Recognising All Our Communities

August 6 is Bolivian Independence Day.

The Bolivian community in London is a tight knit and vibrant diaspora with concentrations in Southwark and Lambeth.

However, they form part of a much wider Latin American community.

The collective Latin American community is the eighth largest foreign-born community in London, estimated at about 250,000 people.

In 20212 the London Borough of Southwark was the first local authority in the UK to include “Latin American” as part of their self defined ethnicity programme.

Since then the Coalition of Latin Americans in the UK have led successful campaigns resulting in the following local authorities introducing similar schemes:

Lambeth, Islington, Hackney, Harringey. . .and Newham.

Numbers specifically for Newham are difficult to find - however it is estimated that approximately 8% of London's total Latin American population live on the borough - that represents approximately 20,000 people.