“(From Karen Leonard’s Punjabi Mexican American Papers/ Courtesy of Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries ) – Valentina Alvarez and Rullia Singh are seen posing for their wedding photo in 1917. They are among the thousands of Punjabi-Mexican couples which sprouted up across the Southwestern United States in lieu of anti-immigration laws.” (source: The Washington Post)

A recent article in the Washington Post discusses the fading history of Punjabi-Mexican Americans who arose from the unions of Punjabi (and predominantly Sikh) men with Mexican women at the turn of the twentieth century, largely in California, as a result of strict immigration and citizenship policies:

“Many Punjabis married the Mexican women that worked on their land because of their cultural similarities and proximity,” [Karen Leonard, author of “Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi-Mexican-Americans“] explained. “And when they’d show up at the county record office, they could both check ‘brown.’ No one knew the difference.”

The Punjabi men chose Mexican women for a host of other reasons: Physically, Mexican women at the time were thought to resemble Punjabis, Leonard said. Both communities also shared a rural way of life, cooked similar types of food and had a similar material culture.