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Inscribing Difference: Maronites, Jews and Arabs in Mexican Public Culture and French Imperial Practice1

2011; Routledge; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17442222.2011.579727

1744-2230

Camila Pastor de María y Campos,

Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender

Abstract This paper traces the relationship between Arab, Maronite and Jewish populations that have circulated between the Mashreq – contemporary Lebanon, Israel and Syria – and Mexico over the past century and a half. It turns to historical anthropology to argue that a number of factors have contributed to the polarization of the Mashreqi migrant population along ethno-religious axes that were not salient in the same sense during the early decades of the migration, when families and individuals established cross-confessional networks based on a shared spoken language – Arabic – a shared culinary tradition and a shared space of life and labor – downtown Mexico City. It explores the categorization of migrants, through French administrative practice and the migrants’ creation of and participation in institutions, to describe the progressive erasure of common spaces and the privileging of allegiances articulated through ethno-religious categories, turned ethno-national labels. The French Mandate over the Mashreq, the subsequent emergence of modern nation-states in the region, and the unfolding of their national and state projects provide a transnational frame for these developments. Keywords: MexicomigrationtransnationalismMaronitesArabsJewsMashreqFrench MandateLebanonSyriacolonial administrationclass formationsracialization Notes Notes [1] For the analysis presented in this paper, I rely on interviews conducted with migrants, their families, and personnel in migrant institutions, archival material from private and official archives, popular culture artifacts, and the excellent scholarship that has preceded my own research. Fieldwork was conducted in Lebanon, Syria, and Mexico City, during 2005–2006, 2008, and 2009. Interviewee's names are omitted to protect their privacy. The main archival source is the Archive du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères Français (AMAE). [2] For new scholarship on the migrations to Latin America, see the list of references. [3] For frequencies of movement, see Páez Oropeza's (1984 [1976]) calculations of Mashreqi entries and exits to Mexico. Among community publications, see Betech de Dueck and Dehesa (Citation2005) for an autobiographical example. [4] Interviews by the author with Saab, Sayegh, Zghraib, and Marrun families, Mexico City, 2006–2007. [5] Lesser's work pioneering the analysis of migrants’ relationship to their adopted nation has been widely influential. Policy and practice across states has been at certain times divergent and at others remarkably uniform – for example, in the case of the migration restrictions imposed across the region in the years that led up to the Great Depression. [6] He presents a careful breakdown of European and Latin American nationalities, but only an inexplicable ‘Saudi Arabia’ and ‘Lebanon’ appear in his tables and are graphed in the unhelpful category of ‘others’. [7] Krause (Citation1987, pp. 168–169). Community estimates are either extremely conservative or present fantastic excess, and Mexican official sources are very limited due to changing census categories and the late and irregular record of migrant arrivals. In the case of Jewish populations, for the period between 1905 and 1910, for example, some community sources record 75 families, others 15,000 individuals, and a Mexican census 254 individuals (Krause, Citation1987, p. 103). [8] I have been fortunate to consult a number of lengthy and carefully crafted family histories, produced every year by school children in Mexico in collaboration with their mothers for family history contests organized in Israel, in which children attending Jewish schools throughout the world are invited to participate. [9] On the development of the Alliance Israelite schools throughout the Ottoman Empire, see Gelvin (Citation2005). [10] Unfortunately space does not allow me to elaborate on historical events in Mexico. Interested readers can refer to the excellent work of historians such as Gonzalez Navarro (1993), Yankelevich (Citation2004), Alfaro-Velcamp (Citation2007), and Palma Mora (2006), which are more centrally concerned with the Mexican process. [11] AME (vol. 407, p. 61). German consulates extended protection to Mashreqis in Mexico through 1919. [12] Germanophile and Francophile sympathies were a sensitive issue in the wake of the traumatic World War I, in which France lost up to 20 per cent of its economically active population. The clustering of confessional and ‘national’ or rather regional categories is less transparent. As I argue elsewhere, they appear to index either support for or rejection of the French mandate over the Mashreq. [13] It is important to note that at the time Palestine was under British mandate, and populations from that region would have been considered British clients. Their indifference to French politics is not surprising. [14] The Lebanese Ambassador in Mexico City, HE Nouhad Mahmoud, calculates that around 80 per cent of Mashreqis in Mexico are Maronite (interview by the author). [15] Wasta is an Arabic term that refers to preferential access to often informal interventions on one's behalf on the part of people wealthier or more powerful than oneself that provide access to scarce or otherwise improbable resources. [16] According to Unikel Fasja (2000, p. 28), established paisanos who owned a shop or stall and granted credit to more recent arrivals were known as despachistas. There is debate as to the relative affluence of the communities, Krause notes that Syrian and Turkish Jews arrived a few years before the large Ashkenazi migrations; she refers to them as ‘permanent residents’ who were ‘well established in their adopted country’ (Krause, Citation1987, p. 169). [17] A large proportion of foreign residents fled Mexico between 1910 and 1920; see Camposortega Cruz in Ota Mishima (Citation1997, p. 29). [18] On residential distribution of early migrants, see Alfaro-Velcamp (Citation2007), Diaz de Kuri and Macluf (1995), Macluf and Díaz de Kuri (2002), and Hamui de Halabe and Charabati (1989). In fact, it is in contemporary restaurants that such interaction continues to be habitual, as in the case of the Shia-owned Al-Andalus, and the Greek Orthodox-owned Adonis, both of which rely on a predominantly Jewish clientele, offering Kosher Arabic sweets baked on the premises by Shia or Sunni sweet makers. [19] Interview with M. C., Mexico City, 2006. [20] Interview with A. S., Mexico City, 2006. [21] Pages of Hetikva reproduced in Smeke Darwich (Citation1999, p. 319). [22] Pages of Optimismo Juvenil reproduced in Smeke Darwich (Citation1999, p. 322). [23] Interview with M. C., Mexico City, 2006. [24] Newspapers consulted include those mentioned as well as Excelsior, El Universal, Milenio; among the tabloids Uno Más Uno, El Sol de México, La Crónica de Hoy. Although El País is a Spanish newspaper, it produces a daily Mexican edition, which circulates daily in Mexico as part of the local press landscape and was the one consulted. [25] Some of the protests were organized by members of the Lebanese Center in Mexico City; for example those held in front of the UN building, at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Villa, and in the Parque España. I also attended a protest organized and held jointly by Jewish and Lebanese activists, also held in the Parque España. [26] Although a number of women who have married-in are of Damascene or Beiruti ancestry. The statement was posted online and could be consulted by anyone with Internet access; I focus on reception known to me through interviews and field research. [27] Text of the letter sent to the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert by the Lebanese Foundation for Peace. Walid Phares of the Foundation for a Free Lebanon was in charge of the English version. The Spanish language text that circulated in Mexico is in my personal archive. This is a selection from the English-language version posted 16 July 2006, grammatical particularities and all, on the Lebanese Foundation for Peace website. Available at: http://www.freelebanon.com/LFPNews/2006/July/July16/July16a/july16a.html (consulted 10 January 2010). [28] Gabriel's position was not publicly endorsed by Maronite authorities in Mexico. [29] ‘Mexican citizens’ refers to Mexican passport holders, mostly descendants, spouses and children of migrants. Evacuation efforts were coordinated by Mexican authorities and the Lebanese Embassy in Mexico. According to press reports, 113 Mexicans were successfully evacuated while 800 remained in Lebanon or had to exit by their own means. [30] Arturo Puente, Ambassador of Mexico in Lebanon, had already stated in a press interview that, although Hizballah's incursion in Israeli territory was unacceptable, the Israeli military response to them was disproportionate. Published in Excelsior, 19 July. This was also the official pronouncement of the Mexican state during the UN Security Council emergency meeting held on 21 July. [31] El Universal and El Sol de México reported on his farewell cocktail parties on 26 August 2006. [32] The Mahjar refers to the social space generated by the migration: to Syrians and Lebanese living outside of the Mashreq. Numerous authors describe the relationship that developed between the Mandate authorities and the Maronites. See Corm (1986) for a Lebanese perspective. [33] Various interviews, but especially those with Monsegnor Jaques Najm and with S. [34] Various interviews by the author with Druze, Shi’a, Sunni, Melkite, Jewish and Greek Orthodox families. [35] They have been richly documented in the work of Liz Hamui de Halabe. Both the Alianza Monte Sinaii (Damascus migrants) and the Centro Maguen David (Aleppo migrants) community centers have published lavish community histories and have ongoing archival and oral history projects.