Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
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California had even earlier imported skilled Chinese<br />
workers. We know that Chinese had been present at the<br />
founding of Los Angeles in 1781. This is easy to understand<br />
when we see that California was closer to Asia than<br />
New York in practical terms; in travel time <strong>San</strong> <strong>Francisco</strong><br />
was but 60 days sail from Canton-but six months by<br />
wagon train from Kansas City.<br />
The settler capitalists used Chinese labor to found<br />
virtually every aspect of their new Amerikan economy in<br />
this region. The Mexicano people, who were an outright<br />
majority in the area, couldn't be used because the settlers<br />
were engaged in reducing their numbers so as to consolidate<br />
U.S. colonial conquest. During the 1830's, '40s<br />
and '50s the all-too-familiar settler campaign of mass terror,<br />
assassination, and land-grabbing was used against the<br />
Mexicanos. Rodolfo Acuna summarizes:<br />
"During this time, the Chinese were used as an<br />
alternative to the Chicanos as California's<br />
labor force. Chicanos were pushed to the<br />
southern half of the state and were literally forced out of<br />
California in order to escape the lynching, abuses, and colonized<br />
status to which they had been condemned."(32)<br />
Thus, the Chinese were not only victims of Amerika, but<br />
their very presence was a part of genocidal campaign to<br />
dismember and colonize the Mexican Nation. In the same<br />
way, decades later Mexicano labor-now driven from the<br />
land and reduced to colonial status-would be used to<br />
replace Chinese labor by the settlers.<br />
popularly called ''the Iron Chink". The fish itself (salmon,<br />
squid, shrimp, etc.) was often caught and brought in by<br />
Chinese fishermen, who pioneered the fishing industry in<br />
the area. Chinese junks were then a common sight in<br />
California harbors, and literally thousands of Chinese<br />
seamen lived in the numerous alllchinese fishing villages<br />
that dotted the coast from <strong>San</strong> Diego up to Oregon. As late<br />
as 1888 there were over 20 Chinese fishing villages just in<br />
<strong>San</strong> <strong>Francisco</strong> and <strong>San</strong> Pablo <strong>Bay</strong>s, while 50% of the<br />
California fishing industry was still Chinese. Farms and<br />
vineyards were also founded on Chinese labor: in the<br />
1870's when California became the largest wheat growing<br />
state in the U.S. over 85% of the farm labor was Chinese.<br />
Chinese workers played a large part as well in bringing<br />
out the vast mineral wealth that so accelerated the<br />
growth of the U.S. in the West. In 1870 Chinese made up<br />
25% of all miners in California, 21% in Washington, 58%<br />
in Idaho, and 61% in Oregon. In California the special<br />
monthly tax paid by each Chinese miner virtually supported<br />
local government for many years-accounting for<br />
25-50% of all settler government revenues for 1851-70.<br />
Throughout the area Chinese also made up a service<br />
population, like Afrikans and Mexicanos in other regions<br />
of the Empire, for the settlers. Chinese cooks, laundrymen,<br />
and domestic servants were such a common part<br />
of Western settler life in the mines, cattle ranches and cities<br />
that no Hollywood "Western" movie is complete without<br />
its stereotype Chinese cook.<br />
The full extent of Chinese labor's role is revealing. But their greatest single feat in building the<br />
The California textile mills were originally 70-80% economy of the West was also their undoing. Between 1865<br />
Chinese, as were the garment factories. As late as 1880, and 1869 some 15,000 Chinese b borers carved the far<br />
Chinese made up 52% of all shoe makers and 44% of all Western stretch of the Transcontinental rail line out of the<br />
brick makers in the state, as well as one-half of all factory hostile Sierra and Rocky Mountain ranges. Through severe<br />
workers in the city of <strong>San</strong> <strong>Francisco</strong>.(33) The fish canneries weather they cut railbeds out of rock mountainsides,<br />
were so heavily manned by Chinese-over 80Q-that blasted tunnels, and laid the tracks of the Central Pacific<br />
when a mechanical fish cleaner was introduced it was 33 Railroad some 1,800 miles East to Ogden, Utah. It was and