Buddhism in Colombia

General Data on Asian Immigration and Buddhism

Colombia is not a country favored by Asian immigrants. During the late nineteenth and the twentieth century, different ethnicities, including Chinese and Japanese, preferred other destinations in Latin America such as Brazil and Argentina. Before World War II, not more than 229 residents of Japanese origin were officially registered in Colombia (Sanmiguel-Camargo 1999, p. 95). In 1964, 4,184 citizens of Asian origin were counted, including 655 of Chinese origin (Bordazar 2002, p. 96). In the early 1990s, the number of residents of Chinese origin had risen to 3,400 individuals. Continuous limited growth rates of Asian immigrants in the last decades and the scattering of already small numbers of Asian residents over a dozen cities (Fleischer 2012, pp. 71–79) have been counterproductive to the establishment of an institutionalized ethnic-rooted Buddhism in Colombia.

The low representation of Asians in the country is one reason for the modest...