- US anti-immigrant sentiment in the early 20th Century led to a flourishing Punjabi-Mexican community.
- The blend of religious customs and fusion food like roti quesadillas created a unique subculture.
In 1950, Kapur Dhillon had lost his leg in a farming accident when he met his future wife. Stuck in the hospital, Dhillon hired Anatasia Pereira as domestic help, and, after getting to know each other through conversations in English and Spanish, fell in love.
They made a somewhat unlikely pair. Dhillon was a first-generation Punjabi born in Paso Robles, California, in 1908. Pereira, of Spanish and French descent but born in Mexico, grew up in a turbulent household marked by divorce and alcoholism. Dhillon's college-educated Sikh family disapproved of their marriage, their daughter, Kartar Smith, told Insider.
But the couple found similarities between their respective cultures. Dhillon taught Pereira how to speak Punjabi, and she cooked him paella and ceviche, then eventually paratha and curries. They were also both marginalized in society: Pereira was considered Mexican and relegated to menial jobs like bussing tables and cleaning, and Dhillon was treated with prejudice because he was Indian.
"It was difficult being a person with brown skin back then in California," Smith said.
Dhillon and Pereira are just one of the hundreds of Punjabi-Mexican couples that formed a unique community in California. The unions led to the creation of a hybrid subculture, resulting in food like roti quesadillas and dances that fuse Bhangra and Mexican folk dance.
Anti-immigrant sentiment led to Punjabi-Mexican unions
In the early 20th Century, Sikh settlers began immigrating to the US in search of jobs and good farmland. By 1915, about 7,000 Indians were in the US, around 85% of whom were Sikhs, according to Harvard University's Pluralism Project.
But the settlers were met with anti-immigrant sentiment. On September 4, 1904, 500 white working men in Bellingham, Washington, — mostly members of the Asiatic Exclusion League — gathered to protest Indian immigrants working at lumber mills. Some attacked the homes of South Asian Indians, their aim "to get them out of town, and scare them so badly that they will not crowd white labor out of the mills."
The fear was also bolstered by unfounded stereotypes of South Asians, who were deemed "troublesome" with a "bad" "code of morals."
Anti-immigrant sentiment led to the creation of exclusionary laws: The California Alien Land Act of 1913 prohibited the immigrant Sikh and Indian communities from owning farmland, and the Immigration Act of 1917 restricted the entry of Asians into the country, preventing the Punjabi workers from bringing their families to join them.
That left nearly 2,000 Punjabi men in a state of legal limbo, separated from their wives and children, Karen Leonard, professor of anthropology at the University of California in Irvine, told Insider.
Some instead chose to marry — or remarry — Hispanic women, bypassing miscegenation laws that prevented interracial marriage by putting "brown" on their marriage licenses. Leonard said nearly 400 Punjabi-Mexican couples were in California by the 1940s.
The birth of a fusion culture
The Punjabi-Mexican unions led to a unique subculture that fused elements from both heritages. Many Indian men changed their first names, like Mohammed to Mondo and Magga to Miguel, and Hispanic women took their husbands' last names. Families spoke Spanish but also went to gurdwaras or mosques and observed Ramadan.
Food was another area where the two cultures melded in harmony. Both Indian and Hispanic cuisines use similar spices like cumin and chili, and feature breads like tortillas and roti.
In 1954, Gulam Rasul, a migrant farmer, and his wife, Inez Aguirre Rasul, opened El Ranchero, a restaurant in Yuba City. On top of traditional Mexican and East Indian fare like enchiladas and chicken curry, El Ranchero had a special menu item: the roti quesadilla, roti topped with melted cheese, onions, and shredded beef, served with a side of dipping curry or hot sauce.
The roti quesadilla was something the Rasul family ate at their home, then brought to the restaurant to share with their community.
"They really enjoyed being able to feed the community and share their dishes with people," Tamara L. Rasul English, Gulam and Inez's granddaughter, told Insider.
When her father, Ali Rasul, took over his parents' restaurant in 1967, he continued to welcome their community into El Ranchero.
"People could just walk in through the kitchen. Someone was always buying him a beer," English said. "I called my dad 'the little mayor,' because everyone would always come to see him."
Descendants are keeping their heritage alive
The Punjabi-Mexican community began to thin as the US opened itself up to Asian and Indian immigration and more Punjabi women arrived. Marriages between Punjabis began to take force, and some Punjabi women disregarded the Mexican women in their communities, even kicking them out of gurdwaras, Leonard said.
The new Punjabi immigrants also reversed some practices that the Punjabi-Mexican community had formed, like sitting in chairs and eating with utensils, Moola Singh, a Punjabi-Mexican, wrote in Hardnews magazine in 2008.
"The newcomers didn't want to recognize those early pioneers — they had married out. But they had no choice! They got around laws, built comfortable and happy lives, and they are proud of them," Leonard told Insider.
The community further thinned as people left their hometowns and married outside the Punjabi-Mexican culture.
But many descendants are holding on to, or reconnecting with, their unique heritage: Kartar Smith, Dhillon and Pereira's daughter, recently learned Punjabi and the Rasuls' granddaughter Tamara English cooks Indian-Mexican food for her own children.
"There's so few of the older generation of our community left, so this is one way of keeping that channel to my culture open," English said.