Peru Emigration and Immigration

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Emigration and Immigration

How to Find the Records

Online Records

• 1509-1599 Catálogo de pasajeros a Indias durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII Lists of passengers from Spain to the New World during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries
• 1509-1701 Pasajeros a Indias : libros de asientos Archivo General de Indias. Commerce Section. Lists of passengers to the New World.
• 1808-1960 Spain, Consular Records of Emigrants, 1808-1960 at FamilySearch - How to Use This Collection; images.
• 1810-1866 Spain, Province of Cádiz, Passports, 1810-1866 at FamilySearch - How to Use This Collection; images. Includes permissions to emigrate,
• 1854-1876 Emigración china para el Perú, 1854-1876 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at Findmypast - index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Peru
• 1892-1924 New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924 Search results for Peru
• 1906-1913 Japanese emigration to Peru at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• 1921-1939 Reseñas de pasaportes de varios consulados, 1921-1939 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only.
• 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
• United States Immigration Online Genealogy Records
• Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose Prtu under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".

Offices and Archives to Contact

Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies) in Seville, Spain

Archivo General de Indias
Edificio de la LonjaAv. De la Constitución
3 Edificio de La Cilla
C/Santo Tomás
541071 Seville
Spain
Contact Form
Telephone: (34) 95 450 05 28 Fax: (34) 95 421 94 85
Website
The Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, is the repository for Spanish documents dealing with the Spanish colonial period in the Americas. You may want to look for your ancestor’s records in the following sections of the archive:

• Informaciones de Méritos y Servicios de los Descubridores/Conquistadores (Information on Merits and Services of the Discoverers and Conquerors). This contains documents of the ships and passengers who sailed to the colonies during the early 1500s.
• Casa de Contratación de las Indias (House of Contracts of the Indies). This is an excellent documentation of passenger lists for ships sailing to the American colonies between 1509 and 1701, as well as petitions and licenses for permission to emigrate during the period 1534 to 1790. A digital index of Casa de Contratación de las Indias records as well as linked digital images are available online through Archivos Españoles en Red.
• Informaciones y licencias de pasajeros (Passenger information and permits)'. This covers the period between 1534 and 1790 and comprises all the information or evidence that had to be submitted to the Casa de la Contratación by anyone who wished to travel to the newly-discovered territories, and the permits issued by the chairman and official judges of the Casa. In this information, passengers had to provide proof of their standing as long-term Christians. Therefore, some files include baptism and marriage certificates which give biographical and genealogical information not only on the passengers, but also on the people that accompanied them.

Online Records From Archivo General de Indias

• 1509-1599 Catálogo de pasajeros a Indias durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII Lists of passengers from Spain to the New World during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries
• 1509-1701 Pasajeros a Indias : libros de asientos Archivo General de Indias. Commerce Section. Lists of passengers to the New World.

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Instituto Nacional de Cultura. Archivo Histórico Nacional

Instituto Nacional de Cultura. Archivo Histórico Nacional
Jr. Camaná 125 con Pasaje Piura. Lima
Peru

Tel.: (00 511) 4275930
Contact: contactos@archivogeneral.gob.pe
Website
Registro de Inmigrantes
The origin of this series, issued by the Ministry of the Interior and National Police, is the Supreme Decree of 15 April 1922 which obliged all foreign nationals resident in Lima and in those provinces where there was a consul or consulate agent to register in order to take a census of foreign nationals. Likewise, through Law Decree 7000, of 30 January 1931, the Government forced all foreign nationals over the age of 16 to renew their registration.

The immigrant registration books are organized by country of origin, and Spanish nationals are registered in books 66 to 69, the first record being entered on 24 February 1922 and the last on 23 November 1933.
Other interesting documentary series for studying this subject include:

Registro de ingresos y salidas de pasajeros en vapor (1926-1937) (Record of entries and departures by steamship)
Censos de extranjeros (1940-1941) (Censuses of foreign nationals)
Salvoconductos (1953-1956) (Safe-conducts)
Registros de inmigrantes de la Prefectura del Callao (1953-1956) (Record of immigrants from the Prefecture of Callao)
Movimiento de vapores (1924-1933) (Movements by steamship)
Padrón de extranjeros (1940-1960) (Register of foreign nationals)

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Finding the Town of Origin in Peru

If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Peru, see Peru Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Peru Emigration and Immigration

"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. (See Immigration into Italy.)
Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Background

Immigration

• Peru is a multiethnic nation formed by the combination of different groups over five centuries. Amerindians inhabited Peruvian territory for several millennia before Spanish Conquest in the 16th century. Spaniards and Africans arrived in large numbers under the Viceroyalty.
• Before 1775, most of the emigrants from Spain came from the regions of Castilla, Andalucía, or Extremadura. The people from Cataluña, Aragón, Galicia, and Vascongadas were excluded from the Americas by the Court of the Indies (Consejo de Indias).
• After 1775, Carlos III of Spain gave permission to all Spaniards to colonize any part of Spanish America.
• During the early period, most Spanish emigrants left through the ports of Seville, Cádiz, San Lucar de Barrameda, and Málaga in southern Spain.
• Later the ports of San Sebastián, Bilbao, Santander, and La Coruña in northern Spain were added as departure cities not only for Spaniards but also for other Europeans. These emigrants most always traveled first to Islas Canarias (the Canary Islands), where they resided for a short time, before continuing travel to the Americas.
• Emigration to America slowed drastically between 1790–1825 due to wars of independence in the Latin American colonies.
• Beginning in 1840, an increased number of people immigrated to Latin America seeking religious, economical, or political freedom.
• After the abolition of slavery in 1854, immigrants from countries such as China, Northern Europe, and Japan arrived to do labor work in areas such as farming. The first major group of immigrants were Chinese laborers who came between 1850–1875 to work on the guano deposits of the Chincha Islands and on the railroads.
• Many Japanese immigrant laborers arrived in Peru at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Japanese trade with Peru expanded after World War II. There are several sources about Japanese immigration to Peru listed in the FamilySearch Catalog: Japanese - Peru
• In 2005, the UN put the number of immigrants in Peru at 42,000, which accounted for less than 1% of its population. However, a more recent report from the Peruvian Directorate of Migrations has put the number at 64,303.
• The largest group of foreign residents is from Argentina, which accounts for about 14% of the total with over 9000 Argentineans living in Peru. Immigrants from the United States make up just over 9% of the total with 5,800 US citizens now residing in Peru. Other large groups of immigrants in Peru include Chileans, Bolivians, Colombians, Brazilians, Uruguayans, Spanish and Chinese.
• The majority of foreign residents in Peru live in Lima, with other communities found in Cusco and Arequipa.

Emigration

• The largest Peruvian communities are in the United States (see Peruvian Americans), Canada, Argentine, Chile, Venezuela, Europe (i.e. Spain, Italy and France), Japan and Australia.

Peruvian Americans

• Most Peruvian Americans are of Amerindian or Mestizo ancestry, but there are also those of European or African background, and a significant number may also have partial or full Chinese or Japanese heritage.
• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2018, 684,345 U.S. residents identify themselves as being of Peruvian origin. Approximately 62% of Peruvian Americans were born in Peru, with a growing population of Peruvian Americans being born in the United States.
• Peruvian Americans immigrated to the United States in four major waves.

• Small but significant waves of immigration occurred in San Francisco during the gold rush and the Metro Detroit area in the 1950s.
• Another wave of immigration occurred again early in the twentieth century, due largely to the burgeoning textile industry in New York and New Jersey.
• Beginning in the 1970s, another wave of Peruvians arrived in the United States, most of whom were fleeing Peru's militaristic government.

• The 1980s and 1990s saw the most significant influx of Peruvians to U.S. shores, this time in response to the hyperinflation crisis that plagued the Peruvian economy, internal unrest in Peru by terrorist groups, and an authoritarian government.
• Immigrants often come from urban areas of Peru, especially Lima, and the majority settle in the New York City metropolitan area—particularly in Paterson and Passaic in New Jersey and the New York City borough of Queens. Peruvian Americans are also clustered in the metropolitan areas of Miami, Florida; Los Angeles; Houston, Texas; Washington, D.C.; and Virginia.

For Further Reading

There are additional sources listed in the FamilySearch Catalog:

• Peru - Emigration and immigration
• Peru - Minorities
• Japanese - Peru

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