La Chinesca

La Chinesca is Mexicali's Chinatown: a few blocks of the old downtown pressed against the border fence with Calexico, around Avenida Juárez and Calles José Azueta and Altamirano. In August 2023 Mexico's federal Tourism Secretariat named it a Barrio Mágico, the first in Baja California; Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco handed the designation to Governor Marina del Pilar Ávila, with China's ambassador in attendance.

The first Chinese arrived in the early 1900s as labourers for the Colorado River Land Company, the American firm that owned almost the entire valley and needed workers to dig canals and levees against the Colorado River's floods. Others came fleeing anti-Chinese laws in the United States and hostile campaigns elsewhere in northern Mexico. By 1918 they had their own commercial district of laundries, barbershops, stores, hotels and cafés, and they founded the Asociación China de Mexicali, still active more than a century later. When Prohibition hit the US, downtown Mexicali filled with bars and casinos for American customers, and basements and passages were dug under the sidewalks to hold gambling rooms, opium dens, altars and even a school. The first Chinese block burned in 1923, and later fires destroyed much of the original quarter.

Since 2015 some of the restored basements have been open on guided tours. More recently the city repaved streets and sidewalks, built a Chinese gateway over Avenida Juárez, hung signs and murals along the Callejón de La Chinesca, and moved the pagoda to the Glorieta Morelos, home of the monument to the Chinese cook. The legacy you will notice most is the food: the city has more than a hundred Chinese restaurants, nearly all Cantonese adapted to northern tastes, with chili and a side of salsa on the table. The city council made November 12 Mexicali's China Day, and Chinese New Year brings dragon dances to the streets.