The myth of the Arabs of Latin America

Lamia Oualalou has a fascinating piece on The Arabs of Latin America for The Nation. According to some of the most recent scholarship,

Unlike other waves of migration organized by states in need of labor, the Middle Eastern immigrants came spontaneously, impelled by economic crises and the British and French occupations in their home countries. In Brazil, the newcomers weren’t sent to the coffee estates, where workers were treated like slaves; most went into trade in the city centers. In Mexico, “the idea took hold…that the Lebanese, as the descendants of the Phoenician merchants of 6,000 years ago, had a special talent for making a profit,” says Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp, who teaches history at Sonoma State University in California and is the author of So Far From Allah, So Close to Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2007). Of the Arab immigrants who registered in Mexico between 1926 and 1951, 45 percent gave their occupation as “trader.”

Their patterns of settlement helped shape cities throughout Latin America. In São Paulo, Arab immigrants were concentrated in the central Rua de 25 Março; in Rio, their area was nicknamed “Saara” (“Sahara” in Portuguese and an acronym for the “Society of Friends of Rua Alfandega and Adjacent Streets”). In Peru, two-thirds settled in Arequipa, the commercial capital; in Honduras, they were concentrated in the center of San Pedro Sula; and in Ecuador, in Quito and Guayaquil. Their specialty was often textiles: The Fauaz family ran one of the finest stores in San José, Costa Rica; José Elias Name ran the Flower of Turkey shop in Havana, Cuba; and the Paris stores in Managua, Nicaragua, were also owned by Arab immigrants.

“What lodged in people’s memories,” Pinto says, “is that when the Arab immigrants arrived in Latin America, they were very poor, and they were all Christian—they’d had to flee religious persecution. They all became traveling vendors, and through talent and hard work, they opened shops and then got into manufacturing and banking, which enabled their children to become lawyers, doctors, and well-known politicians. It’s a myth—in fact, the immigrants mostly came from the upper-middle class, whether they were from the town or the country.” Back home, those who came from rural areas had already been part of a monetized economy, while those who came from the cities were doctors, journalists, lawyers, and academics.

“The funny thing is, the official history of the Arab communities’ unstoppable rise through society is the same in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, and throughout the region,” Pinto continues. This version of history was shaped by The Syrians in America (1924), by Philip Hitti of the American University in Beirut, who aimed to give coherence to a community that was highly segmented religiously, geographically, and politically. His narrative, which left out the Muslim minority and the poor—those who didn’t make it—helped facilitate acceptance by local populations.

Arabs in Latin America built upon the education, skills, and business acumen that they had developed in their countries of origin. However, they also behaved somewhat strategically once in Latin America, emphasizing elements of their culture that seemed to be of interest to people of the new world (belly dancing) and downplaying, or rejecting, others that set them apart (religion).