ABSTRACT
By immigrants we mean people, other than individuals of the colonial powers of particular countries in the Americas, who entered the Americas of their own free will after about 1810, the beginning of the era of independence for most Central and South American countries. Therefore, native Americans and African slaves are not considered immigrants, even though their ancestral homes were not in the Americas (the original native Americans came from Asia). Likewise, people belonging to New World colonial powers who actually immigrated are not included because their cultural achievements were part of the national development of the countries to which they pertained; their musical achievements are discussed in Part 3 of this volume. Immigrants, then, in the context of this overview, are people who left their homelands to go to a new country in the Americas that had not been colonized by their ancestors, or to go to a new or another country after its independence. Thus, English people moving to Brazil are considered immigrants, whereas those going to Trinidad are not, until after its independence; French people moving to Chile are immigrants, whereas those going to French Guiana, which remains a department of France, are not; Spaniards going to Argentina before independence were not immigrants, but those going after were; Chileans going to Mexico were immigrants; and so on. Although these constraints seem arbitrary, they limit and help organize this survey.
