Nationalism Constructed Against “Others”: Chiapas’s Anti-Chinese Movement And State Formation In Postrevolutionary Mexico

This thesis examines the motives and causes of the anti-Chinese movement during Mexican postrevolutionary period in Chiapas, Mexico, where the Chinese population was less dense and a region historically distant from the political center. Drawing from the evidence, I argue that the anti-Chinese movements in the early 1930s was linked to the newly established Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), the party that later became the one that dominated Mexican politics. The anti-Chinese movement in Chiapas also demonstrates PNR’s indirect control over the historically rebellious Chiapas state government and the negotiation of power between the center and periphery. In addition, this thesis also applies the theories of Gerardo Rénique and Pierre Bourdieu on nation state building to this particularly case of anti-Chinese movement in Chiapas in order to examine the apparatus of the postrevolutionary state and the means the new state employed to accumulate various forms of political and social capital and enhance its legitimacy.