Port entries of Finnish nationals to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1886–1940

Abstrakti

Thanks to the Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos (CEMLA) electronic database of Buenos Aires, we have a better understanding of how many Finns migrated to Argentina during 1886–1940. Port entries to Buenos Aires by Finnish nationals during 1886–1940 totalled 916 (the total includes everyone on the lists irrespective if they have been mentioned twice in a few cases), with the lion’s share (482) arriving in 1920–1929. Argentina started to be noticed by Finnish immigrants from 1906, when Arthur Thesleff founded with a group of 112 Finns and 6 Swedes a colony in the northeast province of Misiones. Despite greater immigration from Finland during the 1920s, the highest number of Finns arriving to the Port of Buenos Aires in a single year was in 1906, totalling 139 people. A more precise fi gure, however, would be about 145 (Tessieri 2008, 25, and Tessieri 2009, 13). I would also like to thank and show my apreciation to the Kaarle Hjalmar Lehtinen Foundation of the Institute of Migration for a grant that made this study possible.