The Mexican Colonial Term "Chino" Is a Referent of Afrodescendant

Abstract Apparently unaware of the existence of at least three Spanish language homonyms of "chino" with different significations, times and places of origin, there is a considerable research corpus inaccurately translating as "Chinese" the Mexican colonial name "chino," found in Mexican colonial documents from the late sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To disentangle the confusion of the linguistic problem outlined, this work tracks the distinct etymologies of "chino" meaning "curly-haired African-First Nations offspring;" and of "chino" as Chinese. The objective is to show that the name "chino" as referent of Afrodescendant derives from "chino," a synonym of "pig.' "It is shown that a homonym of "chino" arose in Philippines as a synonym of Sangley, the Tagalog name of the merchants from Cathay (the Middle Kingdom). Based upon the foregoing, three findings are exposed. First, that the term "chino" in most Mexican colonial documents is not a referent of Chinese, but to Afro-Mexicans. Second, that the word "chino" meaning Chinese, which began to be used generally in nineteenth-century Philippines, applies to the Sangley merchants exclusively. Third, that the ethnically diverse people who entered Mexico via Acapulco were called "chinos" because they were perceived as people with tainted blood. "The descendants of negroes and Indian women bear at Mexico, Lima and even at the Havannah the strange name of chino [....]" Alexander von Humboldt1 Apparently unaware of the existence of at least three Spanish language homonyms of "chino" with different significations, times and places of origin, there is a considerable research corpus inaccurately translating as "Chinese" the Mexican colonial name "chino," found in Mexican colonial documents from the late sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the most part, those "chinos" are Afro-Mexican "chinoscambujos," cambujos, or zambujos. "Chino," in New Spain archival records, generally, is a referent to people of African heritage whose lineage was perceived by the Spanish and other Europeans as "tainted" by African blood. Therefore, they were labeled "chino," a synonym for "pig" in the Murcia region of Spain; or "chino-cochino" (dirty pig). Although the animal connotation of "chino" has disappeared, the "dirty" lineage implied by the term has survived until present;2 curly hair in Mexico is "pelo chino." The general usage of the homonym "chino," meaning Chinese, emerged in nineteenth-century Manila, Philippines as a synonym of Sangley, the name given to Chinese merchants. The distortion appears to have originated with Alexander von Humboldt during his visit to New Spain in 1800. Although von Humboldt understood the meaning of the term "chino" as applied in Mexico at the time, he failed to realize that he was dealing with homonyms of "chino" when he mentioned that it was "strange" to call Afrodescendants "Chinese." Nevertheless, von Humboldt reported that "chino" in Mexico referred to the offspring of Black men and "Indian women" [First Nations herein after] (184). John Black (1783-1855) translated von Humboldt's work Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain from French to English for the 1811 publication. While applying the term "Chinese" to Afrodescendants made no sense, John Black overlooked the translation problem. John Black mistranslated "chino" as "Chinese male" and "china" as "Chinese female," which, in context, were referents of male and female African offspring and not Chinese people in the current sense. To avoid misinterpretations, John Black should have translated "china" as "china female" and not "Chinese female." Magnus Morner cites von Humboldt where he states, "The offspring of Indian and Negro were called chinos in both Mexico and Peru" (59 n.22). Von Humboldt was an observer in situ as he traveled in the American Spanish colonies from 1799 to 1804. The Americana: A Universal Reference Library, in the section entitled "Mexico: History and Modern Development" reports in 1912, In 1827 the British Minister to Mexico divided the population into seven classes: (1. …