Punjabi Mexican Americans

Americans descended from Punjabi people who initially immigrated to Mexico

A Punjabi-Mexican American couple, Valentina Alvarez and Rullia Singh, posing for their wedding photo in 1917.Part of a series on

Chicanos and Mexican Americans

Terms

|  Identity

* Chola/o
* La Raza
* Pachuca
* Pachuco
* Pinta/o
* Xicanx

Concepts

* Anti-Mexican sentiment

History

|  Early-American Period

* Josefa Segovia
* Las Gorras Blancas
* Mexican–American War
* Mutualista
* San Elizario Salt War
* Sonoratown
* Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Pre-Chicano Movement

* 1917 Bath riots
* Bisbee Deportation
* Bloody Christmas
* Bracero program
* California agricultural strikes
* Cantaloupe strike of 1928
* Citrus Strike of 1936
* La Matanza
* Mexican Repatriation
* Operation Wetback
* Plan de San Diego
* Porvenir Massacre
* Sleepy Lagoon trial
* Zoot Suit Riots

Chicano Movement

* Aztlán
* Black-brown unity
* Brown Berets
* Católicos por La Raza
* Tulare labor camps rent strike
* Delano grape strike
* Centro Cultural
* Chicanismo
* Chicano Moratorium
* Colegio César Chávez
* CFMN
* Conferencia de Mujeres
* CRP
* East L.A. walkouts
* Hijas de Cuauhtémoc
* Huelga schools
* Land grant struggle
* Las Adelitas de Aztlán
* Los Siete de la Raza
* Los Seis de Boulder
* MANA
* MAYO
* MEChA
* Occupation of Catalina Island
* PCUN
* Plan Espiritual de Aztlán
* Plan de Santa Bárbara
* Quinto Sol
* Raza Unida Party
* United Farm Workers

Post-Chicano Period

* 1985–1987 cannery strike
* 1992 Drywall Strike
* 2019 El Paso shooting
* Abolish ICE
* Arizona SB 1070
* Castro 2020
* Chicano Art Exhibit
* DACA
* Great American Boycott
* IRCA
* Farah strike
* Justice for Janitors
* Murder of Selena
* Proposition 187
* South Central Farm

Culture

|  Language

* Abrazos, no balazos
* Caló
* Chicano English
* Chicano names
* Órale

Food

* New Mexican cuisine
* Tex-Mex cuisine
* Mexican-American cuisine

Music

* Chicano rap
* Chicano rock
* Chicano soul
* Tejano music

Symbols

* Cal-Style VW
* Homies
* Lowrider
* Lowrider bicycle
* Mexican-American folklore
* Pancho Claus
* Zoot suit

Literature

|  Literature

* Chicana literature
* Chicano literature
* Chicano poetry

Autobiographical

* Always Running
* Living Up the Street
* Who Would Have Thought It?

Novels

* Bless Me, Ultima
* Caballero
* Desert Blood
* From This Wicked Patch of Dust
* Mexican WhiteBoy
* The Dirty Girls Social Club
* The House on Mango Street
* The Rain God
* The Revolt of the Cockroach People
* So Far from God
* Under the Feet of Jesus
* ...y no se lo tragó la tierra

Poetry and Short Stories

* Emplumada
* I Am Joaquin
* Moment of Silence
* Pensamiento Serpentino
* The Moths

Chicano studies

|  Fields

* Chicana feminism
* Chicanafuturism

Organizations

* MAS Programs, Tucson
* NACCS
* UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

Texts

* Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
* Brown, Not White
* The Church in the Barrio
* This Bridge Called My Back

Theory

* Barrioization
* Coyolxauhqui imperative
* Gringo justice
* Nahui Ollin
* Nepantla
* New tribalism
* Rasquachismo
* Spiritual activism
* Vergüenza
* Youth control complex

Visual art

|  Visual Art

* Chicana art
* Chicano art
* Chicano cinema
* Paño
* Tortilla art

Art Collectives

* Asco
* Culture Clash
* East Los Streetscapers
* Los Four
* Mujeres Muralistas
* Teatro Campesino
* Royal Chicano Air Force

Art organizations

* Centro de Arte Público
* Galería de la Raza
* Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
* Precita Eyes
* Self Help Graphics & Art

Locations

* Balmy Alley
* Chicano Park
* Estrada Courts
* Great Wall of Los Angeles

Law

|  Supreme Court cases

* Botiller v. Dominguez
* Hernandez v. Texas
* San Antonio I.S.D. v. Rodriguez
* Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co.
* U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce
* Plyler v. Doe
* Medellín v. Texas
* Flores-Figueroa v. U.S.
* Leal Garcia v. Texas
* Mendez v. Westminster
* Bernal v. Fainter
* Perez v. Brownell
* DHS v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal.

Federal Court cases

* Madrigal v. Quilligan

Population

|  Population by City

* Arizona (Tucson)
* California (Los Angeles)
* Illinois (Chicago)
* Michigan (Detroit)
* Nebraska (Omaha)
* Texas
* Dallas–Fort Worth
* Houston

Multiethnic

* Blaxicans
* Californios
* Nuevomexicanos
* Tejanos
* Indigenous Mexican Americans
* Punjabi Mexican Americans

Lists

* Chicano films
* Chicano poets
* Chicano rappers
* Mexican Americans
* Writers
* Bibliography

* United States portal
* Category
* Index

* v
* t
* e

Part of a series on

Punjabis

History

* Folklore
* Language
* Dialects
* Punjab
* Punjabis
* Nationalism

Diaspora

Asia

* Afghanistan

Europe

* United Kingdom

North America

* United States
* Mexican American
* Canada

Oceania

* Australia
* New Zealand
* Malaysia

Culture

* Clothing
* Cuisine
* Dance
* Festivals (India • Pakistan)
* Literature
* Media
* Music
* Religion (Folk religion)
* Sport
* Television

Regions

* Majha
* Malwa
* Doaba
* Puadh
* Bagar
* Pothwar
* Derajat
* Bhatiore
* Bhattiana
* Chhachh
* Kachhi
* Doabs (Sindh Sagar • Chaj • Rachna • Bari • Bist)
* Bars (Sandal • Kirana • Neeli • Ganji • Gondal • Jungle)

Punjab portal

* v
* t
* e

The Punjabi Mexican American community, the majority of which is localized to Yuba City, California, is a distinctive ethnicity holding its roots in a migration pattern that occurred almost a century ago. The first meeting of these cultures occurred in the Imperial and Central Valleys in 1907, near the largest irrigation system in the Western Hemisphere.

## Punjabi immigration

[edit]

Further information: Punjabi Americans

See also: Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans

For decades in the early 20th century, Punjabi farming families sent their sons out of Punjab to earn money.[1][2] Intending to return to the Punjab Province, only a handful of men brought their wives and families. In the United States, however, due to changed immigration laws it was not possible for the families of Punjabi workers to join them. Beyond this, poor wages and working conditions convinced the Punjabi workers to pool their resources, lease land and grow their own crops, thereby establishing themselves in the newly budding farming economy of northern California.[3]

## Mexican immigration

[edit]

Further information: Mexican Americans

Almost one million Mexican immigrants began entering the United States in the 1910s, shortly after the Mexican Revolution, with a large percentage arriving in families. A small number of these families picked cotton in fields farmed by Punjabi men. The Punjabi men are thought to have chosen women of Mexican ancestry for many reasons. Mexican women were considered brown, as were the Punjabi men; interracial marriage bans in California prevented Punjabis from marrying Black or White women but allowed them to marry Mexican women. Mexican women, much like the women of Punjab, covered their heads and bodies to protect themselves from the blazing sun while working in the fields.[3] Mexicans and Punjabis shared a rural way of life, with similar types of food and family values, and thus maintained a similar material and social culture. Mexicans and Indians shared an initially lower class status in American society.[1]

## Intermarriage

[edit]

Indian freedom fighter Udham Singh married a Mexican woman during the 1920s while he was in California, with whom he had two children

Punjabi men married Mexican women laborers and there were eventually almost four hundred of these biethnic couples clustered in California’s agricultural valleys.[1] Although the majority of these intermarriages happened in northern-central California in the Central Valley, in areas such as Yuba City, Stockton, or Sacramento, Punjabi-Mexican marriages occurred as far away as New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, or El Paso, Texas.[4][5] Husbands and wives spoke to each other in rudimentary English or Spanish. The men tended to be older, in their late thirties or forties, and the women in their early twenties. Punjabi men learned Spanish to communicate with Mexican agricultural laborers and to speak to their wives. Some Punjabi men adopted Spanish names or nicknames: Miguel for Maghar, Andrés for Inder, and Mondo for Mohammed.[1]

The aspects of Punjabi culture fathers transmitted to their wives and children included that of food and funerary practices. Cooking in the home drew from both Mexican and Punjabi cuisines and the men taught their wives to cook chicken curry, roti, and various vegetable curries. For example, the Rasul family in Yuba City ran the El Ranchero restaurant, the only Mexican restaurant in California (before closing in 1993) that featured chicken curry and roti.[6] Another important retention of Punjabi culture was the disposition of the body upon death. The Hindus and Sikhs insisted upon cremation, then uncommon in North America, and Muslims carried out orthodox burial ceremonies for each other (though the plots in which they are buried in rural California have since been misnamed "Hindu plots"). The wives were buried in the Mexican Catholic section of local cemeteries, as were the children.[1]

## Notable people

[edit]

* Mike Mohamed (b. 1988), American football linebacker

## See also

[edit]

* California portal
* Hispanic and Latino Americans portal
* India portal
* Mexico portal
* Pakistan portal
* Punjab portal

* Indian immigration to Mexico
* Asian Latin Americans

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e Karen Leonard, PhD (May 1989). "The World & I". The Washington Times Corporation. Archived from the original on 2007-06-09. Retrieved 2007-06-06.
2. ^ Palhotra, Nishi. "The 'dirty Hindus'." Hardnews. March 2008. Retrieved on April 15, 2012.
3. ^ a b Jayasri Majumdar Hart. "Roots in the sand". PBS.
4. ^ "Punjabi-Mexican Communities in South Texas | Ovations | UTSA's College of Liberal and Fine Arts Magazine". www.utsa.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
5. ^ Villegas, Jordan (2021-09-14). "The History of California's Punjabi-Mexican Communities". Latina. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
6. ^ (SAADA), South Asian American Digital Archive (2013-08-05). "A visit to Yuba City, California". South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). Retrieved 2017-12-31.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Leonard, Karen (1994). Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi Mexican Americans. Temple University Press. p. 362\. ISBN 9781566392020.

## External links

[edit]

* Article on Punjabi-Mexicans

* v
* t
* e

Punjabi diaspora

Asia|

* Afghanistan
* Malaysia

Elsewhere|

* Australia
* Canada
* New Zealand
* United Kingdom
* United States
* Mexican American

See also|

* Pakistani diaspora
* Indian diaspora
* Sikh diaspora

* v
* t
* e

Hispanic and Latino Americans

* Index
* Hispanic and Latino
* Latino
* Demographics

North American|

* Californio
* Creoles of Louisiana
* Isleño
* Floridanos
* Mexican
* Punjabi Mexican Americans
* Chicano
* Nuevomexicano
* Tejano

| Caribbean|

* Cuban
* Dominican
* Puerto Rican
* Nuyorican

|

Central American|

* Costa Rican
* Guatemalan
* Honduran
* Nicaraguan
* Panamanian
* Salvadoran

South American[a]|

* Argentine
* Bolivian
* Brazilian
* Chilean
* Colombian
* Ecuadorian
* Paraguayan
* Peruvian
* Uruguayan
* Venezuelan

European|

* Spanish
* Asturian
* Basque
* Canarian
* Catalan
* Galician

Ethnic groups|

* Asian
* Black
* White

Religious groups|

* Christians
* Jews
* Muslims

By region|

* Arizona
* California
* Los Angeles
* San Diego
* San Francisco
* Colorado
* Florida
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Nevada
* New Jersey
* New Mexico
* New York
* Oregon
* Portland
* Texas
* Houston
* Utah
* Washington, D.C.

Other|

* Stereotypes in the United States
* In politics
* In the United States Congress
* Women in journalism

1. ^ The U.S. Census Bureau excludes Brazilian Americans from the "Hispanic or Latino" category.

* Category
* Commons

* v
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* e

Asian Americans

Central Asian|

* Afghan
* Baloch
* Kazakh
* Kyrgyz
* Tajik
* Turkmen
* Uyghur
* Uzbek

East Asian|

* Chinese
* Fuzhounese
* Hakka
* Hoklo
* Hong Kong
* Japanese
* Ryukyuan (Okinawans)
* in Hawaii
* Korean
* in Hawaii
* Mongolian
* Taiwanese
* Tibetan

South Asian|

* Bangladeshi
* Bengali
* Bhutanese
* Indian
* Gujarati
* Telugu
* Indo-Caribbean
* Maldivian
* Nepalese
* Pakistani
* Punjabi
* Sindhi
* Tamil
* Sri Lankan

Southeast Asian|

* Burmese
* Karen
* Cambodian
* Filipino
* Hmong
* Indonesian
* Laotian
* Malaysian
* Singaporean
* Thai
* Vietnamese
* Mien

Other|

* Asian Hispanic and Latino
* Punjabi Mexican
* Multiracial Americans
* Afro-Asian
* Amerasian

History|

* Immigration
* Military
* Internment of Japanese Americans

Topics|

* Arts and Entertainment
* Broadcast journalism
* Demographics
* Politics
* Science and technology
* Sports
* Stereotypes
* East and Southeast Asians
* South Asians
* Model minority myth

Regions|

* California
* Los Angeles
* San Francisco
* Metro Detroit
* Hawaii
* Houston
* Louisiana
* Maryland
* New York City
* Nevada
* North Carolina
* Philadelphia
* Puerto Rico
* Washington
* Washington, D.C.
* Virginia

* v
* t
* e

Indian diaspora

Africa|

| Southeast|

* Kenya
* Madagascar
* Mauritius
* Bihari
* Tamil
* Mozambique
* Réunion1 (Malbars)
* Seychelles
* Tamil
* Tanzania
* Uganda
* Zambia

|

Elsewhere|

* Botswana
* Egypt
* Ghana
* South Africa (Tamil)
* Zimbabwe

Americas|

| Caribbean|

* Barbados
* Belize
* Dominican Republic
* Grenada
* Guadeloupe2
* Guyana
* Haiti (Marabou)
* Jamaica
* Martinique2
* Saint Kitts and Nevis
* Saint Lucia
* Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
* Suriname
* Trinidad and Tobago
* U.S. Virgin Islands

|

Latin America|

* Argentina
* Brazil
* Chile
* French Guiana2
* Mexico
* Panama
* Peru
* Uruguay
* Venezuela

Anglo-America|

* Canada
* Anglo-Indian
* Punjabi
* Sindhi
* Tamil
* British Columbia
* Vancouver
* Toronto
* United States
* by location
* Bengali
* Indo-Caribbean
* Gujarati
* Punjabi
* Punjabi Mexican
* Sindhi
* Tamil
* Telugu

Asia|

| South|

* Afghanistan
* Punjabi
* Bangladesh
* Maldives
* Nepal
* Pakistan
* Sri Lanka
* Bharatha
* Chetty
* Tamil
* Telugu

|

Southeast|

* Brunei
* Cambodia
* Indonesia
* Klingalese
* Mardijker
* Tamil
* Malaysia
* Chitty
* Gujarati
* Jawi Peranakan
* Malayali
* Punjabi
* Tamil
* Telugu
* Penang
* Sabah
* Sarawak
* Myanmar
* Mizo
* Tamil
* Philippines
* Singapore
* Chitty
* Tamil
* Thailand
* Vietnam

East|

* China
* Hong Kong
* Japan
* Korea
* Taiwan

West|

* Bahrain
* Iran
* Israel
* Jews
* Kuwait
* Lebanon
* Oman
* Qatar
* Saudi Arabia
* Turkey
* United Arab Emirates

Europe|

| Eastern|

* Poland
* Russia

|

Northern|

* Finland
* Sweden

Southern|

* Cyprus
* Italy
* Tamil
* Malta
* Portugal
* Spain

Western|

* France
* Tamil
* Germany
* Tamil
* Netherlands
* Switzerland
* Tamil
* United Kingdom
* London
* Indo-Caribbean
* Gujarati
* Punjabi
* Sindhi
* Tamil

Oceania|

* Australia
* Malayali
* Punjabi
* Tamil
* Sindhi
* Fiji
* Gujarati
* South Indian
* New Caledonia3
* New Zealand
* Maori-Indian
* Punjabi
* Tamil

See also|

| Ethnic diasporas|

* Bengali Hindu
* Gujarati
* Kashmiri
* Mirpuri
* Mizo
* Odia
* Punjabi (Sikhs)
* Romani
* Sindhi
* South Indians
* Malayalis
* In the Gulf
* Tamils
* Telugus
* Anglo-Indian
* Chindians

|

Other related articles|

* South Asian diaspora
* Desi
* Little India
* Non-Resident Indian Award
* Non-Resident Indian Day

* 1 An overseas department of France in the southwest Indian Ocean
* 2Overseas departments of France in the Americas
* 3A sui generis collectivity of France in the southwest Pacific Ocean

* v
* t
* e

Pakistani diaspora

Africa|

* Libya
* Somalia
* South Africa

Asia|

| South|

* Afghanistan
* Punjabis
* Bangladesh
* India
* Baloch
* Pashtuns
* Sindhis
* Sri Lanka
* Pashtuns
* Sindhis

|

Gulf|

* Bahrain
* Iran
* Kuwait
* Oman
* Qatar
* Saudi Arabia
* United Arab Emirates
* Baloch
* Yemen

Far East|

* China
* Hong Kong
* Japan
* South Korea

South East|

* Burma
* Malaysia
* Jawi Peranakan
* Punjabis
* Singapore
* Thailand

Middle East|

* Jordan
* Israel
* Lebanon
* Syria

Europe|

* Denmark
* France
* Germany
* Italy
* Netherlands
* Norway
* Spain
* United Kingdom
* London
* Mirpuris
* Punjabis
* Pashtuns
* Sindhis

Americas|

* Brazil
* Canada
* United States
* Houston
* Baloch
* Pashtuns
* Punjabis
* Punjabi Mexicans
* Sindhis

Oceania|

* Australia
* Pashtuns
* Punjabis
* Hazaras
* Sindhis
* New Zealand
* Punjabis

See also|

| Sub-diasporas|

* Baloch
* Gujarati
* Hazara
* Azad Kashmiri
* Kashmiri
* Pashtun
* Punjabi
* Saraiki
* Sindhi

|

Related articles|

* Anti-Pakistan sentiment
* Foreign relations
* Diplomatic missions
* Immigration to Pakistan
* Little Pakistan
* Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development
* Pakistani nationality law
* Pakistani passport
* Pakistani students
* Visa requirements for Pakistani citizens

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