In light of the media coverage and news around Latin American immigration to the United States, and the treatment these immigrants have and continue to receive upon arrival in the United States, I decided to flip the table, and examine immigration into Latin America and the form it has taken over the years.
The article I found on Wikipedia was titled:
African immigration to Latin America
It examines the origins of the black populations in Latin America and traces them back to the immigrations of refugees from Angola and Mozambique particularly, during the Angolan and Mozambican Civil Wars. This article mentions too, the origins of white African immigrants from these same countries during the Portuguese Colonial War. The article makes a distinction between these refugees and Africans who were forcibly removed from their native countries and communities on the continent during the Atlantic Slave Trade. This is an important distinction which begs the ethical question: were the slaves immigrants? The simple answer is No. In reality, the issue may be more complicated.
The article also makes note of the fact that integration of these immigrant populations was easier because of an already pre-existing diaspora black population that had been formed through the slave trade. The wikipedia article further states that it was this, and Latin America’s general open attitude towards immigrants that lent it as a prime destination, in the face of Europe and the rest of the world closing its borders.
The article cites a Reuters article that describes increasing African immigration to Latin America. Content gaps I immediately identify in parsing this article are that it does not offer reputable citations for its statistics of African immigrants to Argentina, Brazil, and Puerto Rico numbering in the 2000s.
Additionally, it does not make a distinct transition from the historical view, to the modern trends of the last century. In one breath, the author transitions from discussing post- slave trade immigration to discussing immigration in the 21st century. For both of these periods, statistics and citations are absent. A more detailed breakdown for immigration for the region and countries in it would benefit this article as well.
There has been only one modification made to the article and the Talkpage has had no discussions on it in the last year. This is indicative of the sparse contributions and revisions made to the article.
This is a really fascinating topic, although I think you might want to narrow it to a specific country because it’s rather broad. Also I’m wondering how African immigrants are treated in Latin America, because we’ve discussed in class colorism and how the relations with indigenous peoples are still not very good. This topic probably has a lot of statistical evidence that you can look at, which should be good to add to Wikipedia.
I feel this topic could be beneficial in advancing the development of Latin history since it can broaden our knowledge on the various cultures that live in Latin america other than Spanish originating cultures
Hey Tanaka! You’ve got quite an interesting article ! It would be nice to see how your research goes, especially when you look at how these new immigrants assimilate or integrate themselves into a new society. In order to find accurate information relevant to the article; I do believe you’ll have to narrow your “geographical view” on such an issue in order to avoid being to board. You could narrow it down to Mexico (which onto itself is already a big country with regional differences), or Central America (that from what I understand has a huge Afro-Latino community from the mixture of African slaves, Natives and Europeans), or a specific country in South America. When you do so, maybe mention how the social interactions between african immigrants and native latinos play out, especially because even though their immigration policies may be lenient. Latin American Culture thrives off of more than just colorism but also very blunt anti-black sentiments.