BBC News Brazil
Since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, Israeli and Palestinian communities in Latin America have closely followed the crisis in the Middle East.
Major Latin American cities have been the scene of demonstrations related to the war, which Israel says has since killed 1,400 people on the Israeli side and 10,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamasrun health ministry in Gaza.
In this context, Chile has a special feature: the country is home to the largest colony of Palestinian origin outside the Arab world. And one of the oldest.
It is estimated that around 500,000 people in Chile belong to this community in the country.
“We are very moved by what is happening in Gaza. We are very shocked by the images coming from there,” Diego Khamis, executive director of the Palestinian Community in Chile, told BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanishlanguage service.
The Palestinian diplomatic representative in the South American country, Vera Baboun, explains: “Historically, the Palestinian community in Chile has been committed to rejecting all atrocities experienced by the Palestinian nation.”
Many have relatives living in Gaza or neighboring areas and are trying to maintain contact with them despite internet and communications outages.
One of the most emblematic cases was that of Ghassan Sahurie, a sevenyearold ChileanPalestinian boy who, according to his uncle living in Chile, was missing in Gaza for several days until he was found in one of the local hospitals, to the press.
But how did Chile manage to forge such a strong bond with the Palestinian community? And why did so many Palestinians choose to live there, 13,000 kilometers away?
To understand the phenomenon of Palestinian immigration to Chile, one must go back to the end of the 19th century. At that time, the region of Palestine between the Jordan and the Mediterranean was considered holy for Muslims, Jews and Catholics and belonged to the Ottoman Empire.
“The withdrawal of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese from the region comes amid a situation of economic crisis, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the suppression of the first Arab nationalist movements in the region,” explained Ricardo Marzuca, an academic at the Center for Arabic Studies at the University of Chile , in a 2021 interview with BBC News Mundo.
For this community, as for many others, America was seen as a “new world” full of opportunity.
So many young Palestinians made their way to Europe, by land and by sea to Buenos Aires.
But instead of staying in the Argentine capital, some in the richest and most “European” period preferred to cross the Andes and head for Chile.
According to the book “The Arab World and Latin America” (free translation) by Lorenzo Agar Corbinosla, between 8,000 and 10,000 Arabs lived in Chile between 1885 and 1940.
Half of them were Palestinians, most of them came from just three cities: Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour.
But then there were further waves of migration, for example after the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and after the Second World War, with the founding of Israel on May 14, 1948.
At this point, approximately 750,000 Palestinians fled to other countries or were expelled.
Like other young countries, Chile needed immigrants to strengthen its economy and control its territory.
The Chilean elite has always favored the Europeans, to whom it has offered land and rights since the early 19th century, but many Arabs and Palestinians have taken advantage of this flow.
“There was a kind of chain effect where certain groups arrived in Chile and brought their families with them,” Marzuca said.
“There are a number of factors that favored his arrival: the climate, as there are certain similarities between the Palestinian and Chilean territories; Freedom, something that was greatly missed due to the oppression of the Ottoman Empire and later the oppression of the British Mandate.” ; and prosperity economy,” he added.
Those who came from the Middle East chose trade and the textile sector, a decision that was fundamental to the growth of the community. They followed their traditions and the wellknown dynamic of discounts and bargains, but also served an existing demand in the region.
“Initially, Palestinians devoted themselves to working as street vendors, then they started small businesses and in the 1930s, these families made an important contribution to the country’s textile development,” Marzuca said.
So the first representatives of the Abumohor family which today represents one of the largest economic groups in Chile with companies in trade, finance and even football traveled around the country offering wholesale goods.
Another example is the company Casa Saieh, which also belongs to a family of Palestinian origin and was opened in the city of Talca in the 1950s.
His heirs later became renowned businessmen: Álvaro Saieh, owner and president of the CorpGroup group of companies, which currently invests in the financial sector, retail and media companies such as the newspaper La Tercera.
Other immigrants began producing cotton or silk, replacing local crafts or expensive European imports. And surnames of Palestinian origin such as Hirmas, Said, Yarur and Sumar would become synonymous with a powerful textile industry.
After the resounding opening of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s and in the face of intense Chinese competition, most Palestinian assets diversified into other business areas: finance, real estate, agriculture, wine, food and the press.
In addition to their contribution to economic development, they founded institutions of various kinds, from a football team the Club Palestino to nonprofit associations and cultural organizations.
They also managed to settle in different cities in Chile, which is essential for building relationships with different communities in the country.
And in Santiago they conquered the famous “Patronato district,” which in its heyday was called “Little Palestine,” with its restaurants offering stuffed grape leaves or popular Arabic sweets to the sounds of music from that diaspora.
“There is a saying that is often repeated in Chile: that in every province there is a square, a church, a police station. We are involved in all these places,” said Maurice Khamis, who came to Chile with his family from Beit Jala in 1952. The community’s surnames stand out in the areas of justice, politics, culture and economics.
In addition to those already mentioned, the commercial impulse is represented in companies such as Parque Arauco, linked to the Said family, in shopping centers in Chile, Peru and Colombia; or Banco de Crédito e Inversiones, founded in 1937 by Juan Yarur Lolas and still one of the largest in the square.
There are also important political figures: party leaders, senators, representatives, mayors and city councilors.
For representative Vera Baboun, “the most interesting thing about the Palestinian community in Chile is that they are fully integrated as Chileans, but at the same time inseparable from their country. And the Palestinian cause is alive in their lives.”
But the process wasn’t that easy. Although historians and experts say Palestinian integration in Chile was “tremendously successful,” there were also delicate moments. The arrivals from the Arab world had to deal with longterm rejection from Chileans, especially in the first years of the migration flow, which made it difficult for them to stay.
They were derogatorily called “Turks,” which harmed the Palestinian community not only because they were assigned the wrong nationality, but also because they were identified with their oppressors during the Ottoman Empire.
“In Latin America, as in much of the world, the Orientalist civilization paradigm took hold and gave rise to the phenomenon known as Turkophobia,” Marzuca explained. “In other words, the rejection of Arab immigrants based on a racial classification made by the Europeans.”
“There was a rejection by certain elites in Chilean high society, where the Palestinians were viewed poorly. It was said that they did not contribute to society, that they were ambitious and freespirited,” he added.
And although Palestinians in Chile agree that there is “Turcophobia” behind them, the community has once again felt some discrimination following the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
That’s what Diego Khamis says. “With this episode we began to see features of antiPalestinianism, of discrimination based on origin, that we had not seen for a long time.”
“When it was discussed who the new children’s ombudsman would be [cargo diretor de uma instituição pública chilena que protege os direitos das crianças]It was said that Anuar Quesille Vera could not be elected because he was of Palestinian origin.
“We are worried because we believed that ‘Turkish phobia’ had been completely overcome. And it is unacceptable to see outbreaks of this kind of discrimination so many years after the Palestinian presence in Chile,” says Diego Khamis.
When asked how the Palestinian community views Hamas’ attack on Israel, Khamis emphasized that he recognizes “the Palestine Liberation Organization.” [OLP] as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”
“And Hamas is not part of the PLO. Neither in Chile nor in Palestine do we believe that violence is a valid method of political action,” he explains.
In this sense, the leader adds: “There have been calls to attack Jewish institutions in Chile and we do not waste a second: we condemn every attack and every call to attack Jewish institutions.”
Historians agree that the prolongation of the crisis that has afflicted Palestinians for decades, in addition to the current Israeli bombings in Gaza, partly explains the ChileanPalestinian population’s deep attachment to their country.
According to Ricardo Marzuca, they “never separated from their communities of origin”.
This text was originally published here.