Asian Brazilians

**Asian Brazilians** (Portuguese: *brasileiros-asiáticos*) are Brazilian citizens of full or predominantly East Asian, South Asian and Southeast Asian ancestry, or an Asian-born person permanently residing in Brazil. The vast majority of the Asian community in Brazil is made of immigrants from East Asia, although there have also been smaller numbers of South Asians and Southeast Asians, including a small number of Asians from the Caribbean, Mozambique and Kenya. The 2011 estimate for Brazilian gypsies is about 800,000, but they are not counted as Asian, although they have distant ancestors coming from South-Asia. People of West-Asian (including Jewish) origin generally do not self-identify as Asian in Brazil as their phenotype since Greco-Roman and Persian conquest has an overlapping with Greece and Iran. On the other hand in some states like Amapa, the Amerindian and East-Asian population are put in one category.

## History

Recent research has suggested that Asians from the early Portuguese Eastern Empire, known as Luso-Asians first came to Brazil during the sixteenth century as seamen known as Lascars, or as servants, slaves and concubines accompanying the governors, merchants and clergy who has served in Portuguese Asia. This first presence of Asians was limited to Northeast Brazil, especially Bahia, but others were brought as cultivators, textile workers and miners to Para and other parts of the Northeast. These Asians intermarried people of African and European ancestry and left a legacy in the food, early art and boat-making traditions of the Northeast.

The first substantial Asian immigration to Brazil were a small number of Chinese people (3,000) during the colonial period as coolie slaves. However, significant immigration from Asia to Brazil started in the late 19th century, when immigration from Lebanon and Syria became important. In Brazil, most of definitions of an Asian Brazilian usually do not refer to the community of West Asian origins such as Arabs, Turks, and Armenians.

The vast majority of Asian Brazilians have origins in Japan. The first Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil in 1908. Until the 1950s, more than 250 thousand Japanese immigrated to Brazil. Currently, the Japanese-Brazilian population is estimated at 1.6 million people. It is the largest ethnic Japanese population outside Japan, followed closely by the Japanese community in the United States. Other East Asian groups are also significant in Brazil. The Korean Brazilian population is estimated to be 50,000, and the Chinese Brazilian population around 160,000. Over 70% of Asian Brazilians are concentrated in the state of São Paulo. There are significant populations in Paraná, Pará, Mato Grosso do Sul, and other parts of Brazil.

## Chinese

The first Chinese people to arrive in Brazil was during 1814, when the Chinese tea planters were sent from Portugal to the Royal Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro. Following calls for the abolition of slavery, more Afro-Brazilian slaves stopped working on plantations, so the Brazilian government was looking for a replacement for the labor force lost in the middle of the 19th century. After considering immigrants such as the Europeans, the Brazilian government decided to hire Chinese laborers, as they were more willing to take the hard task than the Europeans did. The Brazilian government started to import some Chinese laborers from Canton, California and other Latin American countries in the 1870s. Continuing the commercial contract with the Chinese government, the Brazilian government imported more Chinese laborers to Brazil in the 1880 and 1881. The earliest group of Chinese laborers started migration to Brazil, and solved the temporary labor loss in Brazil in the late 19th century.

São Paulo now has the largest Chinese Brazilian population, in particular on the district of Liberdade. The majority of the Chinese immigrants settle in São Paulo, which 200,000 out of 300,000 Chinese Brazilians in total. Some Chinese immigrants work as merchants for international trade, and they work as lawyers, member of the parliament and the house of representatives and doctors. Chinese immigrants have integrated into the Brazilian society by building inter-cultural exchange in the communities. Besides being an area famous for its strong Japanese presence, a significant number of Taiwanese immigrants have settled in Liberdade, and many Chinese immigrants have come to Liberdade following the Communist revolution in 1949. Many Cantonese from Hong Kong and Portuguese-speaking Macau, including some Macanese of mixed Chinese and Portuguese descent, have also settled in Brazil. These Macau immigrants can usually speak and understand Portuguese (its Creole, Macanese or Patuá, is also spoken), allowing them to adjust more easily to life in Brazil. Today, the majority of Chinese Brazilians only speak Portuguese, although some may be bilingual, speaking Portuguese and Chinese.

## Japanese

Between the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, coffee was the main export product of Brazil. At first, Brazilian farmers used African slave labour in the coffee plantations, but in 1850, the slave traffic was abolished in Brazil. To solve the labour shortage, the Brazilian elite decided to attract European immigrants to work on the coffee plantations. This also supported the government's push toward "whitening" the country. The hope was that through procreation that the large African and Native American groups would be eliminated or reduced. The government and farmers offered to pay European immigrants' passage. The plan encouraged millions of Europeans, most of them Italians, to migrate to Brazil. However, once in Brazil, the immigrants received very low salaries and worked in poor conditions, including long working hours and frequent ill-treatment by their bosses. Because of this, in 1902, Italy enacted *Decree Prinetti*, prohibiting subsidized immigration to Brazil.

## Korean

Korean immigration to Brazil began on a small scale in the mid-1950s but was only formalized in 1962, when, to encourage emigration to control population, reduce unemployment, and garner foreign exchange via immigrant remittances, the South Korean government passed its Overseas Emigration Law. In December 1962, the South Korean Ministry of Public Health and Social Affairs, to which the emigration section was attached, sent 92 people (members of seventeen families) to Brazil. Although the South Korean government's desire to direct emigrants to the Southern Hemisphere was based on the size of the Brazilian economy, many Koreans were hindered by the Brazilian government's demand that all visas, including those for tourists, be preapproved.

## Vietnamese

The first wave consisted of over 50 people arriving in Brazil around February 1979. The second wave of 26 immigrants arrived in September of the same year. The third wave, a group of 10, arrived in the early 1980s. The Vietnamese were reported to have had trouble adapting to their adopted country. Among the most prominent of these troubles was the communication barrier between them and the native Brazilians: learning Portuguese proved to be a difficult task for the Vietnamese, as the language was obscure in Vietnam.

## Indian

The earliest Indians to arrive in Brazil were Indian seamen or Lascars, known as "Lascarim" in Portuguese. They arrived between the sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century, when the most important parts of the Portuguese Empire were their colonies in Asia. These included Diu, Daman, Bombay, Thana, Goa, Cochin and some smaller settlements in Hugli River.

Later as the settlement of coastal Brazil developed, many governors, Catholic clerics, and soldiers who had formally served in Asia arrived with their Asian wives, concubines, servants and slaves. later Luso-Indian servants and clerics connected with the religious orders, such as the Jesuits and Franciscans and spice cultivators arrived in Brazil.

In the eighteenth century there were Luso-Indians arriving in Brazil on ships of the English East India Company.