possible to carry out this research; the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
for funding the research and writing; special thanks to Kenya Herrera and
Tanja Wälty, who made comments to this work all along its construc-
tion process and until the very end; Ignacio López-Calvo, Kathy López,
Camille Davis and Liam McLean for showing interest in my research
and making the publication of this book possible; the two manuscript
reviewers, who enriched the book with their comments to my work and
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
their support in the first phase of publishing; Barbara Belejack and David
Bolick for their proofreading work, extremely necessary for a non-native
English speaker; finally, my family for putting up with me during this long
and hard process of research.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Chinese Migration to Mexico 4
1.2 Context 9
1.3 Objectives and Questions 13
1.4 Methodology and Research Design: Who, Where
and How? 14
1.5 The Subjects 15
1.6 The Places 20
1.7 Theoretical and Conceptual Framework 21
1.8 Outline of the Study 27
Bibliography 31
Part I Locating the Chinese in Mexican Popular Markets
2 The Organization and Characteristics of Street Markets

and “Popular” Economy 41
2.1 Popular Markets: From Spaces of Struggle to Spaces
of Opportunities 43
2.2 Tepito and Its Actors, an Intersectional Approach 53
2.3 Migration and Commerce in Tepito 65
2.4 Conclusions 72
Bibliography 74
vii
viii CONTENTS
3 Building Alternative Commodity Chains Between

Mexico and China 77
3.1 Yiwu: The Construction of the World’s Factory 79
3.2 Following the Production of a Hair Garment: The
Role of Migrants in the Establishment of New Global
Commodity Chains 87
3.3 Tepito’s “Plaza Beijing”: Migration, Commodities
and Discrimination 95
3.4 Conclusions 101
Bibliography 103
Part II Her stories of Migration, Building Spaces of

Opportunities
4 Gender Inequality in China, a Path to Migration 109

4.1 Visibilizing Chinese Women in Migration Studies 112
4.2 The Feminization of Chinese Migration Patterns:
Causes and Effects 118
4.3 Childhood in a Chinese Jia: Structural Inequalities 122
4.4 Unequal Access to Education and Work for Women
in China 130
Bibliography 137
5 Migration to Mexico as a Strategy for Survival

and Growth: Building Opportunities in Mexican
Popular Markets 143
5.1 New Migration Patterns to Mexico City’s Popular
Markets and the Search for Opportunities 145
5.2 Marriage and Work Within Migration: Changing
the Organization of the Household 156
5.3 From Petty Vendors to Importers: The Need
for Networks and Associations to Grow in Popular
Markets 167
5.4 Conclusions 177
Bibliography 182
CONTENTS ix
Part III Migration and Commodity Chains, Drafting

Alternative Spaces of Globalization
6 Women as Actors of Transnational Formations 189

6.1 What Are Alternative Spaces of Globalization? 191
6.2 Vulnerabilities and Resistances in the City: Building
Networks of Trust Between Guanxi and Comadrazgo 201
6.3 Constructing Cities Through Belonging: Bringing
Gender In 213
6.4 Transnational Motherhoods 218
6.5 Building Transnational Family Businesses 226
6.6 Building Alternatives to Survival and Growth 229
6.7 Conclusions 237
Bibliography 241
7 Conclusions 245
Bibliography 264
Annex 265
Index 271
List of Translations
Abarrotes (groceries)
Agremiade (union member—“e” for non-gendered form)
Barrio (neighborhood—coloquial )
bodega (warehouse)
Cafés de chinos (Chinese coffeeshops)
Centro Histórico (downtown/Historical Center)
Colonia (neighborhood)
Colportage (peddling)
Comadrazgo (godmotherhood)
Delegación (district)
Diablero (man pushing a cart)
Fayuca (new or used commodities smuggled to Mexico from the
United States)
Fayuqueres (people dealing with fayuca—“e” for non-gendered form)
Huiguan (association)
Jia (house/family)
mercados populares (popular markets)
mojado (unauthorized migrant—coloquial )
Plaza de los “chinitos” (Chinese square)
Tepiteñes (people from/working in Tepito)
Tiendita (store)
Vecindad (popular housing)
xi
Abbreviations
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement

PRC People’s Republic of China
WTO World Trade Organization
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 “América Latina”, outside of the Yiwu market 86

Fig. II.1 Chinatown in Dolores street, after New Year Festivities
2014 106
Fig. 6.1 “China in Tepito” Mural by Daniel Manrique 235
Map 1.1 Chinese vendors in other popular markets 16

Map 1.2 Chinese vendors in the Barrio of Tepito 17
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
It was the second Friday of January 2015, just a little afternoon. I was
standing in front of Shei,1 a Chinese woman in her late forties who lives
and works in Mexico City. She was crying.
Shei is a peddler who sells homemade spring rolls and rice “to go”
that she puts in plastic bags for the hungry clients that quickly pass by
as they commute. She works in the commercial corridor linking the San
Lázaro Metro station to the TAPO bus station in Delegación Venustiano
Carranza, on the outskirts of the Centro Histórico (downtown). This is
one of the busiest stations in the city, which means that her working spot
is privileged because of the high level of transit. Visibility and accessibility
are two fundamental elements that are highly contested among street
vendors; their livelihood depends on them. In order for Shei to work here,
a public space that urban and popular dynamics have turned private, she
1 The names of the Chinese women and men in this book were changed to maintain
privacy and anonymity, except in the case of those whose names are known in the media.
On some occasions, I used pseudonyms that are common Latin names in Mexico; at other
times, Chinese names, sometimes using only one syllable, as the women do themselves in
the Tepito market. The selection depended on how each woman chose to identify herself
in Mexico—whether to keep her Chinese name or a shortened version of it, or choose one
that might be easier for Mexican acquaintances. The Mexican interlocutors are identified
by their own names because they are already highly visible in public and political spheres.
© The Author(s) 2020 1

X. Alba Villalever, The Migration of Chinese Women
to Mexico City, Historical and Cultural Interconnections
between Latin America and Asia,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53344-1_1
2 X. ALBA VILLALEVER
had to become part of—and pay the necessary fees to—the popular orga-
nizations that control it. She needed the approval of the street vendors’
organization and the protection of its Mexican leader.
We had just met. I was accompanied by the leader of her assigned
work area. Contacting him was the only way to approach Shei without
arousing suspicion or creating conflict. Popular markets are often rife
with tensions between organizations that fight each other for space and
political support; there are also tensions with the police and the govern-
ment. Peddlers and their leaders are wary of people who want to talk to
them about their work and their organization. Although meeting Shei
through her area leader reflected his approval, it also reinforced the hier-
archical power structures of the organization, in which Shei was at the
bottom. Approaching her through her leader was the only option I had:
it protected her while legitimizing my presence in the eyes of others, but
also put her in a vulnerable position.
“Aquí la señorita quiere hablar con usted” (“The lady wants to speak
to you”)—the leader blurted out when we reached Shei´s vending spot,
before turning around and leaving. How could she say no? What could be
going through her head as she heard words in a language she didn’t fully
understand, spoken so sharply by the man who could take away her work?
I quickly introduced myself and told her what I was doing there—trying
to make up for the abrupt introduction by the leader, who had other
things to do. As I was telling her that I wanted to learn about the lives of
Chinese women in Mexico and talk to her about her own experiences, she
took a few steps back and answered in Chinese-accented Spanish: “Para
muchas seguro es muy buena, pero para mí, como no tengo dinero, es muy
difícil ” (“I’m sure for many it’s very good, but for me, since I have no
money, it’s very hard”). I asked her—as gently as I could—if she had been
in Mexico for a long time, but I didn’t really need an answer. She nodded
slowly while looking at me with a tissue over her eyes, tears rolling down
her cheeks. After trying and failing, I never found out exactly why she
had cried. That was the end of our exchange, yet in a way, her reaction
spoke volumes.
This ethnographic vignette sheds light on many of the issues that
come up in a process of migration entangled with precarious labor condi-
tions. It shows the difficulties entailed in working within Mexico City’s
popular economy and the strong power relations and social organizations
constructed within its networks. It makes visible the ways cultural and
political characteristics are bound to specific places and their dynamics. It
1 INTRODUCTION 3
exposes the emotional as well as the economic vulnerabilities that migrants

often face and reveals the controversies surrounding migration in all their
complexity: Why does someone go through the brutal changes that trav-
eling from one country to the other demands—a change of language, of
culture, of food, of feelings of belonging, of family—to end up struggling
selling food on the streets? It pushes us to ask: What does this economic
activity actually entail for the people that carry it out; what does it mean
for a Chinese woman to work as a vendor in a popular market in Mexico
City?
My interest in the immersion of Chinese women in this kind of activity
was based on three premises. First, I recognized that this economic
endeavor was not one customarily performed by the Chinese in Mexico.
Second, I considered that the temporal space in which I developed my
research signaled a change in economic and social activities between both
countries. And third, I considered there had been a process of change
in this migration: a process of feminization that entailed new forms of
empowerment, where women, who find themselves in stages of transi-
tion, have to seek and fight for new places within diverse social structures.
Starting with the hypothesis that their incorporation into Mexico City’s
networks of popular economy was related to their gender and the oppor-
tunities they could find in this specific economic system, I deduced that
their participation rapidly changed the dynamics of various markets in
Mexico.
Shei is one of many Chinese women living in Mexico City today who
have found a place within the popular economy networks of the Centro
Histórico and nearby neighborhoods. In this woman’s working condi-
tions and in her reaction, I saw a reflection of the struggles for survival
that many experience, often with no other choice but to leave everything
behind and travel to the other side of the world. Hers is an example of the
new realities that marginalized actors experience within global dynamics.
Shei does not represent the experiences of all Chinese women in Mexico,
of course. However, her case was the materialization of the most difficult
aspects of migration. Hers was the most severe reaction I encountered
while conducting an interview, and it was the last interview I conducted
for my field research in Mexico City, where I had sought to learn about
the experiences of the Chinese women who had migrated to this great
megalopolis and were now working within the networks of the popular
economy. Their experiences show how local perceptions and imaginaries
about these migrants are often unfounded, built on misconceptions, fear
and xenophobia that are historic in nature.
1.1 Chinese Migration to Mexico

Hu-DeHart (2005) stated that it was impossible to understand the
dynamics of the Chinese in one settlement without considering its
connectivities with other settlements. More than that, I also deem it
impossible to understand contemporary networks of Chinese migrations
to Mexico without taking into account their development for a century
and a half throughout the Americas. Although the first waves of Chinese
migrations are not necessarily related to all of the migrant popula-
tions that fall within the focus of my work, it is important to grasp
the ways in which the Chinese have arrived and organized in different
localities, as well as to understand the responses that local populations
have had to their presence. Moreover, to focus on the experiences of
women and on the impacts that their increasing migration has had on
these networks—notably from the 1990s onward—it is necessary to first
analyze the structural organization of this migrant group, as well as its
transformations over time.
Chinese migrations to Mexico are not a new phenomenon. They
started roughly 150 years ago, but in terms of numbers were most signif-
icant in the early decades of the last century. As in many other countries,
from the end of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twen-
tieth, Chinese migrants to Mexico were mostly young men looking for
work, with the majority hailing from Guangdong. Their common origin
often implied that many not only knew each other before migration, but
were also related. In fact, their processes of migration eventually became
a system where one pioneer migrant, once established, would try to bring
other men from his town or family to work with him, thus creating
translocal ties at a time when even communication from one town to
the other was complicated. These men became a very important source
of development in under-inhabited places such as the desert between the
United States and Mexico (Curtis 1995; Hu-DeHart 2005) and the plan-
tations in Yucatán and other southern Mexican states (Cervera 2007).2
At that time, most of the Chinese in Mexico were concentrated in the
northern states (especially Sonora and Baja California), in areas where
2 According to Cervera (2007: 38), one of the first influxes of Chinese to arrive in the
southern Mexican peninsula came from Cuba in 1892 to work as indentured workers in
haciendas henequeneras, but there was already a rather invisible presence of Chinese in the
south, having arrived through Belize.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
the mining and agricultural industries were growing and avid for devel-
opment, needing both manual labor and new markets (Curtis 1995).
Chinese presence and labor were critical in the development of these
areas. After they had boosted agriculture, they often left the fields and
established themselves as small business owners (Hu-DeHart 2005).
During this first period of Chinese migration, the presence of women
was rare and there is little that we know about the experiences of the few
that were in Mexico. The workload in this country, as elsewhere, was hard
and the income insufficient. The workers’ families (wives and children
or parents) often remained in China, dependent upon remittances sent
by the migrants. Remittance systems advanced local development in the
regions of origin and brought growth to specific areas in China, particu-
larly to provinces that were prone to producing migrants. Decades later,
the development of some of these provinces was recognized and boosted
by the state, eventually turned—after the 1980s—into Special Economic
Zones, with one particular economic activity leading the area’s develop-
ment. Meanwhile, the migrants often faced very difficult conditions, at
least during their initial years in Mexico.
Little by little, Chinese men started settling down and forming
communities and anchorage far from home. Their living conditions in
Mexico eventually surpassed those of their families in China. Through
their organization in associations or huiguan,3 they created bank-like
systems that would facilitate sending money back home, thereby strength-
ening translocal relationships that had been difficult to sustain. As
McKeown states:
“These businesses and associations were built on the trust and familiarity of
kinship, and then helped reinforce those ties through their institutionalized
services. Without these services, migration would rarely have been a prac-
tical strategy for the economic survival of families, lineages, or villages.”
(1999: 102)
McKeown was referring to the United States, but this was also true in
Mexico. Despite the harsh conditions they faced on arrival, from the
beginning of the twentieth-century Chinese migrants not only devel-
oped plantation fields that boosted local economies, they also set up
commodity shops that made living conditions more bearable in poorly
3 For a more exhaustive analysis of these associations, see Cinco (1999: 33).
connected places in rural Mexico. Chinese workers and merchants created

commercial bonds with the United States, strengthening ties that had
been notably weak before the Mexican Revolution (Hu-DeHart 2005:
94) and giving the migrant population a role to play between producers
and consumers, the role of middlemen minority (Bonacich 1973), which
has been their trademark ever since.
However, it was their ascension and stabilization into the category
of middlemen—which Hu-DeHart defined as a petite bourgeoisie—and
their capacity to maintain commercial ties across space and under very
harsh conditions, which made the group a target of social scrutiny and
resentment.4 This resentment grew from the perception that the Chinese
had more economic opportunities than Mexicans, a perception still held
by many local vendors within popular markets. At that time, resent-
ment led to outrage, and these feelings soon materialized into violence,
pillage and persecution against the Chinese. A first expression of these
violent events took place in Torreón, Coahuila, in 1911, where over
three hundred Chinese were killed, and several others were dispossessed
of their businesses and properties (Curtis 1995: 339; González 2017:
24). After that, several more extended and organized waves of anti-
Chinese movements took place in Mexico: the first lasted from 1916
to 1919, particularly in the northern region of the country and specif-
ically in Sonora (Curtis 1995; Hu-DeHart 2005; Schiavone Camacho
2009). The second took place in 1921, when the powerful political lead-
ership from Sonora forced the prohibition of Chinese migration (Curtis
1995; Cinco 1999), drastically reducing the numbers of Chinese entering
the country. From then on, there was a strengthening of the social and
economic networks through which the Chinese had always moved, and
the huiguan became strategic in countering aggression (González 2017).
Kinship, political belonging and friendship networks gained a whole new
meaning: they became strategies of protection and survival. In 1925, anti-
Chinese campaigns resumed (Cinco 1999; Hu-DeHart 2005), driven by
4 The idea that strangers (whom local populations often classified as inferior) were
“taking jobs” was the main impetus for the racist and prejudicial feelings against
migrants—much as it still is today. In the case of the Chinese in northern Mexico, authors
like Hu-DeHart have made it clear that the development of these areas would never have
reached the same levels had it not been for the efforts of the Chinese. Nevertheless,
they were persecuted for this exact same reason. For a more complete discussion of anti-
Chinese sentiment in Mexico, see Cinco (1999: 35), Curtis (1995: 340) and González
(2017).
1 INTRODUCTION 7
a mix of political, social and economic factors. Three of these factors stand
out: (1) the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the construction of
a nation-state that sought to “‘Mexicanize’ the country and its economy”
(Curtis 1995: 340), and in which the Chinese presence was unwanted; (2)
the end of WWI, which meant a decrease in demand for cotton produc-
tion at the same time that Mexican workers who had migrated north
to replace the US workforce during the war were returning home; (3)
and racist-inspired propaganda, also coming from the United States. This
was nourished, first, by the sentiment that jobs should be reserved for
Mexicans, and second, by the complaint that the low wages under which
the Chinese were willing to work (when employed by other more estab-
lished Chinese) were so low that it was impossible to compete (Curtis
1995; Cinco 1999; Hu-DeHart 2005; Schiavone Camacho 2009; Alba
Villalever 2014).
These tragic events led the Chinese in Mexico to create and repro-
duce various networks that still have an impact today. Since the
1880s, Chinese community resources in Mexico, which have materialized
through networks of information, trust, kinship and even employment,
have been a strong vehicle for the integration for migrants. Even today,
once a certain level of integration into economic activities is achieved in
a specific locality, Chinese migrants tend to develop an endo-community
job market, thus creating and perpetuating Chinese economic enclaves.5
Chinese markets and shops were always run by family members, loans
were offered to Chinese friends and neighbors, and temporary jobs were
offered to newcomers. These jobs would be paid with housing and
food rather than a salary, depriving newcomers of purchasing power and
forcing them to rely on the social and economic networks already in place.
This system of social and economic reproduction was initially meant as a
way of insertion. But it ended up as an obstacle for individual growth.
Migrants often found themselves trapped in circular capital flows that
5 In a strict sense, economic enclaves depict the embeddedness of a specific economy in

a wider economic context. The social life of the people working within the limits of the
enclave revolves around the enterprise and its economy (Sariego, [1988] 2010). Likewise,
ethnic enclaves, or ethnic enclave economies, refer to the social and economic networks
that are created and reproduced by immigrants, particularly visible in determined localities
where the actors develop specific economic activities that are nourished by migration flows
(Portes and Bach 1985; Sanders and Nee 1987; Zhou and Logan 1989; Portes and Jensen
1989, 1992; Curtis 1995; Zhou 1998).
restricted their progress—much as they still do today (Alba Villalever

2014).
In fact, some of these same migration networks still exist, and through
social interactions often connect separate geographies where Chinese
economic enclaves are still strong, for instance between Taishan6 (Guang-
dong) and Mexicali (Baja California) (Curtis 1995; Alba Villalever 2014).
But new Chinese settlements also rely on these community resources to
grow and survive, and in recent years have formed new enclaves, like the
one in Mexico City where my research took place. These systems allow
for the reproduction of social bonds that continuously traverse borders
and create extensive networks across the Pacific. As a bonus, they give
migrants a sense of belonging to a “Chinese community overseas.”
However, over time and with the widening of migration from China
to Mexico, the diasporic circuits that have structured Chinese migrations
and their insertion into local places of settlement eventually became a
system ruled by hierarchies, dividing different groups by social position
and economic background, and thus defining each individual’s possibil-
ities for growth. This has resulted in increased differentiation between
migrants with higher economic capacities and those with fewer opportuni-
ties. Even today, before they can leave their country, prospective migrants
within traditional Chinese economic enclaves often have to find a job in
the country where they are to settle. On the one hand, this facilitates
the acquisition of legal working documents and implies that the migrants
will easily find food and lodging when they arrive, thus ensuring their
survival. On the other hand, since these elements are usually provided
by employers already established in Mexico, what often results is an
ever-increasing that debt employees owe their employers. Their salaries
are then reduced to diminish that debt, thereby depriving them of the
freedom to find better opportunities or create businesses of their own.7
This social system gradually became a factor of social inequality, not
only regarding economic capacities, but also with respect to social means
6 To maintain unity in the text, the romanization of Mandarin (Pinyin) will be used for
all the names of cities or provinces in China.
7 In the worst-case scenarios, this is also provided by agencies or smugglers, who
often raise their fees without notice and deprive travelers of the option to return home.
Although some evidence of these networks was encountered during my field research, it
was impossible to pursue the subject, which in any case was beyond the purview of my
research.
1 INTRODUCTION 9
and community resources; the weaker the newcomer’s connections with

the Chinese employers, the worse the job offers, living conditions and
opportunities for growth.
These same gaps between migrants with different amounts of social
and economic capital are still found within more recent migration
processes to Mexico. Those who come with fewer capital still find them-
selves in positions that are hard to overcome within the community’s
networks, however, what I found in popular markets in Mexico City
was a little different. In this locality, the roles played by migrants with
higher or lower capital were all important to build commercial networks
among popular economy. While those with higher capital would interact
with Mexicans in the same positions, those with lower capital would
reach a population deprived of better conditions. These made possible
a different kind of interaction among migrant vendors with different
economic capital, which was a key factor in their incorporation into
Mexican popular markets. The differences between old and new migration
processes and the strategies of incorporation of migrants lie in a context
of globalization in which the relation that China has with the localities of
insertion and with the Chinese overseas is foremost.
1.2 Context
The economic tendencies of the last three and a half decades have restruc-
tured the dynamics of all countries and the ways in which they interact.
Migration from one country to the other is a reflection of relations
between contexts; it is both the result of and the producer of bridges
or ties between different territories. Often, these ties are inherently local-
ized and depend on specific contexts: political, economic, social or even
cultural; however, through migration these localities and their specific
characteristics are transformed, given new meanings and dynamics that
result from the movement of actors with different backgrounds and their
interactions(Besserer and Nieto 2015). This book considers two specific
contexts in two different countries—Mexico and China. I argue that
despite their geographical separation, the interactions of different actors
and social institutions between both countries have created interrelated
dynamics.
In 1978, under the rule of Deng Xiaoping, China engaged in a major
political and economic reform that continues to transform the social land-
scape of the country and its relations with other nations. This has played a
fundamental role in the reshuffling of global economic order. This reform,

the Open Door Policy, not only implied a profound change in the coun-
try’s economic system, but also put it on the winning track toward global
economic leadership. In the last two decades, GDP per capita has grown
steadily, making China the second-largest economy in the world after the
United States (IMF 2019). However, although in general terms living
conditions in China have been improving, in actual terms income dispar-
ities have grown and perceptions of well-being among those in China’s
lower economic strata have shrunk (Bartolini 2015). This is not unex-
pected; considering that China’s population has reached 1.4 billion, urban
growth has skyrocketed and agricultural fields have been abandoned at a
troubling rate. As a result of these conditions, a variety of demonstra-
tions have erupted in recent decades, calling for a path to democracy in
China and, since the 1990s, demonstrators have increasingly demanded
better salaries and working conditions (So 2007). Clearly, the country’s
growth has not kept pace with the expectations of its people. While some
are getting richer, others are struggling just to survive. Social inequality
continues to grow, as the vast majority are confronted with limited offers
of employment, disadvantageous or unsatisfying labor options, inade-
quate salaries and exploitation. Liberalization8 has brought both growth
and marginalization (Harvey 2005), and Chinese people of all back-
grounds have to go through several process of readjustment. For many,
readjustment implies migration.
8 Authors like So argue that the Chinese model cannot be categorized as neoliberal
because it relies on a deeper relation between the state and economic development, is
still “highly nationalistic and authoritarian” (2007: 61), and—most importantly—its state
developmentalism has lifted a substantial part of the population out of poverty. Although
it is true that China’s development strategies in no way mirror the neoliberal strategies
that have been developed in Latin America, I believe that the recent responses of the
Chinese state to global economic dynamics thoroughly abide by the neoliberal model. As
far as lifting the population out of poverty, the issue should be looked at from a wider—
intersectional—perspective to fully understand the country’s economic path and its impact
on Chinese society, as I argue throughout the book. However, So’s argument on the state
authoritarianism and its role in subordinating labor to keep wages low and export prices
competitive in a global economy—a trademark of the East Asian developmental state—is
a fact that cannot be overlooked. So considers one possible outcome of China’s state
developmentalism to be the return to neoliberalism, another interesting scenario that will
not be pursued in this book. Hence, I will categorize China’s actual economic strategy as
neoliberal.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
With economic restructuring, Chinese society has changed. Its under-

standing of and adaptation to the world market has had many effects.
In China, the first impacts were perceived not long after reforms began.
One major change was that Chinese overseas—often constructed under
the term “diaspora”9 —were now beginning to be considered privileged
actors in the development of Chinese commodity chains around the
world. However, it would be several years before these impacts became
visible and their effects on other countries apparent. In the case of
Mexico, two of these effects have been visible since the nineties: the
growing migration of Chinese women and their integration into an
unlikely economic field: retail and wholesale in popular markets; and the
increasing circulation and consumption of commodities “Made in China.”
Both phenomena are most visible in specific localities, for example, the
streets and corridors of Mexico City’s popular marketplaces in the Centro
Histórico.
Popular markets and their economic, social and political organiza-
tion are the specific context on which I focus in Mexico. Within these
markets are various levels of informality10 that structure commercial,
social and political relations. The popular economy cannot be easily delim-
ited. Its existence is acutely linked to those networks of economy that
are considered “formal,” with which it engages in constant dialogue
and confrontation. Working in popular markets is one of the most
common methods of survival for inhabitants of this megalopolis. By some
estimates, there are between 350,000 and 500,000 street vendors in
Mexico City (Alba Vega 2012: 82). In spite of moving through unrecog-
nized economic parameters, popular markets are places where enormous
amounts of capital circulate daily. Within these markets in which the
9 In this book, I avoid talking about “a Chinese diaspora” because I consider that it
obscures the inner differences between the diversity of actors of migration and frustrates
the visibilization of individual forms of action and/or agency. Instead, I follow McKeown
(1999) and Hu-DeHart (2007) on the utility of considering a diasporic perspective to
view and analyze these migrations and their inherent global connectivities.
10 Throughout the book, I refer to markets in Mexico City and their dynamics, which
fall within different levels of informality, as “popular markets”, “popular commerce” or
“popular economy”. I do this, first, because it is the emic term used by the actors that
live and work in these economic dynamics. Also, the term “informality” refers to a state
dictate that will not always be significant. Last, the term “informality” brings with it many
implications and cultural constructions that involve illegality. Therefore, to avoid the value
judgments that often accompany the meaning of “informality”, I will only use the term
when specifically referring to issues related to state control.
popular economy reigns, delimitations between formality and informality

are blurred, and so are the borders between center and margin, legality
and illegality, growth and survival. Multiple interactions between actors in
different fields, like family and commerce, and among different territorial-
ities is one way in which different levels of this “informality” are produced
as strategies of survival (Müller 2014). But these interactions also produce
unexpected spaces with new dynamics. In recent decades, the demands of
the people that work and live within this economy have transformed their
daily practices into political struggles. What started as a way of survival
became a way of living, and as is often the case, people started to orga-
nize and fight for territory, visibility and power. Today, every aspect of the
popular economy is regulated by a wide range of popular organizations.
For some, popular markets are places where they are given the tools to
survive, for others they represent a form of economic, political and social
growth.
Moreover, the integration of Chinese migrants created new dynamics
within Mexico’s popular markets. Chinese migration is not a new
phenomenon in Mexico, but rather a process that has been changing
through time and in which a wide variety of actors participate. In recent
years, the Chinese in Mexico City have started to engage in this economic
activity that takes place outside of hegemonic economic systems. This is an
economy forged by the social, political, cultural and economic conditions
of the locality and its actors. The arrival of the Chinese also brought new
ways of doing business and new commercial networks. These reach back
to China, connecting various places, actors and dynamics. To grasp these
complexities, we need to consider the economic, political and cultural
paths of both China and Mexico and the way they intertwine. Although
China has now experienced years of economic growth and development,
it has also known rapid social transformation and growing inequality
(Bartolini 2015), making international migration a more attractive means
of livelihood for many Chinese citizens. In Mexico, meanwhile, structural
inequalities have for decades pushed an important part of its population
to search for alternative economies that have grown in specific interactions
with the state; this is a population that has lagged behind, but also has
built its own means of survival and livelihood. In recent years, the actors
that conform these two separate contexts have brought them together,
creating bridges between separate places through their interactions; in
their search of economic survival and growth, they have created alterna-
tive spaces of globalization. In this book, I explore and assess what these
1 INTRODUCTION 13
places and their economies mean for the Chinese women that work in
them, as well as the impact, in turn, that these women have on them.
1.3 Objectives and Questions

Interested in the ways in which Mexico and China have become articu-
lated in a very specific manner through the interactions of Chinese women
working as vendors in Mexican popular markets, I first had to make visible
that their experiences are transnational and so too are the social spaces
in which they move. They create social fabrics among the localities in
which they are embedded as they move through different territories. To
examine the impacts that these women have had in the Mexican market,
I also had to focus on the resources they have found and appropriated
to venture down these new paths: these are commercial mechanisms,
economic strategies and sociocultural practices. These strategies recon-
figure their conception of themselves as individuals, as women and as
vendors and importers, and they give them specific positions on different
social structures. This implies not only a reconfiguration of gender roles
in a transforming Chinese society, but also in a Mexican one. In this sense,
the analysis of the role of women in a globalized economy has been of
foremost importance.
The book is guided by a search for the articulations between the local
and the global, the ways that local, personal interactions and economic
struggles can be translated into processes of globalization. More specif-
ically, I ask: How do Chinese migrant women in Mexico City´s popular
markets, through the social spaces that they build with their interac-
tions between Mexico and China, forge their own ways of participation
in global processes? The question signals the existence of alternative
processes of globalization that arise from unexpected spaces, such as
struggles for survival that feed and are fed by migration. I argue that
there is a path constructed from the local to the global by actors that are
considered to be on the margins of the hegemonic economy. This path
starts from strategies of survival in specific localities, such as Mexico City’s
public marketplaces, through interactions that take place within them,
such as articulations between Chinese and Mexican vendors, and through
links constructed with other places, such as the hometowns in China and
Yiwu, in Zhejiang Province, the biggest commodity market in the world
today.
I argue that there is a connection between gender dynamics and the

restructuring of social orders and women’s participation in migration.
This can only be looked at through an intersectional perspective that
takes into account gender, class, race and regional and cultural belong-
ings. By examining their participation in Mexican popular markets and
the tools they develop that allow that participation, I trace the trans-
formations actors can exert on localities through migration. There are
different ways in which individuals link places and reshape social spaces
through their migration in search of work. In this specific analysis, migra-
tion networks to Mexico are considered as the result of an intersection
between strategies of survival and strategies of growth, as the construction
of alternative spaces of globalization that have arisen from the particular
situations of the migrating population and the spaces where they establish
themselves in Mexico.
To render this discussion more tangible, I first ask: What factors
have encouraged the migration of Chinese women to Mexico and what
strategies have they developed to venture into popular markets? Here,
I inquire about the opportunities given to women in China and the
elements that have attracted new migrations of Chinese women to
Mexico. I analyze transnational social information networks that allow
the insertion of migrant women in economic activities that derive from
marginalized dynamics, and link the importance of popular economies as
spaces of opportunities. Second: How do women’s migration processes
create transnational social spaces and transform localities? Here, I analyze
women’s participation within various power structures, economic flows
and social networks. I shed light on their performativity and subjectiva-
tion within the different spaces in which they move and on how these
processes have impacts on social structures. While working in networks of
the popular economy, these women have found and reproduced various
strategies of labor insertion that have changed their perceptions of self
and of family. For this question, the analysis of space and the importance
of the different relationships developed by diverse actors are paramount.
1.4 Methodology and Research

Design: Who, Where and How?
As an anthropologist concerned with gender studies and feminist debates,
the core of this research originated in my interest in asserting the impor-
tance of women’s participation in diverse spaces. Having studied Chinese
1 INTRODUCTION 15
migrations for several years, I was struck by the lack of research with
a gender perspective. There have been few studies of Chinese migrant
women, most of them by French, British and American scholars, and
studies about the role played by women who stayed back in their home
country while their husbands worked in the United States.11 In Mexico,
however, there is still not a single published study focusing specifically
on the experiences of Chinese women, either as those who moved or as
those who stayed, and these gaps in the research need to be addressed.
The data used in this book was mostly gathered through ethnographic
research carried out from November 2013 to May 2014 in several popular
markets in Mexico City, particularly in the Tepito market and surrounding
area as well as in Plaza de la Tecnología—colloquially known as “Plaza de
la Computación”—San Cosme and San Lázaro (Maps 1.1 and 1.2). For
the research, semi-structured interviews, in-depth interviews and informal
conversations were carried out with Chinese women as well as with
Mexican vendors and leaders of the popular organizations to which most
of these women were “members.” Most of the women interviewed did
not wish to be recorded, but they all agreed that I take notes during
our interviews: my journal hence became my most important form of
documentation.12
Focusing on gender dynamics sheds light on several aspects of migra-
tion, beginning with the reasons women migrate and the vulnerabilities
they face both before and after they migrate. It reveals the importance
of gender structures and roles within the family and in the workplace,
as well as their possible transformations (hence the need to consider
agency and empowerment in these processes). It also shows new forms
of embeddedness of Chinese in local dynamics.
1.5 The Subjects

This book is based on the experiences of 22 Chinese women of varied
background who have worked within different levels of popular economy
11 Among the leading authors of these investigations are Zhou and Logan (1989), Zhou
and Nordquist (1994), Zhou (2000), Baxter and Raw ([1988] 2004), Song (1995), Lee
et al. (2002), Ryan (2002), Auguin (2005), Lévy (2005), Lévy and Lieber (2009, 2010),
Lausent-Herrera (2007), Siu (2001, 2005) and Mazumdar (2003, 2007).
12 For a more detailed explanation on the research methods, as well as a list of the
interviews carried out during research, see the Annex.
2795000.000000 2796000.000000 2797000.000000 2798000.000000 2799000.000000 2800000.000000 2801000.000000 2802000.000000 2803000.000000 2804000.000000
¯
833000.000000
833000.000000
832000.000000
832000.000000
2 Norte
(Canal
del
Norte)
831000.000000
831000.000000
fo de
a
rm
Re o
la ase
tes
P
Insurgen
Norte
Ci
Ribera
rc
1 Norte
un
de Sa (Ignacio
va
n
Cosm
la
López Rayón)
830000.000000
830000.000000
ció
e
n
)
Cárdenas
Central
(Lázaro
Commercial corridor between
de TAPO and San Lázaro
Unión)
San se o a
Cosme Pa eform
829000.000000
829000.000000
la R Venustian
o
ngreso de la
Vi ctoria Carranza
Cen ntes
Uruguay
tro
rg e
Barrio Ca
Insu
Chino lza
Plaza de la da
Ign
norable Co
828000.000000
828000.000000
acio
Computacion Za
Cárdenas)
rag
Central
(Lázaro
oza
2 Oriente (Ho
s
827000.000000
827000.000000
ente
Sur
Insurg
826000.000000
826000.000000
825000.000000
825000.000000
2795000.000000 2796000.000000 2797000.000000 2798000.000000 2799000.000000 2800000.000000 2801000.000000 2802000.000000 2803000.000000 2804000.000000
2 1 0 Km
Legend
Streets and spots with the Projection: Lambert Conformal Conic
presence of Chinese peddlers Datum: ITRF92
Scale: 1: 50 000
Delegación Cuauhtemoc Units: Meters
Sources: INEGI-Encuesta intercensal 2015
Market of Tepito Authors: Ximena Alba Villalever &
Mario Hernandez Trejo
Year: 2017
Map 1.1 Chinese vendors in other popular markets

1 INTRODUCTION 17
Map 1.2 Chinese vendors in the Barrio of Tepito

in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico. While some of them grew to be

importers of products Made in China, others were intermediaries between
importers and vendors, and others were peddlers or street vendors, selling
food or a few specific commodities. Their positions within these commer-
cial and economic spaces depended on several factors, including social
capital, cultural and regional ties, age (ranging from 24 to nearly 60) and
the various networks to which they have access within their migratory
experiences. Despite these differences, they all participate in a process of
globalization that in this book I call “alternative,” because it has been
constructed with different means than those constructed within greater
(more institutional) economic and hegemonic global flows. When we start
with the experiences of these women, we see them as core to the migra-
tion process, furthering our understanding of the influence of migration
in local and translocal spaces.
However, because I chose to analyze different experiences that the
Chinese women at the center of this research were willing to share, taking
into consideration different aspects of their realities and the ways in which
they have overcome the difficulties that migration implies, it is no wonder
that the project underwent a number of changes. My encounter with Shei,
for instance, and particularly her reaction to my presence and my motives,
told me a lot about the emotional turmoil caused by migration. I wanted
to learn about the experiences of these women as foreign merchants in
Mexico City’s great popular markets; I wanted to know what it was like
for someone from China to enter into a world with such specific local
dynamics; I wanted to know what their experiences had been as women,
what their conditions had been like when they arrived in Mexico, the
ways in which they initially made contact with the street vendors’ leaders
who controlled their working conditions. Instead, in the case of Shei,
what was expressed without words was a set of vulnerabilities intrinsic
to migration and worthy of analysis in themselves. Her reaction had an
impact on my own research experience, revealing aspects I had not initially
considered, including the role emotions play in economic and symbolic
struggles. These aspects were taken into account in my analysis, partic-
ularly when considering transnational motherhood, issues of trust and
commerce and issues of identification and belonging. During my field
research, I was always very aware that the people with whom I spoke
were in difficult situations on so many different levels: they are migrants, a
variable that is in itself a destabilizing situation; they work within different
levels of informality, either due to their legal residency and labor status
1 INTRODUCTION 19
in Mexico or to their incorporation into a sector of economy that falls

within the limits of “informality.” Some of my interlocutors were in much
more unstable positions than others, as was the case of Shei. Their posi-
tions as women represent in themselves a source of marginalization and
vulnerability. I sought to take all of this into account. For a long time,
migration and its implications were considered through strictly economic
perspectives, with a particular focus on remittances. Through gender
studies, other aspects of these processes have been made visible. Migra-
tion crosses every aspect of a person’s life and cuts across all the fields
in which actors find themselves, such as family and work (Herrera 2004,
2012; Lausent-Herrera 2007), sexuality (Lévy 2005; Piscitelli 2005; Lévy
and Lieber 2009, 2010) and motherhood (Madianou and Miller 2011).
It often means prolonged separation from loved ones, parents, children
or spouses. Migration transforms the organization of families, and the
role each person must perform in these extended spaces between China
and Mexico. As a result, gender relations and the structures that define
them are also modified. During my research, the interaction between all
these aspects—the economic, the personal and intimate, the family—was
rendered increasingly clear.
My work was based on the idea that there are actors who manage
to create alternative forms of bonding with local spaces through their
own ways of growth and survival. There are a variety of social and
economic interactions in Chinese migration processes that constitute a
social fabric that is constantly created or renewed. They entail several
networks: the circulation of massive amounts of capital and commodi-
ties that are spurred by the state; the sending of small remittances that
may have important implications for those that receive them as well as for
those who send them; and very personal, intimate exchanges across space
with the help of increasingly modernized means of communication, just
to name a few of the exchanges that take place across the Pacific. These
networks and the ways in which they intertwine are producing changes
in the lives of the women who are the subjects of this book; they are
transforming the spaces in which they move.
Lastly, my encounter with Shei led me to acknowledge once again that
migration is a process through which categorizations are transformed,
erased or reinforced. Migrants working in networks of popular economy
are constantly moving between different stages of marginalization—as
women, as migrants and foreigners, as actors of popular, rather than hege-
monic economies—where variables such as social class and gender are
inescapable. Their experiences as economic agents and their strategies to

overcome these stages of marginalization and the dynamics that take place
“in-between” hence became my main focus.
1.6 The Places

This book starts from a local analysis to first understand the places where
the principal actors are embedded and their experiences in them. Several
markets in Mexico City and in China were approached from an ethno-
graphic perspective. Their specificities are anchored on localities that
somehow have been integrated into global networks. For instance, the
market of Tepito, a pivotal space in my analysis, has been articulated
through Chinese commerce and migration to the city of Yiwu, in China.
These markets have specific characteristics that are dependent on their
geographies and the social and economic dynamics in which they were
constructed. In Mexico, the idea was to follow popular economy networks
in different locations with Chinese presence. I mainly focused on Tepito
because it is a hub for various forms of participation and plays a major role
in the economic activities of the Chinese. In China, I also focus on one
specific geographic location: Yiwu. This market in China also has global
specificities and is characterized by its importance as a hub of international
commerce. The two markets are relevant because they link Mexico and
China through small-scale wholesale transactions that take place through
the work of migrants.
Although bound to territorial delimitations, these markets are
constantly crisscrossed by local and global networks that produce contin-
uous changes, depending on the actors that participate in them. Especially
in Tepito, I met with two quite different realities. First was the knowl-
edge of constant social and political struggle in which Tepiteñes13 are
enmeshed on a daily basis. These struggles have different manifestations:
13 I use “Tepiteñes” (with an “e”) as the common label for people who live or grew
up in Tepito to avoid a/o repetitions or gendered distinctions. Needless to say, Tepito
and the networks of popular economy, as well as Mexico’s entire social organization,
are full of gender distinctions and uneven power relations. The use of “Tepiteñes” is
not intended to gloss over these differences, but to state that indeed they exist and are
found within the dualistic heteronormal discourse that we often reproduce. I do the same
with other Spanish words charged with gender distinctions, such as agremiades (literally
meaning unionized, and, in the context of Tepiteñes, used to refer to a member of a
specific vendors’ organization)or fayuqueres (referring to the men and women who made
their living through fayuca networks, bringing commodities into Mexico through the
US-Mexico border).
1 INTRODUCTION 21
usually discursive, often confrontational, sometimes violent. I was able

to participate in some of these struggles, mostly discursive, since I was
closely observed and protected by the leader with whom I often worked,
María Rosete, who made my insertion into the market of Tepito possible.
I began to understand the need for space in the battle for survival and
also in the battle for political growth. From her perspective, I could see
another side of the arrival of the Chinese in Tepito, one that did not corre-
spond with what Hearn saw through the eyes and perceptions of Victor
Cisneros, another downtown Mexico City leader. Tepiteñes build their
own opportunities. They struggle against the state, the government and
policies designed to “put order” in this place. But they also engage in
struggles against other vendors and leaders. Whether they accept or reject
Chinese presence and participation in popular markets depends on their
own experiences with them.
Asia and Latin America have distinctive dynamics that must be analyzed
from their own specific contexts as well. To understand Chinese migrants
in Mexico, it is not only necessary to understand their experiences in
Mexico and the ways in which they are adapting to their new conditions,
it is also vital to examine their backgrounds in China, the contexts in
which they grew and from which they emigrated, and the ways in which
they still contribute to their homelands, even from afar.
1.7 Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

Throughout the book, I explain how Chinese women become actors in
global markets. In doing so, I bring together studies of transnational
formation, theories of globalization (particularly alternative processes of
globalization) and gender studies. Shifts in systems of economic produc-
tion and their impacts on social organization are particularly evident in the
context of popular markets: first, because these are places where strategies
of survival come face-to-face with significant capital flows and commercial
development. And, second, because their social and economic interactions
are so heterogeneous that they range from the most profitable to the most
vulnerable. The dialectics between center and margin, on the other hand,
were analyzed within what feminist geographers refer to as standpoint
theory. In this sense, my intention is to elaborate a theoretical frame-
work that uses an intersectional perspective to analyze localized, specific
experiences of Chinese migrant women.
My interest in analyzing the participation of Chinese women in Mexico

was the result of a need to show from a feminist perspective the input
of women in urban experiences and in economic processes; a concern
for inequalities and the patterns in which they develop; and a profound
desire to find a way to understand the power regimes through which these
inequalities are formed. With respect to the analysis of power regimes, I
was determined to bypass these power structures by deconstructing estab-
lished set of binary productions of inequality, such as center/periphery,
north/south and men/women. To accomplish these tasks, instead of
starting with existing power structures, my analysis begins with the experi-
ences of the people that are involved and transit within them, illustrating
down-to-earth, day-to-day ways of living to eventually understand their
particularity. Although such daily activities might not seem connected to
the wider theoretical structure, this connection will eventually be made
clear.
I start from a transnational living perspective (Guarnizo 2003; Besserer
and Nieto 2015) and the construction of transnational formations that
arise from below (Portes 1997a; Smith and Guarnizo 1998; Faist 2006;
Smith 2001). These perspectives allowed me to look at different sets of
survival strategies that take place between spaces. These strategies and
the impacts their actors have on wider processes through their mobility
are what I call alternative spaces of globalization. This is a concept built
on Sassen’s discussion of alternative circuits of survival (2000, 2005,
2013) as adjacent processes of globalization, and Ribeiro’s discussion of
alter-native globalizations (2006). These processes are alternatives to the
hegemonic circuits of globalization, rather than merely adjacent to them
as described by Sassen. They construct globalization in different ways and
from different places.
Talking about alternative spaces of globalization gives place to personal
perceptions about the spaces where the subjects carry out their social
interactions and through which they move. Localities are changed by
the actors’ diverse interactions within them; these changes at the local
level also have impacts at the global level. The basic research axes of
my work are set on labor markets with a focus on gender inequalities;
on the family, their dynamics and power operations, and their effects
on the construction of subjectivity; and on the construction of alterna-
tive markets and alternative ways of doing commerce that build global
connections. As will be seen throughout the book, Mexican markets such
as Tepito, which have grown from very localized micro-social links to
1 INTRODUCTION 23
become places of globalization (Menéndez 2010), are strategic research

sites (Sassen 2005) for the study of labor division and processes of gender
segmentation. They are also places of gender re-enactments (Butler 1988,
2011), where subjectivity takes place. Throughout the book, I eluci-
date the ways in which gender, migration and global processes interact.
For instance, how do individual economic transactions between Chinese
and Mexican vendors in a Mexican popular market gradually result in
the construction of global spaces? Migration here is core. It creates
social dynamics that go beyond commonly delimitated structures, criss-
crossing borders—geopolitical, social or those represented by the porous
boundaries of institutional mechanisms, such as formal/informal markets.
Migration connects the local dynamics of popular markets in Mexico to
processes of global commodity production in China. The roles played by
Chinese migrants working in Mexico are foremost. Although migration
is the central element of the book, I seek not to describe the processes
of mobility themselves, but rather to comprehend the experiences of the
subjects that are affected by mobility and how they transform the localities
in which they move and their dynamics.
The theory on global cities was built on the idea of the construction of
a space that is ruled by financial flows and that rather than being unbound
to nation-states, is a construction between nation-states; global cities are
spaces articulated by a set of dynamics that transcend national boundaries
(Sassen 2001). However, too often these processes are considered relevant
when referring to hegemonic circulation of commodities, information and
capital—what Ribeiro (2006) calls hegemonic conceptualizations of glob-
alization. By bringing her theory on global cities to the level of subjects,
Sassen reflected on the construction of alternative circuits of survival .
She considered the participation of a number of actors in global processes
to have been undermined, especially when taking into account migration
and the roles that migrants have on these great global networks (because
how would stockbrokers be able to work if someone else—probably a
migrant woman—wasn’t home taking care of their children?). Neverthe-
less, she did not consider these to be elements of the territorializations
of globalization. Although Sassen considers that these invisible global
actors integrate into already existing global dynamics, I argue instead
that there are actors that construct new ways of articulations and create
different territorializations of globalization (Ribeiro 2006); these actors
construct alternative spaces of globalization. They continuously create
a variety of social spaces across distance, spaces that they cross daily
through interactions with their families back home and with their peers in
Mexico: through remittances, through voice messages and photo sharing
of their children, whom they have seen grow on their screens, through
commercial alliances with Mexicans and trades that take place in China.
They create anchorage to their localities (of residence, of origin and of
commercial transactions) while building circuits through their movements
(of ideas and information, of emotions, of economic transactions and
remittances, of commercial deals). Because of the marginal economies
in which they move, their connectivities and their impacts might seem
insignificant at the global level, but during the course of the book I will
prove the opposite and tie together their micro-social processes to meso-
levels of articulation and henceforth to global linkages. Considering these
popular commercial networks between Mexico and China as spatial units
with global references (Sassen 2003a, b), I will show how the actors
are positioned as bonds or bridges between different fragmented places
of globalization. In this sense, places that have often been considered
marginal—such as popular markets—are also links in what Sassen calls
strategic places of globalization. Analyzing transnational lived experiences
shows how people in the margins or people that organize “from below”
also have ways of appropriating the city and of constructing new articu-
lations of the city. Therefore, they also participate in the construction of
the global city.
The theoretical perspective of transnationalism acknowledges the exis-
tence of different dimensions that transcend boundaries (Besserer 1999)
and sheds light on how migrants carry out their lives in-between different
places. In this sense, Chinese migrant women participate and trans-
form social institutions, such as families, social networks of migration
and commerce. This is a transnational phenomenon because it entails
activities “of an economic, political, and cultural sort that require the
involvement of participants on a regular basis as a major part of their
occupation” (Portes 1997a: 16). Transnational social spaces are domains
of cross-border social relations (Faist 2006); however, these transnational
networks link not only families and individuals through these exchanges,
but also territories and nations. They are social fabrics that traverse and
that are crossed over by their actors (Pries 2013). For instance, places like
Tepito cross borders and go beyond their delimitations through the expe-
riences and social networks of the people that work in them. The insertion
of Chinese women into migration and into the economic networks of
Mexican commerce has had further impacts on perceptions of space. It has
1 INTRODUCTION 25
allowed social, economic and cultural practices to expand across distance,

producing new transnational articulations between Mexico and China.
Portes rightfully warned of the conceptual conflict that could result
from considering all immigrants who maintain strong bonds with both
home and settlement countries as transnational entrepreneurs or as trans-
migrants (Glick Schiller et al. 1992, 1995), a concept that he rejects,
arguing that it adds nothing new to what is already known. In this book,
likewise parting from methodological nationalisms (Glick Schiller et al.
1992; Portes 1997b), I argue that actors who are not necessarily as
economically influential as transnational entrepreneurs still participate in
transnational connections in their own ways. These include immigrants
who have inserted themselves in the same economic activities of transna-
tional entrepreneurs, and who have, through their activities and their
roles as connectors or intermediaries, created bridges between transna-
tional activities, local dynamics and global contexts. Globalization from
below14 and transnationalism from below are two forms of analysis that
have tried to understand the power of those that are not visibly empow-
ered. They stem from the idea that those in the margin(s) also have an
important role to play in forging new economic bonds. Through these
perspectives, I seek to understand the participation of women as actors in
a new global era that is transforming the world system.
Last but not least, in the transnational conceptualization that I use
throughout this book I recognize the existence and interaction of
two different constructions: first, transnational social fields (Levitt and
Glick Schiller 2004), which take as units of analysis the individuals and
their ways of interaction—a personal networks perspective—and, second,
transnational social spaces (Pries and Seeliger 2012; Faist 2006; Dahinden
2010) which focus on the construction of wider social spaces consti-
tuted by networks of networks—a whole networks perspective. These
are both determined by the individual’s capitals (Bourdieu 1979). Two
different typologies of actors of transnational articulation are considered:
migrants who perform constant transpacific travels and create different
types of bridges between localities through their interactions with locals;
and people that stay behind and maintain ties with those who migrate.
14 In this book, I talk about alternative processes of globalization or alternative spaces

of globalization. I do so in accordance with Ribeiro’s conceptualization and to avoid a
dualistic construction between center/periphery, north/south by not conceptualizing the
processes I look at as the “counterpart” to hegemonic globalization.
In talking about the articulation between fields and spaces, individuals

and structures, Bourdieu’s work is helpful. The different kinds of capital
of each individual are significant in the structuring of the diversity of fields
through which they move. This is not because of the predetermination
of actors to the roles and dispositions of their habitus (Bourdieu 1979)
but because of the roles that individuals—agents—play in structures and
how they transform them (Mahmood 2001). There is a latent complexity
that comes between actors and structures in these spaces. Within urban
constructions, there are different articulations between global connec-
tions and personal, lived experiences. Harvey argues that the right to the
city should be extended beyond political and economic elites, and that
there should be a disposition of the masses to the right to the city and
thus of the construction of the cities (Harvey 2005: 16). In this sense, the
“city” as a spatial unit of analysis will be paramount but must be analyzed
through both local and global references. Social spaces are determined by
several factors and entail two distinct dynamics: they are constantly trans-
formed by the social relations and power structures that develop within
them; and they bring transformations to those same social relations and
power structures.
Social spaces are not necessarily linked to a territorial delimitation but
to the interactions among actors and the dynamics that take place in them.
In marginal urban spaces, unexpected interactions often produce spaces
of opportunities. An example is the brief business transaction between a
Mexican vendor who sells bags in retail and a Chinese wholesaler who
furnishes these bags in Tepito. The Mexican vendor knows the market in
Mexico, the Chinese knows that of China. They share their knowledge,
a trip to China and a business transaction, slowly creating a commercial
network that today has transformed Mexico’s popular economy. These
are different from interactions and activities that intentionally connect—
such as the creation of transnational micro-enterprises, or networks of
transnational commerce. Contrary to what Portes asserts about the irrel-
evance of these weaker ties created by migrants, I argue that these brief
or ephemeral interactions are also important components of transnational
articulations and global dynamics.
Finally, gender and processes of empowerment are of high relevance
in my work. Braidotti claims that the “transformations of the system
of economic production are also altering traditional social and symbolic
structures” (Braidotti 1994:2). These transformations are the result of a
1 INTRODUCTION 27
global redistribution of labor. In this book, I follow Marta Lamas’ defini-

tion of gender as a concept that alludes to a cultural process that assigns
a hierarchical order to social places, identities and canons of behavior
depending on the symbolization that is made out of sexual differentia-
tion. In this sense, gender refers to a set of beliefs, practices and cultural
mandates that establish a symbolic division between what is considered
to be proper to men (masculine) and what is considered to be proper to
women (feminine) (2014: 11). Although I will often refer to the vulner-
abilities that the women in question have faced or continue to face, my
intention throughout this book is not to show these women as victims
but as actors. By finding themselves in these situations of vulnerability
and finding ways to overcome them, they gain agency. Like Butler, I
start with the consideration that gender is performative and that there
is a duality of performativity: individuals are both acted upon and acting,
they are vulnerable to and affected by discourses that are not necessarily
chosen. There is a deliberate exposure of power within the construction
of these discourses and of symbolic and social constructions, but this also
produces resistances of a kind (Butler 2015). Because family organiza-
tion plays such an important role in my analysis, taking in consideration
this duality of performativity is essential to understanding the transforma-
tions that the migration of women and their incorporation into popular
economic networks in Mexico has brought on their own self-perceptions
and on the places that they occupy in their families.
1.8 Outline of the Study

This text is structured into three parts. Part I, “Locating the Chinese
in Mexican Popular Markets,” allows the reader to become familiar with
the research subject, the localities where the research took place and
their dynamics. Part II, “Her Stories of Migration, Building Spaces of
Opportunities,” focuses specifically on the Chinese women who work
in Mexico City’s popular markets. This part is largely ethnographical,
and the purpose of these chapters is to understand the heterogeneity of
women who work in these markets and the trajectories that they had
to go through to arrive there. Both chapters deal with inequality and
processes of agency from different angles. Their purpose is to look at the
creation of new spaces that are constructed through migration as strate-
gies for survival. Part III, “Migration and Commodity Chains, Drafting
Alternative Spaces of Globalization,” brings together the experiences of
the women who migrated and the transformations that their participation
in local economies—such as popular markets—entailed. Here, I analyze
the various social spaces through which the women move, as well as the
links that they build through their interactions, both in specific localities
and across distances. The objective in this part is to show how the local
and the global are intertwined and how local transformations also affect
global movements. Each section of the book is developed around one
or two core cases. These focus the discussion and are complemented by
extracts from other interviews, experiences and reflections.
More specifically, in Chapter 2, I analyze the rise and organization
of popular markets in Mexico City. I examine the growing politiciza-
tion of these markets’ populations to demand better conditions and their
constant struggles for spaces of survival and of growth. Tepito in Mexico
City’s Centro Histórico (historical center) is portrayed through the narra-
tives of specific actors: the leader of a street vendors’ organization, a
vendor who ventured as a “Marco Polo” (traveling to China to discover
new merchandise to trade in the market) and a person who grew up in
the barrio in which the Tepito market is located. In this chapter, I analyze
how people of lower socioeconomic strata have made trade and popular
markets a way to earn a living and a way of life. To do this, I analyze
the intersection of several variables of differentiation that result in forms
of inequality: namely gender, class and origin. Again, the objective is to
show the dual reality of popular marketplaces as spaces of opportunities,
since the Mexican popular economy has been both a source of growth
for people in the margins and a space of struggle with highly conflictive
political, social and economic dynamics.
In Chapter 3, I analyze the growth of Yiwu, China’s international
market city, in the province of Zhejiang. I intertwine the dynamics of
this economy to the arrival of Chinese migrants to Mexico City in the last
three decades and their incorporation into popular markets. I take a look
at the two major economic and political events that played a decisive role
in the process that I analyze: first, the economic reform in China in 1979;
second, the introduction of NAFTA15 in 1994. In this chapter, I analyze
localized experiences of articulation between China and Mexico, particu-
larly those created through the arrival of Chinese people and commodities
in networks of popular consumption in Mexico. Their insertion as vendors
15 The North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and
Mexico.
1 INTRODUCTION 29
and importers of commodities “Made in China” produced a substan-

tial boost in commercial activity in places like Tepito. In this chapter,
the realities of Mexicans in popular markets are interwoven with the
arrival and incorporation of the Chinese, who often come from under-
privileged backgrounds in search of opportunities—just like their Mexican
counterparts.
Chapter 4 focuses on different forms of structural oppression that
Chinese women face before and after migration, and on the forms of
resistance that they develop according to their own capabilities. To do
so, I first discuss the context and development of Chinese society: the
unequal access to education, labor and family inheritance that women
and girls experience compared to men. These inequalities, China´s shifting
society after Deng Xiaoping´s Reform in 1979 and the country´s integra-
tion into the WTO in 2001 deeply transformed migration patterns from
China to the Americas. In Mexico, the feminization of these patterns and
the growing diversity of the local origins of migrants are among the most
important changes and are analyzed here. The reasons and the ways in
which women enter migration vary from case to case: they are linked to
their economic capacities, to the needs of their families, to their personal
desires and their capabilities to fulfill them and to the localities in which
they grew up and the experiences that they allowed their inhabitants. The
stories of each of the women in this book are different, as are their forms
of resistance. In this chapter, I use the narratives of the women I spoke
with in Mexico and the body of academic research about the migration of
Chinese women to understand the specific case of Mexico City’s popular
markets.
In Chapter 5, I analyze specific events in the experiences of the women
interviewed in Mexico City’s popular markets to look at how the inter-
section among different factors of inequality impact these women´s lives
after migration. Considering that Mexico is better known as a country of
emigration rather than immigration, the chapter seeks to find the reasons
why Mexico—and specifically the networks of popular economy that are
so intrinsic to the country´s historical context of social inequality—has
become such a strong node of contemporary Chinese migration patterns,
particularly important for the migration of women. As expected, the
results of this analysis show the creation of different networks among
migrants as one of the most important factors for the growth of these
patterns. Here, we start to see the first signs of articulation between
migrants with substantial capital and access to opportunities and those
who travel as a last resource. Mexican popular markets are the product
of a very heterogeneous population, and the Chinese who work in them
have inserted themselves in different layers of this social fabric.
Chapter 6 focuses on the social and economic interactions that Chinese
women build among themselves in Mexico City, with their families back
home and with their Mexican co-vendors in Mexican popular markets. In
the first part of this chapter, I discuss the concepts of ‘globalization from
below’ and the ‘global city’ and explain the usefulness of analyzing the
production of alternative spaces of globalization. The analysis continues
with specific experiences lived by the women in Mexico and the contin-
uous struggles that they undergo daily to succeed in their quest for better
opportunities for themselves and their families. I look at how limitations
imposed by a social differentiation of gender may become a tool of resis-
tance. I seek to show that these women become bonding agents and
produce spaces that link different places, such as the market of Tepito
in Mexico City and the city of Yiwu in China, the source of most Chinese
commodities sold in Mexico. I do this first by looking at the construc-
tion of a hybrid conception of trade built between two different cultural
notions of trust: comadrazgo and guanxi. I argue that these have been
particularly important in the experiences of women in popular commerce.
The chapter continues by showing how their modes of life are transna-
tional because of their continuing economic and emotional participation
in their homelands despite the distance. These women and their fami-
lies are creating spaces of transnational interaction in different manners:
through remittances and social participation, through motherhood at a
distance and through the construction of transnational family enterprises
that encompass entire processes of production, distribution and consump-
tion. Finally, I consider how the localities where the Chinese have arrived
in Mexico have changed as a result of the migrants’ incorporation into
local dynamics. This has implied transformations in local ways of doing
business, in local forms of consumption and even in the physical organi-
zation of the markets. By focusing on the everyday struggles of migrants
and locals alike, by looking at their strategies to get ahead, I show how
Mexican popular markets, starting with Tepito, are increasingly becoming
spaces of opportunities in which alternative spaces of globalization arise.
In the concluding chapter of the book, I show the need to look toward
the local—to the individual—when talking about the global. I argue
that without considering these micro-social processes in which individ-
uals move and construct their own realities, our understanding of how
1 INTRODUCTION 31
globalization, global chains or global processes are constructed is incom-

plete. I connect local practices to global processes by examining the ways
in which popular vendors (Chinese and Mexican), by striving for survival
and by trying to overcome the positions in the margins to which they
were relegated by hegemonic actors and institutions, have constructed
bridges between China and Mexico, bridges which were then extended to
other parts of the globe. The clear objective of the book is to give a place
to women in the study of Chinese migrations and in the study of global-
ization. I conclude here that first, migration, and second, work within the
popular economy, have been strategies of survival developed by Chinese
women to overcome the vulnerabilities imposed by the inequalities to
which they have been subjected. I show that Chinese women working in
Mexican popular markets have become agents of change and connectors
between different localities, and in this sense, they propel the creation of
alternative spaces of globalisation.
Bibliography
Alba Vega, Carlos. 2012. “La calle para quien la ocupa: Las condiciones
sociopolíticas de la globalización no hegemónica en México DF.” In Nueva
sociedad, 241: 79–92.
Alba Villalever, Ximena. 2014. “El Barrio Transnacional.” In Ensamblando
La Ciudad Transnacional, edited by Federico Besserer and Daniela Oliver,
195–266. Juan Pablo Editores / Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana -
Iztapalapa.
Auguin, Estelle. 2005. “Le Lien Filial en Migration: Les Chinois Du Sud Du
Zhejiang.” Hommes Et Migrations, 1254 (Mars–avril): 18–28.
Bartolini, Stefano, and Francesco Sarracino. 2015. “The Dark Side of Chinese
Growth: Declining Social Capital and Well-Being in Times of Economic
Boom.” World Development 74: 333–51.
Baxter, Sue, and Geoff Raw. [1988] 2004. “Fast Food, Fettered Work: Chinese
Women in the Ethnic Catering Industry.” In Enterprising Women Ethnicity,
Economy and Gender Relations, edited by Parminde Bhachu and Sallie
Westwood, 47–60. New York: Routledge.
Besserer, Federico. 1999. “Estudios Transnacionales Y Ciudadanía Transna-
cional.” Fronteras Fragmentadas. Colegio de Michoacán, 215–38.
Besserer, Federico, and Raúl Nieto. 2015. “La Ciudad Transnacional Comparada:
Derroteros Conceptuales.” In La Ciudad Transnacional Comparada. Modos
De Vida, Gubernamentalidad Y Desposesión, edited by Federico Besserer and
Raúl Nieto. Juan Pablos Editor, S.A. / Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
- Iztapalapa. Mexico DF.
Bonacich, Edna. 1973. “A Theory of Middleman Minorities.” American

Sociological Review, 38 (5). American Sociological Association: 583–
94. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094409?ref=search-gateway:95507583bd4b
254ffb36fcdac35a7299.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. La Distinction. Minuit. https://doi.org/10.14361/978
3839413272-033.
Braidotti, Rosi. 1994. Nomadic Subjects. Columbia University Press.
Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: an Essay
in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, 40 (4). JSTOR:
519–31.
Butler, Judith. 2011. Bodies That Matter. Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 2015. Vulnerabilidad y resistencia revisitadas. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6taXkozajec.
Cervera, José Juan. 2007. La Gloria De La Raza, Los Chinos en Yucatán.
Instituto de Cultura de Yucatán.
Cinco, Mónica. 1999. Mas Allá De Las Fronteras: Los Chinos en La Ciudad De
México. Bachelor’s thesis, Universidad Autónoma Metropolotana - Iztapalapa.
Supervised by Raúl Nieto. Mexico DF.
Curtis, James R. 1995. “Mexicali’s Chinatown.” Geographical Review. JSTOR:
335–48.
Dahinden, Janine. 2010. “The Dynamics of Migrants’ Transnational Formations:
Between Mobility and Locality” In Diaspora and Transnationalism, edited by
Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist, 51–72. Amsterdam University Press.
Faist, Thomas. 2006. “The Transnational Social Spaces of Migration.” Working
Papers.
Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. “Transna-
tionalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration.” Annals
of the New York Academy of Sciences, 645 (1). Wiley Online Library: 1–24.
Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1995. “From
Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration.” Anthro-
pological Quarterly, 68 (1). The George Washington University Institute for
Ethnographic Research: 48– 63. https://doi.org/10.2307/3317464?ref=no-
x-route:75396a97278f212488eb814e0a6f19fd.
González, Fredy. 2017. Paisanos Chinos: Transpacific Politics Among Chinese
Immigrants in Mexico. University of California Press.
Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo. 2003. “The Economics of Transnational Living.”
International Migration Review, 37 (3). Wiley Online Library: 666–99.
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Herrera, Gioconda. 2004. “Elementos Para una Comprensión de las Familias
Transnacionales Desde la Experiencia Migratoria del Sur del Ecuador.” In
Migraciones: un Juego con Cartas Marcadas, 215–32.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
nobody quite realizes the importance of the occasion until he reads
about it afterwards. At the Nile Reservoir all this happened in due
order with the necessary local variations. The officials wore red
tarbushes instead of top-hats, and every sensible person carried a
cotton umbrella over his head.
But apart from the ceremonial, the scene was deeply interesting.
If the day’s routine was insignificant, it was because the
overpowering presence of the Dam itself dwarfed every other
presence. And the names of those assembled there recalled vividly
the thrilling history of Egypt during the last twenty years. There were
statesmen and diplomatists, soldiers and engineers, men of
business and men of letters, all of whom, in some field or other, had
done their part in building up the fallen country. Some, too, were
there who, submitting contentedly before the logic of accomplished
facts, burying old rivalries and animosities, had come in no unfriendly
spirit to witness the realization of much that it had once been their
policy to hinder. But if all the rest had been absent, the presence of
one man, the Chief, whose wise counsel and guiding hand had been
everywhere, would have been sufficient to represent all that these
twenty years have meant to Egypt. Well might Lord Cromer and the
irrigation engineers review their work with satisfaction. To them the
Reservoir means the successful culmination of a great policy long
and steadily pursued, nothing less than the establishment of the
prosperity of Egypt upon a sure and certain basis: for that is what the
regulation of the Nile involves. In Egypt, at any rate, they require no
formal monument. Their praise stands clearly writ on the face of
every cultivated field throughout the country.
CHAPTER X
BRITISH RULE IN EGYPT
At the inauguration of the Nile Reservoir at Assouan, it was an

Egyptian Minister of Public Works who read an Arabic speech
congratulating the Khedive on the completion of the great work
which is to make his name famous among the rulers of Egypt.
Among all the flags that decorated the town and the craft on the
river, the most infrequent was that of England. A casual observer,
knowing nothing of the country, might easily have overlooked the
number of Englishmen wearing the tarbush, that red badge of
Egyptian officialdom, and gone away thinking that even the presence
of the brother of the King of England marked nothing but a
compliment paid by one great Power to another. He might well have
been astonished to be told that the Dam, which will confirm and
increase the prosperity of Egypt, is no less an evidence of the
stability of British rule. It is just possible that immediately after our
first occupation we might have been able to evacuate the country—
not, indeed, without danger to our hold upon the highroad to India, or
without detriment to the true interests of Egypt, but at least without
loss of honour to ourselves. Since then, in spite of the efforts of our
statesmen at home, it has become more and more impossible.
Among the guests at Assouan there might have been seen a
quiet-looking old gentleman, with a gray beard and bushy whiskers,
beaming benevolently through gold-rimmed spectacles. His figure
was that of a man, once sturdy and square-set, over whose head
had passed years of ease and good living. At the first glance, in his
frock-coat and tarbush, he looked like any other comfortable Turkish
gentleman. Yet there was no one present with a more interesting
past than he. For this was Mukhtar Pasha, who bears the proud title
of Ghazi, ‘the victorious,’ the hero of the Caucasus in the Russo-
Turkish War. He came to Egypt in 1887 as special Turkish
Commissioner, to arrange for the British evacuation under the
Drummond-Wolff Convention. It is well known how France and
Russia at the last moment intervened to prevent Turkey from
ratifying the agreement. A special Providence guards the British
Empire against the efforts of its rulers. But Mukhtar remains as
Turkish Commissioner in Egypt without duties, and probably without
pay, a reminder of past eccentricities of British policy.
We have travelled far from the days when it was seriously
proposed by Conservative statesmen to make Turkey responsible for
civilization and good government in Egypt. To-day no one in his
senses could wish to put an end to British rule. Let a man start from
Assouan and survey the great series of irrigation works—the
Reservoir, the Assiout Barrage, the Regulator of the Ibrahimiyah
Canal, the Koshesha Regulator, the Barrages and Weirs at the point
of the Delta and at Zifta; let him examine the intricate system of
canals, siphons, wheels, drains, dykes, and sluices, by which the
water is distributed over the cultivated lands, and let him reflect on
what would happen if all this were left in Egyptian hands. Inevitably,
sooner or later, the whole thing would come to ruin, and the greater
the height of prosperity to which the country has attained under the
system of perennial irrigation, the greater would be its fall. Egypt has
been called the classic land of baksheesh, and it will not lose its
character in a generation or two. Imagine a Government in need of
money; what better thumbscrew could an Oriental despot wish for
than the command of the water-supply? When a land-owner knew
that he could be ruined by the shutting of a sluice-gate, he would pay
anything without a struggle. The golden goose would be killed in
every direction. Even under a well-intentioned Government it would
only be regarded as natural for a local official to make free use of
such unrivalled opportunities to supplement his pay. Corruption is not
a vice in Oriental eyes; it is the habit of centuries. That is why, with
every extension of scientific irrigation, the need for European
supervision becomes greater, and since we can allow no Power but
ourselves to hold Egypt, European means British.
An amusing instance of the native way of looking at such matters
occurred in connection with the making of the Reservoir. A certain
sum was allotted for the compensation of those who would be
flooded out of house and home. Some of the Assouan people saw
their chance. It does not take much to build a native house. In a
short time the Government inspectors had the pleasure of being
shown a number of brand-new buildings on the foreshore, with the
whitewash still wet upon them. Great was the disappointment of
these ingenious speculators. In another case a man was building a
boat; he was repeatedly warned to move his work, but would not.
Only when the water began actually to rise did he become seriously
alarmed, and sent down a letter of remonstrance. Again the position
was explained to him; but again he advanced his request that the
gates might be opened, accompanied with a hint that he might be
willing to make some small acknowledgment of his obligation.
Realizing at last the futility of his demand, he exclaimed in despair,
‘What is the use of your Dam if you cannot let the water out to save
my boat?’
The two great principles of British policy in Egypt have been
irrigation and low taxation. Irrigation is the vital necessity to Egypt.
Other departments of Government, however urgent their claims
might be, have had to wait and to be starved until the reproductive
works could be established and set going. Every penny that could be
spared had to be cast upon the waters. At the same time we found
the people overburdened with taxation on account of the Public
Debt, and also bound hand and foot in the meshes of the usurer. We
could not, however powerful we might be, hope to hold securely a
country with 11,000,000 of population, unless we have something
else than mere force to look to. To the Egyptians we are aliens by
race and religion, we have no ties of custom or intermarriage; we
have nothing but their material interests to appeal to. If we can make
them prosperous, if they can save money without fear of
confiscation, if we can secure to them the fruits of their labour, we
have done a great deal to strengthen the basis of our rule.
There is no doubt that the fellaheen do appreciate the benefits of
British rule; it would be strange if they did not. The corvée is gone.
Not only has taxation been enormously reduced in amount, but its
method of collection has been made equitable and regular. Whereas
in former days the tax-collector was in league with the money-lender,
and contrived to demand his payments at times when it was certain
that the cultivator of the soil would have no money, and would have
to pledge his growing crops to raise the amount, now the time of
payment is adjusted to suit the harvests. Moreover, the new
Agricultural Bank lends to the fellaheen at a rate far below that
demanded by the Syrian, Greek, or Coptic usurers; the State gives a
small guarantee, and the Government tax-collectors collect the
interest and instalments of the loans at the same time as the taxes.
The Egyptians are naturally a thrifty people; they are taking
advantage of this plan, and are very punctual in their repayments.
When the scheme was first started, it was met with grave
disapproval by the professed economists. The fellaheen, they said,
will borrow first from the Bank, and will then execute a second
mortgage, and borrow more on the same exorbitant terms from their
old blood-suckers. But Lord Cromer’s keen insight into the character
of the people has once again been justified.
It is true that a generation is growing up that knew not Ismail.
These have lived only in the new order of things, and have no
personal reminiscences to sharpen their enjoyment of the present;
but even so the number of those actually discontented must be few,
and the number of those who would carry their discontent into action
still fewer. More than this, perhaps, it would be foolish to expect. In
the East a reforming nation could not be really popular, except
among fighters. And the Egyptians are no fighters—they are
peaceable people, who love their homes; no one joins the army
except by the necessity of conscription. Even the reformatory school-
boy cannot be induced to volunteer for so much as the band. Honour
and glory are nothing to them; they seek no bubble reputation at the
cannon’s mouth. Again, the Englishman endeavours to establish
impartial justice in the Courts. That is all very well if your opponent is
a richer man than you; but what if you could have outbid him quite
easily? It is a good thing to be free from the fear of being
bastinadoed and fined because your neighbour has given false
evidence against you, or because he has influence with the police.
But if you, which is at least as likely, wish to do the same to him, how
do you profit by the reform?
Then, too, the alien rule may be just and righteous and full of solid
benefit, but it is dull. In old days a man might be maltreated and
flogged, he might have his property confiscated, he might even lose
his life, according to the whim of his ruler, but the same whim might
equally make him Grand Vizier. Such fluctuations appeal to the
Oriental imagination. A veiled Protectorate must always be
something of a mystery to an Egyptian; the personal rule of a despot,
Effendina, the Lord of all, is much more suited to his instincts. At any
rate, it is difficult to discover much outward manifestation of an
appreciation of British rule; but it would be wrong to argue too
strongly from that. The fact is rather, indeed, a proof of the lightness
of the governing hand. The Egyptians know very well that we shall
never resent any opposition; they have confidence in our
forbearance. But if time should bring a change once more—and
there have been many changes in the past—it would be an evil day
for those who had been too open in their support of English rule. It is
well to be on the safe side.
If you take an intelligent and prosperous Egyptian, old enough to
remember the days of Ismail—for example, a lawyer who has saved
enough money to make a considerable investment in land, the prime
ambition of every native, a man who speaks a couple of European
languages, has had a good education himself, and is very likely
sending his son to Oxford or Cambridge—and question him upon
British rule in Egypt, he will probably tell you something as follows:—
‘No one who has eyes to see can question the benefit of the
British occupation. The country has attained such prosperity as
never before. We knew very well that no other European nation
would have ruled us with such a single eye to the well-being of the
natives. We realize the devotion and ability of the British officials. We
would rather have you than any other rulers, and we are well aware
that if you went we might easily become subject to a King Stork. In
such a case your popularity would become enormous. Doubtless we
should clamour for your return. But we cannot help dreaming of the
glories that might have been ours if our Khedives had not wasted
their chances. Who can say how great an African empire might have
existed? Long before European nations began to take a hand in the
partition of Africa, we held the whole valley of the Nile to Uganda.
With a wise Government and such a starting-point, what limits could
have been set to our dominions? By the folly of our rulers we
squandered it all, and came to ruin. You have drawn us out of the pit,
but you thrust your benefits upon us at the point of the bayonet. In
spite of them, and perhaps unreasonably, we sigh for rulers of our
own faith and race, and we would sacrifice something of our
prosperity if we could feel ourselves the authors of what remained.’
Such longings are natural and creditable, and if the men who feel
them were capable or numerous enough to form a real governing
class, the prospects of the future might be different from what they
are. But they are not; and these dreams must remain dreams—for
some time to come, at any rate. Such discontents are the inevitable
outcome of the progress of our educative work in Egypt. Nothing
illustrates it better than the recent movement among the Egyptian
officers of some of the Soudanese battalions. These men had been
trained on a British model; they had gained much experience in the
stern school of actual warfare, and yet they found the higher ranks of
the Service barred to them, and filled by a succession of British
officers, younger and less experienced than themselves. Their
discontent was natural, but their disappointment was also inevitable.
In spite of their training and experience, to have given them the
promotion they wished for would have been to ruin the efficiency of
the army. You cannot make bricks without straw, however scientific
your methods.
It would be very easy to exaggerate the importance of such
murmurings. They are as nothing in the face of the rising tide of
prosperity which has come to the mass of the labouring population
as the result of our rule, and which is its overwhelming justification.
In the Delta provinces, in Middle and Upper Egypt, in the Fayoum,
the undeniable facts rise up and confront you. Wages have
increased in some places as much as 50 per cent., and with the rise
has gone an enormous improvement in all the conditions of life. The
fellaheen are building better houses, they are better fed, disease is
less, they are happier every way. And as labourers they well deserve
it. Many faults they have, but nowhere in the world can a more
industrious, patient, and hard-working people be found.
In the Mosque el Azhar, the Mohammedan University of Cairo, the
interpretation of the Koran is the principal subject of study, and it is
said that weeks and months, and even years, are spent by
professors and pupils in subtle and ingenious dissertations on such a
question as, Who is your neighbour? Is a man living over your head
more worthy of the name than one who lives next door? And so on. If
in these reforming days these pundits turn their attention to politics,
they will find an almost equally insoluble problem in attempting to
define the exact nature of British rule in Egypt. To them the question
may safely be left. But while the learned few are labouring through
its intricate maze with the most agreeable lack of success, the
unlearned many will have their own simple answer. They only know
the thing was done; it matters nothing by what authority. The water
came to them regularly in due season, and the wilderness was made
to blossom like the rose.
CHAPTER XI
SCHEMES FOR THE FUTURE
The completion of one programme by the construction of the

Reservoir and the works dependent upon it does not mean
stagnation. Irrigation is an ever-growing and ever-living science.
There can be no standing still. Even in the ordinary routine there are
thousands of details always pressing forward for fresh consideration.
It takes but a few years for a daring innovation to become old-
fashioned. The system of perennial irrigation in Egypt is so young
that there is still much to be learnt. It means a totally new style of
agriculture. Nothing but constant experiment and constant
watchfulness will enable the engineers to distribute the water to the
best advantage. The best methods of reclaiming new land, and of
preventing the deterioration of the old, the maintenance and
improvement of existing locks, weirs, regulators, barrages, and other
masonry, the care of canals and drains—these and an infinity of
other matters fill the life of the irrigation engineer, so that, always
interesting, it is also at times even exciting. Decisions of great and
immediate importance have to be constantly and promptly taken.
Their duty touches very nearly the lives of all who dwell and labour
within their districts. There can be no question of any folding of the
hands to slumber. But beyond all this, it is the peculiar good fortune
of those whose care is the water-supply of Egypt that they have to
travel in thought or in fact over half a great continent, and discuss
schemes of a magnitude and extent enough to stagger the
imagination of the boldest dreamer. The Anglo-Egyptian army at
Omdurman opened an entirely new chapter in the history of the
control of the Nile.
No one can hold Egypt securely unless he holds also the whole
valley of the Nile. The sources of the river in hostile, or even in
indifferent, lands must always be a grave cause of danger, or, at the
best, anxiety. If tradition be correct, the Abyssinians on more than
one occasion made use of their position on the Nile as a powerful
lever in negotiations with Egypt. Vansleb, the Dutch seventeenth-
century traveller already quoted,[6] is not perhaps perfectly
trustworthy as to his facts, but at least he is evidence as to the
tradition. He had in his possession, he says, a copy in Arabic of a
letter written by David, King of Ethiopia (i.e., Abyssinia), surnamed
Constantine, to ‘Abu Seid Barcuk, King of Egypt, in the year of
martyrs 1193, in which he threatens in two distinct places to turn
aside the river Nilus and hinder it from entering into Egypt,’ so as to
cause all the inhabitants to perish with hunger, if he ‘continues to vex
the Copties.’ Vansleb also says that ‘the King of Ethiopia hindered
the current of Nilus and turned it out of Egypt in the days of
Mostanser, one of the califfes of Egypt, which obliged him to send
the Patriarch of the Copties with rich presents to the King of Ethiopia,
to entreat him to take away the bank, which he had raised to turn
aside the river. The King of Ethiopia having granted this request for
the sake of the Patriarch, the river increased in one night 3 cubits,
which was sufficient to water the fields.’ Doubtless the tradition is
founded on fact; if the country in question had been occupied by a
Power with any engineering skill, there is little doubt that this method
of pressure would have been oftener adopted.
The danger is by no means an imaginary one, and this is
recognised in the latest treaty between the Government of the
Soudan and Abyssinia, concluded May 15, 1902, in which it is laid
down that no work shall be constructed across the Blue Nile, Lake
Tsana, or the river Sobat, which shall arrest the flow of their waters
into the Nile, except by mutual agreement.
If even now it is thought necessary to make formal treaty
arrangements on the subject with Abyssinia, much more real would
be the apprehension if the Soudan Government were hostile to
Egypt. But quite apart from any hostility, an important question might
arise. We have seen what great efforts have been made in Egypt
under the system of perennial irrigation to secure a good supply of
water in the summer months; it is then that the river is at its lowest;
the best of reservoirs can only supplement the natural flow of the
river. At the very time that it would be easiest to do it, an interference
with that natural flow would be most disastrous. The mere
employment of a considerable amount of water on irrigation in the
Soudan during the summer months might have a very serious effect.
The possession of the Soudan practically guarantees to Egypt the
safety of her water-supply. The fact that the sources of the White
Nile are in purely British territory, and that in the Soudan itself the
British flag flies side by side with the Egyptian, gives thus a more
and more permanent aspect to the British position in Egypt.
It is calculated that at the present moment another 3,500,000,000
cubic metres of water over and above the present summer supply,
including the Assouan Reservoir, would amply suffice for all possible
requirements in Egypt. When the Dam is raised to its full height,
about 1,000,000,000 cubic metres more will be provided. If only
Egypt were to be considered, the remainder of the water required
could be stored in a similar reservoir built somewhere above Wadi
Halfa. Egypt could then be developed to its very fullest extent, but
‘such a work,’ as Sir W. Garstin remarks, ‘would leave untouched the
countries bordering the river to the south. Their interests must be
safeguarded by such a scheme as will insure them a proportional
share in the prospective benefits.’
From every point of view the interests of the Soudan are vital to
Egypt. Bitterly has she suffered from the neglect of those interests in
the past. Misrule and oppression caused the Mahdi’s rebellion, with
all its burden of shame and suffering. With a more intelligent enemy
the loss of the control of the Nile might have meant irretrievable
disaster. She knows now that a prosperous and contented Soudan is
the best safeguard against rebellion. Upon England, too, rests the
responsibility for the welfare of those vast provinces, once so
shamefully abandoned to barbarism and ruin. English arms have
retrieved that disgrace. It would be impossible to allow the Soudan to
get nothing and Egypt everything, even if such a course were not
certain to be fatal to both.
At present far-reaching schemes are being carefully inquired into,
under the guidance of Sir W. Garstin. Fortunately for Egypt, she
possesses in him an adviser of unsurpassed experience, cool,
careful, and level-headed, upon whose final judgment she may
confidently rely. He has already made a report, after personal
observation, upon the White Nile and its main affluents, and he has
recently returned from a journey to Lake Victoria Nyanza and Lakes
Albert and Albert Edward, the results of which have not yet been
published. Another expedition was also sent in 1902-1903 to explore
Lake Tsana and the upper course of the Blue Nile. A mass of
information is being collected and quietly digested, and in due time
the policy to be pursued will be settled on. For the moment there is
no occasion for hurrying. It will take time for Egypt to make full use of
the advantages of the Assouan Reservoir. The Soudan, though
rapidly progressing, is hardly yet in a position to reap the advantage
of such changes on a great scale. When the engineers have
completed their observations, there will still be the financial aspect of
the question to take in hand. Schemes involving the regulation of
2,000 miles of river cannot be subjected to too great scrutiny before
arriving at a decision. It would be rash to speculate on what course
will be finally adopted, before all the data are known, but it will not be
out of place to give some indication of the rival projects in view, and
to glance at some of the arguments for and against.
All the schemes aim at establishing a control over the head-
waters of the Blue or the White Nile, and so increasing the supply in
the river when it is most scanty. Anyone can see that the Blue Nile
depends upon Lake Tsana, which is across the Abyssinian frontier,
and the White Nile upon the Lakes Victoria and Albert Nyanza.
Proposals have been made for regulating the outflow from each of
these lakes, or from them all, and also for preventing the waste of
water which now takes place in the swamp country south of
Fashoda. Up till now the plan of building a dam at the point where
the Blue Nile emerges from Lake Tsana has been most in favour.
It has several great advantages. This lonely lake is situated some
6,000 feet above sea-level, in a wild and desolate country in
Northern Abyssinia. It is 3,300 square kilometers in extent, and very
deep. During six months in the year there are very heavy rains in the
area which drains into the lake. Between Lake Tsana and Khartoum,
a distance of 1,350 kilometres, the Blue Nile falls over 1,000 metres,
and its rocky bed makes it very suitable as a channel for carrying the
water. It is deep and narrow, with high, steep banks, and so the less
liable to evaporation. For every metre by which the level of the lake
was raised, 3,300,000,000 cubic metres would be stored, and it is
obvious that, if the level were raised 4 or 5 metres, there would, after
making a proper deduction for evaporation, be ample water to supply
the greatest demand in Egypt, and also plenty besides available in
the Soudan. There are also strong arguments for irrigation works on
the Blue Nile. After the Cataracts of Rosaires, which are roughly
speaking about halfway between Khartoum and Lake Tsana, the
river passes through fertile plains consisting of rich alluvial soil,
extending to a great distance on both sides. At present these lands
yield only small returns, dependent as they are upon a somewhat
capricious rainfall. With proper irrigation they would be most
productive, and the water coming down from Tsana might be utilized,
without any great difficulties, by a system of canals starting from this
point, assisted by barrages and weirs. Further, the river would thus
be rendered navigable at all seasons of the year, and would thus
become an effective trade route in the most promising part of the
Soudan. The great objection is that Lake Tsana lies wholly within
Abyssinian territory. Nothing could be done without some very
definite arrangement with the Emperor Menelik, and one that would
be irrevocable by any successor of his who might be less friendlily
disposed. Nothing, in fact, would be absolutely satisfactory unless
complete sovereignty over the Reservoir district were assured to the
Soudan Government. In view of the fact that the whole of this region
is perfectly valueless to Abyssinia, or, indeed, to anybody else,
except for purposes of water-storage, it does not seem impossible
that by some cession of territory, or other compensation elsewhere,
a satisfactory arrangement may be come to. But even so, the
remoteness of the lake and the difficulties of transport would prevent
the immediate realization of the scheme. Without a railway from
some point in the Nile Valley it would be practicably impossible to
collect the necessary materials and supplies, and such a railway will
not be an affair of this year or next.
Precisely on the points where the Lake Tsana scheme is weakest
the schemes for utilizing one or both of the great lakes of Uganda
are strongest. Precisely where it is strong they are weakest. Any
works damming the exits of Lake Victoria Nyanza or Lake Albert
would be wholly within British territory. They would also be in a
region much more easily accessible from the sea. Lake Victoria has
already railway communication with Mombasa, and the transport of
material, and also of coolie labour from India would be comparatively
easy. In the case of Lake Albert, a railway would have to be built
from Lake Victoria; but this would be of service to the country apart
from any irrigation works, and would, indeed, practically establish
through communication by boat and railway between Mombasa and
Alexandria. But here their advantages over Lake Tsana end. The
whole region is very much subject to earthquakes. The strain to
which great masonry works would be subjected might be very
severe. The country through which the White Nile passes is very
unsuited to large irrigation works. Much of it is swamp, and the low
slope of the land is ill-adapted for canals. The soil, too, is poor and
light compared with the rich alluvial tracts on the Blue Nile, which
would of course receive no benefit. Practically only the provinces
north of Khartoum would receive any benefit from the increased
supply, and in them the cultivable land can never be more than a
mere strip along the river, so circumscribed are they by the desert
ridges. In any case they would be equally benefited by water coming
from the Blue Nile. Besides this, the negro population living on the
White Nile is very much less advanced, and less likely to form an
industrious agricultural population than the inhabitants of the Eastern
Soudan.
Nor is the bed of the White Nile well adapted for carrying the
water. From Lake Albert to Khartoum the distance is 2,100
kilometres, and the total drop is only 300 metres. It flows slower
through a hotter country. Except between Duffile and Rejaf it is very
wide and shallow, without any banks to speak of, and with a sandy or
muddy bottom. For at least half its course it runs through swamps,
and between Bor and Lake No alone it is calculated to lose half its
volume by dissipation and evaporation in the marshes. But for the
important contribution made by the Sobat, the volume reaching
Khartoum would be very much smaller than it is. If, then, a
considerable extra supply of water is to be brought down from the
equatorial lakes, the scheme must involve a permanent improvement
in the channel of the Bahr el Gebel, as the upper portion of the White
Nile is called.
This, according to Sir W. Garstin, can only be effected in one way,
by embanking the river for its whole length between Bor and Lake
No, a distance of 624 kilometres. When it is considered that all
supplies would have to be brought from Khartoum, 1,000 kilometres
distant; that during four months of the year work is impossible, owing
to the incessant rains; that the local tribes can never be relied upon
for labour; that the climate is exceedingly bad and unhealthy at all
seasons; and that the actual engineering difficulties in making the
banks would be by no means small, some idea may be formed of the
cost of such an undertaking. It is estimated that to complete it in five
years’ time would involve an expenditure of £3,700,000. Another
proposal, which is really independent of the Reservoir question, is to
use the Bahr el Zeraf to carry the extra summer supply at present
wasted in the marshes. The Bahr el Zeraf is a branch of the Nile,
taking off near Shambe, and entering the river again below Lake No
before the junction of the Sobat. The cost of preparing the Bahr el
Zeraf channel by means of dredging and embanking is estimated at
£1,250,000, and in addition certain supplementary works would be
required.
Until the result of Sir W. Garstin’s observations on the Albert Lake
are known, it will be impossible to make any accurate comparison of
the qualifications of the two lakes Victoria and Albert for being
utilized as reservoirs. Lake Victoria, which lies between the two ‘Rift
Valleys,’ is encircled by a low and shelving shore. It covers
approximately about 70,000 square kilometres. The Somerset Nile
flows out of it, and finds its way into Lake Albert. Lake Albert is the
northernmost of the chain of lakes in the western Rift Valley, and into
it drains the Albert Edward Lake by means of the Semliki River,
partly fed by the glaciers of Mount Ruwenzori. The Nile issues from it
at the northern end, not so very far from where the Somerset Nile
enters. Lake Albert is surrounded by mountains and cliffs. There is
comparatively little flat shore round it. Its area is roughly about 5,000
square kilometres. For every metre that the surface of each lake was
raised, Lake Victoria would store 70,000,000,000 cubic metres, and
Lake Albert 5,000,000,000. These enormous figures are enough to
show that, even when the largest allowance has been made for loss
by evaporation, dams of no great height on either lake would suffice
to store quite sufficient water for all possible needs in Egypt, and all
of the Soudan that could be touched by water coming down the
White Nile.
A very small rise in the level of Lake Victoria would give a very
large reserve of water, and therefore the works regulating its outflow
would be of less dimensions, and so, presumably, less subject to
damage by earthquakes. Being nearer the sea, they would,
moreover, be easier of construction. But Sir W. Garstin so far totally
rejects the idea of Lake Victoria. He says:
‘The amount of water which could be stored even by a very small rise in the
levels would be far beyond any possible requirements. This lake may
consequently be omitted altogether from any projects for water-storage. Much of
the country adjoining Lake Victoria Nyanza is densely populated, and the villages
are situated close to the shores. Any considerable rise in the water-levels would
flood a large and populous area of country. It must not, moreover, be forgotten that
about half the area covered by this lake falls within German territory. As the
inhabitants of the southern half of this lake would derive no benefit from such a
reservoir, it is quite conceivable that they might view any such proposal with
disfavour.’
He proceeds to argue that Lake Albert, on the other hand, is

specially adapted by its conformation for the purpose.
‘With a regulating dam at a point on the river below its exit, the Albert Lake
could well be used to store up water during the rainy season, which would be
discharged into the river during the months of low supply. In this way a double
purpose would be served: the volume of the river in flood would be diminished,
and in summer would be largely increased. The lake has an enormous catchment
area, and it seems probable that its levels could be, without serious difficulty,
raised to the required height.’
In all probability the arguments will be found to be conclusive in

favour of a dam at the exit to Lake Albert, but the reasoning against
a regulator for Lake Victoria does not appear at first sight very
cogent. Sir W. Garstin tells us that three years ago the mean water
level of the lake averaged some 8 feet lower than it did twenty years
earlier. But between January 1 and June 1, 1901, the level rose 3
feet 3 inches. When such fluctuations already occur in the ordinary
course of Nature, it would seem that some very useful regulation
might be carried out without causing the least inconvenience to any
dwellers on the shore, German or otherwise. All these remarks,
however, were written quite tentatively by Sir W. Garstin before he
had personally examined these regions, and his next report will be
certain to give fuller information on the matter. Perhaps in the end
both lakes will be subjected to the yoke of the engineers.
Such in brief outline are the gigantic schemes which are now
engaging the attention of the irrigation authorities of Egypt. Great as
are the achievements of the past, they look almost petty before
these visions of the future.
CHAPTER XII
THE SUDD
If the White Nile carried its waters in a channel in any way

resembling that of the Blue Nile, there would be small cause for
anxiety over the summer supply of Egypt. As far as Lado, indeed,
the Bahr el Gebel, or Mountain River, as it is called, does flow with
as good a slope and as sound a rocky bed as any Egyptian could
desire. Then it enters upon the great plain which extends practically
as far as Khartoum, but until Bor is reached it has not to encounter
more than the ordinary troubles of a flat country. The swamps are
still well above the summer level of the river, and the loss of volume
is not great. At Bor, however, the real difficulties begin, and the
‘shorn and parcelled river strains’ miserably along for some 350
miles through the real sudd country. The river that leaves Lado in
April or March with a volume of 600 cubic metres per second is
reduced to less than half this amount by the time it emerges from the
maze on the further side, and that, too, although it has nominally
received at Lake No through the Bahr el Ghazal the drainage of a
vast province.
Lake No is the remains of an inland sea which once covered all
this desolate region. Gradually this lake became silted up with peaty
deposits, and formed a series of swamps and lagoons through which
the Bahr el Gebel from the south and the Bahr el Ghazal from the
west wander in a series of loops and curves without any certain
banks. The smallest rise in the level of the river floods an immense
tract of country, and at all times of the year the sudd region is one
gigantic evaporating pan. The Bahr el Ghazal, so far as any active
contribution to the volume of the Nile is concerned, is practically lost
altogether, though by spreading out over the marshes it fills a space
which the Bahr el Gebel would otherwise occupy, and so helps to
form a sort of reservoir, which prevents any rapid fall in the level of
the White Nile.
All these swamps are covered with a dense growth of reeds and
water-weeds. Of these, the most important is the papyrus, which
grows in great abundance, and often reaches a height of 10 to 16
feet. Once the papyrus was common in Egypt, but now it is not found
north of Abu Zeid, 190 miles south of Khartoum. In Europe it is not
found, except on the river Anapo in Sicily, where, however, it does
not attain anything like the same luxuriant growth. There are also
great stretches of the reed called in Arabic ‘um soof,’ or the mother
of wool. It is no wonder that the party sent by Nero to explore the
river was intimidated by these interminable forests of papyrus and
reeds, and turned back. No travellers have a good word to say for
this country, unless they only pass through it extremely quickly. It is
monotonous and desolate in the extreme, the air is always hot and
steamy, and after dark mosquitoes rage in countless myriads.
As far as Shambe the banks of the river are fairly well defined, but
there are numbers of breaches in them, through which the water
spills into the marshes. In a distance of seventy-five miles Sir W.
Garstin counted 129 of these breaches, usually about 4 yards wide;
nearly all of these were on the eastern side. These channels are
deeply cut with vertical sides, as if dug by hand, and the loss of
water through them is very great. The marshes on the eastern side
drain off into the Bahr el Zeraf, which takes off near Shambe, and,
cutting off the corner, rejoins the Nile below Lake No. Greatly
diminished by this loss, the Bahr el Gebel continues on its way, its
bank being often nothing more than a line of papyrus separating it
from large lagoons or dense thickets of reeds. As long as the
channel is clear, tortuous and winding though it is, a great deal of
water is able to pass; but under certain circumstances the channel
becomes blocked by bars of solid vegetable matter, called sudd.
Upstream of the obstruction the level rises, and, spreading out over
the marshes, more and more water is lost in evaporation.
Sudd occurs both in the Bahr el Ghazal and the Bahr el Gebel,
but it is of different kinds. The Ghazal sudd is very much less
substantial than that of the Gebel. It is chiefly composed of masses
of the smaller swimming plants, which grow in Lake Ambadi and
other shallow lagoons on that river and its affluents. But on the

The Migration of Chinese Women To Mexico City Ximena Alba Villalever Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Migration of Chinese Women To Mexico City Ximena Alba Villalever Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Migration of Chinese Women to

Mexico City Ximena Alba Villalever

About the Series Editors

More information about this series at

Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia

Part I Locating the Chinese in Mexican Popular Markets

2 The Organization and Characteristics of Street Markets

3 Building Alternative Commodity Chains Between

Part II Her stories of Migration, Building Spaces of

4 Gender Inequality in China, a Path to Migration 109

5 Migration to Mexico as a Strategy for Survival

Part III Migration and Commodity Chains, Drafting

6 Women as Actors of Transnational Formations 189

NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement

Fig. 3.1 “América Latina”, outside of the Yiwu market 86

Map 1.1 Chinese vendors in other popular markets 16

© The Author(s) 2020 1

exposes the emotional as well as the economic vulnerabilities that migrants

1.1 Chinese Migration to Mexico

connected places in rural Mexico. Chinese workers and merchants created

5 In a strict sense, economic enclaves depict the embeddedness of a specific economy in

restricted their progress—much as they still do today (Alba Villalever

and community resources; the weaker the newcomer’s connections with

fundamental role in the reshuffling of global economic order. This reform,

With economic restructuring, Chinese society has changed. Its under-

popular economy reigns, delimitations between formality and informality

1.3 Objectives and Questions

I argue that there is a connection between gender dynamics and the

1.4 Methodology and Research

1.5 The Subjects

Map 1.1 Chinese vendors in other popular markets

Map 1.2 Chinese vendors in the Barrio of Tepito

in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico. While some of them grew to be

in Mexico or to their incorporation into a sector of economy that falls

inescapable. Their experiences as economic agents and their strategies to

1.6 The Places

usually discursive, often confrontational, sometimes violent. I was able

1.7 Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

My interest in analyzing the participation of Chinese women in Mexico

become places of globalization (Menéndez 2010), are strategic research

allowed social, economic and cultural practices to expand across distance,

14 In this book, I talk about alternative processes of globalization or alternative spaces

In talking about the articulation between fields and spaces, individuals

global redistribution of labor. In this book, I follow Marta Lamas’ defini-

1.8 Outline of the Study

and importers of commodities “Made in China” produced a substan-

globalization, global chains or global processes are constructed is incom-

Bonacich, Edna. 1973. “A Theory of Middleman Minorities.” American

At the inauguration of the Nile Reservoir at Assouan, it was an

The completion of one programme by the construction of the

He proceeds to argue that Lake Albert, on the other hand, is

In all probability the arguments will be found to be conclusive in

If the White Nile carried its waters in a channel in any way

You might also like