Outside of the predominantAmerindian,mestizo,white, andblack populations, Chinese are estimated to constitute less than 0.1% of the Peruvian population.[3] In the2017 Census in Peru, only 14,307 people claimedtusán or Chinese ancestry.[4] However, according to the embassy, it was estimated that 15% (or 4 million) of the 30 million Peruvians had Chinese roots and ancestry, tracing back to the 19th century arrival of 100,000 Chinese immigrants that migrated to Peru and entered relationships with many Peruvian women.[5][6][7]
Workers who were shipped from theSpanish Philippines toAcapulco via theManila-Acapulco galleons were all calledChino ("Chinese"), although in reality they were not only from China but also other places, including what are today thePhilippines itself,Japan,Malaysia,Indonesia,East Timor and further afield such asIndia andSri Lanka.[8]: 12 [9][10][11] Filipinos made up most of their population.[12] The people in this community of diverse Asians inMexico were called "los indios chinos" by the Spanish.[13] Most of these workers were male and were obtained from Portuguese traders, who obtained them fromPortuguese colonial possessions and outposts of theEstado da India, which included parts of India,Bengal,Malacca, Indonesia,Nagasaki in Japan andMacau.[14][15]Spain received some of these coolies from Mexico, where owning aChino coolie showed high status.[8]: 13 Records of three Japanese coolies dating from the 16th century, named Gaspar Fernandes, Miguel and Ventura who ended up in Mexico showed that they were purchased by Portuguese slave traders in Japan, brought to Manila from where they were shipped to Mexico by their owner Perez.[16][17][18] Some of these Asian slaves were also brought toLima inPeru, where it was recorded that in 1613 there was a small community of Asians, consisting of Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Malays, Cambodians and others.[19][20][21][22]
Chineseimmigrants, who in the 19th century took a four-month trip from Macau (then a Portuguese territory), settled ascontract laborers or coolies. Other Chinese coolies fromGuangdong followed. 80,000[23] to 100,000[24][23] Chinese contract laborers, 95% of which were Cantonese and almost all of which were male, were sent mostly to thesugar plantations from 1849 to 1874, during the termination ofslavery. They were to provide continuous labor for the coastalguano mines and especially for the coastal plantations where they became a major labor force (contributing greatly to the Peruvianguano boom) until the end of the century. While the coolies were believed to be reduced to virtual slaves, they also represented a historical transition from slave to free labor. A third group of Chinese workers was contracted for the construction of the railway from Lima toLa Oroya andHuancayo. Chinese migrants were barred from using cemeteries reserved for Roman Catholics and were instead buried at pre-Incan burial sites.[25] Between 1849 and 1874 half[24][23] the Chinese population of Peru perished due to abuse, exhaustion and suicide[24] caused by forced labor.[24][23]
Diez de Octubre School in Peru Chinatown in Lima Chinese Community in Peru - Dance of the Lion
There were almost no women among the nearly entirely male Chinese coolie population that migrated to Peru and Cuba.[8]: 143 [26] Peruvian women were married to these Chinese male migrants.[27][28][29][30][31]
Interracial marriages between Cantonese-Chinese males and Peruvian females was quite large resulting in large number of mixed children and people with some Chinese ancestry in Peru. There is no prevailing racist attitude against intermarriage between the Chinese and non-Chinese in Peru, so the number of interracial marriages is quite large. According to one source, the number of mix raced children born was 180,000. Half of that number was in Lima alone, with the ratio between Chinese mestizo and the full-blooded Chinese at 90,000 to 15,000 (6:1).[32] The recent census only estimates 14,307 Peruvians of Chinese descent (2017).[33]
Many Peruvian women of different origins married to these Chinese male migrants. Most of the women that married Chinese were Amerindians (including Mestiza) and Black. Some lower class white women also married Chinese men but in a lower ratio.[34][35][36][37][38][39] Chinese had contact with Peruvian women in cities; there they formed relationships and sired mixed babies. These women originated from Andean and coastal areas and did not originally come from the cities; in the haciendas on the coast in rural areas, native young women ofindígenas ("native") andserranas ("mountain") origin from theAndes mountains would come down to work. These Andean native women were favored over Africans as marital partners by Chinese men, with matchmakers arranging for communal marriages of Chinese men to youngindígenas andserranas.[40] There was a racist reaction by Peruvians to the marriages of Peruvian women and Chinese men.[41] When native Peruvian women (cholas et natives,Indias,indígenas) and Chinese men had mixed children, the children were calledinjerto; once theseinjertos emerged, Chinese men sought out girls ofinjerta origin as marriage partners. Children born to black mothers were not calledinjertos.[42] Peruvians of low class established sexual unions or marriages with the Chinese men, and some black and Indian women "bred" with the Chinese according to Alfredo Sachettí, who claimed the mixing was causing the Chinese to suffer from "progressive degeneration". In Casa Grande, highland Indian women and Chinese men participated in communal "mass marriages" with each other, arranged when highland women were brought by a Chinese matchmaker after receiving a down payment.[43][44]
In Peru andCuba, some Indian (Native American),mulatto, black, and white women engaged in carnal relations or marriages with Chinese men, with marriages of mulatto, black, and white woman being reported by the Cuba Commission Report. In Peru, it was reported byThe New York Times thatPeruvian black and Indian (Native) women married Chinese men to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of the men since they dominated and "subjugated" the Chinese men despite the fact that the labor contract was annulled by the marriage, reversing the roles in marriage with the Peruvian woman holding marital power, ruling the family and making the Chinese men slavish, docile, "servile", "submissive" and "feminine" and commanding them around, reporting that "Now and then...he [the Chinese man] becomes enamored of the charms of some sombre-hued chola (Native Indian and mestiza woman) or samba (mixed black woman), and is converted and joins the Church, so that may enter the bonds of wedlock with the dusky señorita."[45] Chinese men were sought out as husbands and considered a "catch" by the "dusky damsels" (Peruvian women) because they were viewed as a "model husband, hard-working, affectionate, faithful and obedient" and "handy to have in the house", the Peruvian women became the "better half" instead of the "weaker vessel" and would command their Chinese husbands "around in fine style" instead of treating them equally, while the labor contract of the Chinese coolie would be nullified by the marriage, the Peruvian wife viewed the nullification merely as the previous "master" handing over authority over the Chinese man to her as she became his "mistress", keeping him in "servitude" to her, speedily ending any complaints and suppositions by the Chinese men that they would have any power in the marriage.[46] Although Chinese Peruvians were well-integrated into Peruvian society, it did not come with an easy beginning.
During theWar of the Pacific, Chinese labors led an uprising in support to Chile against Peru. Peruvians held Chinese as responsible to the Chilean invading army, and this led to the first everSinophobia in Latin America. Chinese were targeted and murdered by native Peruvians and it was not until 1890s that anti-Chinesepogroms with total deaths of 10,000 to 30,000 Chinese inArequipa,Lima,Cañete,Trujillo,Piura andCerro Azul until 1890's were stopped and continue in 1929 until 1960 with 40,000Chinese deaths by patriots,fascists and half of thePeruvian Army andPeruvian Navy.[47][48] In one 1881 pogrom in the Cañete Valley it is estimated that 500 to 1,500 Chinese were killed.[49] Chinese were barred from immigrating to the country until the 1970s.[50]
Another group of Chinese settlers came after the founding ofSun Yat-sen's republic in 1912, and another after the establishment ofCommunist rule in 1949. At the time of theChinese Civil War, the Chinese community in Peru identified with theNationalist government in Taipei, although as time passed, they became adherent to the government in Beijing instead.[51]
In 1957, Cantonese speakers constituted 85 per cent of the total Chinese immigrant population, the rest of whom were Hakka speakers.[52]
Recent Chinese immigrants settled in Peru fromHong Kong and Macau in 1997 and 1999, owing to fear of those territories returning to Communist rule, while others have come from other places inmainland China,Taiwan, and southeast Asian Chinese communities, including those of Malaysia, Indonesia,Singapore and the Philippines. ManyChinese Indonesians came to Peru after anti-Chineseriots andmassacres in those countries in the 1960s, 1970s, and late 1990s. These recent Chinese immigrants make Peru currently the home of the largest ethnically Chinese community inLatin America.[53]
Many Chinese Peruvians left Peru in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of them headed to theUnited States, where they were calledChinese Americans or Peruvian Americans of Chinese descent.[citation needed]
After their contracts ended, many of them adopted the last name of their patrons (one of the reasons that many Chinese Peruvians carry Spanish last names). Some freed coolies (and later immigrants) established many small businesses. These includedchifas (Chinese-Peruvian restaurants - the word is derived from Chinese term,吃飯 (pinyin:chīfàn;Jyutping:hek3faan6) which means "to eat rice or to have a meal"). Calle Capón,Lima's Chinatown, also known as Barrio Chino de Lima, became one of theWestern Hemisphere's earliest Chinatowns. The Chinese coolies married Peruvian women, and many Chinese Peruvians today are of mixed Chinese, Spanish, African orNative American descent. Chinese Peruvians also assisted in the building of railroad and development of theAmazon rainforest, where they tapped rubber trees, washed gold, cultivated rice, and traded with the natives. They even became the largest foreign colony in the Amazon capital ofIquitos by the end of the century.
In 1942, a Chinese-Peruvian, Erasmo Wong, started a small store in a residential district in Lima, which grew into a large supermarket chain in Peru known asWong supermarkets. Wong supermarkets was later acquired by the Chilean multinational retail companyCencosud on December 16, 2007, helping it grow further.
The majority of Chinese descendants in Peru do not carry a Chinese surname, since their ancestors, when they arrived in Peru, were baptized or adopted the surnames of their patrons, Catholic saints or some very common Castilian surname.
^Oropeza, Déborah (Fall–Winter 2009)."Ideas centrales en torno a la esclavitud asiática en la Nueva España" [Central ideas surrounding Asian slavery in New Spain](PDF).Historia Mexicana (in Spanish) (1). Encuentro de Mexicanistas 2010 (La esclavitud asiática en el virreinato de la Nueva España, 1565-1673): 2. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 7 April 2014.
^"The Chinese in Peru".Chʻiao. Vol. 3. Basement Workshop, Incorporated. 1974. p. 35....but in 1957 speakers of Cantonese constituted 85 per cent of the total, the rest of whom were Hakka speakers.
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