A great convergence: The American frontier and the origins of Japanese migration to Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Sidney Xu Lu

Abstract This article explains how the US westward expansion influenced and stimulated Japanese migration to Brazil. Emerging in the nineteenth century as expanding powers in East Asia and Latin America, respectively, both Meiji Japan and post-independence Brazil looked to the US westward expansion as a central reference for their own processes of settler colonialism. The convergence of Japan and Brazil in their imitation of US settler colonialism eventually brought the two sides together at the turn of the twentieth century to negotiate for the start of Japanese migration to Brazil. This article challenges the current understanding of Japanese migration to Brazil, conventionally regarded as a topic of Latin American ethnic studies, by placing it in the context of settler colonialism in both Japanese and Brazilian histories. The study also explores the shared experiences of East Asia and Latin America as they felt the global impact of the American westward expansion.

Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence

This chapter focuses on a paradigmatic misencounter between an American experiencer and a Latin American reader. Examining an implicit debate about the sources of Walt Whitman’s poetry and vision of the Americas, I argue that Waldo Frank, one of the twentieth century’s main literary ambassadors from the US to Latin America, positioned Whitman as the representative US writer whose antibookish experiential aesthetics could serve as a model for “American” writers both in the North and in the South. I show how Frank’s framework provided a foil for Borges’s idiosyncratic view that Whitman’s poetry about America derived entirely from his readings of European and US writers. Although much of the best scholarship on Whitman’s reception in Latin America has concentrated on poets like José Martí and Pablo Neruda, who adapted Whitman’s naturalism, I contend that Borges’s iconoclastic portrait of Whitman as a reader profoundly influenced a range of anti-experiential literary theories and practices in Latin America.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nubia Muñoz

It is too early to know which will be the final death toll from the Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2 virus epidemy in Latin America since the epidemy is still active and we will not know when it will end. The curve for new infections and deaths has not reached yet a peak (Figure 1). In addition, we know little about the epidemiology of this new virus. The daily litany of the number of people infected with the number of admissions to hospitals and intensive care units and the number of deaths guides health authorities to plan health services and politicians to gauge the degree of confinement necessary to control the transmission of the virus, but it says little about the magnitude of the problem if we do not relate it to the population at risk. At the end of the pandemic, we will be able to estimate age-standardized death rates for the different countries, but until then the crude death rates will provide a first glance or snapshot of the death toll and impact of the pandemic from March to May 2020. These rates are well below those estimated in other countries in Europe and North America: Belgium (82.6), Spain (58.0), the United Kingdom (57.5), Italy (55.0), France (42.9), Sweden (41.4), and the US (30.7). (Johns Hopkins CSSE, May 30, 2020). However, in the European countries and the US the number of deaths has reached a peak, while this is not the case in Latin American countries. (Figure 1). It should be taken into account that the above rates are crude and therefore, some of the differences could be due to the fact that European countries have a larger proportion of the population over 70 years of age in whom higher mortality rates have been reported.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-566
Author(s):  
Dario Gaggio

In the aftermath of World War II, Italy’s centrist leaders saw in the emerging US empire an opportunity to implement emigration schemes that had been in circulation for decades. Hundreds of thousands of Italian peasant farmers could perhaps be able to settle on Latin American and African land thanks to the contribution of US capital. This article examines the Italian elites’ obsession with rural colonization abroad as the product of their desire to valorize the legacy of Italy's settler colonialism in Libya and thereby reinvent Italy's place in the world in the aftermath of military defeat and decolonization. Despite the deep ambivalence of US officials, Italy received Marshall Plan funds to carry out experimental settlements in several Latin American countries. These visions of rural settlement also built on the nascent discourses about the ‘development’ of non-western areas. Despite the limited size and success of the Italian rural ‘colonies’ in Latin America, these projects afford a window into the politics of decolonization, the character of US hegemony at the height of the Cold War, and the evolving attitude of Latin American governments towards immigration and rural development. They also reveal the contradictory relationships between Italy's leaders and the country's rural masses, viewed as redundant and yet precious elements to be deployed in a global geopolitical game.


Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter examines the reasons for the instability in Latin America during the Cold War. The oil crisis of 1973–1974, followed by trade deficits, depression, and high inflation, helped promote revolutionary ideas among the landless peasants and urban poor of many Latin American countries. Under Jimmy Carter, with his interest in promoting human rights, a more active and enlightened US policy towards Latin America might have been expected. However, his aims were inconsistent, as the moral cause of human rights clashed with local realities and other American interests. The chapter first considers the Reagan Doctrine and Ronald Reagan’s meddling in El Salvador before discussing the United States’s involvement in Nicaragua and the ‘Contragate’ scandal. It concludes with an assessment of the US invasions of Grenada and Panama.


Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter examines the reasons for the instability in Latin America during the Cold War. The oil crisis of 1973–4, followed by trade deficits, depression, and high inflation, helped promote revolutionary ideas among the landless peasants and urban poor of many Latin American countries. Under Jimmy Carter, with his interest in promoting human rights, a more active and enlightened US policy towards Latin America might have been expected. However, his aims were inconsistent, as the moral cause of human rights clashed with local realities and other American interests. The chapter first considers the Reagan Doctrine and Ronald Reagan’s meddling in El Salvador before discussing the involvement of the US in Nicaragua and the ‘Contragate’ scandal. It concludes with an assessment of the US invasions of Grenada and Panama.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 56-56
Author(s):  
Vidya Vedham ◽  
Marianne K. Henderson ◽  
Osvaldo Podhajcer ◽  
Andrea Llera ◽  
Marisa Dreyer Breitenbach ◽  
...  

PURPOSE The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Global Health promotes global oncology research to reduce cancer burden worldwide. In 2009, NCI launched the Latin American Cancer Research Network (LACRN) to support a clinical cancer research network in Latin America. LACRN was started by a coalition of research institutions through bilateral collaborative agreements between the US Department of Health and Human Services and the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay. The LACRN is supported through a research contract to a study coordination center and subcontracts to 6 low- and middle-income country sites. The participating countries have a shared goal that meets the specific research needs of the regions. The overarching purpose of this endeavor is to implement high-quality standards for conducting clinical research studies and developing collaborative cancer research projects. METHODS NCI supported a clinical breast cancer project for LACRN, “Molecular profiling of breast cancer (MPBC) in Latin American women with stage II and III breast cancer receiving standard neo-adjuvant chemotherapy.” The molecular profiling of breast cancer study was conducted in 40 hospitals and research institutions across 5 countries with a study population of approximately 1,400 patients. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION Establishing a comprehensive network in Latin America and their research institutions yielded an incredible research resource that can be used in future studies, driven by the network. Throughout the process of developing and implementing studies, LACRN helped identify key elements of the functionality of research networks, such as the pivotal role of institutional and government commitment for sustainability; the importance of building multidisciplinary teams, transparent communications, and training; the ability to combine translational, epidemiology, and clinical research to close research gaps; and the application of new technologies to standard cancer clinical care.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Chikashi Tsuji

This study empirically examines the return transmission effects between the four North and Latin American stock markets in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. More specifically, applying a standard vector autoregression (VAR) model, we obtain the following interesting findings. First, (1) the return transmission effects between the four North and Latin American stock markets became much tighter in our second subsample period. Second, (2) in particular, US and Mexican stock markets are strong return transmitters in the recent period. Furthermore, (3) both in our first and second subsample periods, Brazilian stock returns do not transmit to the other three stock returns, although the other three North and Latin American stock markets affect the Brazilian stock market.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-92
Author(s):  
Maria de Fatima Silva do Carmo Previdelli ◽  
Luiz Eduardo Simoes de Souza ◽  
Rodolfo Francisco Soares Nunes

Since the start of the commercial war between the USA and China in 2018, Brazil has changed many of its previous alliances in order to become the interest representative of the USA in Latin America. After the coup d’état of 2016, Brazil has taken progressive actions in order to distance itself from the previous partners at BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) to get closer to the USA. The arrival of the new Brazilian president in 2019, a declared representative of US interests in the Latin American continent, has increased the pace of such measures. This article aims to explain the main actions taken by the USA and China in that context and how Brazil has adapted to take sides in that scenario, moving away from the BRICS group (now RICS since the B stands for Brazil) and toward the US foreign and economic policies.


Subject The US election impact in Latin America. Significance Donald Trump's victory in the US elections was received with concern in Latin America, where most governments informally supported Hillary Clinton's campaign and were expecting continuity in US foreign policy. Trump's positions on migration are particularly worrying for Mexico and Central America. His agenda in other areas is not clear: during the campaign, he made few statements about the region and maintained some contradictory positions on several issues, including relations with Cuba. Impacts Trump's victory will have an impact on domestic policy debates in many countries. Backpedalling on climate change would represent a major regional concern. Already weak support for economic orthodoxy and reduced trade barriers will decline further.


1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-83
Author(s):  
Shirley Christian

There has always been a certain attitude in Washington having to do with Latin America. It is that Latin America is not quite a grown-up place and, therefore, is worthy of intense US interest only when the region, or part of it, falls into a crisis that crosses paths with one of the US hot-button issues of the moment: drugs, immigration, human rights, communism (until recently) and, farther back, fascism. In other words, Latin America has been worthy of attention only when the United States decided to “do good” (e.g., human rights crusades), incorporate the region into efforts at solving US domestic problems (e.g., drugs), or needed firm support from the region in some international effort (e.g., the Cold War and World War II).


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