British Latin American
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A British Latin American (Spanish and Portuguese: latinoamericano británico) is a Latin American of British ancestry.
British immigration to Latin America occurred mostly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and went primarily to Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
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[edit] Argentina
- See also: English settlement in Argentina and Welsh settlement in Argentina
Argentina currently has perhaps the largest population of British Latin Americans, most of it consisting of Anglo-Argentines in the Buenos Aires area. In the mid-1980s they were estimated at 100,000.
The country has had a Welsh community in the Patagonia since their arrival from Liverpool in the 1860s. Its creation was an effort by nonconformists to build a "little Wales" away from the English. Welsh Argentines currently number around 20,000.[1]
A Scottish Argentine population has existed for 180 years.[2] The first Argentine woman to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree was Cecilia Grierson, of Scottish ancestry.[3]
Famous Argentines of significant or full British ancestry include Jorge Luis Borges and Olivia Hussey, the latter famous for playing Juliet in the movie Romeo and Juliet.
[edit] Brazil
The Gracie family, famous for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, was founded by George Gracie, a nineteenth century Scottish immigrant.
Oscar Cox, son of a British diplomat, introduced football to his native city, Rio de Janeiro, a century ago. He founded one of the top teams in Brazil, Fluminense Football Club.
The Brazilian Bawden family branch was initiated by Thomas Bawden, an early nineteenth century Cornish immigrant, who was very successful in gold prospection in the region of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais province, in the then Brazilian Empire. Following his goldmining enrichment, his daughter Mary Angel Bawden was married to a Brazilian nobleman, the Second Baron of Camargos, whose father, the first Baron of Camargos, was a prominent political figure in the aforementioned province.
[edit] Chile
Chile, facing the Pacific Ocean, had a smaller, though equally important British presence. Over 20,000 British immigrants settled in Chile from 1840 to 1930, with an important number of them settled in the country's southernmost Magallanes Province, especially the city of Punta Arenas when it flourished as a major global seaport for ships crossing the Strait of Magellan from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Also, around 10,000 of them settled and traded in Valparaíso, influencing the Port up to extent of making it virtually a British Colony during the last decades of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th C. However, the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and the First World War drove many of them off the City.
Some British Chileans are of Scottish and Scotch-Irish origins. Some Scots settled in the country's temperate climate and forested landscape with glaciers and islands, which reminded them of their homeland (the Highlands and Northern Scotland), while English and Welsh made up the rest. The Irish immigrants were frequently confused with English, and arrived as merchants, tradesmen and sailors, settling along with the British in the main trading cities and Ports.
Chileans of British descent include former president Patricio Aylwin; Bernardo O'Higgins, The Liberator; Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, writer and politician; Alejandro Foxley, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Ignacio Walker, former Minister of Foreign Affairs; Gustavo Leigh, member of the former Government Junta of Chile; Roberto Valenzuela Elphick, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church; Juan Williams Rebolledo, commander-in-chief of the Chilean Navy at the beginning of the War of the Pacific; Enrique Mac-Iver; William Thayer; Alberto Blest Gana, writer; Harold Mayne-Nicholls, president of ANFP and Chilean Football Federation.
The British founded the first football club in Valparaíso and in Santiago sometime later, such as Santiago Wanderers and Prince of Wales Country Club, among others.
[edit] Peru
See British Peruvian
