JAPANESE IN MEXICO

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 33, 2 August 1911, Page 3

JAPANESE IN MEXICO

FACTS OF THE CASE. When American troops were massed on the Mexican border, it was freely ru-1 mored that this mobilisation was due | to Japanese activities in Mexico. This i was authoritatively refuted. Statistical information as to Japanese residents in Mexico has been published by the Chugai Sho-gyo, a Tokio commercial daily. According to this journal, the Japanese population in Mexico numbers 2470, the majority of whom are contract laborers. I It was no less a personage than the late j Viscount Yenomoto who conceived the idea of starting a coffee plantation in Mexico. This statesman, who held various ministerial positions in the' Japanese Government, bought of the Mexican Government 150,000 acres of land in the state of Chiapas, and in 1897 sent there 32 "colonists," who were followed by a few more bodies of emigrants. Owing to poor management and the inconvenient location of the plantation, the undertaking failed, and the la«d was mostly transferred to Mexican capitalists. Most of; the colonists were thus obliged to return home, but a few remained in the Republic and took to fanning on their own account. They settled in Chiapas, a small town of some 1000 population, and prosperity soon rewarded their industry and frugality. The story of their success reached home, and more Japanese went to jo in them, either direct from Japan or from South America or the United States. At present the Chiapas colony consists of 50 Japanese, 12 of whom have Mexican wives. The leader of the Chiapas colony, Terui by name, operates a sugar plantation of 1000 acres, besides controlling a large acreage of uncultivated lands. Another member of the colony owns a ranch of some 30,000 acres. All these Japanese are, we are told, on the best of terms with their Mexican neighbors, and their colony shows every sign of increasing prosperity and happiness. As to the immigration of Japanese contract laborers, this journal says:i "The first band of contract laborers, 160 in number, was imported in 1900 by American and Canadian plantation owners at Oakenia, 140 miles from the port ofCoatzacoalcos. These were soon follow- j ed by many more contract laborers, im-1 ported by the same group of planters. At one time Japanese laborers employed by these planters numbered more 'than a thousand, but the ill-treatment accorded to them by their employers has been responsible for the , steady', decreao of their number."