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Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions pp 1–3Cite as

Buddhism in Venezuela

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Introduction

According to not very reliable rough estimations, there are currently up to 52,000 Buddhists in Venezuela. The figure corresponds to 0.16 % of the country’s population in 2015. Also uncertain is the exact number of residents of Asian origin. Public numerical estimates about Chinese descendants, who were probably the first who introduced Buddhism in the mid-nineteenth century (Holland 2010, p. 21), range from 60,000 to 450,000 individuals.

In a new immigration wave, the number of Chinese officially registered in 1939 was just 20; in 2011 the last national census counted 15,456 Venezuelan citizens of Chinese origin (“La diaspora …” 2013). About Japanese immigrants, due to the Law of Immigration and Colonization from 1894, which prevented Venezuela from mass immigration from non-European countries, no more than 30 Japanese immigrants were registered before World War II. Only from the 1980s onwards, commercial and cultural bonds led to a considerable increase of Japanese...

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Religião, Pontifical University of São Paulo, Rua Ministro de Godói, 969 4° andar, 05014-901, São Paulo, Brazil

    Frank Usarski & Rafael Shoji

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  1. Frank Usarski
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  2. Rafael Shoji
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Correspondence to Frank Usarski .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sociology/Anthropology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Henri P. P. Gooren

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Usarski, F., Shoji, R. (2015). Buddhism in Venezuela. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_125-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_125-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08956-0

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