Middle Easterners

Middle Eastern and North African immigrants from various ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds came to Latin America as part of the predominantly Ibero-Italian influx that spanned the period from the latter decades of the nineteenth century to the 1950s. Most were Arabic speakers from Ottoman or post-World War I Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine (Mashriq). They were preceded by the less numerous waves of mainly Spanish-speaking Jews from Morocco and Algeria (Maghrib). Some 200 years after the flowering of a Maghribi Jewish presence in Brazil, economic and demographic factors combined with a bout of xenophobia stemming from the Moroccan-Spanish conflagration (1859–1860) to add new impetus to individual departures to Latin America, which had resumed earlier that century. Impelled by such a combination of events, more Jews from Morocco—and eventually from Algeria too—set their sights on reaching Gibraltar, the Spanish mainland (Algeciras, Cádiz, and Málaga), and the Canary Islands (Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife), en route to a fresh start across the Atlantic. Favorable economic conditions at their final destination and the fact that some Moroccan Jews hailed from Portugal were among the reasons reportedly pulling the departees in the direction of Brazil. Later, Argentina and Venezuela and, to a considerable lesser extent, other Latin American states became their primary destinations. An indication of the scale of such migration is provided by the Argentine census of 1914, which recorded the presence of nearly a thousand Maghribis: 802 Moroccans and 125 Algerians.

Unlike the North Africans, the Mashriqis' first choice apparently was not Latin America, but rather the United States, presumably because of the greater attention the latter received in nineteenth-century Arabic-language geography books and press. Nevertheless, the economic and other factors that pushed increasing numbers of Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians to leave their homes during and after the 1870s, together with stringent health tests in the United States and the eventual introduction of quotas, prompted travel agents to redirect many Mashriqis to the countries south of the Rio Grande. The absence of direct links between the migrants' places of birth and the main Latin American ports required transshipment in France, Italy, Spain, or other European countries. Moreover, Ottoman restrictions prompted numerous travelers to disguise their voyage's ultimate destination as a trip to Egypt. Hence, many of those classed in Latin American immigration registers as Egyptians were in fact Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians, just as countless Algerians were Moroccan.

Latin America's principal countries of immigration, Argentina and Brazil, were also the favorites among the Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians. Argentine records show some 180,000 entries from the Mashriq during the period 1890–1950. Whereas the Syrians are believed to have been the single largest Middle Eastern group in Argentina, the Palestinians occupied that position in Chile and Honduras. As the main waiting-room republics for Arabic speakers and others intent on crossing into the United States, Cuba and Mexico also witnessed the arrival of thousands of Mashriqis. Not surprisingly, the U.S. government repeatedly prodded the Cuban and Mexican authorities into cooperating to stem the flow of this human contraband. That is not to say that all the Arabic speakers who arrived in these countries sought to leave or aimed to contravene U.S. sanitary and other regulations. Most Arabic speakers were Christian, in particular Greek (Melkite) and Maronite Catholics, or Orthodox. Undeniably, followers of other Christian denominations, Druze, as well as Muslims (Alawi, Shia, and Sunni) and Jews were also among them. In fact, the emigration of Arabic-speaking Jews from Aleppo, Damascus, and Beirut occurred at the same time as that of their Ladino counterparts from continental (European and Near Eastern) Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean isles. Ottoman and Young Turk policies no doubt provoked an Armenian exodus as well. That some Latin American states received nearly as many Turkish and Arabic speakers is highlighted by the fact that from 1901 to 1924 Cuba admitted nearly 14,000 Turkish and Mashriqi aliens, with 5,807 listed as Turks and 8,128 as Arabs, Syrians, or Palestinians.

Most Spanish and Arabic speakers arrived before the 1930s, when the combination of economic crisis and nationalism in Latin America translated into greater selectivity of immigrants. Since the end of World War II, however, the region's Palestinians as well as its Maghribi and Mashriqi Jews represented a powerful magnet for a new wave of their confreres. Hundreds of Palestinian refugees of the first Arab-Israeli war (1948–1949) moved to Brazil, Venezuela, and other countries, and a few thousand Moroccan and Egyptian Jews flocked to Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. The resettlement of these Jews was one of the side effects of the waning of the French presence in the Maghrib, the Israeli-Egyptian war of 1956, and the fears aroused by the ascendancy of Nasserite Pan—Arabism throughout the Arab world. Known as turcos—a label used with inadvertent irony with respect to Turks, Arabs, and Armenians—the Arabic speakers were likewise referred to as moros in Cuba, presumably owing to Spain's influence on the island. The immigrants tended to perceive the turco sobriquet as pejorative, especially after the Ottoman Empire's demise resulting in Lebanese and Syrian arrivals with French travel documents or Palestinians with papers issued by their country's British mandatory authorities. Many Lebanese, the Maronites in particular, were keen to stress a French identity even before World War I, much in the same way as numbers of Moroccan Jews described themselves as Andalusian Catholics.

Like other new arrivals, the Middle Easterners, or at the very least a significant portion of them, initially saw themselves as sojourners, striving to amass wealth before returning to their birthplace to enjoy the fruits of hard work. Indeed, a number of Maghribis and Mashriqis fulfilled the expectation of moving back to their home countries, so it is hardly surprising to find some of the most successful of them serving as honorary consuls for several Latin American states before the close of the nineteenth century. Moroccans and Algerians first and then Arabic speakers took advantage of Latin America's undeveloped retail trade and devoted themselves almost exclusively to commerce, at the outset as peddlers, then as shopkeepers, and later as wholesalers. Catering to the needs of the least well-off, they helped to expand the market; to achieve this end, they provided credit by operating a rudimentary system of payment by installments.

Most Middle Easterners settled permanently in Latin America. They proved wrong those among the local liberals who, like others, had argued against their immigration, whether on grounds that their occupations differed markedly from official expectations of recruiting agricultural labor or that their ethnoreligious backgrounds stood in the way of assimilation. Nevertheless, the concern over occupations persuaded some of Argentina's better established Syro-Lebanese to promote the channeling of newly arrived kinsmen to farm work early in the twentieth century and to attempt their own screening in Beirut of immigration candidates in the late 1920s. Likewise, concern about their adherence to beliefs other than Catholic was among the contributing factors for Muslim self-effacement throughout the region. Latin Americans of Arab parentage—especially, but not only, the Christians among them—rose to political prominence in countries that once sought to limit the influx of their kinsmen. From the 1930s on, the region saw some become parliamentarians; others were entrusted with ministerial portfolios, pursued military careers, or were coopted into the diplomatic corps; a few ruled—or sought to do so—as elected or de facto heads of state. To name but a few, such are the cases of the three following presidents: Argentina's Carlos Saúl Menem (of Syrian Muslim parentage), Bolivia's Juan Pereda Asbún (whose mother was a Palestinian Christian), and Colombia's Julio César Turbay Ayala (whose father was a Lebanese Maronite).

See alsoArab-Latin American Relations; Jews.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Ignacio Klich, "Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina: An Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888–1914," pp. 243-284.

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                              Ignacio Klich