FALL 2018 HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA MUSICLATIN AMERICA AND ASIA EDITOR’S LETTER BY JUNE CAROLYN ERLICK South-South I stumbled into China when I was eleven or twelve. O-lan led me. I was intrigued by VOLUME XVIII NO.1 her quiet strength, her small stature and big unbound feet. A voracious reader, I couldn’t David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies put Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth down. I had never heard tales like the ones she told of this silently courageous woman in rural prerevolutionary China, a woman who led Director Brian Farrell her husband and family to landed prosperity. Many of the themes the book touched— although I didn’t know it at the time—were those that would occupy me during my Executive Director Andrew Elrick entire life: poverty, gender relations, women’s rights, urban migration, revolution, war and peace, human trafficking, and of course, love, life and death. ReVista As a journalist and editor and just plain human being, I’ve thought about these Editor-in-Chief issues on another continent—Latin America. I lived in a Dominican neighborhood in June Carolyn Erlick New York and perhaps it was inevitable that my Spanish-speaking neighbors would lead Copy Editor me down a path of reality that was stronger than the still vivid call of the fictional O-lan. Anita Safran In the late 1960s, the two continents came together in the guise of my neighborhood Publication Interns restaurants, La Nueva Victoria and La Caridad, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Isaac Ochoa Sylvie Stoloff delicious and cheap eateries set up by Chinese-Cuban exiles (Katherine López writes about such restaurants in this issue on p. 40). It was my first inkling that the two Design Jane Simon Design continents were connected by large diasporas. Later I was to discover that these diasporas extended to migrants from other parts of Asia, especially Japan and Korea. Printer P+R Publications In the process of putting together this special issue on Asia and Latin America, I’ve discovered so many other relationships, ranging from earthquake threats shared by Contact Us 1730 Cambridge Street Japan and Chile to trade relations, cultural exchanges and infrastructure goals. When I Cambridge, MA 02138 read Ernesto Londoño’s recent piece in the New York Times describing a US$50 million Telephone: 617-495-5428 satellite and space mission control center built by the Chinese military in Argentina’s Subscriptions, Back Copies and Comments Patagonia desert, the development seemed light years away from the rural world of [email protected] O-lan or even my favorite Chinese-Cuban eateries. But thinking of the article and the Website Chinese imaginary of The Good Earth in context gave new meaning to the somewhat revista.drclas.harvard.edu clichéd description of the relationship between Asia and Latin America as South-South. Facebook It’s not just about geography: it’s about history. ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America Just as Pearl Buck looked upon O-lan from her perspective as the daughter of a white Copyright © 2018 by the President and U.S. missionary to China, we see the evolving relationships between the two continents Fellows of Harvard College. through the prisms of our own experiences. This ReVista includes Asian, U.S. and Latin ISSN 1541—1443 American scholars looking at each other’s worlds; it includes many co-authored pieces ReVista is printed on recycled stock. that bridge the two continents. As in almost every ReVista, we’ve tried to build bridges between art and business, the humanities and science, the current and the historical. Dear reader, read on. But before you do, I want to say thanks to those who have contributed to keep ReVista going, and especially to the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism class of ‘70, which funded our 2017 Best of ReVista photography contest (see the winners on p. 110 ). ReVista belongs to all of you readers and contributors; remember to keep your addresses updated and your suggestion and donations coming. p.s. Your editor knows Asia is a huge continent and that some areas of Asia are not represented in this issue as thoroughly as we’d hoped. We look forward to more Asia collaborations in the future! HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA FALL 2018 VOLUME XVIII NO. 1 Published by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Harvard University Photos clockwise: Site of Hitoshi Sanada, 1955/ Londrina –PR (IMS) by Haruo Ohara; Cuban and Chinese flags displayed at El Moro fort in February 2018 during Cuban international book fair honoring China as guest country by Kathleen López; Burning incense to welcome the return of their ancestors’ spirits by Yuan Wang. CROSS CURRENTS LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA K-dramas Flow into Latin America By James A. Dettleff 82 FIRST TAKES How to Think Globally By Andrea Bachner 84 Bridging Asia and Latin America By Karen Thornber 2 Living Between Distant Shores From Extraction to Construction By Cynthia A. Sanborn 4 By Manuel Azuaje-Alamo 87 What Connects Two Worlds Apart? By Guo Jie 8 Shared Sentiments Inspire New Cultural Centers By Yuan Wang and Theodore Macdonald 90 THE DIASPORAS Telluric Connections, Bodies in Transit The Migrant Photography of Haruo Ohara By Rosario Hubert 12 By Ana Paula Kojima Hirano 94 Growing up Chinese in Uruguay By Michael Chu 18 Transoceanic Traveling Trash Japanese Peruvians By Mary Jo McConahay 25 By Ilana Boltvinik and Rodrigo Viñas (TRES) 98 From Vendedor to Fashion Designer By Kyeyoung Park 27 Revisiting Circles and Circuits By Alexandra Chang 30 BOOK TALK Nikkei Latin America By Millie Creighton 34 Understanding Social Protections The Japanese Brazilian Community By Regina Matsue and Rafael Shoji 37 By Lorena Barberia 102 Fried Rice and Plátanos By Kathleen López 40 Guatemalan Youth as Citizens in Waiting One Day We Arrived in Japan By Aaron Litvin 44 By Martha C. Franco 104 Contemporary Human Rights TRADE TIES AND BEYOND and Latin America By Theodore Macdonald 105 Development in Northeast Asia By Víctor López Villafañe 48 Filling the Infrastructure Gap By Margaret Myers 50 BUILDING BRIDGES New Pirates in the Caribbean? By Horacio J. Godoy 53 Energy Innovation Ecosystems in Rural Mexico Chinese Development Finance and By Francisco Acuña et al 108 the Andean Amazon Infrastructure Boom By Rebecca Ray 56 Waves of Asian Investments in Brazil By Mario Henrique Ogasavara 60 Best of ReVista 2017-18 110 Made in China 2025 By Renato Balderrama and Amado Trejo 63 Understanding the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative By Rosario Santa Gadea 66 China and Latin America Relations By Gilmar Masiero 70 A Commercial Hit That’s a Product of Censorship By Patricia Castro Obando 72 Dragon Mart Cancún By Emiliano Valle 75 China-Venezuela Relations By Matt Ferchen 77 ON THE COVER Map illustration ISTOCK.COM OSTAPENKOOLENA REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 1 FIRST TAKES Bridging Asia and Latin America China’s (Belt and) Road-blocks in Latin America By KAREN THORNBER ACADEMICS, JOURNALISTS AND POPULAR and its focus on three African hip-hop Africa and India, Japan and China; authors are writing more and more in artists striving to forge careers in their new Infrastructure, Trade and Industry; recent years on the interconnections home, humanized many of the complex Migration and Economic Opportunity; between Asia and Latin America. Asia dynamics between Asia and other regions Trading and Industrial Diaspora; and specialists, Latin America specialists discussed earlier in the day. It also provided Migration, Trade and Health in the and an impressively increasing number context for other immigrant communities in Africa-Asian Relationship; and Africa of individuals who have expertise in China, including those from Latin America. and Asia: The Way Forward. These both regions are focusing on varied We reconfigured the Harvard Africa and panels, and in particular the discussions types of interconnections: diplomacy, China Program as the Harvard Africa-Asia throughout the conference on the lessons military engagement, and security; trade, Initiative in the spring of 2016, recognizing Africa and Asia can learn from one investment, and other economic networks; environmental degradation and social conflict; knowledge transfer, cultural Although unlike with Africa, Asia’s known ties interactions and transculturations. They with Latin America date back centuries, not are also exploring the many facets of the migrations and diasporas that have led millennia, the early success of the Harvard Africa- to today’s longstanding populations of Asia Initiative suggests just how fruitful a similar Asians of Latin American descent and Latin Americans of Asian descent, as well collaboration between the Asia-related centers and as to today’s steady movement of peoples the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American between the two regions, despite their great geographic distance. Studies could be. For scholars of Asia, the growing attention to Asia-Latin America inter- that African communities have been another, made even more apparent the connections reinforces the importance of interacting with their counterparts from fundamental importance of examining thinking not only across borders within across Asia for millennia, with China Asia’s relationships with other parts of the Asia (the primary mission of Harvard’s becoming a major presence on the African world, including Latin America. Asia Center, which I direct) but also about continent only relatively recently. Joining The Harvard Africa-Asia Initiative has Asia in transnational and transregional the Asia Center, the Center for African sponsored a variety of other activities, global perspective. The Asia Center has Studies, the Fairbank Center, and East including a roundtable on “Shared already done important work in this area. Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law Challenges, Shared Opportunities: Most notably, in 2015, it partnered with School in this venture were the Korea Healthcare Delivery in Africa and Asia” the Center for African Studies, as well as Institute, Lakshmi Mittal South Asia in fall 2017.