The Mexican frontier-an arid and sparsely populated region- became the home for thousands of Chinese who were driven from the United States by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Mexican government encouraged them to settle in harsh regions of the country where European settlers had failed to succeed. By the 1920s, the Chinese in Mexicali, one of the largest cities in Mexico’s north, had outnumbered Mexicans 10,000 to 700 and by mid century thousands more arrived, fleeing the brutality of the Chinese Civil War. Today, Mexicali, the capital of the northern state of Baja California, boosts the largest Chinatown in Mexico.