Asian Latin American Totally Explained

Everything about Asian Latin American totally explained

An Asian Latin American is a Latin American of Asian descent.
   Asian Latin Americans have a centuries-long history in the region, starting with Filipinos in the 16th century. The heyday of Asian immigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, however.
   There are currently more than four million Asian Latin Americans, nearly 1% of Latin America's population. Chinese and Japanese are the group's largest ancestries, of which the next includes Koreans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Indians, and Hmong. Brazil is home to the largest population of Asian Latin Americans, at some 2.3 million. The highest percentage of any country in the region is 3%, in Peru. Politics, music, anthropology, sport, humour, business: these are but some of the areas in which Asian Latin Americans have contributed to their countries and the world.
   There has been emigration from these communities in recent decades, so that there are now hundreds of thousands of people of Asian Latin American origin in both Japan and the United States.

History

The first Asian Latin Americans were Filipinos who made their way to Latin America (particularly Mexico) in the 16th century, as sailors, crews, slaves, prisoners, adventurers and soldiers during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. For two and a half centuries (between 1565 and 1815) many Filipinos sailed on the Manila-Acapulco Galleons, assisting in the Spanish Empire's monopoly in trade. Some of these sailors never returned to the Philippines, and many of their descendants can be found in small communities around Baja California, Sonora, Michoacán, Guerrero, Culiacán, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Veracruz and the Yucatan Peninsula.
Most Asians, however, arrived in the 19th and 20th century as contract workers or coolies, others as economic refugees (especially from China and Japan), or as political or war refugees (victims of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution in 1966 China).
Today, the overwhelming majority of Asian Latin Americans are of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent, yet with Vietnamese the most significant group thereafter. While Vietnamese Latin Americans are almost entirely confined to Cuba, other Asian groups are represented throughout Latin America.

Geographic distribution

Four and a half million Latin Americans (almost 1% of the total population of Latin America) are of Asian descent. The number may be millions higher, even more so if all who have partial ancestry are included. For example, Asian Peruvians are estimated at 3% of the population there, but one source places the number of all Peruvians with at least some Chinese ancestry at 4.2 million, which equates to 15% of the country's total population.
Most who are of Japanese descent reside in Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, while significant populations of Chinese ancestry are found in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, and Costa Rica (where they make up about 1% of the total population). Nicaragua is home to 12,000 ethnic Chinese; the majority reside in Managua and on the Caribbean coast. Smaller communities of Chinese, numbering just in the hundreds or thousands, are also found in Colombia, Ecuador and various other Latin American countries. There is also a significant Filipino and Taiwanese community in El Salvador. The largest Korean communities are in Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Mexico and Argentina. There are around 50,000 living in Guatemala. There is also a Hmong community in Argentina. Panama and Venezuela have small Asian Indian communities.
In Peru, Asians (primarily ethnic Japanese and Chinese) constitute 3% of the population by some estimates, the largest as a percentage of any Latin American country. Japanese Peruvians have a considerable economic position in Peru. Many past and present Peruvian Cabinet members are ethnic Asians and former president Alberto Fujimori is of Japanese ancestry. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community outside of Japan, numbering about 1.5 million.

Emigrant communities

Japan

Japanese Brazilian immigrants to Japan numbered 250,000 in 2004, constituting Japan's second-largest immigrant population. Their experiences bear similarities to those of Japanese Peruvian immigrants, who are often relegated to low income jobs typically occupied by foreigners and, as with other immigrants, are vulnerable to the Yakuza. In 2006 the Census Bureau's American Community Survey estimated them at 154,694, while its Population Estimates, which are official, put them at 277,704.
Some notable Americans of Asian and Hispanic or Latino heritage include Carlos Galvan, Kelis, and Chino Moreno.

Composition

Nation	a href=http://Overseas_Chinese.totallyexplained.com title="Overseas Chinese - Totally Explained">Chinese	a href=http://Non-resident_Indian_and_Person_of_Indian_Origin.totallyexplained.com title="Non-resident Indian and Person of Indian Origin - Totally Explained">Indian	a href=http://Japanese_diaspora.totallyexplained.com title="Japanese diaspora - Totally Explained">Japanese	a href=http://Korean_diaspora.totallyexplained.com title="Korean diaspora - Totally Explained">Korean	a href=http://Overseas_Filipino.totallyexplained.com title="Overseas Filipino - Totally Explained">Filipino
Argentina	60,000	1,600	6,604	35,000
	5,900	1,900	1,500,000	293,000
	11,000	16
	113,828		616
	50,000		3,000	800
Ecuador	15,000
	2,700	400	50,000
	5,200	400	15,000	20,000	200,000
Nicaragua	12,000
	200,000	2,164	456
	10,000	145	35,685
Puerto Rico		4,500
Uruguay	200	690	828

Notable persons

Jorge Cham, created the popular comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper; Chinese Panamanian
Franklin Chang-Diaz, former NASA astronaut; Chinese Costa Rican
Bruce Chen, Major League Baseball pitcher; Chinese Panamanian
Alberto Fujimori, President of Peru from 1990 to 2000; Japanese Peruvian
Keiko Fujimori, congresswoman; Japanese Peruvian
Ana Gabriel, singer and composer; Chinese-Japanese Mexican
Hiromi Hayakawa, singer; Japanese Mexican
Myrna Mack, anthropologist of Mayan descent; Chinese Guatemalan
Barbara Mori, actress; Japanese Uruguayan
Pedro Shimose, poet; Japanese Bolivian
Arlen Siu, martyr of the 1979 Sandinista revolution; Chinese Nicaraguan
Erasmo Wong, entrepreneur and owner of various retail chains; Chinese Peruvian

Further Information

Get more info on 'Asian Latin American'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://asian_latin_american.totallyexplained.com">Asian Latin American Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.