LACS 284BAsians in Latin America

Catalog

Why does Brazil have the largest Japanese population outside of Japan? How did Chinese-descended peoples experience the Mexican and Cuban Revolutions? How did Indians become the largest ethnic group of Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago? This course surveys the history of Asian and Asian-descended peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the course will begin with the Manila Galleons that connected Asia to Spanish America in the sixteenth century, most of our attention will focus on the experiences of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Indonesian, and Korean peoples from the nineteenth century to the present. This course will be guided by the following questions: How can we write the histories of Asian-descended people in the region we call "Latin America"? How have Asians peoples been integral to Latin American and Caribbean history? How have Asian-descended peoples engaged with or disrupted the complex racialized hierarchies of the region? Topics include but are not limited to: indentured servitude and the "coolie" trade; the role of Asian immigration in nation-building and economic development; the racialization of Asians and experiences of racism; resistance through interracial alliances, mixed race relationships, social movements, and cultural production; "new" Asian migrations at the turn of the twenty first century; and the creation of transnational, multinational, and multicultural identities.