Latin Americans are one of the UK's fastest-growing groups. So why aren't they recognised?
11 DECEMBER 2019
Latin Americans have been ignored by politicians, the media and the national census. A new British-born generation is trying to change that.
BY LAURENCE BLAIR
Over fuzzy shots of South London terraces, tower blocks and high streets, several teenagers explain the cases of mistaken identity they confront on a daily basis. Moroccan, Asian, Turkish, Indian; you don’t look Cuban, you look Mexican. “I know where I’m from,” counters one. “And I’ll tell you that.”
The newly released documentary More than Other profiles what it calls the largest ever generation of British-born Latin Americans. They form one of the country’s fastest-growing ethnic groups, but are rendered “invisible” by official policies and a near-total absence of media portrayals, says Canadian-Brazilian filmmaker Romano Pizzichini. Over chicken soup in an Ecuadorian restaurant in the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, Pizzichini explains how the local Latin community made him feel “very much at home” when he arrived in London as a student. But British colleagues have told him that they have never met any Latin Americans. “What about the guy who comes in and says hello to you and cleans your desk every night? They’re all Latin American, I can probably guarantee you that.”
The UK is now home to around 250,000 people of Latin American origin – born or with ancestry in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of the Americas. Roughly half live in London, where they form the eighth-largest ethnic community. Nationally, they are already comparable in size to the British Asian population in 1991. Fleeting connections between Britain and Latin America go back a long way: statues and plaques around Marylebone, Belgravia and Richmond mark where historical figures like Simón Bolívar plotted South American independence. Last year, a Chilean student discovered a mural on the walls of Leeds University Union, painted in 1976 by some of the 3,000 exiles from the Pinochet regime granted asylum by the UK.
But the vast majority of Britain’s contemporary Latin American population – in large part made up of migrants from Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador, and refugees from Colombia’s civil war – only arrived in the 1990s and early 2000s, making them and their children comparative newcomers. The resulting uncertainty and unfamiliarity is both a source of challenge and heady sense of possibility. “Everything’s so new with Latin Americans here. It’s the first generation growing up here that’s going to set the roots for the culture. They’re doing it from scratch,” says Pizzichini, whose 16mm short was backed by Brazilian production house Capuri after potential UK funders fell through. “It’s a shifting landscape. I wanted to document this very precise moment in time.”
More:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/12/latin-americans-are-one-uks-fastest-growing-groups-so-why-arent-they-recognised
