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| Editor | Walton Look Lai, Tan Chee-Beng |
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| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Brill Publishing |
Publication date | 2010 |
The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean is a 2010 book edited by Walton Look Lai and Tan Chee-Beng and published by Brill.
The essays in the book were previously published as a portion of an issue of the Journal of Overseas Chinese , a publication of the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO) of Singapore. Look Lai is a University of the West Indies (UWI) professor who specialized in studying the British Caribbean population of Chinese and Southeast Asians. Tan, a Hong Kong–based man who is the editor of the Journal of Overseas Chinese, is a specialist in studying the Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese populations. [1]
Look Lai wrote the introduction. [1]
The remaining portion of the book has three parts, which together have eight chapters. [2] The Chinese immigration discussed in these chapters include those from the early colonial era to the present. [1]
The sole article of Part I is "The Early Colonial Period" by Edward Slack, Jr. This article discusses the first Chinese immigration to Mexico. [2] The source material of this chapter originates from the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain and the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City. [3] John Kuo Wei Tchen of New York University wrote that the Slack article "is a valuable baseline framing of the early Manila-Acapulco “China trade,” the Asian peoples moving to colonial Mexico, and the emergence of the New World typology of “chino” or “indio chino,” a legal subcategory of the “indios” of the Americas." [1]
Part II, "The Classic Migration," includes Chapters 2–5. Chapter 2, written by Look Lai, discusses overall migration from Asia during the 19th Century. Chapter 3, written by Evelyn Hu-Dehart, discusses anti-Chinese sentiment in Latin America. [2] Hu-Dehart's essay examines a question asked by Nicolás Cárdenas García, a scholar from Mexico, on whether the Chinese in Latin America are "integrated and foreign." [4] Chapter 4, [2] written by Belizean St. John Robinson, is a comparative analysis [4] which discusses Chinese populations of Central America. Chapter 5, written by Lisa Yun, is an interview with Ruthanne Lum discussing Lum's book, God of Luck . Dorothea A. L. Martin of Appalachian State University stated that the first two chapters of this section are "the anchors of the work". [2]
Part III, "Old Migrants, new Immigration," includes Chapters 6-8. The overall focus are relations between different generations of immigrants in Latin America. Chapter 6, by Isabelle Lausent-Herrera, discusses the history and internal relations of Chinese Peruvians. Chapter 7, [2] written by anthropologist Paul B. Tjon Sie Fat, discusses the groups of Chinese Surinamese and their responses to anti-Chinese sentiment. [4] Chapter 8, by Kathleen Lopez, discusses Chinese Cubans in the post-Soviet Union era. [2] The article discusses a PRC-Cuba initiative to renovate the Havana Chinatown. [4]