Arab Immigrants in Brazil

Arlene Clemesha1

The first official record of the arrival of Arab immigrants in Brazil was that of the
Zacarias brothers from Beirut, who established themselves in Rio de Janeiro in 1835. However,
it was only in the 1870s that Arab immigration grew and became an important feature of
Brazilian history.

The majority of the Arab immigrants were Christian, and among the Muslim minority,
most were Sunni, from the regions of Syria and Lebanon. Up to 1908, the Brazilian Customs
Bureau registered these immigrants as belonging to other nationalities, or, because the
region was part of the Ottoman empire up to the I World War, as Turks, Arab-Turks, and
Asian-Turks. Eventually they began to be registered as Syrian and Lebanese, but by then
several hundred had entered the country without any precise register as to their origin,
nationality, or profession. Research has demonstrated that there was also a small number of
Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Iraqis among them. The reasons for the departure from
their countries varied, but were usually attached to religious or socio-economic problems,
related to the growing need for peasant family members, and small rural property owners, to
search for a new source of income.

Immigration was slow and irregular in the last two decades of the 19th century,
increasing considerably after 1895, increasing again after 1903, and continuing to grow up to
the First World War. Between 1871 and 1900 an estimated 5400 Syrian and Lebanese
immigrants entered the country. The year 1913 registered a peak of 11,101 Arab immigrants
arriving in Brazil. After the war, in the 1920s, Arab immigration picked up again, registering an
average of 5,000 immigrants per year. However this tendency dropped and immigration
numbers began to decrease after 1929, as a result of the great depression and of the
implementation of a Brazilian quota policy. According to Knowlton, a total of 48,326 Syrian and
Lebanese entered the country from 1908 to 1941. In relative terms, this represented 4% of the
overall immigration to Brazil during that period (Apud Truzzi, 2009: 46). Today, the Arab
immigrant population and their descendants comprise an estimated 11 million people, or 5%
of the Brazilian population. According to the Islamic Federation of Brazil, 1.5 million of these
are Muslims, served by 50 mosques and more than 80 Islamic centers throughout the country.

Searching for Amrik

1
Dr. Clemesha is Professor of Arab History at the Arabic Language, Literature and Culture Program,
Department for Oriental Languages, University of So Paulo, Brazil, and currently the Director of the
Center for Arab Studies of the University of So Paulo.
 The destination sought after by most emigrants leaving the seaports of Beirut and
Tripoli at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, was the United States of
America. Second came Brazil and Argentina, and to a lesser degree, Mexico and Canada. It is
interesting to notice that several came to Brazil by mistake, possibly tricked by the French,
Greek or Italian navigation companies that operated the route, and wished to fill their ships
with as many passengers as possible. They would sell tickets to America, and, upon arrival at
the final destination -usually at the Port of Santos, So Paulo, Brazil- justify themselves to the
desolate passenger explaining that the whole continent was called Amrik.2

The Syrian and Lebanese immigrants traveled and established themselves throughout
the whole of Brazil, from the northern Amazon to the southern city of Chu, on the border with
Paraguay. However, the state of So Paulo received the majority of the Arab immigrants,
followed by the states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, located next to So Paulo, and Rio
Grande do Sul.

According to the 1920 population count, 31% of the foreign population of the State of
So Paulo had an Arab origin, as indicated by the imprecise denomination Asian Turks in the
following chart:

Nationality So Paulo State So Paulo City %

Italian 398,797 91,544 23,0
Spanish 171,289 24,902 15,0
Portuguese 167,198 64,687 39,0
Japanese 24,435 (1) --
Asian Turks 19,290 5,988 31,0
German 11,060 4,555 41,0
Austrian 10,643 1,772 17,0
English 2,198 1,212 55,0
(1) Less than one thousand.
Source: Truzzi, 2009: 47.

The almost 20,000 Arabs living in So Paulo in 1920 represented 40% of the total Arab
population of Brazil. Two decades later, almost half of the Arab population of Brazil was living
in So Paulo. And, by 1934, half of the Arab population of the state of So Paulo lived in the
capital, So Paulo city.

Avoiding plantation farms

The main destination of foreign immigrants in So Paulo at the end of the 19th and
beginning of the 20th centuries were the coffee plantation farms, where the whole family
would live and work in a system of harsh labor exploitation, called colonato. These immigrants

2
Amrik, or America as pronounced by the Arab immigrants, is also the title of an interesting
photography exhibition organized by the Institute for Arab Culture, with the support of the Brazilian
Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Amrik shows the history of Arab immigration in Latin America through the
lenses of some of the most important photographers in the region.
were obliged to work on the farms until they managed to pay off their debt to the company
which had brought them to Brazil. While trying to do so, with an extremely low income, they
would frequently acquire new debts to purchase basic goods at the farm shop, thus entering a
vicious cycle aimed precisely at keeping this cheap labor at the farms. In fact, it was immigrant
labor employed in the harsh colonato system that from 1870 onwards substituted slavery,
finally abolished in 1888.

However, contrary to almost all immigrant populations in So Paulo, the Syrian and
Lebanese immigrants did not work on the coffee plantation farms, nor did they become a
massive working force for the industrialization process. But the reason why the Arab
immigrants did not dedicate themselves to agriculture is a question that authors do not always
agree upon. As far as research has been able to demonstrate, most immigrants were peasants
in their villages of origin in Syria, and did not have much accumulated experience as peddlers
or street vendors, since in Syria this activity was mainly in the hands of the Greek, Armenian
and Jews. The logical conclusion is that they would tend to maintain the activity they mastered
the most, and would naturally become agricultural workers, or colonos, in the plantation fields.

The most plausible analysis provided by Truzzi demonstrates that the key to
understanding this phenomenon resides in the differences between agricultural activity in
Syria and Brazil. Whereas in Syria or Lebanon the former immigrant usually worked on small
family-run proprieties, in Brazil the farming activity was in the hands of a few very large land
owners. However hard a colono worked, he would never be able to afford a lot of land for
himself.

When, in 1908, the Port of Santos began to register Arab immigrants and their
professions (before 1908 they were frequently registered as other nationalities and no
mention was made as to their occupation), the record showed that the among the Syrian,
Lebanese and other Arab immigrants entering Brazil, very few declared themselves to be
agricultural workers, probably because they had been warned by relatives that the best
alternative for them was to head to the towns and follow the steps of those who had begun as
peddlers and were now well established in the trading business.

Therefore the number of agricultural workers is low if compared to other nationalities:

18% of the Arabs arriving at Santos declared themselves to be agricultural workers, 49,11% of
the Italians, 47,99% of the Portuguese, 78,63% of the Spanish, 98,95% of the Japanese, and
31,08% of the German. (Secretaria Agrcola, 1940. Apud Truzzi, 2009: 52)

Pioneers: Peddlers

Unlike immigrants from other nationalities, such as Japanese or Italian, who came with
their whole families, whose tickets were frequently funded, and, as mentioned above, had to
pay their dept by working as colonos on farms, the Arab immigrants usually arrived on their
own and had the intention of returning to their homeland after earning a reasonable sum. As
they also arrived with no capital, the only activities left for them at the beginning were petty
commercial activities, mainly door-to-door sales.
 The image of the Arab peddler, at ones door, in the cities, in the villages or even at
the most distant farm houses, was so widespread that in Brazil the idea of trade became
automatically associated to the image of the Arab. This was not a pejorative preconception,
but one of proximity and integration, which had the advantage of substituting the former view
of the Arabs as exotic peoples (See Sebe, 2008: p, 20).

Some Arab immigrants were in fact already familiar with the trading activity. Kurban
mentions the biographies of several immigrants whose parents were traders in Beirut, Zahle
and Homs (Kurban, 1937. Apud Truzzi, 2009:52) And there are some interesting individual
cases, such as that of the Safady family, which sold in Brazil the dried fruit and grain produced
in Syria. However, the important aspect of the Arab immigrants option to earn a living as
salesmen, is the fact that by doing so they were chosing to establish their own business in
Brazil, to be their own masters as some would declare.

The Arab immigrant traded not only in large urban centers, but also in the villages and
farms. As door-to-door vendors, they were highly required by poor colonos (farm-workers) in
the rural areas, as an alternative source of goods to the farmers shops which practiced high
prices. They reached distant rural regions, and set up business in small cities all over the
interior of the state of So Paulo, not to mention the fact that to a lesser degree they reached
and established themselves throughout the whole of the country, thus taking over a market
and a whole field of activity which until then had been dominated by Italian immigrants.

According to Knowlton, in 1983 more than 90% of the peddlers of the city of So Paulo
were Arab immigrants. After succeeding to dislodge the Italians, and accumulating some
capital, they were prepared to flood with small shops the whole neighborhood around Street
25 de Maro, in the old center of So Paulo (Truzzi, 2009: 58). Already in 1983, one could
count at least seven shops selling mainly cloth, buttons and needles, owned by Syrians and
Lebanese on that lively commercial street in downtown So Paulo.

Cloth retailing

At the beginning of the 20th century, throughout the country, Syrian and Lebanese
immigrants, many of which had begun as peddlers, were setting up their own shops. These
tended to specialize in cloth retailing, in spite of the fact that the first Arab immigrants in Rio
de Janeiro had started off selling matches on trays hanging from the neck, and, in the catholic
religious center of Aparecida do Norte, in the State of So Paulo, by selling religious charms
brought by family members from Syria (Safady, 1966:181 apud Truzzi, 2009:58).

In So Paulo city, the Syrian and Lebanese traders were slowly taking over shops on
the busy Street 25 de Maro, in the center of So Paulo, and, by the year 1910, according to
Knowlton, were beginning to effectively dominate the district:

The Street 25 de Maro was becoming known as the Syrian-Lebanese colony.

The majority of the Germans had left, and the number of Italians was decreasing. Some
Portuguese still lived close to the market. The vast majority of the Syrian and Lebanese
lived in rented houses or on the second floor, right above their shops. They had become
 specialized in cloth and related articles such as buttons, needles, and laces.
(KNOWLTON, 1961: 117. Apud TRUZZI, 2009: 59)

The Syrian and Lebanese peddlers had in fact faced severe competition from the Italian
immigrants, and when it came to setting up their own shops, several declared they had chosen
the cloth trade because of the almost lack of competition in this field. The retail and wholesale
shops owned by Portuguese, Germans, Italians and Irish, specialized mainly in agricultural and
food products, construction material and iron.

In fact, an important characteristic of the Syrian and Lebanese immigration to Brazil

was its chain process, in which the first immigrants brought the next and so forth. The
immigrants from the beginning of the 20th century usually came to join relatives who had
already established themselves, or had at least some contact with the immigrant colony and
knew how and where to start business. They were not alone upon arrival, as were the very first
immigrants in the 1870s and 1880s.

According to Truzzi, there is no doubt that the Syrian and Lebanese pioneers operated
a real revolution in commercial practices in Brazil (TRUZZI, 2009: 69). Their flexibility,
eagerness to trade, readiness to not only sell their products but exchange them for almost
anything that was offered, ranging from coffee to gold, the practice of loaning money for up to
a year, all this contributed to significantly stimulate the commercial sector of Brazils national
economy. From the beginning, they adopted the practice of selling cheaply to sell a lot,
applying small margins of profit and aiming at a large degree of stock rotation. Some would say
that they actually invented popular trade in Brazil, its practices, methods, and overall features.

The next step taken by the most prosperous cloth retail shop owners on Street 25 de
Maro, was to open wholesale cloth shops, on Street Florencio de Abreu, where this time they
would have to compete with Portuguese shop owners dedicated to the same trade.

Industrialization

Clothing factories could be set up with a small amount of capital, four or five
employees working in a rented room, and second hand sewing machines. The articles
produced would then feed the door-to-door trade already considered a typically Arab
activity. A characteristic situation would be that of the wife producing clothes at home with
the help of one or two employees, and the husband selling the production door-to-door. In
this case, the family usually prospered enough to send the children to good schools and
universities, to become doctors and engineers. However, sometimes the whole cycle of cloth
retail shops/ cloth wholesale/cloth and clothing factories, would belong to the same family.
And this is where fortunes were made at the first half of the 20th century.

By means of this entrepreneur activity, the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants

constituted an important driving force of Brazilian industrialization, at a moment in history
when the country was substituting large scale importation of manufactured products.
Machines were imported, with government incentive, and national production achieved what
were considered excellent results. The 1920 census found that out of 91 industries belonging
to Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, 65 produced clothing, and 12 fabricated cloth.

The 1920s were considered as the golden age of the clothing industry in Brazil. But
since business owned by immigrants also tended to take the highest risks, they were deeply
affected by the 1929 clash, when several fortunes were lost from night to day. Looking back at
this period, some Syrian and Lebanese descendents would take pride in his or her fathers
honest breakdown, as opposed to so many dishonest ones throughout the country. However,
according to Truzzi, the relative economic position of the community maintained itself
(TRUZZI, 2009: 60), and in 1934, among the main ethnic groups in So Paulo, the Syrian and
Lebanese owned some of the largest factories. On the average, they were still very well
positioned among the main industrialists of So Paulo, as shown by the chart below:

Nationality of Number of Average Average Average Average

owner Factories capital number of Horsepower production
invested per workers per per industry value (1)
industry industry
Canadian (2) 4 133,028 2,058 730 25,363
British (2) 27 2,522 69 145 1,142
American (2) 18 1.034 38 86 1,230
Brazilian 4,837 413 31 39 350
Syrian- 225 223 26 26 434
Lebanese
Portuguese 460 83 11 12 134
Austrian 44 75 13 13 108
French 13 72 17 13 200
Italian 2,181 58 9 8 99
German 122 52 12 8 134
Spanish 275 37 7 4 86
Japanese 62 23 7 3 47
Other 307 187 19 12 244
Total 8,575 340 24 27 274
(1) In the local currency of the period, contos de reis.
(2) The Canadian, American and British industries were typically monopolies
related to communications, transportation and energy, for which reason
they were considerably larger than the general private initiative.
Source: Truzzi, 2009: 61-62

In fact, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Syrian and Lebanese consolidated and increased
their businesses, strengthening the overall economic power held by the Syrian-Lebanese
community. They practically monopolized the cloth retailing sector and the small industry
related to cloth and clothing, and held the main position among nationalities in the cloth
wholesale sector. In the 1940s, they were responsible for up to half of all the capital invested
in the textile industry in the State of So Paulo.

Socio-economic stratification and cultural differences in the community

 Operating outside the traditional elite of farmers on the one side, doctors and
engineers on the other, the community prospered in the first half of the 20th century, and
some managed to become very wealthy and respectable, contributing to improve the image
related to the Turk merchant.

However, while an outsider usually held a uniform image of the Arab colony, it was
in fact becoming increasingly stratified. A complex hierarchy of status and power was slowly
developing inside the colony, not only as a result of religious affiliation, geographical origin and
political differences at the place of origin, but above all due to different economic growth
among the families in the new society (Truzzi, 2009: 103).

The largest commercial and industrial fortunes in the 1940 and 1950s belonged to
those who had arrived at the end of the 19th century or very beginning of the 20th century, who
first trailed the path from peddlers, to small retail shop owners, then to wholesale shop
owners, and finally industrialists. Among the Lebanese, this is the case of the Jafet family from
Schueir3, and among the Syrian, of the Abdalla, Salem, and Camasmie, among others.

For those who arrived in the second quarter of the 20th Century, especially after 1929,
chances of making fortunes were small, and the socio-economic position they would occupy in
Brazil depended considerably on what it had been at the time they emigrated from their
country of origin.

Once the socio-economic position of the most eminent community members allowed
them to begin creating and financing charity and welfare institutions, the communitys inner
differences in terms of religion and place of origin (region and village) began to appear. As
mentioned above, a small minority was Muslim (mainly Sunni), and some were Druze. The vast
majority was Christian, among which there were Maronite, Orthodox, Catholic, Melkite, and
Protestant, which were not necessarily willing to identify with one another, less still to build
collective institutions.

The names of some of the innumerous institutions created by the Arab community in
So Paulo give us a glimpse of the matter: The Maronite Charity Society (1897); The Young
Homcie Society (1908); The White Hand Charity Society (1912); The Ladies Charity Society
(1918); Beirut Charity Society (1920); The Antiochian Charity Society (1927); The Muslim
Charity Society (1929) etc.

Next came the educational institutions: The Oriental School (1912); The Syrian-
Brazilian School (1917); The Modern Syrian School (1919); Saint Miguel School (1922); and
sports clubs: The Syrian Sports Club (1917); Homs Club (1920); The Zahle Club (1922); The
Mount Lebanon Athletes Club (1934); Rachaya Club (1936) etc., among other institutions such
as The Home for the Elderly (1935), and the Syrian Sanatorium (1944).

As stated by Truzzi, the disputes between institutions frequently brought about the
communitys inner divisions, which in one way or another related to the divisions existing in

3
Together with other pioneers of industrialization in Brazil, the Jafet family (from Beirut) was arguably
amongst the richest. They participated in the industrialization of So Paulo, setting up textile and mining
companies, and took pride in having built the first one-piece steel pole in Latin America.
their places of origin, and were frequently fomented by the arrival of a cleric or an
intellectual. The most important and long-standing division was that between Syrian and
Lebanese, for it involved practically the whole of the Arab community in Brazil during the
entire period in which those two countries were struggling for their independence from French
colonization (Truzzi, 2009: 113).

For example, at the beginning of World War II, there was a serious dispute over the
name of the main hospital created by members of the community. Under the protests of some
of the founding members and main financers, what was called The Syrian Hospital became The
Syrian-Lebanese Hospital still one of the main hospitals in So Paulo, together with the Albert
Einstein Hospital created by the Jewish Community, and the Portuguese Charitable Hospital.
After that episode, the Syrian rich preferred to invest in the Thorax Hospital, today called The
Hospital for Heart Treatment, also one of the main hospitals in So Paulo.

Newspapers and magazines published by the Syrian-Lebanese community also

developed in an interesting manner. At the beginning they were published in Arabic, and
several had the clear objective of promoting the cause for the political independence of Syria
and Lebanon. They reported on the political developments of these countries, and expressed
local opinions. However, they also published the rich and expressive Brazilian Mahjar
literature.

Brazil received intellectuals engaged in the national liberation and cultural projects,
who faced restrictions, were sometimes persecuted, and had really little alternative but to
escape Ottoman rule. The founders of the first Arabic newspapers in Rio de Janeiro (1896) and
in So Paulo (1898) had graduated from the American University of Beirut. In 1900, Naum
Labaki created the literary circle Ruwaq al Maari, which was directed by the important
physicians Said Abu Jamra and Fadlo Haidar, after Naum Labaki returned to Lebanon to take up
his post as member of parliament. From 1890 to 1940, no less than 394 newspapers and
magazines were founded in Brazil (Zghidour, 1982: 56).

According to Professor Vargens, the two most important Arabic literary centers in the
th
20 Century, outside the Arab countries, were the United States of America and Brazil.
However, after 1931, and the death of one the main North-American poets, the Arabic literary
tradition of the United States lost its prominence to Brazil. Created in 1933, the Andaluzian
Literary League of Brazil was to become the largest Arabic literary group in South America.
Among its most prominent members were Michel Neman Maluf, Nazir Zaitun, Nasr Samaan,
Daud Chaccur, Husni Gurab, Iskandar Kerbej, Chicrala El-Jurr, among others. It published a
review under the same name until 1953, distributed to all of South America and Arab
countries.

According to the Algerian writer Slimane Zghidour, the Brazilian literary modernist
school influenced modern Arabic literature to a larger extent than the North American school.
First, due to the fact that the Syrian-Lebanese community life in Brazil was more intense in
terms of both the number of participants and the number of publications (newspapers,
reviews, magazines, clubs); second, because of the close contact between these Arabic literary
circles and the local Brazilian literary modernist movement, which was a thriving movement in
the 1930s and 1940s.
 Although the immigrants poems often expressed a deep longing for their countries of
origin, they soon began to reveal the Arab immigrants adaptation to their new reality. Intra-
community relations were maintained by means of community clubs, community schools etc,
and a clear preference attributed to non-mixed marriages, but the fact is that the Syrian and
Lebanese immigrants adapted themselves quite quickly and mixed into Brazilian society.
Neither Christians nor Muslims suffered any extreme form of racism. Preconceived ideas of
the exotic Arabs either faded or became jokes in the mouths of the immigrants themselves
(See Sebe. 2008: 20).

This had to do with local conditions in Brazil, the fact that the country was receiving a
large amount of immigrants of various different nationalities and origins, and the fact that they
had a social and economic role which meant they were needed in the country. It was also
related to the characteristics of the immigrants themselves, such as their mainly Christian
origin, which was able to mix into the Christian Brazilian society with little difficulty. But it was
also due to the fact that after a couple of decades, and certainly from the beginning of the 20th
century on, the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants expressed a conscious effort to integrate into
the country life, while preserving certain traditions and values, as stated by the immigrant
Nami Jafet:

It is true that we should preserve our good eastern customs in terms of the
family, our beliefs and conscience, our reserved customs and decency, the love for our
homeland, so that we may help Syria which suffers under Turkish rule. But, it is also true
that we should get along well with the nationals, and come close to them in their way of
life. We should unite in regard to national events, both pleasant and painful. It is our
sacred duty to help them in their national affairs, for the sake of the good administration
and the overall efforts for the growth of the nation (Jafet, 1947: 46).

Finally, hidden underneath the over-emphasized features of a full and successful

integration of the Arab immigrants into Brazilian society, are the dilemmas of each
immigration wave, and each generation born in the new land, as shown in the Brazilian Mahjar
literature. The poems, written first in Arabic, then in Portuguese, often reveal unavoidable
tensions between the desire to integrate and the dream of returning to the land of origin,
and, finally, for some, the impossibility of doing either one or the other. For these, the loss of
the Syrian or Lebanese identity came before one could truly fit into a new identity. In other
words, the land of our fathers, like a homeland of memories, could never be retrieved, while
the Brazilian identity was still untenable.

Integration of the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants into the Brazilian society, from
North to South, and mainly in So Paulo, was therefore the result mainly of a conscious and
continuous effort to do so. It came together with the respectability gained by the community,
the institutions they founded, and the fact that their sons and daughters began to study in the
same schools as local Brazilians, learning the same language Portuguese- and taking part fully
in the social and political life of Brazil.
 Bibliography:

Greiber, B.L., Maluf, L.S., Mattar, V.C. 1998. Memrias da Imigrao: Libaneses e Srios
em So Paulo., So Paulo: Discurso.

Hajjar, C. F. 1985. Imigrao rabe: 100 Anos de Reflexo. So Paulo: cone.

Knowlton, C. 1961. Srios e Libaneses: Mobilidade social e espacial. So Paulo:

Anhembi.

Safady, W. 1966. Cenas e Cenrios dos Caminhos de Minha Vida. Belo Horizonte: Santa
Maria, 1966.

Sebe. J.C.B.M. 2008. Ser rabe na Cultura Brasileira: Construo de Identidade. Tiraz.
Revista de Estudos rabes e das Culturas do Oriente Mdio. No 5, So Paulo: Humanitas/USP.

Sendlmayer, S. 2004. Perambulaes: presena rabe na literatura brasileira. Tiraz.

Revista de Estudos rabes e das Culturas do Oriente Mdio. No 1, So Paulo: Humanitas/USP.

Truzzi, O. M. S. 2009. Patrcios: Srios e Libaneses em So Paulo. So Paulo: Unesp.

Zghidour, S. 1982. A Poesia rabe Moderna e o Brasil. So Paulo: Brasiliense.