Chinese immigrants in the 19th century, who took a four-month trip from Macao (then a Portuguese territory), settled Peru as contract laborers or “coolies”. Other Chinese coolies from Guangdong followed. One hundred thousand Chinese contract laborers, almost all male, were sent mostly to the sugar plantations from 1849 to 1874, for the termination of slavery and continuous labor for the coastal guano mines and especially for the coastal plantations where they became a major labor force until the end of the century. While the coolies were believed to be reduced to virtual slaves, they also represented a historical transition from slave to free labor.
Another group of Chinese settlers came after the founding of Sun Yat-sen’s republic in 1912, World War II, and the establishment of Communist rule in 1949.