{"id":45099,"date":"2016-01-15T19:20:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T19:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=45099"},"modified":"2016-01-15T19:20:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T19:20:28","slug":"the-forgotten-era-of-punjabi-mexicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=45099","title":{"rendered":"The Forgotten Era of Punjabi-Mexicans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Forgotten Era of Punjabi-Mexicans<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

OZY<\/a>
\n2016-01-13<\/p>\n

Nick Fouriezos<\/strong><\/a>, Reporter\/Researcher<\/p>\n

Like a good comedian, Mary Singh Rai<\/a> picked from her three identities to best suit her listener. \u201cWhen I\u2019m with Americans, I like to think of myself as one,\u201d the native of Yuba City, California<\/a>, said in a 2012 interview. But in some ways, the then-89-year-old with the light brown skin and wrinkled cheeks epitomized the American dream more than many others.<\/p>\n

A daughter of immigrants, Rai was the result of an unlikely coupling of a Mexican mother and Punjabi father in the Golden State<\/a> \u2014 and decades later, her dual ethnicities were still reflected in her distinctly Hispanic last name and Indian maiden name.<\/p>\n

In the early 1900s, a generation of working men from Punjab<\/a> \u2014 a region between the Indian<\/a> and Pakistani<\/a> border \u2014 laid down their rifles, headed West and picked up farming tools. Many had served in the British Royal Army<\/a> or its police forces but decided to search for a better life a hemisphere away, in the fertile lands of Southern California\u2019s<\/a> Imperial Valley<\/a>. Forming migrant-worker gangs, the Punjabi men were often called \u201cHindu crews,\u201d but they were really an eclectic mix of Hindus<\/a>, Sikhs<\/a> and Muslims<\/a> who toiled in hopes of earning enough to pay for their wives and children to join them in the land of opportunity. Instead, they found themselves stranded in a country that soon passed a wave of immigration legislation, effectively closing its borders to foreigners…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Forgotten Era of Punjabi-Mexicans OZY 2016-01-13 Nick Fouriezos, Reporter\/Researcher Like a good comedian, Mary Singh Rai picked from her three identities to best suit her listener. \u201cWhen I\u2019m with Americans, I like to think of myself as one,\u201d the native of Yuba City, California, said in a 2012 interview. But in some ways, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,459,8,20],"tags":[455,22617,22618,17430,9975],"class_list":["post-45099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-california","tag-mary-singh-rai","tag-nick-fouriezos","tag-ozy","tag-punjabi-mexicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45100,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45099\/revisions\/45100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}