Narrating Chinese Massacre in the South American War of the Pacific

Abstract

This essay explores competing and overlapping narratives about massacres of Chinese men by African-descended Peruvians during the War of the Pacific (1879–84), a conflict during which Chile invaded and occupied Peru. Reports of brutal killings of Chinese merchants in Lima circulated alongside stories about the massacre of over a thousand Chinese contract workers on plantations in the province of Cañete. Descriptions of brutal acts by black people, especially black women, were central to both narratives. Asking what political purpose these stories served, this essay explores how Chileans, Peruvians, and Chinese recounted episodes of anti-Chinese violence to make larger claims about gender, race, and nation. It argues that both urban and rural violence against Chinese men during the war stemmed from struggles over Chinese contract labor and a plantation system that had long exploited African and indigenous people. Narratives of Chinese massacre occluded the centrality of plantations to political struggles among Peruvians as well as the importance of Chinese labor to Chilean military occupation. Moreover, accounts of black women savaging Chinese men functioned as cover stories for other violence, such as Chilean massacres of Peruvians, new forms of exploiting Chinese labor, Peruvian elites’ collaboration with Chile, and their disqualification of black people as Peruvian patriots.