JE#4 El Paso's Cultural Schitzophrenia

           The first things that I noticed during the readings in “Ringside Seat to a Revolution” by Romo, is the racial geography of the city that were present in the city such as the Chinatown. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, El Paso became a major entrance point for Chinese migration. As the city faced an influx of people of Chinese descent, they could not ignore the community in its entirety. A photo that really jumped up at me was the one found on page 199 in the middle of the page. The picture was published on the El Paso Herald in 1897 and depicts a drawing of a Chinese man riding a bike. He is wearing a big round hat and has a ponytail trailing behind him. The caption under the photograph reads “An Up-To-Date El Paso Chinaman”. This photo demonstrates the stereotypical images that the dominant society at large portrayed the growing Chinese diaspora in El Paso. Interestingly enough, the photo calls the Chinese an “El Paso Chinaman”, which leads me to wonder how the photo presents an acknowledgement of the Chinese as part of the community, yet not an embracing sentiment at that.

            Another image that really surprised me was the photographs on page 238 and 239. The photograph is one that depicts a crowd of Mexican workers being inspected by public health officials before their entry to the U.S. The Mexican men are stripped naked and covering their genitals with a white sheet of paper. The three inspectors are checking ears and mouths of the men. This picture is interesting for various reasons. For starters, the inspectors are standing in a position of power over the Mexican migrants, which are perpetuated within the larger El Paso society. Also the key thing to note is the nudity of the Mexican bodies and the control that the Anglo inspectors had on them. This is the phase that had to be done in order to incorporate them within society. This demonstrates the subjugated nature that Mexican immigrants found themselves once they crossed over into El Paso.

            These two pictures demonstrate the cultural schizophrenic nature of the city. At the same time that the city didn’t necessarily deny the presence of both Chinese and Mexican people, Anglos at the same time did not seem to want to relinquish their “white racial superiority” over them. They would do this through publishing derogatory images of them and subjugating them to demeaning inspections, among other things. This is why the city found itself with a complicated identity because it was dealing with a coexistence of different racial groups under this overall ideology of white supremacy.