The Center for Multicultural Education

Broadening the Scope of Asian American Studies

March 24, 2006, 11 AM - 12 PM
At The Center for Multicultural Education
(109 MAU).

Learn more about the history of Asian migration to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the documentation and analysis of the contributions these immigrants gave to the formation of Latin/Caribbean societies and cultures. There were two major patterns of Chinese movement and settlement in Latin America and the Caribbean: as coolies and workers, and as shopkeepers and entrepreneurs. From 1847 to 1874, as many as 250,000 Chinese contract laborers or coolies, almost all male, were sent to Cuba and Peru, most destined for the sugar plantations. After the coolie period, freed coolies and later immigrants established small businesses and created two of the Western hemisphere's earliest Chinatowns in Havana and Lima. In Peru, Chinese also participated in the opening of the Amazon: they tapped the rubber trees, washed for gold, cultivated rice, traded with the Indians, and became the largest foreign colony in the Amazon capital of Iquitos by the end of the century. Dr. Evelyn Hu-DeHart is a Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.

Contact
Lydia Perez Roberts
lydia.roberts@uni.edu
319 273-2250
Tickets: Free