History

Peru

This is taken from a webpage with a news article which chats with Farid Kahhat, a Palestinian-Peruvian author, who wrote a book, The Arab Footprint in Peru.

Note: The author is using the historical sense of the present tense, so I translated it to the past tense.

Arab migration to Peru: A Palestinian settled in Peru takes this country as his own

Los inmigrantes árabes no les enseñan la lengua a sus hijos, no intentan formar un colegio étnico, adoptan la religión católica como un esfuerzo por integrarse a la sociedad peruana.

The Arab immigrants didn’t not teach the language to their children, didn’t try to form an ethnic university; they adopted the Catholic religion as a way to integrate themselves into Peruvian society.

He noted that most immigrants were Christian, but to faciliatate integration, many converted from Greek Orthodox Christianity to Catholicism. Again we see the pattern so common in Latin America. The immigrants were Christian. Many who were not Catholic, converted to Catholicism. Assimilation was total.

There are an estimated 20,000 Palestinians in Peru; and also Syrian and Lebanese.

There are not as many Arabs in Peru as you will find in Chile, Argentina, or Brazil, but they are there.

The Fans of C.D. Palestino

Latin Arabia History, Palestinians, Sports, TV , 0 Comment


Even without translation it is worth watching
Posted on YouTube: October 10, 2009

C.D. = Club Deportivo (Sports Club)

These are the fans of the Palestino (Palestinian) Football (Soccer) Club in Santiago. They call themselves Baisanos, instead of Paisanos, because their Arab ancestors could not pronounce the letter P, and mispronounced it as B.

They wave Palestinian Flags and sport their colors.

The club was founded in 1920 by Palestinian immigrants and their sons. This sort of shows that some sense of Palestinian identity predated 1964 – giving a rebuke to the claim that no Palestinian identity pre-existed the formation of the PLO.

Unfortunately, the team and the fans have gotten radicalized. They will often spout Pro-Palestinian slogans, and hold up signs which deny Israel’s existence.

My point here is not to glorify their radicalism, but to point out that the Palestinian community is well embedded in Chile. Sadly, it is now very radicalized against Israel.

January 18, 2025 Edited: Added a date to the video. Added explanations. Changed title.

Arab Dancing in Honduras

Latin Arabia Arabic Dance, History 0 Comment

Honduras has about 250,000 Palestinians, which is roughly 3% of the population – though in fact, they are quite successful in business. In fact, Honduras has had a president, Carlos Roberto Flores, who was of Palestinian descent.

There are an estimated 5-6,000 Muslims in Honduras, which is less than about 0.1% of the population. Running the numbers this means that the Arabs in Honduras are 97% or more Christian, if we assume that all these Muslims are found only in the Arab community.

Again we see this amazing phenomena. It as if there were a demographic sieve which made sure that only Christian Arabs got to the New World.

More on Lebanese Maronites

August 22, 2012

The Canadian-American scholar T. B. Irving wrote:

Source Islamic Renewal in Iberia and Latin America: Its Needs and Preconditions T.B. Irving 1981
a lecture delivered at the University of Brasilia

Frankly it has been hard to gather much data on this subject. Yet even the Christian Lebanese immigrants to South America (and I might include much of Africa where these Lebanese have also gone as mer­chants and entrepreneurs) owe much to their over‑all Arab heritage, even though many of them try to call themselves “Phoenicians”.

It was the Maronite Catholics, NOT usually the Lebanese Muslims, who regularly fell into this Phoenicianism. The Lebanese Muslims tended to be pan-Arabists.

However, it was the Maronite Catholics who form the bulk of Lebanese immigration to the West, and hence the confusion in the data. They will call themselves Maronites, Lebanese, or Phoenician, but will differentiate themselves from Arabs in general. Again, not all of them, but enough to create havoc with the data.

This may be changing as of late, but the damage to the census data has already been done. I have run into Lebanese who get quite angry when referred to as Arab.

The point to this is that academics note how the Lebanese Maronites create confusion with their insistence on labelling themselves as Phoenician or Lebanese, not as a subset of Arab; but as an identity distinct from Arab. Hence the quite common and absurd transnational statistics where the Lebanese will outnumber the census of Arabs in a given country

NOTE: Dr. Irving was a Princeton educated professor of Arabic and Spanish, who taught at the University of Tennesse for 40 years. However, he was a bit daft, and converted to Islam. His scholarly achievements are many but he could pepper them with such idiocies as: “… the original countries which are now called Spain and Portugal enjoyed nine centuries of Islamic rule”1

However, given his proficiency in Arabic and Spanish, he is an excellent source for historical data on the civil disabilities attending Muslims who did not convert in Latin America, even if Dr. Irving’s religious judgements are suspect.

1Source: (Click Here) Apparently, the Spanish and Portuguese thought otherwise. They threw the Muslims out.

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