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Asian Diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean

Location:  UW-Milwaukee (in-person)

July 22-24, 2024

This summer institute examines Asian migration to Latin America and the Caribbean since the mid-19th century, the experience of their descendants as well the emergence of more recent Asian communities in the region.  Presentations will explore the transnational labor demands which gave rise to significant Asian diaspora communities in Peru, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico, the challenges of discrimination and anti-Asian violence and the resilience of these communities in enduring and adapting. The institute also considers late 20th century and contemporary Asian immigrant experiences as well as teaching resources appropriate for world history and Spanish language classrooms.

A collaboration between the UW-Milwaukee Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), UW-Madison Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies (LACIS) and the Florida International University (FIU) Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center.  CLACS, LACIS and FIU are Title VI National Resource Centers, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. 

2024 CLACS Summer Institute Speaker Bios

• Dr, Ralph Gabbard is Affiliated Emeritus Faculty with the Center for Asian Research and an Art History Faculty Associate at Arizona State University.  He was the leader of the team that worked with James and Ana Melikian to add his collection, Chinese Immigrants in Cuba, to the library’s repository and subsequently processing the collection from digitization through metadate to the final input to the repository.
• Dr. Fredy González is an Associate Professor of Global Asian Studies and History at the University of Illinois-Chicago.  His research focuses on Asian diasporas in Latin America, particularly on the Chinese diaspora. Before coming to UIC, Professor González was a professor of Latin American history at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he also taught courses on immigration history.  His first book, Paisanos Chinos: Transpacific Politics among Chinese Immigrants in Mexico, was published in 2017 with the University of California Press. His articles have appeared in the Western Historical Quarterly and the PRC History Review, and won the Bert M. Fireman and Oscar O. Winther awards from the Western History Association.
• Blanca Sadako (Maoki) Katsura was born and raised in Peru, where her parents operated a general store. After World War II began, Katsura’s father and uncle were arrested and jailed, and the family traveled by boat from their home country of Peru to the United States, where they were interned at the Department of Justice internment camp at Crystal City, Texas.   She has been active in speaking out about reparations and redress.
• Dr. Jeffrey Lesser is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor at Emory University.  His interests surround the constructions of identities, especially how ethnic groups like Asian-Brazilian, Arab-Brazilians, and Jewish-Brazilians understand their own and national spaces. His research is important to my teaching, and many of his classes include oral and digital history projects.  His books include Immigration, Ethnicity and National Identity in Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2013; Editora UNESP, 2015), A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese-Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy (Duke University Press, 2007; Editora Paz e Terra, 2008); and Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Duke University Press, 1999; Editora UNESP, 2001).
• Dr. Rachel Haejin Lim is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Sacramento. A two-time Fulbright Scholar to South Korea and México, Dr. Lim writes and teaches on Korean diasporas in the Américas, Asian American and Asian diasporic histories, comparative and relational racial formations in the United States and México, and transnational migrations in global perspective. Her writing has appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed and public outlets, including Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Journal of Asian American Studies, and The Washington Post.  One of her current research projects is Itinerant Belonging: Korean Hemispheric Migration to and from Mexico.

Museu Histórico de Imigração Japonesa no Brasil:

• Lidia Reiko Yamashita
  Architect-urban planner by training, she has served as president of the Administration Committee of the Historical Museum of Japanese Immigration in Brazil since 2007 and is also one of the vice-presidents of the Brazilian Society of Japanese Culture and Social Assistance-BUNKYO, member of the Center’s supervisory board of Japanese-Brazilian Studies. She was also coordinator of the Japanese conversation course for executives from Japanese and Brazilian companies.
• Roselia Mikie Ikeda
  She has served on the Administration Committee of the Japanese Immigration Museum in Brazil since 2014 and, as an architect and ceramist, she contributes more to the exhibition part of the museum, such as assembling showcases, layouts, among others. More recently, as she also holds a position in the City of São Paulo, she has worked to strengthen the Museum’s relations with the Municipal Department of Education, in order to boost and expand the Museum’s educational actions.
• Rodolfo Wada
  Internal Auditor of a financial institution (Banco Itaú)
  Vice President of Bunkyo, responsible for the Youth Committee
  Volunteer at the Center for Japanese-Brazilian Studies
• Marcelo Nagao (reads Nah-Gah-o)
  Graduated in Business Administration, for the second time working as a volunteer in the Financial Department of Bunkyo, Marcelo is a Japanese descendent selling American Chevys as a Brazilian car dealer for the past 30 years.
• Brand Nakashima is a history PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who researches the transnational nature of the Japanese diaspora, with an emphasis on the afterlife of WWII Japanese Peruvian internment. They are a descendant of Japanese Peruvians interned during WWII and an activist in the pursuit of Japanese Latin American redress.
• Dr. Benjamín Narváez is Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Morris, where he also serves as coordinator of the Latin American Area Studies program.  His research focuses on the history of Chinese migration to Latin America, especially Chinese indentured labor in nineteenth-century Cuba and Peru and Chinese immigration in early twentieth-century Costa Rica. His work has appeared in various journals, including the Journal of Social History, The Americas, and the New West Indian Guide, as well as edited volumes.
• Diann Rowland is an independent researcher on the Korean diaspora in Mexico, collaborating with Dr. Rachel Haijin Lim.  Her interest and commitment to the topic began with her own family history research, being a descendant of Korean migrants who arrived in the Yucatán early in the 20th century.
• Grace Shimizu is the daughter of a Japanese immigrant resident of Peru who survived the US Latin American extraordinary rendition program during World War II. She is a leading advocate for the documentation and preservation of this hidden history of kidnapping, internment, hostage exchange, and post-war deportation as well as for US government accountability and reparations for such war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Ms. Shimizu serves as director of the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project (JPOHP); director of the Campaign For Justice: Redress NOW For Japanese Latin Americans! (CFJ), and project manager of the updated online and traveling exhibit, “The Enemy Alien Files: Hidden Stories of World War II.”  She holds a B. A. degree in American Studies from Occidental College (1974-Los Angeles, California) and a J. D. degree from Hastings College of the Law (1977-San Francisco, California).
• Dr. Chia Youyee Vang is Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her teaching and research interests include twentieth century U.S. international history, the Cold War in Asia, Asian American history, Hmong history, refugee migration and transnational and diasporic communities.  Dr. Vang’s research is global in scope but intimately informed by her own refugee experiences as a child. She is interested in not only understanding larger political and military transformations, but also, the lived experiences of those who experience wars not of their own making but fought in their environments. Her documentation of Southeast Asian refugee lives and that of their descendants across four continents help us to better understand the lasting impact of one of the most controversial wars of the 20^th century.