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Editor's Note:
Latin America is principally seen as the site of encounter of peoples of three cultural heritages: the European, the Amerindian, and the African. But Latin America has received other demographic ingredients as well. One of the oldest, and yet least considered, is from Asia. Modern Asian immigration to the Americas dates to the sixteenth century. In the 1500s, Asians participated in the Manila Galleon trade with Spain and Portugal. Over the next several centuries, thousands of Chinese, Japanese, East Indians, and other peoples from across Asia would leave their ancestral homes and make their way to Latin America and the Caribbean. They settled in and around large cities in Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Argentina and other New World nations. While known for their entrepreneurial skills as merchants, Asian immigrants also constituted an important part of the labor force, especially in the circum-Caribbean. So-called indentured "Coolies" worked on building the railroads and canals, including the Panama Canal. Their labor was essential to the development of the region's economy.
Asian peoples from China, Japan, and elsewhere have continued arriving in the Americas throughout the twentieth century, augmenting earlier waves of immigration. The economic, political, and social importance of Asians in the region is clear, as evidenced by the 1990 election of Latin America’s first Asian president, Japanese-Peruvian Alberto Fujimori. In addition, Asian-Latin Americans serve as valuable conduits with their Asian cousins, facilitating the process of cultural and commercial exchanges between their adopted and ancestral nations. While a relatively new phenomenon is taking place whereby some Asian-Latin Americans are returning home, many stay in places such as Havana or Lima. Today, Asians in Latin America are more visible politically, socially, and culturally than at any time in the past. In offering the films featured in this newsletter, LAVA is proud to present the rich but overlooked history and reality of the Latin-Asian population for May, Asian Heritage Month.
To order these videos, contact us by email at info@lavavideo.org, by phone 212-243-4804, or by fax 212-243-2007. Our website, www.latinamericanvideo.org, allows for secure purchases by credit card.
Japan Across the Seas Get Details and Purchasing Info
Mabel Maio
Documentary 48 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
They came from the snowy northern outpost of Hokkaido and the sunny southern island of Okinawa. Some were the sons of the newly disenfranchised samurai. Others were humble farmers. The Japanese who have settled in Argentina since the end of the 19th century came for many reasons: wanderlust, good farming, and even a love for tango, an Argentine music with “a very Japanese sense of nostalgia.” Now numbering nearly 18,000, Japanese immigrants and their children have made a home for themselves in this country that, in the words of one Japanese-Argentine poetess, “welcomed us with yellow flowers like a rain of gold.” The immigrants and their Argentine-born descendents have made deep roots in Argentina. But they also have various degrees of attachment to Japanese culture, language, and values. The protagonists of the video explain how their ties to Japan are maintained through a variety of Japanese cultural practices: ikebana flower arrangement, the tanka and haiku poetry forms, sumi-e brush painting, the tea ceremony, calligraphy, music, dance, and food. For some artists, the application of traditional Japanese techniques to Argentine realities is a fusion of their hybrid identities. But the importance of these cultural practices is their role as the means in which the reproduction of Japanese life in Argentina takes place. It is through such daily practices as the family meal that families inculcate the newer generations with the Japanese values of fraternity, compassion, spiritual growth, and respect for elders. JAPAN ACROSS THE SEAS relies on the accounts of individual Japanese-Argentines rather than a single narrator, taking the tales of the old and the young, the Japanese-born and the second-generation, and even the Japanese-Argentine widow of the writer Borges. Weaving together their accounts, it tells the history of the migrations that led to the establishment of Japanese-Argentine communities in Misiones, Buenos Aires, and Córdoba; of their struggles to balance their identities; of the discovery and maintenance of Japanese culture; and of their attachment to Argentina. In doing so, JAPAN ACROSS THE SEAS paints a complex and multifaceted portrait of the diversity of the Japanese-Argentine experience.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Longest Journey, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Rigoberto Lopez
Documentary 24 minutes 1987
With English subtitles
On January 2, 1847, 300 poor Cantonese laborers boarded a ship to take them to Cuba, where they hoped to make money to support their families would be fulfilled. 142 days later, the 206 who survived the arduous journey found themselves in a brutal system of indentured service under which they were bought and sold like the slaves they worked alongside. Their contract was for 8 years, at a wage of 4 pesos a month, making what was by Chinese standards a small fortune for those who returned. But most never did; many were defrauded by dishonest bosses and con artists. Their numbers swelled by middle-class merchants from San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Cuban Chinese built in Havana what was once the largest Chinatown in Latin America. There, they adapted to Cuban life. Many fought in the Independence wars. Some married Cubans and started families in their adopted land. As they stayed, their traditions became more established on Cuban soil: the dragon dance is still held every Chinese New Year, and the fraternal organizations still exist. The Buddhist warrior saint Kwan Kong has even mixed with the Catholic Saint Barbara and the African god Changó, enfolding Chinese culture in the quintessentially Cuban process of hybridization. With rare footage of Cuban Chinese religious, social, and cultural spaces, the film demonstrates how they are an important part of the cultural legacy of Cuba.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
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