South America
In 1846, thousands of immigrants, mostly Irish, joined the US army and were sent with Gen. Zachary Taylor's army to invade Mexico in what some historians have called a war of Manifest Destiny.
Perhaps the biggest myth about the Irish in South America is the one that appeared in Eire-Ireland, the scholarly US journal of Irish studies, in 1965. There, the novelist and librarian William B. Ready wrote that the Argentine Irish were 'money-grubbing bourgeoisie' and that the Irish 'contributed little to the South American way of life, except a pattern of Puritanical thrift and industry'.
As Irish emigrants have scattered across the globe, St. Patrick has been honoured in unexpected ways and places. But a Peruvian celebration of 1824 was unique.
The following list includes 7,159 passengers. It is a published version of the Irish Passengers to Argentina Database, which was compiled from diverse sources.