Heidi Tinsman

University of California, Irvine, History, Department Member

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My current book project is entitled, "Chinese Labor and Masculinity in the Making of Modern Latin America," which examines forced labor and political movements in 19th and early 20th century Peru, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico.
Address: Irvine, CA

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Papers by Heidi Tinsman

Freeing Chinese Men on the María Luz: Gender and the Latin American Coolie Trade

Journal of Global History, 2023

This essay analyzes a Japanese court's criminal conviction of a Peruvian shipmaster for abusing C... more This essay analyzes a Japanese court's criminal conviction of a Peruvian shipmaster for abusing Chinese contract workers and the subsequent release of all Chinese passengers except a lone girl. Using the case as a lens onto gender dynamics within the coolie trade to Latin America, I argue that overlapping patriarchal practices made Chinese contract labor overwhelming male and prioritized men in debates over freedom. The María Luz trials upheld women's domestic sexual bondage while condemning men's enslavement.

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Contesting Chinese Contract Labor: Yung Wing's Reports and the Qing Mission to Peru

Labor: Studies in Working-Class History. 20:3 (2023): 6–32., 2023

, a Yale-educated envoy for the Qing Empire named Yung Wing arrived in Lima from his diplomatic p... more , a Yale-educated envoy for the Qing Empire named Yung Wing arrived in Lima from his diplomatic post in the United States to survey the conditions of Chinese contract workers in Peru. Over the course of two weeks, Yung Wing interviewed numerous Chinese laborers and merchants and enlisted the assistance of several American residents in Peru, and one Chilean citizen, to provide information about Chinese on plantations and railway operations. In his report to Qing officials, Yung Wing offered a grim condemnation and urged that a permanent Qing consulate be established in Lima. He documented egregious violations of the original contracts signed in China and argued that Peruvians treated Chinese men as chattel slaves. In wrenching detail, Yung Wing described how Chinese contract workers died of starvation, exposure, obscene workloads, and sadistic floggings at the hands of overseers. Plantation owners refused to pay specified wages and used debt to extend Chinese bondage beyond the original eight-year indenture. Chinese men were routinely sold to third parties, shackled with leg-irons and neck-rings, and brutally killed for attempting to run away; in desperation, many killed themselves. The only redress came from Chinese merchant guilds in Lima that occasionally succeeded in pressuring Peruvian officials to intervene. Yung Wing's 1874 mission to Peru provides an extraordinary window onto the experience of Chinese contract workers in Latin America and Qing efforts to defend Chinese subjects abroad. Between the 1840s and the 1870s, over a quarter million Chinese were trafficked through the so-called coolie trade to South America and the Caribbean as long-term indentured laborers to replace enslaved Africans. Over 110,000 Chinese contract workers ended up in Peru. 1 The vast majority labored I especially thank Yuxiu Wu, Hongqin Deng, Weiquiang Ma, Ding Yu, and Amy Hawkins for research and Chinese translation assistance. I am also grateful to Qitao Guo, Jeffery Wasserstrom, Yong Chen, Ping-chen Hsiung, Mu-chou Poo, Elliott Young, Erik Kongshaug, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Research was supported by the

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Binding Ties

Duke University Press eBooks, 2002

Patrón and Peón

Coming Apart

Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973

Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2004

... am particu-larly grateful to Miguel Aguilar, Selfa Antiman, Maria Elena Galdamez, Omar Garcia... more

Engendering World History

Radical History Review, 2005

Revolutionizing Women

La tierra para el que la trabaja : género, sexualidad y movimientos campesinos en la reforma agraria chilena

... Les agradezco a Luis Ortega, Julio Pinto, Diana Veneros Ruiz-Tagle, Cecilia Salinas, Verónica... more

Partners in Conflict

Duke University Press eBooks, Nov 20, 2020

The Fresh Sell

Struggling for Land

Duke University Press eBooks, 2002

Fables of Abundance

8. World history meets history of masculinity in latin american studies

New York University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

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Making Men

Duke University Press eBooks, 2002

Epílogo

Chile 1984/1994, 2020

Unequal uplift : the sexual politics of gender, work, and community in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973

Epilogue: 1973-1988

Narrating Chinese Massacre in the South American War of the Pacific

Journal of Asian American Studies, 2019

This essay explores competing and overlapping narratives about massacres of Chinese men by Africa... more 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. • JOURNAL OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES • 22.3

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Paisanos Chinos: Transpacific Politics among Chinese Immigrants in Mexico, written by Fredy González

Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2018