BECOMING “JAPANESE” IN BOLIVIA: OKINAWAN-BOLIVIAN TRANS(NATIONAL)FORMATIONS IN COLONIA OKINAWA1

Abstract

This article chronicles the changing subject-positions of Okinawans in Bolivia from the 1950s to 1990s, who migrated to Colonia Okinawa, an agricultural settlement in the eastern Santa Cruz region, as sponsored migrants backed by the United States military administration and the Okinawan (Ryūkyū) government. Since the forced annexation of Okinawa by Imperial Japan in 1879, Okinawans and the Okinawan Diaspora have often been discriminated against by the Japanese government and the immigrants from mainland Japan as illegitimate Japanese national subjects. The lack of active intervention by the Japanese government and the virtual absence of Japanese mainlanders in the settlement, however, enabled the Okinawan settlers to maintain their Okinawan cultural identities and practices without being questioned about their legitimacy as Japanese. Underscored by their socioeconomic success as large-scale farm owners who employed the locals as inexpensive laborers, the settlers gradually shifted their primary identification from “Okinawan” to “Japanese” in the particular social contexts of Colonia Okinawa. The settlers’ concern about their children’s cultural assimilation into the local Bolivian population led them to stress the Japanese-Bolivian polarity, while relegating the troubled history between Japan and Okinawa into the background. As a result, Okinawans in Colonia Okinawa, despite their status as formerly colonized subjects under Imperial Japan, “became” Japanese—vis-à-vis local Bolivians—without culturally becoming as one.