"From natives to settlers to immigrants", a series of posts to tell the brief history of Latin American cities through a diversity, money, density, and creativity lens, borrowing the model from the MCNY.
The first signs of urban community took place with Pachacamac (c. 200 BCE–600 CE). Also known as Early Lima, Pachacamac, is a large pre-Columbian ruin located in the Lurin Valley on the central coast of Peru. During the Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) it continued to be a major centre and place of pilgrimage and was probably the principal establishment of the Huari Empire on the coast. In late pre-Columbian times the Inca built the large Temple of the Sun at the site, and the Oracle of Pachacamac, probably associated with a shrine in this temple.
Settlers sacked the shrine and temple during the Spanish conquest (c. 1532) and in 1535 the Spanish city of Lima was founded by Pizarro as Ciudad de los Reyes (“City of the Kings”).
Lima's coastal location facilitated communication with Spain and it soon became an important center of education and wealth. The city was politically conservative and socially stratified. Lima's loyalties to the Spanish crown made the country the last mainland colony to declare its independence from Spain in 1821.
Lima 2000, 1685 - Lima, Ciudad de los Reyes, Pedro Nolasco.
The modern city of Lima experienced a parallel growth of connection through new transportation systems and unprecedented immigration from Asia. The first out of three big waves of Chinese migration came in 1849 from the southern Guangdong and Hong Kong regions, with over 100,000 immigrants, mostly male laborers whose names and backgrounds have become untraceable after cultural intermixing by marrying Peruvian women.
In 1851, the Lima-Callao railroad was built and over the next 20 years new interurban railway links to main cities such as Miraflores, Ancón, and Chosica prompted suburban growth. Urban segregation ensued, the small pedestrian city of Lima gradually lost its wealthier residents to Miraflores, who built mansions in and around the city.
Lima and Callao benefitted from an export boom of guano deposits, which were collected from islands off the Peruvian coast and shipped to Europe. Guano is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats and serves as an effective fertilizer. But the city's prosperity soon declined due to the War of the Pacific in 1879-83 over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert, which drew Peru in because of its secret alliance with Bolivia. The Chilean victory won the country a significant amount of resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia, including all of Bolivia's coastal land.
Peru became the first country in Latin America to establish diplomatic relations with Japan in 1873. In 1899, the Sakura Maru brought Japanese families from Yokohama to the port city of Callao. These 790 Japanese were the first of several waves of Japanese who made new lives in Peru before emigrating to Brazil. Most came from Okinawa, Gifu, Hiroshima, Kanagawa, and Osaka and they were mainly farmers or worked in the fields, but once their contracts were completed they went on to settle in the cities.
Lima 2000, 1904 – Plano de Lima, Santiago M. Basurco
The 1920s-30s saw a new wave of urban expansion set off by the automobile and a roadbuilding program within Lima and between Lima and other parts of the country. Better connection made it easier for migrants to reach Lima, and 2 million people moved to the city between 1940-80. This included a new wave of 26,000 Japanese immigrants arriving in 1941, the year of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, marking the beginning of the Pacific war campaign for the US in WWII. Tensions arose at the end of 1942 and during all of 1943 and 1944, the Peruvian government on behalf of the US Government and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) organized and started massive arrests, without warrants and without judicial proceedings or hearings and the deportation of many of Japanese-Peruvians to several American internment camps.
The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, led to a second wave of Chinese immigration who, unlike their predecessors, came from Taiwan and were well-educated, relatively wealthy, and wanted to start businesses. Finally, the most recent wave between 1980 and 1990 brought rich, educated immigrants that had grown up in Communist China and who sought to use Peru as a trampoline to get to the US for better business opportunities. These recent arrivals had money and power to form elite, community-building clubs, echoing Japanese immigrants from the 19th century, who used similar tactics to maintain Japanese identity. Peru has the second largest ethnic Japanese population in South America after Brazil; the Nikkei community has made a significant cultural impact on the country, and today constitutes 0.1% of Peru's population.
Lima 2000, 1965 – Plano de la Ciudad de Lima Metropolitana, Amadeo Góngora
As Lima became more interconnected, the city experienced urban sprawl, with hundreds of thousands of shanties constructed on the outskirts. Eventually, the government awarded land titles whilst trying to provide basic services. By 1990, about 30% of the population lived in "pueblos jóvenes." In the late 20th century, a system of multilane expressways was built to serve the city’s expanding population, which surpassed 7 million by the early 21st century.
Today, Lima metropolitan region has around 11 million people, and although latest numbers are not exact, about 2.5% of Peru's population are immigrants, with 77% coming from Venezuela, 3.4% from the US, and 2.6% from China. Peru is the Latin American country with the highest Chinese population, and ranks 7th in the world for largest population of Chinese people outside of China, with 1.3 million Chinese Peruvians.
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