Celebrating Arab Heritage in Latin America

Book display "Celebrating Arab Heritage in Latin America" Showing books displayed on two tables

April is National Arab American Heritage Month in the United States. We created a new book and DVD display “Celebrating Arab Heritage in Latin America.”

This is the first time that LACC observes Arab American Heritage Month, and we want to share the stories of Arab travel and migration to the region. Many of our books related to the topic discuss Arab migrant experiences in the larger Latin American countries like Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, but we also have research material available on Arab communities in Central America and the Caribbean as well.

All books and videos on display are available for checkout. Books are also available for interlibrary loan. The display includes material in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch.

Arab migrants to and travelers in Latin America and the Caribbean represent a diversity of individuals from many different places and cultures and religious traditions, traveling for just as many reasons.

In the twentieth century, many immigrated to the region for political and economic reasons, sometimes permanently and in other cases for shorter durations. In Argentina for example, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants constituted some of the largest immigrant communities, alongside Italians and Germans.

Our book and video display also documents Palestinian immigration in the later twentieth century, in Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Chile. Palestine in the South is the story of one man’s struggle to relocate his extended family to Chile with the support of the large Palestinian community there.

We also included the earliest known first-hand account of an Arab traveler to Latin America. In the later seventeenth century, Chaldean priest Elias al-Mûsili traveled throughout Spain’s American colonies, often finding himself the guest of Catholic monasteries. His diary contains a traveler’s observations on people, places, and the natural world at a time when outsiders were not allowed to travel so freely in the Spanish empire.

Book cover for "More Argentine than You: Arabic-Speaking Immigrants to Argentina" by Steven Hyland Jr.

Books:

More Argentine than you : Arabic-speaking immigrants in Argentina (2017) by Steven Hyland

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (F3021.A59 H95 2017)

 Diálogo América do Sul–países árabes by Seminário “Diálogo América do Sul–Países Árabes” (2004)

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (DS63.18 .S46 2004)

La Argentina encubierta : informes sobre la otra identidad (2000) by María Elvira Sagarzazu

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (F3021.A59 S34 2000)

 Escritores chilenos de origen arabe : ensayo y antología (1989) by Matías Rafide

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America Reference (PQ7934.A7 R331 1989)

As raízes árabes, na tradição poético-musical do sertão nordestino (1978) by Luis Soler

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (PQ9691.N59 S64)

An Arab’s journey to colonial Spanish America : the travels of Elias al-Mûsili in the seventeenth century (author fl. 1668, translated 2003) by Ilyās Mawṣilī, translated by Caesar E. Farah

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (E143 .M3913 2003)

Dollar, dove, and eagle : one hundred years of Palestinian migration to Honduras (1992) by Nancie L. Solien González.

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (JV419 .G64 1992)

The Mexican Mahjar : transnational Maronites, Jews, and Arabs under the French Mandate by Camila Pastor (2017).

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (F1392.A7 P37 2017)

Los inmigrantes árabes en Honduras : una historia en imágenes = Arab immigrants in Honduras : an illustrated history (2016) by Aníbal Nelson Valenzuela Motz.

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (F1517.A73 V35 2016)

Distinguishing arabesques : the politics and pleasures of being Arab in neoliberal Brazil (Dissertation, 2004) by John Tofik Karam.

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (F2659.A7 K373 2004a)

Arab-Latin American relations : energy, trade, and investment (1983) by Fehmy Saddy.

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (HF1480.55.A65 A7 1983)

Between Argentines and Arabs : Argentine orientalism, Arab immigrants, and the writing of identity (2006) by Christina Civantos.

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America LAC (F2810 .C54 2006)

Cover for the documentary on DVD "Palestine in the South"

DVDS

Palestine in the South (DVD) (2011) by Ana Maria Hurtado, Daniel Osorio, and Jorge Lozano.

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America Ltd. Cir. (F3285.A7 P35 2011)

Los árabes en la hispaniola y la cuestión palestina (DVD, 2013) by Romig González, Jimmy Sierra, and Ramón Abreu

Available at UF SMATHERS, Latin America Ltd. Cir. (F1941.A73 A73 2013)

For More Information

UF Libraries Committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

US State Department Press Release

Arab America Foundation