Asians in South America

The partial article below can be access and read on the site. I was completely unaware of ordinary everyday Asian people (in this case the Japanese people) had such a difficult time in South America not to mention the discrimination they endured outside their native Japan. The story resonate with me because it is convey as a personal narrative from a young boy’s point of view of his experience growing-up between 2 worlds and dealing with reconciling his identity and reflecting on what it was like, “Growing up as a Japanese person in Peru. It is difficult to remember exactly what it was like to be Japanese in Peru…I come from an Okinawan family. My brothers and I are Peruvian Sansei. The three of us are full-blooded Japanese. My grandparents and great grandparents all came to Peru in the early 19th century when most Japanese migrants came to Peru to work in the agricultural sector.”
http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2007/5/24/japanese-person-in-peru/
Next, another example of Asians in South America is the meteoric rise to power, political trajectory and fall of a notable a Japanese, “Alberto Fujimori (First President of Japanese origins)…First Japanese Peruvian President of Peru. October 1998. Although anti-Japanese discrimination in Peru was among the worst in Latin America, in 1990 Alberto Fujimori was elected President, and was reelected in 1995. He was the first person not only of Japanese descent, but of Asian descent, to be elected president outside Asia.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Peruvian

When I lived in Brazil as a teenager, I was struck by the huge Japanese population in Sao Paulo..I had no idea about the impact on Brazilian society in that region. Then I read an article about reverse migration about Japan allowing "Japanese looking" Brazilians to maintain their homogenous population and get cheap labor. However they have been cultural problems for everyone involved. "[font=Arial, Helvetica, メイリオ, 'MS Pゴシック', Osaka, 'ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3', sans-serif]The problems faced by Brazilian [/font]nikkei-jin[font=Arial, Helvetica, メイリオ, 'MS Pゴシック', Osaka, 'ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3', sans-serif] (Japanese-descent Brazilians) start with the fact that they look Japanese. But they are culturally Brazilians, and many of them cannot speak the Japanese language and are treated as foreigners. Their children also suffer difficulty because of the language barrier and a significant number of them leave school. Other children who came to Japan while very young forget the Portuguese language and lose the ability to understand their parents.[/font][6][font=Arial, Helvetica, メイリオ, 'MS Pゴシック', Osaka, 'ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3', sans-serif] Besides this and many other challenges, the Brazilian community is struggling to fit into the Japanese society and stay in Japan.[/font][7]"http://www.hurights.or.jp/archives/focus/section2/2009/12/life-as-dekkasseguis-the-brazilian-community-in-japan.html