Asian Dragons and Andean Condors
A Perspective on asian men in South America, a two part series
Part 1: Society, Sex, and Culture in Latin America and Asian Men.
Master Huang Yu beats the drums
Master Yu, his wife and students. The little girl all the way on the right in white is his daughter. His wife is bolivian.
The firecrackers exploded with the intensity of the lunar new year, except it was mid may. Brown hands and faces performed the ancient lion dance, as the crowd clapped. A shorter, Chinese man with wide shoulders, a powerful back, and huge biceps pounded on the Chinese drum. The drum was made of amazon hard wood. I looked up at the sign, and it said in Spanish, Centro de la Cultura China. I watched as a diplomat from the People’s Republic of China announced with the mayor of La Paz, the opening of the new cultural center, in Spanish. Later, after the demonstration, the drummer, who was the master of the new kung fu school and center, posed with his bolivian wife and two children, along with numerous students. The master is famous in La Paz, for putting 6 armed assailants in the hospital… all at once. Since then, he’s been in charge of training the La Paz police force in hand to hand combat and defense.
The Japanese cultural concert flier
The japanese cultural concert en El Centro Boliviano Japanoes, in La Paz, Bolivia.
Vietnamita with Kathy and Jen, both kollas and paceñas. Kathy's dad is chinese, and Jen's dad is japanese.
The theater darkened, as hundreds of people sat in rapt silence. I was in El Centro del la Cultura Boliviano Japonesa, the Bolivian Japanese cultural center, in La Paz. On stage, a man of japanese descent, while speaking about the history of the instruments and how he and his group fused them with bolivian folklore, smiled and broke out in a La Paz colloquialism, “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, no ve?� The entire audience broke out in laughter, and clapped at the young man’s steady transformation from foreigner, into a paceño. In the audience were numerous people of Japanese descent, with latin names and Japanese last names, mixed in with mestizo, indigenous, European, and asian descendant peoples… who were all Bolivians. Afterwards, they performed with taiko drums made from amazon woods, and covered in the skins of llamas, or with a Japanese lute made from the wood of Riberalta, near the border of Brazil.
Vietnamita with the Shimoses.
Pedro Shimose, a venerated poet of the Bolivian people and country
At a dinner party, where I cooked Vietnamese food for the Shimoses, the father, Pablo Shimose, a 3rd generation descendent of Japanese immigrants, recanted his stories of adventures in the deep Amazon Basin. He used to be a cargo ship captain, running trade between the Amazon territory countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela. If you can imagine Han Solo with a Japanese face, a pistol, shotgun, and rickety wooden cargo boat that runs faster than small motorcraft, then you have an idea about this remarkable and funny man. His younger brother, Pedro, is a famous national poet of Bolivia, a socialist and nationalist to the cause of Latin American countries, but especially Bolivia. His daughter, Mitsuko, helped me cook, while her mother, Rita, a kolla and paceña, picked up more ingredients for my curry dish.
Chyang and his wife Claudia making sushi
Claudia shows her machista ability to eat wasabi without moving her face, while Chyang and her uncle Omar look on in amazement.
In La Paz, I stayed with Chyang and his wife, Claudia, who were both old friends of mine from my first bicycle expedition, in 2001. We made sushi, while Claudia’s uncle, Omar, of the bolivian rock group Octavia, amazed me with his ability to eat pure wasabi… without moving a muscle in his face. Chyang is a 1st generation camba, from the city of Santa Cruz, and moved to Bolivia when he was 5 years old. Claudia is a kolla, from La Paz.
Whether they’re senators in the Peruvian, brazilian, or ecuadorean senate, business council leaders in the heart of the Amazonian city of Iquitos, soccer players in a Peruvian or Paraguayan squad, the colonel in charge of the army in Sucre, Bolivia, or the mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, or just normal, everyday folks living their lives all across latin America, it’s hard not to notice latinos of asian descent. Sometimes they’re first generation émigrés from asia, almost always men, who come for freedom, or a better life, and end up marrying a local girl. Other times their families have been there for generations, and they make up the “establishment� in business, politics, or academia. When it comes to the émigrés, they’re 95% men. They come looking for opportunities, freedom, or adventure. 90% of them end up falling in love with a local Latina, get married, have kids and families, run businesses, factories, or end up working for the governments and industries, and serve their new homeland. Their children, who are almost always mixed or end up marrying a local, through cultural centers or family, maintain an education in some aspect of their cultural heritage, or in something asian. Quite often, as latinos, they end up mixing and creating new contributions to latin culture and society. You can see them as the charango player with Los Kjarkas, or the keyboardist for Octavia, and many other rock, cumbia, salsa, samba bands. Or, in the case of the the Shimose’s, they form the bedrock of national literature.
Often, they’re descendants of Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, or the People’s Republic of China, and their fore bearers are mostly men. I asked a number of them what it was that pulled them to the Global South? Where poverty and political unrest often strikes a large number of the local populace? What is it that not only drives them to succeed, much like immigrants to the anglo derived countries, but to also integrate so completely, including marrying a local Latina? The answer is always the same. It’s the chance for a new start, a new lease on life, for freedom, for adventure, and for living. As for marrying the local girl, the answer is always the same. Love is love, and attraction is attraction. The answer is so simple, and yet somehow, in the anglo derived world, something seems to screw things up in that regard. In anycase, Asian immigration to Latin America isn’t new. It’s been going on for at least 400, or 15,000 years, depending on who’s timeline, or which genetic record you want to tap into, and for centuries, asians have and will continue to contribute to latin society and culture.
Vietnamita and Carmen. Carmen helped me get an interview on the Jay Leno/20/20 equivalent on Bolivian national television, Que No Me Pierdes, with John Arrandia
Vietnamita and John Arrandia
Asian Dragons and Andean Condors: Part 1 - A Perspective of Asian Men in Latin Americ
