(re) creating ethnicity middle eastern immigration to brazil

(Re) Creating Ethnicity: Middle Eastern Immigration to BrazilAuthor(s): Jeffrey LesserSource: The Americas, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jul., 1996), pp. 45-65Published by: Academy of American Franciscan HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1007473Accessed: 20/10/2010 16:03

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The Americas 53:1 July 1996, 45-65

Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History

(RE) CREATING ETHNICITY: MIDDLE EASTERN IMMIGRATION TO BRAZIL

The Legend of the Town of Marataize There once was a group of peddlers who sold their wares in the interior of Espirito Santos, going from place to place by mule. One of the peddlers was named Aziz and his wife, Marat, was considered the leader of the women who stayed behind as the men went out to sell their goods. These women went out every day to wash clothes in a place called the "Turkish bath" (bacia das turcas). Over time, the town that grew up around the place where the women washed their clothes came to be called Marataize in honor of the wife (Marat) of Aziz.'

n Brazil hyphenated identities are very real in spite of the fact that elite culture aggressively rejects such social constructions. Thus, while there are no linguistic categories that acknowledge hyphenated ethnicity (a

third generation Brazilian of Japanese descent remains "Japanese" while a fourth generation Brazilian of Lebanese descent may become a "turco," an "arabe," a "sirio" or a "sirio-libanese"), in fact immigrant communities aggressively tried to negotiate a status that allowed for both Brazilian nationality and ethnic difference. Immigrant groups in Brazil often did this by claiming a more "original" or "authentic" Brazilianess than members of the European descended elite, often via active constructions of social myths specific to the Brazilian milieu (see "The Legend of the Town of Mara- taize" above). This is possible since immigrant ethnicity is not some "im- mutable primordial indentit(ies)" but rather, as Anthony Cohen and others have suggested, a self-conscious and symbolic means by which boundaries were built.2 This means that ethnic identification is extremely malleable,

1 This story has been told to me in various forms of which I repeat only one. A slightly different version can be found in Claude Fahd Hajjar, Imigragdo d rabe: 100 anos de reflexdo (Sio Paulo: Icone Editora, 1985), p. 145.

2 Jay O'Brien, "Towards a Reconstitution of Ethnicity: Capitalist Expansion and Cultural Dynamics in Sudan" in Jay O'Brien and William Roseberry, eds., Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 126-138; Anthony Cohen, "Culture as Identity, An Anthropologist's View," New Literary History 24:1 (Winter 1993), 195-209. Thomas C. Holt, "Marking: Race, Race-making, and the Writing of History," American Historical Review 100:1 (February 1995), 1-20.

45

46 (RE) CREATING ETHNICITY

allowing for internal group difference even while permitting outsiders to remake the reality of immigrant heterogeneity into the fiction of common culture. Over time, this fiction may become fact, and post-migration identity is often a conscious and purposeful creation that derives from resistance and solidarity even when no such ethnicity existed prior to migration, such as in the case of the "sirio-libanese.'"3 One means by which to examine the construction of immigrant ethnicity in Brazil is to look at the 107,000 Middle Eastern immigrants who entered Brazil between 1884 and 1939. Arabs were particularly difficult for Brazilians to contextualize since they were not considered "black," "white," or "yellow" in color and frequently practiced Christianity. Native Brazilians imagined Arabs to be members of an exotic "race" even though they were often physically in- distinguishable from the normative "typical Brazilian." While many Mid- dle Eastern immigrants succeeded economically, they appeared uninterested in investing themselves wholly of Europeanized elite culture.

The varied images surely came in part from Portugal. Iberia's conquest by the Moors, the thrill of European reconquest and the excesses of the Inqui- sition, and the clear Arabic influence on the Portuguese language, made Arabs appear both friend and enemy, as a somehow familiar "other." In 1810, when "the Brazilian people saw a Persian for the first time," the view was that they were "as sacred as they were profane."4 This meant that Portuguese travelers to the Middle East, like Eqa de Queiroz who traveled to Egypt in 1869 when he was twenty-three years old, could easily find an audience for their Orientalist musings among Brazil's elite.5 Jose Bonifficio Andrada e Silva, considered by many the architect of Brazil's independence, saw the Middle East through Portuguese eyes as he filled a small notebook with comments on the commercial success of the Phoenicians and "in particular the Syrians," all the while carefully distinguishing between different ethnic groups in "Arabia."6 Nineteenth-century French crackpot theories suggesting that King Solomon ("ancestor of the Syrians") had sailed the Amazon River and that the Quechua and Portuguese languages

3 A number of scholars take the contrary approach. Richard T. Schaefer, Racial and Ethnic Groups Fourth Ed. (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education, 1990), pp. 9-12; Michael Novak, "The New Ethnicity," in John A. Kromkowski, ed. Race and Ethnic Relations 94/95 (Guil- ford, CT.: The Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc. 1994), pp. 169-174.

4 Luiz Gonqalves dos Santos (Padre Perereca), Mem6ria para servir d hist6ria do reino do Brasil (1825) (Rio de Janeiro: Zelio Valverde,1943). 2 vols., vol. 1, p. 333.

5 Eqa de Queiroz, O Egipto: Notas de Viagem (1926) Fifth edition (Porto: Lello and Irmio, 1946), pp. 123-140.

6 The twenty-four page notebook was handwritten and had footnotes but no title. Coleqio Jose Bonifdicio--O Patriarca. Lata 191 Doc. 34 M. 4880. Instituto Hist6rico e Geogrifico Brasileiro--Rio de Janeiro.

JEFFREY LESSER 47

were offshoots of ancient Hebrew were first published in Brazil in the 1870s and eighty years later continued to be repeated by respected intellectuals.' In the twentieth century, Brazilians who looked to Portugal for self- understanding, like Gilberto Freyre or Luis da Camara Cascudo, searched for the traces of a "Moorish presence" that could be found in their own Lusified identities.8 Even the nativist leader of the fascistic Agqo Integralista Brasileira, Plinio Salgado, conflated Brazilian and Arab identities in his diary of a 1930 trip to the Middle East (which was only published in 1954), noting that ". . . I hear, coming from one of the boats. .. (in) the guttural accent of the Asiatics, the roguish [carnival] music of Brazil, At the far limits of the Mediterranean, with its indescribable flavor. We are in

Beirut.'"9 Leading members of the Arab-Brazilian community frequently espoused the intersection of Arab and Brazilian culture by re-defining ethnic differences within a Brazilian national (and nationalist) identity, claiming that Arabs were more "Brazilian" than most Brazilians. The prize-winning poet, author, and commentator Salomao Jorge was perhaps the most famous: his short article on "The Arab in Brazilian Civilization" awkwardly mimicked Gilberto Freyre's miscegenationist ideas about Moors and Portu- guese even while asserting that Middle Eastern culture was more "original" than that of colonial Brazil. ' Other books by Middle Eastern intellectuals in Brazil were similar in intent although not in style, frequently commencing with photographs of the author's father in European dress and placing the

7 Vicomte Enrique Onffroy de Thoron, Voyages des flottes de Salomon et d'Hiram en Amerique: position geographique de Parvaim, Ophir & Tarschisch (Paris: Imp. G. Towne, 1868). "O Rei Salomdo no Rio Amazonas" in Jiinior Amarilio, As vantagens da

immigraqgo syria no Brasil: em torno de uma

polemica entre os Snrs. Herbert V. Levy e Salomdo Jorge, no "Diario de Sdo Paulo" (Rio de Janeiro: Off. Gr. da S. A. A Noite, 1925), pp. 87-103; Viriato Correia, "O Rei Salomdo no Rio Amazonas," in Salomdo Jorge, Album da Colonia Sirio Libanesa no Brasil (Sdo Paulo: Sociedade Impressora Brasileira, 1948), pp. 471-479.

8 Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. 2nd English-Language Edition; Translated by Samuel Putnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 208-220; This passage is included in Salomao Jorge's Album da Colonia Sirio Libanesa no Brasil as "A Influencia do Mouro na Civilizaqgo do Brasil," (Sdo Paulo: Sociedade Impressora Brasileira, 1948), pp. 39-66; Luis da Camara Cascudo, Mouros, Franceses e Judeus (Tres Presengas no Brasil), (Rio de Janeiro: Editbra Letras e Artes, 1967), pp. 17-52.

9 Plinio Salgado, "Oriente (Impressdes de Viagens) 1930," in Obras Completas vol. 18 (Sao Paulo: Edit6ra das Americas, 1954-56), p. 307.

10 Salomdo Jorge, Tudo Pelo Brasil (Sdo Paulo: n.p. 1943), p. 147; New edition published as Tudo pelo Brasil : discursos, ensaios e artigos literarios (Sdo Paulo: Nova Epoca Editorial, [1975 or 1976?]); Salomdo Jorge, Album da Colonia Sirio Libanesa no Brasil, (Sdo Paulo: Sociedade Impressora Brasileira, 1948); Taufik Duoun, A Emigragdo Sirio-Libanesa as Terras de Promissdo (Sdo Paulo: Tipografia Arabs, 1944); Jamil Safady, O Caft e 0 Mascate (Sdo Paulo: Editora Safady, 1973); Wadih Safady, C(enas e cendrios dos caminhos de minha vida (Belo Horizonte: Establecimentos Graificos Santa Maria, 1966); Sadalla Amin Chanem, Impressdes de viagem (Libano-Brasil) (Niteroi: Graphica Brasil, 1936).


name used in Brazil over the name given at birth. These pictures were often labeled with dedications in which references to the "Paitria" were not clearly identifiable as referring to Brazil or Lebanon (or Syria). At the same time, there was the constant inference that Brazil had assimilated to the older Middle Eastern culture as much as the actual Middle Eastern immigrants had assimilated to Brazil: in other words that acculturation, and not assimilation, has taken place on both sides.

Tanus Jorge Bastani's O Libano e os Libaneses no Brasil is typical of a genre of books produced by Middle Eastern immigrants or their children in that it equally glorified both Brazil and Lebanon. Bastani's father Jorge (Giries) had emigrated from Sarba, Lebanon in 1895 and Tanus's dedicatory photograph and comments talk about his father's help in creating "the greatness of the Fatherland of his sons." While some seventy percent of O Libano e os Libane^ses recounts a glorified history of Lebanon, it is in fact the smaller section on Brazil where the attempt to create a Arab-Brazilian hyphenated identity is most clear. Asserting the existence of a "traditional Luso-Lebanese friendship that dates from the Crusades" Bastani argues that Brazilians and nineteenth and twentieth century Middle Eastern immigrants have a material and psychological shared culture that allowed the easy Brazilianization of "Arab" culture. Thus, according to Bastani, Brazilian artifacts like the "bombachas" (leggings) used by gauchos and churrasco (the famous Brazilian meat grill) were actually Lebanese in origin and the fact of their incorporation as part of Brazilian culture indicated the special place that Arab immigrants should be accorded as part of the base of Bra- zilian identity. Along these lines, Bastani (and other authors as well), re- constructed items as simple as Brazilian street food like kibe or cubes of meat on a skewer, as showing that Lebanon and Brazil are "very united (and) . . . dedicated to sincere and reciprocal friendship." Not surprisingly, the final paragraphs of O Libano e os Libaneses quote a song "Libano! Brasil!" whose words characterize Brazilians and Lebanese as "brothers." Brothers come from the same biological stock and thus Arabs became Bra- zilians and vice-versa."I

One reason that Middle Eastern immigrant intellectuals were so intent on constructing a place for Arabs as Brazilians was that images of "turcos" were far from favorable. Anti-Arab prejudices first appeared in Brazil in the

" Tanus Jorge Bastani, O Libano e os Libaneses no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: n.p., 1945), pp. 133, 137.

JEFFREY LESSER 49

nineteenth century when large numbers of immigrants from both the countries of the Levant (Mashriq) and French and Spanish-speaking North Africa (Maghrib) began to make Brazil one of the centers of the mahjar (literally "the emigration" but taken to mean the Arab diaspora).12 In 1857, for example, a planter from Sao Paulo linked Brazil's imperial monopolistic economic legislation that "excluded German (immigrants) from black [Af- rican] work" with the exclusion today of Christian and Jews from property in Turkey."13 As Brazil's image as a hospitable nation for relocation spread, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern Arab immigrants starting entering Brazil, leading both intellectuals and politicians to express concern. In the early 1920s Cezar Magalhaens, a professor at the Academia Brasileira de Ciencias Econ6micas, Politicas e Sociaes, blamed Brazil's "backwardness" on the "Muslim passivity" it had inherited through the Portuguese. 4 Bra- zilian diplomats in the Middle East uniformly dismissed the area they worked as "incredibly backwards, lacking in culture, with neither admin- istration nor organized work forces" while claiming that "all Muslin countries impose the most despotic absolutism."'5 While initial images of Arabs may have been generated by Brazilians looking to the Middle East, late nineteenth century notions were increasingly formed by contact with Arab immigrants in Brazil. Yet the earliest large group of Arab immigrants to Brazil were neither Muslims nor Christians. They were Jews. A few hundred Moroccan (or Maghribi) Jewish families moved to Rio de Janeiro beginning in the early 1860s. While the Spanish-Moroccan War (1859- 1860) may have been the catalyst for their flight, deeper issues propelled these migrants.16 While historically some Jews had even worked as business

12 There is an extensive non-Arabic bibliography on Arab immigration to countries other than Brazil. See Ignacio Klich, "Introduction to the Sources for the History of the Middle Easterners in Latin America," Temas de Africa y Asia 2-Africanos y Mediorientales en America (Siglos XVIII-XX) (Buenos Aires, 1993), 205-233; Michael W. Suleiman, "Los airabes en America Latina: bibliograffa preliminar," Estudios migratorios latinoamericanos, 9:26 (April, 1994), pp. 165-188; Ignacio Klich, "Sources on the Lebanese and other Middle Easterners in Latin America." Centre for Lebanese Studies (Oxford), Papers on Lebanon no. 16 (March, 1995).

13 From an unsigned, reserved and confidential letter of 5 September 1857 under the heading "Imi- graqio." Lata 477 Doc. 21, Coleqio Instituto Hist6rico. Instituto Hist6rico e Geogrifico Brasileiro-Rio de Janeiro.

14 Cezar Magalhaens, Pela Brazilidade (Discursos e Conferencias) (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. A. Per- nambucana Hermes Poffes, 1925), p. 6.

15 Jos6 Daniel Colaco (Consul) to Jodo da M. Machado (Min de Rel Ex), 20 August 1884. 02- Reparticies Consulares Brasileiras, Tangier-Offcios--1876-1890-265/1/10. Arquivo Hist6rico Itam- araty, Rio de Janeiro [hereafter AHI-R].

16 Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco: 1862-1962. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), pp. 133-137; Robert Ricard, "Notes sur l'6migration de Israel1ites marocains en Amerique espagnole et au Br6sil," Revue Africaine 88 (1944).


agents for the Sultan, living in a Muslim world left many with a profound sense of ethnic minority status in spite of their economic positions. This, and their multilingualism-Arabic and Spanish were used for business, French and Hebrew were studied at the Alliance Isra6lite Universelle (AIU) schools that had been set up in Tangier and other port towns, and Haquitia was spoken at home-gave them a transnational perspective. 7 As Moroccan economic opportunity diminished in relation to other areas of the Arab world, Jews began to consider emigration, some leaving for Egypt and Algeria, but many of those educated at the Alliance schools choosing to leave the region altogether. According to a report from one of the AIU's directors, by the 1880s ninety-five percent of the boys completing their education at an Alliance school went to South America.18 By 1890 more than one thousand Maghribi Jews had migrated to the state of Parn, in Brazil's Amazon region. The rubber economy appeared booming and towns like Belem were filled with peddlers and small merchants who would soon become well off.19 Yet Brazil had another attraction for Morocco's Jews: naturalization certificates were fairly easily to obtain. This technicality of Brazilian law (or lack of it) was of great interest to Maghribi Jews who, in spite of their economic success, feared that "yellow fever (and) insects" made Brazil "a country of sickness." Brazilian nationality thus allowed them to return to Morocco after seven or eight years with both a sense of security and significant sums of money. They experienced a leap in status because of their wealth and worldliness and there are reports that many of those Jewish men who had not migrated experienced a decrease in their marriage prospects.20 Mimom Elbis was typical of these Maghribi immigrants. He emigrated to Belem at the end of 1892 and after a year moved to Rio de Janeiro. Six months later he was naturalized and returned to Morocco leading the Brazilian Consul in Tangier to complain that Elbis, who had left

17 Edmund Burke, III, Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and Resistance, 1860-1912 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 36-37; Salomio Serebrenick, and Elias Lipiner, Breve Hist6ria dos Judeus no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Ediqhes Biblos Ltda., 1962), p. 95.

18 Mair LUvy, "Rapport sur l'Emigration ' Tetouan" (1891-1892), Archives of the Alliance Israelite

Universelle (Thtouan) VI B 25, reprinted in Sarah Leibovici, Chronique des Juifs de Tgtouan (1860- 1896) (Paris: Editions Maisonneuve & Larose, 1984), pp. 287-296; Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco: 1862-1962 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), p. 137; Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1991), p. 38.

19 Barbara Weinstein, The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850-1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 50-51, pp. 259-260; Abraham Ramiro Bentes, Primeira Comunidade Israelita Brasileira: TradiCdes, Genealogia, Pre- Hist6ria (Rio de Janeiro: Grifica Borsoi, 1989).

20 Robert Ricard, "L'emigration des Juifs marocains en Amerique du sud," Revue de Geographie Marocaine 7:8 (2nd and 3rd trimesters, 1928), 1-6, 3; Isaac Benchimol, "La langue espagnole au Maroc," Revue des ecoles de l'AIU 2 (July-September, 1901), 127-133, 128.

JEFFREY LESSER 51

his family in Brazil, "does not know how to speak any language but Arabic which is typical of the Hebrews from the Eastern ports. "21 The questionable legality of Elbis rapidly gained naturalization certificate was only a surface issue; the consul's real concern was the introduction of a new, and poten- tially dangerous, ethnic stream into Brazil. The problem was that Brazil's leaders had divided the potential immigrant world into two simple groups; undesirable Africans and Asians who were banned by law and desirable European and North Americans who were to be attracted with subsidies. Moroccan Jews arriving on their own were simply never part of the equation and so there were no barriers to their entry. This concerned diplomats in Rio de Janeiro, who often suggested that the Ministry of Justice be more careful in granting naturalization certificates in the future.22 No one took such measures. By the first years of the twentieth century there were over six hundred naturalized Brazilians living in Morocco, all of whom looked to Brazil for protection, especially in times of crisis. Simdo (or Simon) Nah- miash moved to Para in 1879 when he was twenty-three years old. Three years later he requested a naturalization certificate, claiming a "firm inten- tion to continue residing in the Empire and to adopt it as my fatherland."'23 The entire process took about a month and some years later Nahmiash returned to Tangier, Brazilian citizenship in hand. He set up an importing business and in 1901 became engaged in a land rights battle with a local Muslim merchant and found himself arguing his case before the Shraa Tribunal (Native High Court). Not only did he lose the case, he also found himself held in contempt of court, an offense punishable by prison. As police arrived at Nahmiash's house to make the arrest, he raised the Bra- zilian flag, but to no avail.24 Nahmiash immediately contacted the Brazilian Consul, A. Mauritz de Calinerio, for help. Calinerio was less than excited about helping the "Hebrew" but feared that if he did not do so the "semi- barbarous" Moroccan political system would be perceived as having de- feated the Brazilian "Spirit of Justice.'"25 Strong measures were needed and

21 See naturalization case of Mimom Elbais in Egon and Frieda Wolff, Diciondrio Biogrdfico IV: Processos de Naturalizagdo de Israelitas, Seculo XIX (Rio de Janeiro: n.p., 1987), p. 211; Jose Daniel Colaco (Consul) to Carlos de Carvalho (Minister of Foreign Affairs), 18 September 1895. 02-Reparticies Consulares Brasileiras. Tangier-Offcios-1891-1895-265/1/11. AHI-R.

22 Ministry of Justice annex to Jose Daniel Colaco (Consul) to Carlos de Carvalho (Minister of Foreign Affairs), 18 September 1895. 02-Reparticies Consulares Brasileiras. Tangier-Oficios-1891-1895- 265/1/11. AHI-R.

23 Letter of Simio Nahmias in Egon and Frieda Wolff, Diciondrio Biogrdfico IV: Processos de Naturalizagdo de Israelitas, Seculo XIX (Rio de Janeiro: n.p., 1987), pp. 349.

24 Al-shogreb-Al Aksa (Tangier), 27 August 1902. In 02- Reparticies Consulares Brasileiras, Tang- ier--Offcios-1900-1925-265/1/13. AHI-R.

25 Confidential letter of A. Mauritz de Calinerio (Consul in Tangier) to Olyntho Maximo de Magal-


the Consul's threat to break Brazilian/Moroccan relations if Nahmiash was not released made international headlines.26 While there is no evidence that the publicity had any effect, Calinerio's "private representations" (probably in the form of cash), did lead to the release of Nahmiash. One result of Calinerio's success was that growing numbers of naturalized Brazilians demanded, and received, the help of the Consulate in Tangier. This angered both the Brazilians, who in 1900 decided that only those Moroccans naturalized before 1880 would be considered Brazilians, and the Moroccan government, which had cordial relations with Brazil "in everything and for everything as long as it is not related to the Hebrew Moroccans, naturalized Brazilians."27 "In everything and for everything," however, meant little since an examination of Itamarati documents on relations with Morocco show an almost exclusive focus on the question of how to treat Brazilian Jews of Moroccan birth. On March 4, 1903, a solution was found: Brazil closed its diplomatic offices and turned the problem over to the Portu- guese.28 The end of North African Jewish immigration did not end all Middle Eastern entries to Brazil and after 1904 over ninety percent of those entering from the Middle East came from the regions today denominated Syria and Lebanon.29 Between 1904 and 1914 some 54,000 Middle East- erners entered Brazil and French consular reports during the 1920s suggest that there were about 130,000 Syrian and Lebanese immigrants in Sao Paulo and Santos, 20,000 in Pardi, 15,000 in Rio de Janeiro, 14,000 in Rio Grande

haes (Minister of Foreign Affairs), 15 September 1902. In 02- Reparticdes Consulares Brasileiras, Tangier-Oficios-1900-1925- 265/1/13. AHI-R.

26 El Imparcial 20 August 1902. 27 Confidential letter of A. Mauritz de Calinerio (Consul in Tangier) to Olyntho Maximo de Magal-

haes (Minister of Foreign Relations), 6 October 1902; 02- Reparticdes Consulares Brasileiras, Tangier- Oficios-1900-1925- 265/1/13. AHI-R.

28 Letter of William R. Gordon (Brazilian Vice Consul in Tangier) to Itamarati, 4 March 1903. 02- Reparticaes Consulares Brasileiras, Tangier--Offcios-1900-1925-265/1/13. AHI-R.

29 Since Arab immigrants were categorized in different ways by the Brazilian government, statistics rarely coincide, making exact demographic examinations impossible. "Discriminaqao por Nacionalidade dos Imigrantes Entrando no Brasil no Periodo 1884-1939" Revista de Imigragdo e Colonizacdo 1:3, (July 1940), pp. 617-642; "Movimento Imigrat6rio no Brasil de 1819 a 1947" cited in J. Fernando Carneiro, Imigragdo e Colonizagdo no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia, 1950); Revista de Imigragdo e Colonizagdo [hereafter RIC] 1:4 (October 1940), pp. 617-638; Oswaldo M. S. Truzzi, "Etnicidade e diferenciagqo entre imigrantes sfriolibaneses em Sao Paulo," Estudios migratorios latinoamericanos, 9:26 (April, 1994), 7-46, 18; Meir Zamir, The Formation of Modern Lebanon (Lon- don: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 15; See also Taufik Duoun, A Emigragdo Sirio-Libanesa as Terras de Promissao (Sao Paulo: Tipografia Arab6, 1944), p. 89; Rollie E. Poppino, Brazil: The Land and People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 194; J. Fernando Carneiro, Imigragdo e ColonizaCdo no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia, 1950), p. 64; Clark S. Knowlton, "Spatial and Social Mobility of The Syrians and Lebanese in the City of Sdo Paulo, Brazil" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1955), Table 1, p. 58-59; Published in Portuguese as Sirios e Libaneses (Sdo Paulo: Editora Anhenmbi, 1960).

JEFFREY LESSER 53

do Sul and 12,271 in Bahia.30 Most Arabs entered Brazil with Ottoman passports and were thus classified under the "turco" category.31 Both the motives for emigration and the choice of Brazil over the more popular United States and Argentina varied widely.32 An internal migration from Lebanon's northern mountain valleys to the more economically viable southern Shuf created new population pressures that combined with the religious and political persecution of Christians.33 Families thus encouraged their sons to emigrate and agents or brokers (simsars) traveled throughout the region encouraging and organizing the migratory streams.34 Yet what- ever internal dynamics may have convinced Syrians and Lebanese to emigrate in extremely high numbers (one scholar suggests that by 1915 one quarter of Lebanon's population had emigrated), a perception of political, social and economic development in Brazil made these emigrants into immigrants.35 Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century steamships filled with people and goods regularly plied the oceans between the Middle East and Europe, then continued on to Latin America. This made migration to Brazil easy, and decreasingly expensive. Brazil's seemingly smooth transition from empire to republic, at least when compared to the civil wars that other Latin American countries (and Lebanon) had endured, led many Middle Easterners to place faith in Brazil as a nation with a clear vision of the future.

Two important components of Arab migration to Brazil are religion and remigration. Although statistics for religious background are incomplete, most Lebanese and Syrian immigrants in Brazil were Catholic or Orthodox, representative of general emigratory trends to the Americas, while another fifteen percent were Muslin.36 An analysis of statistics from the port of

30 Ignacio Klich, "Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina: An Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888-1914." Table 3, in The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration, Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, eds. (London and New York: I.B. Tauris and St. Martins Press, 1992), p. 271; Kohei Hashimoto, "Lebanese Population Movement, 1920-1939: Towards a Study," Table A. 1; in The Lebanese in the World, pp. 89, 91.

31 Jamil Safady, O Cafe e 0 Mascate (Sio Paulo: Editora Safady, 1973), pp. 115-116. 32 There are no exact statistics on Arab emigration. According to Kohei Hashimoto there were 688,

917 migrants between 1921 and 1926. 29.0 percent (199,785) resided in the United States, 25.7 percent (177,051) in Brasil, and 16.0 percent (110,226) in Argentina. Other significant populations in the Americas could be found in Mexico, Cuba, Canada, and Venezuela. "Lebanese Population Movement, 1920-1939: Towards a Study," figure C. 1, in The Lebanese in the World, p. 107.

33 Albert Hourani, "Introduction" in The Lebanese in the World, pp. 4-7; Gordon, Lebanon, p. 112. 34 Charles Issawi, "The Historical Background of Lebanese Emigration, 1800-1914" in The Lebanese

in the World, pp. 13-31. 35 A. Ruppin, "Migration from and to Syria, 1860-1914," in The Economic History of the Middle

East, 1800-1914, Charles Issawi, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 269-273. 36 David C. Gordon, Lebanon: The Fragmented Nation (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 112.


Santos (Sdo Paulo) shows that between 1908 and 1941 almost 65 percent of the Lebanese and Syrians entering Brazil professed Catholicism, with among those identified as Syrians Greek Orthodoxy was common.37 Re- gardless of religion, another important component of Middle Eastern migration to Brazil was outmigration. Statistics from Santos for the years 1908-1936 show a remigration rate of almost 46 percent (43,596 entries and 19,951 exits of "turcos" and "sirios").38 Indeed, return to Lebanon and Syria (as well as re- emigration to non-Middle Eastern destinations) was an important aspect of the Arab experience in Brazil. Father Jose de Castro visited the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Zahl6 (Zahleh) in July, 1925 and reported meeting Portuguese speakers throughout the country. In one place the Brazilian national anthem was sung spontaneously in his honor.39 In the mid-1930s some seventy percent of the inhabitants of Zahl6 spoke Portu- guese and the main thoroughfare's name, "Rua Brazil," was painted in enormous letters on the pavement itself.40 The Beirut neighborhood of Al- sufi had its own "Avenida Brasil" and was known as the "bairro dos brasilieros."

The regular movement of Middle Easterners in and out of Brazil, and the fact that many Arabs worked as peddlers in interior regions, helps to explain the transformation of nineteenth century elite images of Arabs into wide- spread popular ones in the twentieth century. Peddling was a prototype of Arab economic integration in Brazil since few immigrants arrived with the capital needed to buy a shop or factory, and Brazil's tertiary sector of retail trade and consumer credit were virtually nonexistent outside of a few cities. Arab peddlers began making their mark during Brazil's late nineteenth-

37 "Entradas de Imigrantes Pelo Porto de Santos, Segundo a Religido, 1908-1936" Secretaria da Agricultura, Indtistria

e Comercio, Boletim da Directoria de Terras, Colonizacdo e Imigragdo 1:1 (October, 1937), 64; Secretaria da Agricultura, Indtistria

e Comercio, Boletim do Servigo de Imigragdo e ColonizaCdo 2 (October, 1940), 155 and Boletim do Servigo de Imigragdo e ColonizaCdo 4 (December, 1949), 11 and 53. In 1939, for example, 63 of the Lebanese entering with so-called "temporary visas" were listed as Catholic and 22 were listed as Muslim. For Syrians 52 were listed as Orthodox, 24 as Catholic, and 17 as Muslim. These numbers, it must be emphasized, are far from conclusive. RIC 1:4 (October 1940), 127-128.

38 "Movimento Migratorio Pelo Porto do Santos, 1908-1936," Table A-4, Boletim da Directoria de Terras, Colonizagdo e Immigragdo 1:1 (October 1937), p. 54; After 1923 Turkish Jews made up a significant part of the emigration of "Turcos."

39 "Como os brasileiros foram recebidos no Libano-Uma admiravel impressdo do Padre Jose de Castro" in Junior Amarilio, As vantagens da immigragao syria no Brasil : em torno de uma polemica entre os Snrs. Herbert V. Levy e Salomdo Jorge, no "Diario de Sdto Paulo" (Rio de Janeiro: Off. Gr. da S. A. A Noite,1925), pp. 135-156; Also see Sadalla Amin Chanem, Impressdes de viagem (Libano- Brasil) (Nichteroy: Graphica Brasil, 1936), pp. 85-86.

40 Sadalla Amin Chanem, Impressdes de viagem (Libano-Brasil), pp. 24-25, 83.

JEFFREY LESSER 55

century coffee boom and by 1900 were widely identified with this occupa- tion. Known popularly as mascates (peddlers), Arabs often supplied house- hold and dry goods to workers on the coffee fazendas (plantations) or to urban dwellers in the lower socio-economic classes. Arab peddlers could be found throughout the country, generally moving west along with new rail lines. A group of some ninety Syrians settled in Juiz de Fora (Minas Gerais) in the years around World War I and virtually all worked as peddlers. The Feres family, from Syria's Akar region, peddled their wares in the so-called "Mineiro Triangle" in Minas Gerais State's Guaxup6 and Te6filo Otni region. The elder Feres was robbed and killed as he wandered through the region and his son, the poet Assis Feres titled a poem "O Mascate" (The Peddler) in his honor: ". . . When we came from the East, God's sacred land, we found the new born land ... How sad, this dubious path, carpeted with pain! . .

."41

The numbers, the pre-migratory images, and the dispersion within Brazil, made the Arab presence a subject of frequent comment. An angry 1888 editorial in the newspaper Mariannense (Mariana, Minas Gerais) complained that "throngs" of "Turkish vagabonds" in Brazil treated their children in an inhumane manner and were dangerous because they used outdated agricultural methods. There was no doubt to the solution to the problem: "Lock the doors so that they do not infiltrate our organism (bring- ing) instead of strong blood, the evil virus of an indolent people.'"42 The police also harped on the entry of Arabs, emphasizing that foreign prison residents outnumbered Brazilian ones by a substantial margin. The "arabe," "turco-asiatico" or "turco" category appeared frequently in police reports and in 1897 more than ten percent (30 of 271) of the foreigners incarcerated in the Sao Paulo city prison were "turcos," the second largest group after Italians.43 Local residents in Rio Preto (state of Sao Paulo) complained in 1898 that eight of the twelve commercial establishments in the one-thousand inhabitant city were owned by Arabs. Alderman Porffrio Pimentel even led a movement to erase all traces of "foreign interference in

41 See the oral histories in Wilson de Lima Baston, Os Sirios em Juiz de Fora (Juiz de Fora: Ediqies Paraibuna, 1988), pp. 47-186; A novel that treats this theme is Emil Farhat, Dinheiro na Estrada: Uma saga de imigrantes (Sio Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 1986).

42 "A emigraqio turca," Mariannense (Mariana, MG). Reprinted in full in A Immigraado-Orgdo da Sociedade Central da Immigradao, Anno V: 43 (March 1888), 3.

43 "Relat6rio apresentado ao Vice-Presidente do Estado pelo Secretario dos Negocios da Justica de S. Paulo Jose Gettilio Monteiro Relativo ao Anno de 1897 (Sio Paulo: Typ. Espindola, Siqueira & Comp., 1898), p. 151; "Relat6rio apresentado ao Secretario dos Negocios da Justiqa do Estado de S. Paulo pelo Chefe de Policia Theodoro Dias de Carvalho Junior em 31 de Janeiro de 1895" (Sio Paulo: Typ. Espindola, Siqueira & Comp., 1898), p. 59; Thomas H. Holloway, Policing Rio de Janeiro: Repression and Resistance in a Nineteenth-Century City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 255.


public life," proposing in 1906 that all "turco" and "airabe" businesses be obligated to have a "Brazilian" accountant or face a fine. Those who spoke Arabic near a Brazilian were to be fined on the spot but this suggestion was rejected by Rio Preto's Justice Commission as "violent and absurd.'"44 In the early twentieth century a number of factors led Arabs to both rapidly integrate into Brazilian society and reinforce their pre-migratory culture. The accumulation of capital in peddling, for example, led many Arab immigrants to invest in urban production rather than rural distribution. Thus, when in 1907 the municipal governments of Sio Paulo and Rio de Janeiro began to construct formal markets and force peddlers to sell or lease spaces, business nucleation helped spur individual economic growth and cultural maintenance among former Arab peddlers. Typical of immigrant communities, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants grouped their shops in the inexpen- sive areas where they resided, often living on the upper floors of the build- ings they owned or rented for shops or factories. These neighborhoods, strategically located between markets and the railroad stations so that shop- pers had to pass through then when returning home from work, were widely identified by both elites and working class Brazilians as "Arab."''45 By the early 1920s Syrian and Lebanese immigrants and their descendants domi- nated small-scale textile sales and the dry goods trade in most major Bra- zilian cities.

The growing concentration of Arabs in specific urban neighborhoods led to a growth of an Arabic language press that had a dual, and contradictory, function: it helped maintain pre-migratory culture through its use of Arabic while at the same time encouraging integration by providing aid in finding urban jobs and housing. In 1914 fourteen different Arabic newspapers cir- culated in Brazil and even the immigrants themselves were surprised that "the collectivity could sustain such a high number.46 Brazil's first Arabic

44 A. Tavares de Almeida, Oeste Paulista: A experiencia etnografica e cultural (Rio de Janeiro: Alba Editora, 1943), pp. 171-173.

45 Clark S. Knowlton, "The Social and Spatial Mobility of the Syrian and Lebanese Community in Sao Paulo, Brazil," The Lebanese in the World, pp. 285-311. Jose Carlos G. Durand, "Formaqao do pequeno empresariado textil em Sao Paulo (1880-1950)" in Pequena Empresa: 0 comportamento empresarial na acumuladao e na luta pela sobrevivincia. Henrique Rattner, ed., vol. 1. (Sio Paulo: Brasiliense, 1985), p. 112; Morse, From Community, p. 254; Safa, L'?migration Libanaise, pp. 55-57.

46 Wadih Safady, enas e cendrios dos camninhos de minha vida (Belo Horizonte: Establecimentos Grificos Santa Maria, 1966), p. 146; Claude Fahd Hajjar, Imigragdo drabe: 100 anos de reflexdo (Sio Paulo: Icone Editora, 1985), p. 70; Joseph L. Love, Sdo Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), p. 91; Elie Safa, L'?migration Libanaise (Beirut: Universit6 Saint-Joseph, 1960), p. 64-66; Viscount Philip di Tarrazi's study of the Arab press noted the existence of ninety five different Arabic newspapers and magazines in Brazil prior to 1933. Ta'rikh al-sihafah al-'Arabiyah (History of the Arab Press) (Beirut?: al- Matba'ah al-'Adabiyyah, 1913-33). A recent study

JEFFREY LESSER 57

newspaper, Al Faidh (Al-Fayha), was founded in the city of Campinas in November, 1895 and Al Brasil was founded less than six months later in Santos. Within a year the two papers had merged and moved to Sdo Paulo and by 1902 their were three different Arabic language newspapers in Sdo Paulo and two more in Rio de Janeiro.47 Sao Paulo's Arab literary circle, the Al-' Usba al-Andalusiyya (Brazilian New Andalusian League), published an internationally renowned monthly that placed Brazil in the center of mahjar literature. Ilyas Farhat (1893-1976) moved from Kafr Shima, Lebanon to Brazil in 1910, when he was seventeen. While working as a peddler he helped found the literary review Al-Jadid which published for a decade beginning in 1919. Another Lebanese immigrant, Rashd Salim Khuiri (better know as al-Shafir al-Qarawi or "the village poet"), moved to Brazil in 1913 and, like Farhat worked as a peddler in order to finance his poetry which was published in Arabic-language newspapers throughout the world.48 The al- Ma'ldf brothers, Fauzi (1899-1930) and Shafiq (1905-1976), came from a distinguished Lebanese family from Zahl&: their father was a highly respected author, journalist and teacher. Fauzi al-Ma'lOf migrated to Sao Paulo in 1921 and his brother joined him five years later where they pros- pered as textile manufacturers, all the while writing poetry in Arabic that would eventually be translated into Portuguese, Spanish, French, Russian, German and Italian.49

Urban concentration helped to speed the creation of a new Arab-Brazilian ethnicity that in time would lead many Middle Easterners to define themselves to outsiders as "sirio-libanese." Since this ethnic formulation does not exist in the Middle East, the use of "sirio-libanese," with its implied notion of "Brazilian" as well, provides a clear indication of how immigrant minorities constructed hyphenated identities in the face of a national culture that tended to reject them. This is most evident in the decision by leaders of

of Arabic among Lebanese immigrants in Sio Paulo is: Neuza Neif Nabhan, O imigrante Libanes em Sdo Paulo: Estudo de Fala (Sdo Paulo: FFLCH/Universidade de Sdo Paulo, 1989).

47 Claude Fahd Hajjar, Imigragdo drabe: 100 anos de reflexao (Sdo Paulo: Icone Editora, 1985), p. 70.

48 C. Nijland, "The Fatherland in Arab Emigrant Poetry," Journal of Arabic Literature XX (Part 1, March 1989), 57-68, p. 62; M.M. Badawi, A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 196-203. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed. Modern Arabic Poetry; An Anthology (New York: Columbia Press, 1987), pp. 68-71; Robin Ostle, ed. Modern Liter- ature in the Near and Middle East, 1850-1970 (London: Routledge, 1991); Safa, L'Emigration Liba- naise, p. 67; Jorge Safady, Antologia drabe do Brasil (Sdo Paulo: Editora Comercial Safady, Ltda., no date) and Farid Aoun, Do Cedro ao Mandacaru (Recife: FIDA-Editorial Comunicaqgo Especilizada S/C Ltda, 1979).

49 C. Nijland, "A 'New Andalusian' Poem," Journal of Arabic Literature XVII (1987), 102-120, 102-103.


Brazil's Arab community to use ethnically specific community groups for general Brazilian fund raising. In 1913 and 1918 Ceara's Marronite "So- ciedade a Mio Branca" raised funds for local disease victims and in 1917 Sao Paulo's House of Deputies thanked the Syrian immigrant community publicly for its donations to the Brazilian Red Cross.50 Even as Middle Eastern immigrants attempted to cement a place for themselves in Brazil's unacknowledged multi-cultural society, growing nationalism, economic dis- locations, and heavy doses of racial scientific theory imported from Europe, led in the 1920s to growing concern among the press, policy-makers, and academics that while Syrians and Lebanese were adapting profitably to Brazil's economic climate, they were refusing to embrace Euro-Brazilian culture. Guilherme de Almeida, a well-known vanguard poet, wrote a series of eight satirical articles in 1929 giving his "impressions of our diverse foreign neighborhoods" for the mass circulation newspaper O Estado de Sdo Paulo. "The More than Near East," saw Arabs not as people but as "mustaches, only mustaches. Contemplative mustaches . . . hopeful mustaches. . . smoky mustaches . . sonorous mustaches. Mustaches." 25 de Marqo Street with its many Arab-owned shops became a space where "wholesalers sell giant bundles from giant plantations, with giant men with giant mustaches." A Middle Eastern residential neighborhood had "Mus- taches, only mustaches .. ."51 Yet Almeida's view of Middle Easterners as uniformly exotic did not prevent him from mocking Brazilians who did not recognize ethnic differences among Arabs. "What's the recipe for a Turk?" he asked. "Take the 25 de Marqo Street cocktail shaker and put in a Syrian, an Arab, an Armenian, a Persian, an Egyptian, a Kurd. Shake it up really well and-boom--out comes a Turk."52 Guilherme de Almeida was sure that "turcos" were not white but what they were in his ethnic/racial terms was open to debate. For those thrown into the 25 de Marqo Street cocktail shaker the equation was just as complex. The approximately 25,000 Arme- nians who migrated to Brazil beginning in the late nineteenth century, for example, insisted, as did the Ottoman government, that they were not "turcos" and were "a legitimate ethnicity [that was]) heroically occidental.'"53 Brazilian diplomats also saw Armenians as racially different from Turks,

50 Claude Fahd Hajjar, Imigraqdo drabe: 100 anos de reflexdo (Sdo Paulo: Icone Editora, 1985), pp. 35-37.

5' Guilherme de Almeida, "Cosm6polis: O Oriente Mais Pr6ximo," 0 Estado de Sdo Paulo, 19 May 1929, 6. The entire eight article were published in book form as Cosmrpolis: Sdo Paulo/29 (Sdo Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1962). The best known history of "Orientalism" is Edward W. Said's Orientalism, (New York: Random House, 1978).

52 Guilherme de Almeida, "Cosm6polis: O Oriente Mais Pr6ximo," p. 6. 53 Roberto Griin, Neg6cios e Familias: arminios em Sdo Paulo (Sdo Paulo: Editora Sumare, 1992),

p. 32.

JEFFREY LESSER 59

claiming the former (along with Arabs and Egyptians) were "producers" while the latter (along with Jews and Syrians) "lived off the first group." This led one consular officer in Alexandria to suggest, somewhat contra- dictorily, that Armenian immigration be prohibited (a position later adopted) since they were "opium producers" who would provide a "perpetual temp- tation" to "yellow" immigrants (Japanese) already in Brazil.54 It was not only diplomats who made distinctions among various Middle Eastern eth- nicities. Plinio Salgado, who later formed the green shirted Brazilian fascist movement the AIB, traveled to the region in the late 1920s and marveled at the "complex of races superimposed, mixed and co-existing." He paid a great compliment to three Syrian businessmen returning to their country of birth from Minas Gerais when he recalled the "hours of strong Brazilianess in which we played recordings of Rio de Janeiro sambas and the nostalgic songs of the country folk."55 J. Rodrigues Valle, an economist and law professor at the University of Brazil Law School in Rio de Janeiro, was less sympathetic. He complained that "Arabs, Turks and Syrians, segregated from other Brazilian populations, live throughout Brazil. They rarely marry outside of their own. They retain, almost intact, their nationality."56 Rod- rigues Valle wanted to lock Brazil's doors to Middle Easterners, a position mirrored by those responding to a survey on immigration by the Sociedade Nacional de Agricultura that included governors and mayors along with doctors, lawyers and agricultural workers. The respondents, while generally taking a pro-immigration position, rejected Arabs out of hand. Indeed, while twenty- five separate immigrant groups were referred to as "white," none came from the Middle East and when Arabs were mentioned it was generally in negative terms. The response of the Sociedade Pastoril Agricola Industrial of Jaguarao in Rio Grande do Sul was typical: its members argued that Arabs should be avoided since "they are never farm workers and are always peddlers when they are not gamblers or smugglers." Others in the survey described Syrian and "Semitic" immigration with words like "parasitic," "exploitative" and "con-men.'"57 Such sentiments would find strong policy

54 Unsigned confidential note from the Brazilian Consular Section, Alexandria to Octavio Mang- abeira, Minister of Foreign Relations, 14 April 1930. Lata 1290, Maqo 29616-29622. Dulphe Pinheiro Machado, Director, Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce to Joaquim Eulalio, Director of Economic and Commercial Services, Directoria Geral do Serviqo de Povoamento, 9 June 1930. Lata 1290, Maqo 29616-29622. AHI-R.

55 Plinio Salgado, "Oriente (Impressies de Viagens) 1930," in Obras Completas vol. 18 (Sio Paulo: Editra das Americas, 1954-56), p. 308.

56 J. Rodrigues Valle, Pdtria Vindoura (Em defesa do Brasil) (Sio Paulo: Graphico Editora Monteiro- Lobato, 1926), p. 55.

57 Sociedade Nacional de Agricultura, Immigragdo: Inquerito promovido pela Sociedade Nacional de Agricultura (Rio de Janeiro: Villani and Barbero, 1926), pp. 281-282, 51, 61.


backing following the Gettilio Vargas-led "Revolution of 1930.'"58 The

Vargas coup was nativist in tone and gave many in the political bureaucracy license to express prejudice openly. A Brazilian commercial attache in Al- exandria, Egypt, complained that Syrians ". .. are populating Brazil and forming our race with all that is the most repugnant in the universe."'59 Other officials assailed Arab immigrants for their urban concentration, their lack of formal schooling, and their frequent entry as unmarried males. Brazil, according to President Vargas, was only "interested in receiving . . . true rural agricultural workers who come in constituted families" and statistics from the port of Santos show that the agricultural entrance rates of "Turcos" between 1908 and 1936 were the lowest among all immigrant groups, eleven percent, and in the case of Syrians, under thirty percent.60 In terms of illiteracy, "turcos" over seven years of age had the highest level (almost fifty-eight percent) while Syrians were somewhere in the middle (about thirty percent). Arab immigrants also had high indices of single male entrance and this led many to question their morality.61 Jtilio

de Revoredo, an official of Sio Paulo's Department of Labor, even attacked "turcos" for entering in high numbers and for leaving in large numbers as well!62 In spite of this nativist climate, Arab immigrants created a new political culture as they defined a sirio-libanese ethnicity in part by embracing Syrian or Leb- anese nationalist sentiment. Antun Sa'adih was born in Lebanon in 1904 into a family of Greek Orthodox intellectuals and emigrated to Brazil at age sixteen. During the 1920s he began to construct a theory of Syrian nationalism that included both an ethnic and spatial Syrian nation.63 This idea was

58 Boris Fausto, A Revolugdo de 1930: Historiografia e Hist6ria (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986), p. 29; Wilson Suzigan, Indaistria Brasileira: Origem e Desenvolvimento (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986), pp. 74-115.

59 Commercial Attache (Alexandria) to Octavio Mangabeira (Foreign Minister, Rio), 17 April 1930.

Maqo 29.625/29 (1291). Arquivo Hist6rico Itamaraty (Rio de Janeiro). This was representative of comments made in justifying restrictive immigration policies throughout the Americas. See, for example, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, "Racism and Anti-Chinese Persecution in Sonora, Mexico, 1876-1932, Amer- asia 9:2 (1982), 1-28.

60 Gettilio Vargas, quoted in Julio de Revoredo, Immigragdo (Sto Paulo: Editora Paulista, 1934), p. 146. "Entradas de Imigrantes Pelo Porto de Santos, Segundo a Profissao, 1908-1936." Boletim da Directoria de Terras, Colonizagdo e Imigragdo 1:1 (October 1937), 74.

61 "Entradas de Imigrantes Pelo Porto de Santos, Segundo a Profissao, 1908-1936," Table A- 17; "Entradas de Imigrantes Pelo Porto de Santos, Segundo o Sexo, 1908-1936," Table A-10; "Entradas de Imigrantes Pelo Porto de Santos, Segundo o Estado Civil, 1908-1936," Table A -12. Boletim da Directoria de Terras, Colonizagdo e Imigragdo 1:1 (October 1937), pp. 67, 69, 74. Knowlton cites statistics to the same effect through 1941.

62 Julio de Revor6do, Immigragdo (Sao Paulo: Empresa Grafica "Revista dos Tribunaes," 1934), pp. 92-93.

63 Labib Zuwiyya Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis (Cambridge: Center for Middle Eastern Studies/Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 53-55.

JEFFREY LESSER 61

prevalent among the Arab 6migres in South America and much of Sa'adih's ideology was tested and reinforced within Brazil's Arab community. In 1929 Sa'adih returned to Lebanon with the intent of organizing a political party and in 1932 he secretly founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, formalizing it publicly two years later. In Brazil, other Arab immigrants took up Sa'adih's challenge, organizing Brazilian sections of a party, and in 1938 Antun Sa'adih returned to Brazil to raise funds for the SSNP.64 Swirl- ing around the discussion of Brazilian and Arab nationalist sentiment was the reality that the (re) created sfrio-libanese ethnicity was far from the Europeanized one that the Brazilian elite desired. Arab-Brazilians thus chal- lenged a Brazilian national identity that rejected the multi-ethnic society unintentionally created by earlier immigration policies. This often led nativist intellectuals to dismiss Arab immigrants contributions to Brazil by suggesting that their success in commerce was biological in nature. Vivaldo Coroacy writing in O Estado de Sdo Paulo in 1929 took the following position on "Syrians, Lebanese, Armenians and Copts": "It is the Semitic current of bent-nosed Levantines whose essential activity is to buy and sell and not produce. .. But there is not only the economic aspect to consider. These individuals bring an Eastern mentality, sinuous and strange when compared to our habits, our traditions and our western education. They bring ways of thinking and ways of doing that come from the Near East, tortuous and sinister, the picturesque East perhaps, but always dangerous ... The East that all civilized peoples hope to avoid."65 Paulo Cursino de Moura suggested that simply "pronouncing" the name of 25 de Margo Street "mentally" conjured up images of the "turco type," sentiments echoed more recently by Manuel Diegues, Jr. who writes in his standard work on minority communities in Brazil that "when a 'turco' arrives on a street to conduct some commercial activity, the street takes on another color, an ethnic color . . soon the street is given a Syrian or Lebanese physiog- nomic character."66 Over the course of the 1930s and 1940s a number of influential academics came to see the commercial success and urban settle- ment patterns of Arab immigrants as something to be battled in a holy war for an authentic Brazil. Pierre Deffontaines, a professor at the Universidade

64 Labib Zuwiyya Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis (Cambridge: Center for Middle Eastern Studies/Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 59. Philip K. Hitti, Lebanon in History: From the Earliest Times to the Present (London: MacMillan and Company, 1957), p. 498.

65 Vivaldo Coaracy, "Elementos immigratorios" in Problemas nacionaes (Sao Paulo: Sociedade Impressora Paulista, 1930), pp. 117-124, 121.

66 Paulo Cursino de Moura, Sao Paulo de outrora : evocagdes da metropole [1932] (Belo Horizonte: Editora Itatiaia ; [Sao Paulo] : Editora da Universidade de Sao Paulo, 1980), p. 174. Manuel Di6gues, Jr., ?tnias e Cultura no Brasil (Sdo Paulo: Cfrculo do Livro, 1976), p. 147. The first edition of this book was published in 1952.


do Distrito Federal in Rio De Janeiro, complained that the city of Bauru's "richest block is inhabited in large part by Syrians" and that the preferred place of residence in Sao Paulo, on Avenida Paulista, was the "nouveaux riche blocks (filled) with their extravagant and exaggerated homes."' 67 A. Tavares de Almeida's used the language of sport and war when he charac- terized Arabs as "defeating the national competition with ease" and Paulo Cursino de Moura wrote that the Syrians had "conquered" Sao Paulo, giving exactly the sense of the ethnic (re) creation mentioned in the title to this article.68

Perhaps the most outrageous display of stereotyping, both positive and negative, came in 1935 when Salomio Jorge, a poet and intellectual of Syrian descent, began a public debate with Herbert Levy, a perhaps surprisingly named non-Jewish journalist and author. The topic of discussion was whether Brazil should promote or discourage Syrian and/or German- Jewish immigration. Yet to look at the conflict as a localized Palestine is to miss the point. What is interesting is that both combatants adopted an ethnic (i.e.: culturally mutable) position rather than a racial (biologically immuta- ble) position. Both quoted Oliveira Vianna, melting pot theory and fusibility indexes (even those that showed that Jews and Arabs did not assimilate) as they claimed that the immigrant groups they supported could only help Brazil to improve its culture and economy.

The gloves first came off in late 1934 when Herbert Levy suggested in his widely read (among the elite) Problemas actuaes da economia brasileira that German Jewish refugees gave Brazil "the opportunity to receive ... the best in the arts, in the sciences, in economics, in the letters [and] in all areas of cultural activity. '69 Levy, however, believed Arabs, and especially Syrians, should be prohibited from entering Brazil because they were "dedicated to commerce and speculation ... [were] difficult to assimilate ... [and had] unsatisfactory racial and hygienic qualities."''7 In other words, Levy attacked Syrian immigrants by applying to them a series of negative

67 Deffontaines, "Mascates," p. 29.

68 A. Tavares de Almeida's Oeste Paulista: A experitncia etnografica e cultural (Rio de Janeiro: Alba Editora, 1943), pp. 171-173. Paulo Cursino de Moura, Sdo Paulo de outrora : evocagdes da metropole [1932] (Belo Horizonte: Editora Itatiaia ; [Sao Paulo] : Editora da Universidade de Sao Paulo, 1980), p. 174.

69 Herbert V. Levy, Problemas actuaes da economia brasileira (Sao Paulo: Empreza Graphica da "Revista dos Tribunaes," 1934), p. 104.

70 Herbert V. Levy, Problemas actuaes da economia brasileira (Sao Paulo: Empreza Graphica da "Revista dos Tribunaes," 1934), pp. 104-106.

JEFFREY LESSER 63

stereotypes that had been used against both Arabs and Jews.71 Salomao Jorge responded by attacking Problemas actuaes as "extraordinarily medi- ocre" and claiming that Levy's "unmeasured praise of Israelite immigration" came about because "by [Levy's] own name I conclude that he is a Jew or the descendant of one."72 With this assumption in hand, Jorge decided to turn the tables and suggest that it was Levy, and not Syrian immigrants, who had not really assimilated into Brazilian society. "Where does Mr. Levy live?" asked Jorge, "Is it in Bessarabia or Brazil?' '73 Why would Levy "insult his Syrian brothers?"'74 Indeed, Jorge noted, what Levy saw as positive about Jewish immigration was almost exactly what he had attacked in Syrians. Levy's criticism of Syrian commercial activity led Jorge to respond that ". . . not all Jews are scientists, physicians and philoso- phers. A great part are business people, bankers, economists and capitalists S.. Peddling is almost a Jewish institution ... If the Jews present optimal racial qualities, why don't the Syrians present them as well.'7" We are fortunate that Herbert Levy was as prolific as he was public. Firing back at Jorge, Levy claimed that while "I don't hold any spirit of hostility toward any race" he did believe that immigrants engaged in speculative activity and who lived primarily in cities "are not convenient to our country."76 What of Jorge's claims that Levy was Jewish? According to Levy "neither [I] nor my close ancestors are Jewish."" Furthermore, according to Levy, Jorge did not understand that opening Brazil's doors to Jews which should be done "only in the particular case of ... persecuted German Jews who are born of the German culture."78 In other words, it appears that Levy accepted the notion that Jews for the most part were not European, but modified this idea in the case of economically acceptable German Jews.

71 Jeffrey Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 55.

72 Salomdo Jorge, "Carta aberta ao Dr. Jose Maria Whitaker," in Juinior Amarilio, As vantagens da immigracao syria no Brasil : em torno de uma polemica entre os Snrs. Herbert V. Levy e Salomdo Jorge, no "Diario de Sdo Paulo" (Rio de Janeiro: Off. Gr. da S. A. A Noite, 1925), p. 25. Using this same flawed logic, Jorge could also have easily argued that Bank of Brazil head Ricardo Jafet was also Jewish since Yefet is a common biblical name.

73 Salomdo Jorge "Carta aberta ao Dr. Jose Maria Whitaker," in Junior Amarilio, As Vantagens da Immigragdo Syria no Brasil, p. 33.

74 Salomdo Jorge, "Carta aberta ao Dr. Jose Maria Whitaker," in Junior Amarilio, As Vantagens da Immigragdo Syria no Brasil, p. 35.

75 Salomdo Jorge, "Carta aberta ao Dr. Jose Maria Whitaker," in As Vantagens da Immigraqdo Syria no Brasil, p. 27.

76 Herbert V. Levy, "A prop6sito de uma carta aberta ao Dr. Jose Maria Whitaker," in As Vantagens da Immigragdo Syria no Brasil, p. 39.




The debate continued. Levy attacked Syrian immigrants as polygamous Muslims while Jorge explained that they were generally monogamous Chris- tians.79 Levy quoted meaningless statistics and Jorge responded in kind. Strangest of all, while Levy hailed the racist "Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres" opposition to Syrian immigration without ever mentioning its regular attacks on Jews, supporters of Jorge cited Integralist chief Plinio Salgado's positive comments on his trip to the Middle East without ever mentioning his anti-immigrant stance.80 Of course the real winner in the debate was the notion that culture was malleable and not biologically de- termined. Throughout the charges and counter-charges neither Levy nor Jorge tried to claim that ethnicity had to disappear in order for an immigrant group to be desirable. On the contrary, both hailed the importance of immigrant ethnicity for the construction of Brazilian national identity. Others who joined the fray took similar positions. Juinior Amarilio, who brought together the Jorge/Levy editorials and a series of essays under the title As Vantagens da Immigraado Syria no Brasil, dedicated his collection to the poets Nami Jafet and Fauzi al-Ma'lfif as "Names that honor the distant patria and Brazil" and to all Syrian and Lebanese immigrants who "gave to Brazil, [the] life of your life and the blood of your blood."81 Even in the 1940s such position were common. Writing about the "new ethnic factors" in the state of Parana, the sociologist Alfredo Romario Martins proposed a sea change among Syrian immigrants who had "gotten rid of their [Muslim] fanaticism, changing it for practical activities that allowed them to work harder, but happier, and to rise intellectually in our [Brazilian] social milieu. ''82

Large scale Arab immigration ended in the years before World War II as Brazil erected quotas and as emigration from the Middle East decreased, picking up again at a somewhat lower rate after the end of the war. Even so, the complex place of Arabs within Brazil's ethnic world continued. The poet and literary critic Manoelito de Ornellas gave a regionalized reading of Gilberto Freyre's thesis on the Moorish presence in Brazil in his Gauchos e beduinos: A origem etnica e a formaado social do Rio Grande do Sul (1948), claiming that the roots of the modem residents of Southern Brazil

79 Herbert V. Levy, "A prop6sito de uma carta aberta ao Dr. Jos6 Maria Whitaker;" Salomio Jorge, "Carta aberta ao Dr. Jose Maria Whitaker," in As Vantagens da Immigraqdo Syria no Brasil, pp. 41, 51.

80 Amarilio, As Vantagens da Immigraado Syria no Brasil, pp. 43, 157-161. 81 Amarilio, As Vantagens da Immigraqdo Syria no Brasil. 82 Alfredo Romario Martins, Quanto Somos e Quem Somos: Dados Para a Hist6ria e a Estatistica do

Povoamento de Parand (Curitiba: Empreza Grafica Paranaense, 1941), p. 177.

JEFFREY LESSER 65

could be found in North Africa.83 Clark Knowlton's study of Syrian and Lebanese "infiltration" in Sao Paulo, completed in the late 1950s, takes the opposite approach. He focuses only on commerce and politics, erroneously equating the fact that many early Arab arrivals to Brazil were illiterate with the claim that "the interest in literature, poetry and in the arts so charac- teristic of many Arab groups in the Middle East is not part of the culture of the Syrio-Lebanese colony in Sao Paulo."84 Richard Morse played on other stereotypes in his study of Sao Paulo by commenting that Syrian "peddlers S. . monopolized a large segment of the dry goods trade."85 Such notions soon became part of sirio-libanese culture. In Rio de Janeiro, for instance, many Arab merchants had their shops in a relatively unmodernized zone of small shops and narrow streets near Avenida Presidente Vargas. When these merchants decided to organize, the new association was named "Sociedade de Amigos da Alfandega y Ruas Adjacentes" or SAARA. Of course few if any of these merchants (or their immigrant predecessors) were actually from the Sahara desert region, but by placing the name of an "Arab" locale known and respected by Brazilians on the neighborhood, they hoped that negative images of Arabs would be transformed into positive ones. This seems in some ways to have worked. A book published in 1988 on the Syrian experience in Juiz de Fora (state of Minas Gerais) boasted that "Syrian youth, born in Brazil, have effectively permutated with Brazilians through marriage, forming a healthy race.'"86 For this author, Arab immigrant ethnicity had been transformed from the negative (unassimilable) to the positive. In doing so, it had disappeared. But for the sirio-libanese community their ethnicity remained, as a part of a new Brazil that could not consume them.

Connecticut College JEFFREY LESSER New London, Connecticut

83 Manoelito de Ornellas, Gaachos e beduinos: A origem etnica e a formaqao social do Rio Grande do Sul (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio, 1948).

84 Knowlton, "Spatial and Social," p. 297. 85 Knowlton, "Spatial and Social," p. 188; Morse, From Community, p. 254. 86 Wilson de Lima Baston, Os Sirios em Juiz de Fora (Juiz de Fora: Edigqes Paraibuna, 1988), p. 27.

(re) creating ethnicity middle eastern immigration to brazil

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