The House of the Pain of Others by Julian Herbert (Graywolf Press)

In the Mexican city of Torreon, the football team has a motto written on their locker room wall: In the house of the pain of others. This is appropriate because, as Julian Herbert discloses in his book of the same title, Torreon lives with the history of the pain of others, the massacre of over three hundred Chinese residents in 1911 during the Mexican Revolution.

It was Pancho Villa who killed them, say many Torreon residents. It was the rabble who followed the soldiers who were responsible. It was done by outsiders, not by those who lived here. Manuel Lee Soriano, a descendant of a Chinese family who remained in Torreon after the slaughter, says, “I lived through those anti-Chinese campaigns and that’s how my parents taught me to respond…’If you think you might cause offense, better not speak. Better be quiet’...the story belongs to us...It’s got nothing to do with anyone else.”

Torreon, Mexico’s youngest city, was a boom town at the close of the 19th Century, its explosive growth fueled by cotton, steel, and rubber. It needed workers and Chinese immigrants, facing poverty in their country after years of war and rebellion and drawn to North America by the California Gold Rush, came across the fluid borders between the U.S. and Mexico to seek their fortunes. Finding not only work but the opportunity to establish their own businesses in Torreon, they stayed and prospered, owning large grocery stores, hotels, restaurants, and the city’s gigantic produce market. Wong Foon-Chuck, who got off the train in Torreon with two baskets of Chinese goods, within several years had founded a school and owned hotels. J. Wong Lim arrived with a medical degree from a California university and became a Mexican national with three languages at his disposal.

Drawn by the idea of establishing a shipping line between Mazatlan and Hong Kong, a wealthy politician and Confucian philosopher, Kang Youwei, was attracted to Torreon because its Chinese were residents, not seasonal migratory workers. He soon began speculating in real estate, buying cheap and selling high, and with Foon-Chuck and Lim, founded what was called the Banco Chino which was designed to become the bank used by all the Chinese in Mexico. Torreon’s Chinese business community became an economic force with the capacity for greater growth--and as the Revolution gathered steam, they became a target.

Kang Youwei’s real estate success led to higher rents and housing shortages and demagogues were quick to exploit that, along with the threat that Chinese businessmen were killing off any competing enterprises. When the Mexican Revolution began to gather force, guerrilla forces destabilized the area around Torreon with frequent raids in the city, setting the stage for unrest long before revolutionary troops arrived on May 13th, 1911.

Making their way to the Chinese produce farms, the soldiers demanded food and water at first, then stepped up their demands to include tools, cash, and even the clothing on people’s backs, leaving their victims vulnerable and “the easiest to kill.” From the night of May 13th to the night of May 15th, Chinese businesses were looted, businessmen and their employees were killed in their shops, and those who found hiding places were dragged out from safety and killed in the streets. Corpses were thrown from the windows of the Banco Chino, at least four Chinese children were murdered in plain sight, and Mexican residents carried away whatever bounty they could scavenge from the looted stores and houses. The massacre continued until the revolutionary leader Emilio Maduro finally declared martial law and an immediate end to attacks upon the Chinese. By that time almost half of Torreon’s Chinese residents had been killed within a period of two days. They were buried in mass graves outside of the city. 

The economic loss to the Chinese community was estimated at over 1,300,00 pesos and many of the survivors left Torreon. China demanded financial indemnity for the death of its citizens and Emilio Madero’s brother Francisco, after gaining power as the Mexican president, promised a payment of 3,100,000 pesos, a decision that was highly unpopular with his fellow countrymen. Not long afterward Madero was assassinated and the indemnity was never paid.

Wong Foon-Chuck’s descendants still live in Torreon. J. Wong Lim remained in the city for years after the massacre; his home is now the Museo de la Revolution. But Torreon’s Chinese community is muted in comparison to what it once was and its bloody history is obscured. As Manuel Lee Soriano’s parents told him, “Better keep quiet.”

Julian Herbert, ignoring that advice, has brought these truths out of the house of pain into the awareness of outsiders in the rest of the world. ~Janet Brown