Central and South America In Central and South America, significant numbers of Chinese first started arriving in the mid-19th century as part of the
Coolie slave trade. By the mid-20th century,
Cuba and
Peru had the largest Chinese populations. By the end of WWII, there were considerable high numbers of Central and South America descended from local women and Chinese fathers. There are also small numbers of Central and South American residents of Asian and African descent in countries like
Puerto Rico,
Haiti and the
Dominican Republic.
Cuba About 120,000 Cantonese laborers, all males, entered Cuba under contract for 80 years; most did not marry, but Hung Hui (1975:80) cites there was a frequency of sexual activity between black women and Cantonese coolies. According to Osberg (1965:69) the free Chinese conducted the practice of buying slave women and freeing them expressly for marriage. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese men (Cantonese) engaged in sexual activity with both White and Black Cuban women and from such relations many children were born. In the 1920s an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male and there was rapid intermarriage with white, black and mulato populations. The CIA World Factbook Cuba, in 2008, claimed a population of 114,240 Chinese-Cubans, with only 300 being pure Chinese. In the 1920s, an additional 30,000 Chinese arrived; the immigrants were exclusively male. In 1980, 4000 Chinese lived there, but by 2002, only 300 pure Chinese were left. 1.6% of Cuban population have direct East Asian male paternal ancestor. One of Cuba's most known Afro-Asians is the artist
Wifredo Lam.
Haiti In
Haiti, there is a sizable percentage within the minority who are of
Asian descent. Haiti is also home to Marabou peoples, a half African and half East Indian people who descent from East Indian immigrants who arrived from other Caribbean nations, such
Martinique and
Guadeloupe and African slave descendants. Most present-day descendants of the original Marabou are mostly of African in ancestry. The country also has a sizable
Chinese-Haitian population. One of the country's most notable Afro-Asians is painter
Edouard Wah who was born to an Afro-Haitian mother and a Chinese immigrant father.
Peru About 100,000 Cantonese coolies (almost all males) in 1849 to 1874 migrated to Peru and intermarried with Peruvian women of European, African, Amerindian, mestizo and mulatto origin. Many Peruvian Chinese today are of mixed Spanish, Amerindian and Chinese lineages. Among this population exist many of
African slave lineage. Estimates for the Chinese-Peruvian population range from about 1.3–1.6 million. Asian-Peruvians are estimated to be 3% of the population, but one source places the number of citizens with some Chinese ancestry at 4.2 million, which equates to 15% of the country's total population.
Brazil Brazil has the largest Japanese community outside Japan and a large Chinese and Korean minority as well. The country's brown population, which includes
mixed race mestizo and
mulatto Brazilians, is almost half of the entire population and it also includes people of Eurasian, Roma and indigenous descent . Interracial marriages between Asians, mostly Japanese and Brazilians of African descent are less common than those between East Asians and Brazilians of European, Arab, and Jewish descent, which are not uncommon and known as
hāfu or ainoko. Most East Asians live in
São Paulo and
Paraná. Afro-Asians can be found in
Rio de Janeiro, where there is a sizeable Chinese minority as well as a Vietnamese and Indonesian population, and
Bahia, where the majority of black people live.
The West Indies In the 1860s, East Indian and
Chinese immigrants arrived in the West Indies as indentured servants. Chinese male laborers and migrants went to Peru, Cuba, Haiti, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica and Trinidad where they often intermarried with local black women which resulted in a large population of racially mixed children. According to the 1946 Census from Jamaica and Trinidad alone, 12,394 Chinese were located between
Jamaica and
Trinidad. 5,515 of those who lived in
Jamaica were Chinese-Jamaican, also known as "Chinese colored" (Chinese mixed race) and another 3,673 were Chinese-Trinidadians (Chinese colored) living in
Trinidad. The Chinese men who married African women in Guyana and Trinidad Tobago were mostly Cantonese, while the Chinese men who married African women in Jamaica were mostly Hakka but with a large minority of Cantonese men. In her book and documentary
Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem, Afro-Chinese-Jamaican-American
Paula Williams Madison explores her grandfather's life and travels. The journey ends with the reunion of the author's immediate relatives with their newly discovered extended family in
Guangdong, China. 1871 the census was recorded at a population of 506,154 people, 246,573 of which were males and 259,581 females. Their races were recorded as 13,101 White people, 100,346 Coloured (mixed Black and White) and 392,707 Black people with a minority making up other races. In
Jamaica,
Guyana,
Suriname and
Trinidad, a percentage of the population of people are of
Chinese and
Indian descent (from paternal Grandfather), some of whom have contributed to Afro-Asian-Caribbean children. Approximately 4% of Jamaican men have a direct Chinese paternal ancestor.
Guyana Between 1853 and 1879, roughly 14,000 Chinese indentured workers arrived in
British Guiana on five-year indenture contracts to work on the colony's sugar plantations. They soon integrated into the local culture, converting to Christianity and learning English. The majority of workers were unmarried men, and intermarried with local
Indo-Guyanese and
Afro-Guyanese women.
Trinidad and Tobago The country is known for having a large
Indian population stemming from the 18th and 19th-century colonial plantation economy and people of Indian descent now make up a narrow plurality. In Trinidad and Tobago, people of African-Indian mixed descent are called "
douglas". One of the country's most notable Afro-Asians is its former President
George Maxwell Richards and musician
Nicki Minaj.
United States is of
African-American and Vietnamese descent. is of
Indian and
Afro-Jamaican descent In 1882, the
Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and
Chinese workers who chose to stay in the U.S. could no longer be with their wives who stayed behind in
China. Because
White Americans looked at Chinese labor workers as stealing employment, they were harassed and discriminated against. Many Chinese men settled in black communities in states such as Mississippi and, in turn, married black women. After the
Emancipation Proclamation, many intermarriages in some states were not recorded and historically, Chinese-American men married
African-American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese-American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese-Americans immigrated to the Southern states, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. For example, in 1880, the tenth
US Census of
Louisiana alone counted 57% of interracial marriages between these
Chinese Americans to be with
African Americans and 43% to be with
European-American women. In the mid 19th to 20th century, Filipino men often dated and cohabited white women, some married white females while most married black females due to miscegenation laws. Filipino population in all over United States was made up overwhelmingly of men. For example, in California the Filipino population was 30,470 and in mainland leapt from 5,603 in 1920 to 45,208 ten years later.
U.S. Census reports According to the
2010 United States census, there are 185,595 people of Native African or African-American and Asian descent in the United States. Reports further offer the following break-down of all groups having Native African or African-American and Asian descent: ==East Asia==