Arabs and the Americas:
A Multilingual and Multigenerational Legacy
Waïl S. Hassan
Waïl S. Hassan is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the President of the American Compara- tive Literature Association. His latest publications include the Arabic trans- lation of Alberto Mussa’s O enigma de Qaf (2015) and the edited volumeThe Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions (2017), which includesfive chapters on the Americas. He is currently writing a book provisionally entitled “Arab Brazil: Literature, Culture, and Orientalism.”
The culture that Spanish and Portuguese colonists brought to the Americas was deeply marked by nearly eight centuries of Arab, Moorish, and Muslim presence in Iberia. The Spanish and Portuguese languages had borrowed an estimated four thousand and one thousand Arabic words, respectively, while the impact on literature, philosophy, architecture, music, cuisine, and so many aspects of Iberian culture, not to mention the ethnic and racial makeup of the population, was incalculable. A few months separated the fall of Granada and Columbus’s first voyage, two events that led to the arrival of Arabic speakers in the New World right at the moment of con- quest. Expecting to reach India, where Islam had been present for centuries, Columbus took moriscos with him to act as Arabic interpreters (Mehdi 1), while the ships of Pedro Álvares Cabral (whose middle name likely comes from Arabic—al-fāris means “the horse-rider” or “knight”) were reportedly piloted by Arabs (Igel 308).
It was not until the 1880s, however, that Arabs from the Ottoman pro- vince of Greater Syria (present-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and
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Jordan) began to immigrate to the Americas in significant numbers. This was mainly the result of population growth and the decline of the silk industry in the Mount Lebanon region as a result of competition with Chinese and Japanese silk, more cheaply available to European markets after the opening of the Suez Canal. Other factors included the spread of foreign, including American, missionary schools throughout the region in the nineteenth century, which drew a rosy picture of the missionaries’countries; the success stories of earlier immigrants to the Americas, some of whom returned home wealthy; and the Ottoman military draft imposed after 1900, which many males, especially Christians, wanted to avoid. Although widespread, the myth of ethnic and religious persecution of Christians by Muslim compatriots and Ottoman officials is not sup- ported by facts, although it was promoted abroad by some immigrants and foreign missionaries, sometimes becoming part of immigrant family lore (Khater 49-52). Akram Khater estimates that by 1914, almost a third of the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon left for the Americas, with the majority settling in Latin America, where they faced fewer restrictions on immigration than in the United States, and where greater economic oppor- tunities were found. Because of the Iberian legacy, Arabs who settled in Latin America also felt much closer to their native cultures than those who made it to the United States.
The majority of early immigrants were Christians (Maronite, Syrian Orthodox, and smaller numbers of others denominations), but there were also Muslims and Jews from Greater Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, and else- where. Since the Second World War, large numbers of Palestinians dispos- sessed in 1948, more Lebanese fleeing the country’s Civil War of 1975-90, immigrants from various Arab countries, and in recent years Syrian refugees, have settled throughout the Americas, as well as in Europe and Australia. Unlike the early immigrants, who were predominantly poor, many of the newcomers have been of the middle class who left their home countries for education, professional opportunities, and other reasons. They have also been more diverse in their religious, national, and ethnic backgrounds.
Because they arrived with Ottoman travel documents, early Arab immi- grants were first called “Turks” in the United States and “turcos” in Latin America. This label was offensive to many of them who detested Ottoman rule. In reaction to this homogenization and misidentification, immigrants who in their home countries identified themselves by clan, sect, and/or city and town began, in the U.S., to call themselves“Syrians,” in reference to Greater Syria, and more recently “Arab Ameri- cans.” Similarly, in Brazil they first called themselves sírios, and after Leba- non’s independence in 1943 some called themselves libanêses, sírio- libanêses, árabes/brasileiros, brasileiros/árabes, or simply árabes.
Official immigration records in many countries in the Americas also reflect this change in labels. Writing specifically of the Lebanese, Hourani states, “Because of this confusion of names, but also for other reasons, it
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is not possible to give more than a very rough estimate of the number of emigrants or their descendants. To say that some hundreds of thousands have left Lebanon in the last century and a half, and that their descendants may number a few millions, is at least to give some idea of the size of the movement” (3). Today, Brazil is home to the largest community of Arab descent in the Americas (an estimated 7-12 million, or 3.5-6% of the popu- lation, compared to about 3.5 million, or roughly 1% of the U.S. popu- lation). In Spanish America, Argentina has received the most Arab immigrants (about 4.5 million), followed by Mexico, Colombia, and Vene- zuela (1.5 million each); Chile (800,000); Honduras and Ecuador (a quarter million each), and smaller numbers in Central America and the Caribbean. Chile has the largest Palestinian population outside of the Middle East, and they are the majority of Arab Chileans. They are mostly Christian Ortho- dox, unlike the majority of Arabs who have settled in Argentina and Brazil, who were Lebanese Maronites.
Whereas in the United States Arab Americans have long suffered from“invisibility” (Jamal and Naber) as well as demonization, largely as a result of U.S. meddling in Middle East politics, their counterparts in Brazil and other Latin American countries have been remarkably visible and successful as cultural figures, businessmen, and politicians—presiding, for example, over the largest telecommunications network in Mexico; becoming heads of state in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Paraguay; and estab- lishing themselves as major writers, poets, and artists. Yet their beginnings in North and South America are quite similar, with many of them working as pack-peddlers, then gradually opening shops and factories. With economic success came social mobility and an emphasis on education for the second generation, which produced middle-class professionals.
Due to British and U.S. political influence in the Middle East, many Arabs already knew at least some English prior to immigrating to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By con- trast, their compatriots who settled in Latin America did not begin to acquire Portuguese or Spanish until they arrived there. Thus, while an Anglophone Arab immigrant literature began over a century ago (Hassan 38), the great majority of Arab immigrants in Latin America wrote only in Arabic. They are known collectively as the “southern mahjar” (or immi- grant) group, to distinguish them from, while also denoting their affinity to, the North American mahjar writers. Likewise, the North American Al- Rābitạ al-Qalamiyya (the Pen League), founded by Kahlil Gibran in 1920 inNewYork,haditscounterpartintheBrazilianAl-‘Usḅaal-Andalusiyya(the Andalusian League), founded in São Paulo in 1933, and Al-Rabitạ al- Adabiyya (The Literary League), established in Argentina in 1949. Arab immigrant writers were also more numerous in Latin America than in the United States: George Ṣaydaḥ lists eighty-three in Brazil, thirty-six in the United States, eighteen in Argentina, and smaller numbers in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Cuba, Colombia,
and Santo Domingo. Written in Arabic and addressed to Arab readers both in the Arab world and in the Americas, most of this literary production engages with themes and issues pertaining to Arabic literature and to social and political issues in the Middle East, with little reference to its immediate surroundings. In Latin America, Arab immigrant writers remained even closer both to the political concerns of the Arab homelands and to the Arabic poetic tradition, which they venerated, than the North Americans, who rebelled against the conventions of Arabic poetry and exhibited great interest in mysticism and universal themes. Both groups, however, have played an important role in the history of modern Arabic literature and much scholarship has been devoted to their work.
A few immigrants and dozens of second- and third-generation writers have written in Portuguese and Spanish, including some of the most promi- nent poets, novelists, journalists, and scholars. These include Antônio Houaiss, Salim Miguel, Mário Chamie, Carlos Nejar, Waly Salomão, Raduan Nassar, Milton Hatoum, Alberto Mussa, and Marcelo Maluf in Brazil; Shakib Arslan, Juan Khury, Pablo Achem, Juan José Saer, Jorge Asís, and Durval Abdala in Argentina; Benedicto Chauqui, Edith Chahín, Ema Cabar Kuncar, Mahfúd Massís, Roberto Saráh, Miguel Littín, Andrés Sabella, and Walter Garib in Chile; Giovanno Quessep, Luis Fayad, and Juan Gossaín in Colombia; Héctor Azar, Bárbara Jacobs, and Carlos Martí- nez Assad in Mexico; Jorge Elías Adoum and Jorge Enrique Adoum in Ecuador; among many others. Notably also, many prominent Latin Ameri- can writers without Arab ancestry have written about Arab or Muslim culture and/or Arab immigrants—including José Martí, Malba Tahan, Jorge Luis Borges, Jorge Amado, Gabriel García Márquez, Ana Miranda, and Nélida Piñon. The current special issue offers a small sampling of scho- larship and literary works from this enormous field, still largely understudied.
References
Hassan, Waïl S. Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Hourani, Albert. “Introduction.” Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, eds. The Lebanese
in the World: A Century of Emigration. London: Tauris, 1992. 3–11.
Igel, Regina. “Ni halal ni kosher: Inmigrantes sirio-libaneses y judíos en la literatura bra- sileña.” In Árabes y judíos en América Latina: Historia, representaciones, y desafíos.
Ed. Ignacio Klich. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2006. 306–35.
Jamal, Amaney and Nadine Naber, eds. Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11:
From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Khater, Akram Fouad. Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in
Lebanon, 1870-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Mehdi, Beverlee Turner, ed. The Arabs in America, 1492-1977: A Chronology & Fact
Book. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1978.
Ṣaydaḥ, Jūrj. Adabuna wa urabā’unā fī al-mahājia al-amrīkiyya. 3rd ed. Beirut: Dār al-
’Ilm lil-Malāyīn, 1964.
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