In 1852 the Argentine political philosopher Juan Bautista Alberdi published Bases and Points of Departure for Argentine Political Organization, in which he argued that the development of his country depended on immigration. Indians and blacks, Alberdi maintained, lacked basic skills, and it would take too long to train them. Thus he pressed for massive immigration from northern Europe and the United States. Alberdi’s ideas, guided by the aphorism “to govern is to populate,” won immediate acceptance and were even incorporated into the Argentine constitution, which declared, “The Federal government will encourage European immigration.” Other Latin American countries adopted similar policies promoting immigration to achieve similar goals.

Coffee barons in Brazil, latifundiarios (owners of vast estates) in Argentina, or investors in nitrate and copper mining in Chile made enormous profits that they reinvested in new factories. Latin America had been tied to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and northern Europe from the outset as a provider of raw materials and as a consumer of industrial goods. In the major exporting countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, domestic industrialization now began to take hold in the form of textile mills, food-processing plants, and mechanized transportation such as modern ports and railroads.

By the turn of the twentieth century, an industrial working-class had begun to emerge. In Brazil and Argentina these workers, who were mainly European immigrants, proved unexpectedly contentious: they brought with them radical ideologies that challenged liberalism, particularly anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, a version of anarchism that advocated placing power in the hands of workers’ unions. These workers clashed with bosses and political leaders who rejected the idea that workers had rights. The authorities suppressed worker organizations such as unions, and they resisted implementing labor laws such as a minimum wage, restrictions on child labor, the right to strike, or factory safety regulations.

Although Europe was a significant source of immigrants to Latin America, so were Asia and the Middle East. For example, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries large numbers of Japanese arrived in Brazil, and by 1920 Brazil had the largest Japanese community in the world outside of Japan. From the Middle East, Lebanese, Turks, and Syrians also entered Brazil. Between 1850 and 1880, South Asian laborers went to Trinidad, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent, mostly as indentured servants. When slavery was abolished in Cuba in 1886, some of the work in the sugarcane fields was done by Chinese indentured servants. Likewise, the abolition of slavery in Mexico led to the arrival of thousands of Chinese bonded servants.

Thanks to the influx of new arrivals, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Mexico City, Montevideo, Santiago, and Havana experienced spectacular growth. By 1914 Buenos Aires in particular had emerged as one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with a population of 3.6 million.

Immigrants brought wide-ranging skills that helped develop industry and commerce. In Argentina, Italian and Spanish settlers stimulated the expansion of the cattle industry and the development of the wheat and shoe industries. In Brazil, Swiss immigrants built the cheese business, Italians gained a leading role in the coffee industry, and Japanese farmers made the country self-sufficient in rice production. In Peru, Italians became influential in banking and the restaurant business, while the French dominated dressmaking as well as the jewelry and pharmaceutical businesses. Chinese laborers built Peruvian railroads, and in sections of large cities such as Lima, the Chinese dominated the ownership of shops and restaurants.