Mexico’s Canal Once (Channel 11) has a short video on the history of the Lebanese in Mexico.
Posted on YouTube: February 2, 2012
It is in Spanish, but you should be able to auto-translate it.
1) Click Settings Wheel and choose Subtitles/CC.
2) Click to turn on: Spanish (auto-generated) .
3) Click – for a second time – to turn on: Subtitles/CC(1) Spanish (auto-generated) .
4) Click auto-translate.
5) Choose English – THIS CAN BE TRICKY – I suggest using up and down arrows to chose English, and then press Enter.
This can be very touchy, and you may have to play with it, but it works. Once you get the hang of it, you can turn the option on in a few seconds.
The numbers for Arab-Mexicans are all over the place, but the video (above) (in the description) makes an estimate at around 400,000 for the Lebanese in Mexico. Given other patterns of immigration that are common in Latin America, this probably means a guess-timate of 600,000 for Arabs of other backgrounds that went to Mexico. Again, this is only an estimate. Almost certainly, almost all of the Arab-Mexicans are Christian, now.
Given the common Christian Lebanese tendency – especially among the Maronite Catholics – to refuse to identify themselves as Arabs, but rather as simply Lebanese or Phoenician Westerners, one can only make an educated guess at best. The numbers in Wikipedia are all over the place. And one can find many cases where Wikipedia shows more Lebanese in a country than Arabs overall, which is an impossibility.
Frankly it has been hard to gather much data on this subject. … [T]he Christian Lebanese immigrants to South America… owe much to their over‑all Arab heritage, even though many of them try to call themselves “Phoenicians”.
Well, Professor Irving (above) noticed the same problem that I do.
The Maronite Catholics were almost genocided by the Muslims, more than once throughout history, which is why so many immigrated early on. Hence, they will often only identify as Lebanese, or as descendants of the Phoenicians.
The Lebanese-Christians do this to distinguish themselves from the Muslims. Muslim Lebanese will readily identify as Arab. This ethnic tension led to the Lebanese Civil War.
So demographers and historians have to guess; and the number of Lebanese in any Western population, and almost certainly the total number of Arabs in any country, is undercounted as a result.
So my educated guess (and that is all that it is) is that there are about 1 million-plus Arab-Mexicans.
We Americans, sadly tend to think of Latin America as a monolithic culture. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The impression that I got in school – even in Spanish class, where I did NOT do so well – was that the countries primarily consisted of a European Spanish or Portuguese elite with a large mestizo class (Spanish + Indian blend). It was/is not that simple.
First, the word mestizo means mixed, and does NOT necessarily contain the derogatory wallop that a term like mulatto used to carry, and might carry still, in the USA. But then there is a subcategory called castizo which means only one-quarter Indian and three quarters European Spanish. That term, castizo, has fallen out of use.
But the racial lines in Latin America are not so clearly delineated. A person who is one-quarter Indian would usually be considered White.
Okay, that part you may have known.
BUT DID YOU KNOW THIS?
The largest ethnic group in Argentina is Italian, not Spanish. And half of those Italians are Northern Italians, not the Mediterranean complected Sicilians. Indeed, though Argentina speaks Spanish, the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area speaks Spanish. but with an Italian accent, and they often say Ciao instead of Adios.
Posted on YouTube: November 3, 2017
Indeed, in the early 20th century, so many Italians were leaving Italy for South America that Italy had to make emigration illegal. About 60% of Argentines have some degree of Italian ancestry, albeit not necessarily pure. Chile is roughly 3.5% Italian, but Uruguay is about 44% Italian in whole or part, while Brazil is about 15% Italian in whole or part.
And then there are the Germans. Somewhere between 6-10% of Argentines are German. The problem is that Germanic immigration started to Argentina before Germany was unified in 1871; and so were not properly registered as German. If you add in the German speaking Swiss, Austrians, and ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, the number could go much higher.
Of course, many are intermarried with other ethnicities now.
So NO, the German-Argentines are NOT all descended from those who fled to Argentina after WW 2. There had been a considerable amount of Germans in Argentina before the war, many of them had been there for generations; and some of the then newer German-Argentines had even fled Hitler in the 1930s. Those Nazis who fled after WW 2 were a relatively small group compared to the German-Argentine population and they only fled so they could hide.
Further complicating the matter is that many of the Spanish immigrants to South America were not Spanish, but rather Basque and Galicians, who technically are not ethnic Spaniards, but come from the Whiter regions of Northern Spain.
Okay, you say, so Argentina is relatively White. Well, the same is true of some other Latin Countries. Costa Rica is heavily European White; with two-thirds identifying as White.
The Croatians settled large parts of Chile and Argentina.
Posted on YouTube: December 15, 2017
The current president of Argentina, Javier Milei, is of Croatian and Italian ancestry. A former president of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, was of Croatian and Swiss-German ancestry.
Okay, you say, but one does NOT normally see this in Mexico.
Well, most of Mexico and most of Central America is mestizo to be sure. But that is not true of all of Latin America. And even Mexico has some Germans and Arabs.
However, as so common in demographics, Wikipedia (2025) lists more Lebanese-Mexicans than Arab-Mexicans, which is ridiculous. This is a nightmare for historians and demographers, often caused by Lebanese Maronite Christians who refuse to consider themselves Arabs.
Large sections of South America, the southern tip (called the Southern Cone of South America) – Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and South Brazil – are very White, albeit with a looser definition of white. Being one half Indian may not necessarily disqualify a person. Then general rule is: if you are more than half white, you can be considered white. However, I have known a green-eyed Chilean who was majority White in ancestry, and called herself mestiza. South America does have a racial divide, but it is not so sharp as it was historically in the United States.
It could be argued that Argentina is whiter than the USA, except that American Whites are more Northern European in ancestry and usually pure White. Argentina does have Northern European Whites, but most Argentines are Mediterranean in ancestry, and half of Argentine Whites have some degree (small or large) of non-White (usually Indian) ancestry.
BTW: Some Latin Americans often prefer the term indigenes (Indigenous) to Indian, as they sometimes treat the term indio (Indian) as derogatory.
Essentially, ethnically, Argentina is similar to the United States, only with the proportions of each ethnic group varying.
Religiously, another difference between the USA and Latin America used to be religion, with the USA being majority Protestant and Latin America being majority Catholic.
Forget that, now! Evangelical Christianity has made massive inroads into Latin America, with Brazil about one-third Evangelical and growing. In some Central American countries, Evangelicals are approaching or now outnumber Catholics in percentages.
As for Jews, America has more Jews by percentage than Latin America, but Argentina still has a massive number of Jews, and has the seventh largest community of Jews in the world. At one time, the percentage of Jews in Argentina rivalled that of the USA.
Jews made an important contribution to the development of tango.
Unfortunately – and beyond the scope of this post – anti-Black discrimination is still strong in sections of Latin America, particularly Argentina.
So, if you thought that so many Arabs going to Latin America was that unbelievable, think again. Latin America is more of a melting pot than you probably realized.
The Palestinians in Guatemala are approximately 200,000 strong, making them the third largest Palestinian population in Latin America behind Chile and Honduras (with communities of 500,000 and 250,000 respectively).
While the number of Palestinians in Guatemala is 200,000, the number of Muslims in Guatemala is only around 1200: (Click Here – 2025). What this means, by inspection, is that almost all of the Palestinians in Guatemala come from Christian stocks – over 99% Christian, constituting a 200 to 1 advantage over Muslims in the group. These Palestinian-Guatemalans en toto constitute a little over 1% of Guatemala’s population.
Yet, unlike Chile, where the Palestinian-Chileans have incredible power – and hijacked the Chilean government’s position to be against Israel – in Guatemala the government is very pro-Israel.
Posted on YouTube: February 18, 2022
The friendly relationship of Guatemala and Israel dates to the history of aid given to the Guatemalan Government by the Israel government in the past.
When Guatemala stopped receiving arms from the U.S. in the late 1970s, its relationship with Israel strengthened. Israel stepped into the void as Guatemala’s biggest arms supplier and military advisor, with their weapons and training methods aiding the massacres that were perpetrated at this stage of the Guatemalan civil war (which lasted from 1960 to 1996). By the 1980s, roughly 300 Israeli military advisers were working in the country to bolster their ally’s army.
NOTE:One has to factor that Mondoweiss is an anti-Zionist source. So it can spin history. Still the background cited above is accurate.
What is amazing is that Palestinians in Guatemala – like the Palestinians in Chile – are so heavily Christian, yet identify with an Islamist cause in Palestine.
One has to remember that the bible speaks of nations, and Christians think in terms of nation-states. Islam speaks of a greater Islamic homeland, a caliphate. Muslims are not as comfortable with the concept of nationality, but rather think in terms of religion.
Think of the antiquated term: Christendom. Yet, in spite of a sense of general religious connection, Westerners prioritize national identification over a general religious affiliation. Protestant England still fought Protestant Germany.
The opposite can be true in the Arab mindset.
So Palestinian Christians may see the struggle with Israel as a national cause while the Muslims see the Palestinian struggle as a Holy War.
The Palestinian-Guatemalans’ support for the Palestinian cause may not be for the same reason that Muslims support Palestine. Palestinian-Guatemalan Christians may not realize that – were the Palestinians to win – the victorious Muslims would not treat Christians in Palestine as equals, but as dhimmis, even worse than they think Israel would treat Christians. This is a myopic miscalculation on the part of the Palestinians in Latin America.
Still, like the Palestinian-Chileans (Chilestinians/Chilestinos in Spanish) in Chile, the Palestinians of Guatemala also have risen to the status of elites, in spite of past prejudices.
Following an early period of hardship, Palestinian immigrants to Central America established prosperous businesses and, in a relatively short time span, joined the dominant class in the commercial structure of their host countries. In the late 1910s in San Pedro Sula [Honduras], for example, Arab merchants, 95% of them Palestinians, “controlled major sectors of the city’s elite structure, especially large commerce.”
Their commercial success led to some official discrimination against them for a while; and ironically, their rise in society was similar to that of the Jews in America.
With the growing economic power of the Palestinian communities in the 1920s and 1930s, it was probably inevitable that the local elites would come to see them as economic rivals and try to isolate them socially and politically. Because Palestinian success was most visible in Honduras, the situation was especially acute there.
However, today the Palestinians of Central America are fully integrated into society, and they are elites. However, their social cohesion has disappeared.
At present, descendants of early Palestinian immigrants are completely integrated into their host societies and are an important part of national life and social, political, and cultural institutions at all levels. Traditions such as intergroup marriages and concentrations of Palestinians in the same neighborhoods are few and far between. The price for Palestinians of full integration, however, has been the loss of their culture, especially the language and knowledge of their past. Today, the majority of Palestinian descendants marry non-Arabs; it is difficult to find Palestinian families without non-Palestinian members. Most Palestinian descendants do not speak Arabic, although they might use some Arabic words and phrases.
Yet, the Palestinians of Chile intermarried and maintained some cohesion.
Three reasons might explain the differences.
1) The Palestinians in Chile, at 2-1/2% of the population, are a larger demographic.
2) The army and the government of Guatemala feel in debt to Israel.
3) Guatemala has a slightly larger Evangelical (usually pro-Israel) population than Chile.
However, though some Palestinian-Guatemalans are upset with the government of Guatemala, they cannot hijack the government’s foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine, like the Palestinian-Chileans (Chilestinians/Chilestinos in Spanish) have hijacked the Chilean government’s foreign policy in Chile.
Of course, there are other reasons, but the difference between Chile and Guatemala, which both have noticeable Palestinian demographics, is an interesting distinction.
While many Western countries align with the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, often appearing to act in support of Zionist agendas, the nations of Latin America show strong solidarity with the Palestinian people. This connection goes beyond political alliances and reflects a shared history and cultural understanding.
From Palestinian identity and traditions to the preservation of their roots and, most importantly, their land, Latin American empathy for Palestinians is deeply rooted in the region’s history of Arab migration, the celebration of heritage, and a profound understanding of the struggles faced by indigenous communities. These nations recognize the pain of displacement and the fight to preserve one’s homeland and cultural identity against forces that seek to undermine or erase them.
Yes, there is a degree of truth to the article, and the author does go through a lot of countries.
However, what is overlooked is the growing demographic of Evangelical Christians in Latin America. They may not be able to elect presidents in some countries, but they limit the maneuverability of those presidents in foreign policies.
All articles have to be checked for bias, and the article above is one of them.
Balance that article with this video below.
Posted on YouTube: November 6, 2023
The video can be auto-translated
Lula da Silva’s government in Brazil would be much more anti-Israel were it not hamstrung by his country’s pro-Zionist Evangelical community which is close to one-third of the population.
And not just Brazil! This video below is from Ecuador.
Posted on YouTube: August 26, 2020
AND THE VIDEO IS BY A CHRISTIAN CHANNEL
This is a growing phenomenon in Latin America, and cannot be overlooked.
While Evangelical Christianity seems to be weakening in the United States, it is growing in Latin America – and not just the mainstream denominations, but tilted heavily to the pro-Christian Zionist denominations.
So yes, the Arab ethnics still have clout (especially in Chile) but for how long? How long?
