The Ryukyuans in Argentina1

T HE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC has been one of the major immigration countries of the Western Hemisphere since the mid-nineteenth century.2 Argentine immigration was and continues to be largely European in character, the Italians being foremost, with lesser numbers of Spaniards, French, Poles, Russians, Turks, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and others.3 In general this immigration has been an organized, regulated process designed to satisfy Argentina's need for agricultural labor. Asiatic immigration, by contrast, has been indirect and sporadic, depending upon the interest of the individual immigrant who, until the World War I period, commonly re-emigrated from another South American country. Chinese immigration has been negligible, whereas the Japanese in Argentina constitute a small but increasingly significant minority, the third largest colony in Latin America following Brazil and Peru. The dominant group among the Japanese in Argentina has been the immigrants from the Ryukyu Islands, south of the home archipelago in the western Pacific.4 From the beginning of the present century the Japanese emigrated in largest numbers to Brazil, Peru, and initially to Mexico, where they were supported by subsidies and plantation agriculture. Japanese immigration to Argentina was less significant for a number of

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