Who's from South America

[Erendani]

This past year for some reason I met a significant number of Asian Americans living in the US who had ties with South America somehow... either born there or grew up there before coming over to the States.

Apparently there is a large population of Asians living in countries like Brazil and Argentina. I never would have known. I think Peru even had an Asian president for a while.

And it's cool because these transplants are usually trilingual... they know Spanish, their parents' native language (Korean, Japanese, etc), and then English from living in America.

Is there anyone on these boards who have ties with South America? ...Or just noticed the same trend.

[lethal]

There are some Chinese in Panama as well. People who came over to help build the Canal years back and stayed.

[deez nuts]

I lived in Brazil for a year before coming to the US...it was easier to get in that way my parents told me.

[Chris]

i used to have Chinese freinds that live in Peru and Panama. Another friend was from Venezula and then one of my best friends cousin is in Brazil.

[SunWuKong]

my mother's parents lived in Venezuela for a long time. such a long time that my uncle was born and raised there. they moved to NYC when he was a teenager. an aunt moved there with my grandparents when she was little. my aunt and uncle are both fluent in spanish, which is a great help living in NYC. when my uncle was younger, he was not white-washed, he was latin-washed. he claimed that he's not chinese, and that he's latin. he would refer to himself as the latin lover. yeah he was confused.

i have a friend who is in toronto now, but was born and raised in Surinam. she speaks dutch, spanish, english, and three dialects of chinese - mandarin, cantonese, and hakka.

[Erendani]

Originally posted by SunWuKung@Jan 23 2003, 09:09 PM
he would refer to himself as the latin lover.  
hahaha that's too funny :lol:

So is it true then that asian men get mad play down in South America?

[AliBabaIncorporated]

there was a Korean-Brazilian girl on my floor during frosh year ... before that I had never heard of Asians living in Central/South America. Except for all the Hakkas in Panama. I remember reading an article about the Taiwanese government providing funding for an overseas Chinese organization in Panama to set up a school teaching in Mandarin, but I can't seem to find it anymore.

[thaite]

There's a restaurant in my town called Chino Bandido. They serve Chinese and Mexican food. I believe it's owned by a couple, Chinese man and his Lataina wife.

[TyroneK(prettypretty)]

I have a family friend who's family settled in Grenada.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by Erendani@Jan 23 2003, 06:19 PM
hahaha that's too funny :lol:

So is it true then that asian men get mad play down in South America?
i don't know
but my uncle is the kind of guy that gets mad play pretty much wherever he goes, from girls of any races.

[moxie]

my parents both came to cali by way of central america from hong kong. my dad lived in nicaragua for about 6 years before coming to the states for a) school and B) to get away from the guerillas.

my mom's father had a store in mexico where she lived for a few years as a child before coming to cali.

as a result, my family is predominately tri-lingual. well, the parents are. the kids all dabble in the languages...some speak more chinese, some speak more english and some speak more spanish. i think it gives our family an interesting dynamic...both indirect, yet loud. reserved but expressive. parties with salsa dancing and bad karaoke. tamales at christmas, sticky rice at thanksgiving.

ps...gracias to erendani for starting this post

[princess]

i know about 6 or so japanese that live here now but used to live in brazil.

[Filiprish]

I've met two mixed Asian/Latino people from South America. Talk about tokens of history.

[Mr.Lum]

There are a lot of Asians in Agentina and Brazil as well as Peru and Ecuador (relatively speaking). The Guyanas (Guyana, Surinam, French Guyana) also have many Indonesians, South Asians, Chinese and Hmong (French Guyana). Cuba had a large Chinese population before and right after the revolution. Alberto Fujimori was president of Peru and is of Japanese ancestery.

A dark horse candidate, Fujimori won the 1990 presidential election with his new party Cambio 90, beating the world-renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa in a surprising upset. He capitalized on profound disenchantment with the previous president of Peru, Alan García and his APRA party. He also exploited distrust of Vargas Llosa's identification with the existing Peruvian political establishment and distrust of his carefully-reasoned campaign promises for neoliberal economic reform. Since the campaign, he was affectionately nicknamed el chino ("the Chinaman"). Most observers believe his Japanese descent benefited Fujimori as much of the population is of Native American-descent, and his ethnicity helped set him apart from the Spanish-dominated political elites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujimori

I have no personal ties to Latin America but I know a lot of South Asians from Trinidad and Guyana (both have near majority or majorty Asian populations).

[truMp]

I never knew that there were that many Asians who lived in South America until about 3 years ago where I one of my teachers, who is korean, described his childhood experience in Brazil and the wide diversity of people there was. I believe he told me that he was of the first korean/asian family to have ever arrived in the country and that there were photos of his family in a Brazilian museum, which I found really interesting. He included that S.American does have a growing Asian population but the percentage he was no unsure of.

I would really like to know the demographics of the Asian race in S.America.

[Patvs]

Both my parents (Chinese mother, Dutch father) were born and raised in Surinam. I was just there for a month the whole summer.

Surinam has a very large Asian community. 15% of the population is Javanese (Java - Indonesia), and 2% Chinese (Hakka).

[golden_buns]

I grew up in Colombia.

I noticed that there was a very sizeable asian community in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama, mostly composed of chinese and taiwanese.

There's about 10K koreans in Argentina, more in Brazil, and right now Mexico is the country that has the most Koreans in Latin-America.

There's also about 5K Koreans in remote countries such as Guatemala

[damashii]

Supposedly, Brazil has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan. Was almost going to be Japanese-Brazilian when I was little.

[NtshiabLiDej]

This past year for some reason I met a significant number of Asian Americans living in the US who had ties with South America somehow... either born there or grew up there before coming over to the States.

Apparently there is a large population of Asians living in countries like Brazil and Argentina. I never would have known. I think Peru even had an Asian president for a while.

And it's cool because these transplants are usually trilingual... they know Spanish, their parents' native language (Korean, Japanese, etc), and then English from living in America.

Is there anyone on these boards who have ties with South America? ...Or just noticed the same trend.
I have relatives who live in French Guiana. There is approx. 2000 Hmong people who live there.