JEWS AND ARABS FIND SUCCESS IN BRAZIL
By John Fitzpatrick
Gringoes.com, Brazil
Oct 10 2005
Jews have been coming to Brazil since the country was first discovered
by the Portuguese in 1500. One of Pedro Alvares Cabral´s crew was a
New Christian, as Jews who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism
were known. Fernando de Noronha, who gave his name to the archipelago
off the Northeastern coast, was another New Christian and arrived in
1503. These New Christians were subsequently banned from entering the
country in 1567 but many continued to enter clandestinely. They were
active in the sugar trade in Pernambuco and owned around 200 sugar
cane plantations by the end of the 16th century.
The Dutch invasion of the Northeast in the mid 17th century brought
hundreds of Jews from Holland. The Dutch were tolerant and allowed the
Jews to practice their faiths and the New Christians to return to their
old beliefs. The oldest synagogue in the Americas was built in Recife
in 1637. Although most of these Jews were originally of Portuguese or
Spanish descent they repaid their Dutch hosts by supporting them during
the rebellions by the Portuguese and Brazilians against Dutch rule
in 1645-54. More than 200 years later, Jews were among the millions
who arrived in Brazil during the period of mass immigration at the
end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century. Most were
Ashkenazi Jews who came mainly from eastern Europe and Russia. Others
arrived in the 30s to escape from the growing Nazi threat.
It is difficult to know how many Jews there are in Brazil and
estimates range from around 87,000 to 150,000. The higher figure is
probably more accurate but, in any case, Jews represent a miniscule
fraction of the entire population of over 180 million. Argentina
has a larger Jewish population, put at around 250,000. Brazil´s Jews
have flourished in a number of areas, including business, finance,
the media and the arts. Large Jewish-owned concerns include the
Klabin pulp and paper company, the Bloch publishing house and the
Safra financial group. Unlike Brazil´s Arabs, they have generally
steered clear of politics. Prominent Jews include Silvio Santos,
owner of the SBT television channel and other media outlets, Celso
Lafer, the former foreign minister in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso
government, Roberto Justus, an advertising executive who recently
launched a local equivalent of the Donald Trump television show “The
Apprentice”, actress Deborah Bloch, and the chief rabbi, Henry Sobel.
The Arabs, or Moors as they were known, had occupied much of the
Iberian peninsula for hundred of years before being expelled.
Although Moors, as such, may not have been among the first visitors,
many of the Portuguese arrivals must have been of Moorish descent.
Arabs did not begin arriving en masse until the late 19th and early
20th century. They were mainly Christian Lebanese and Syrians fleeing
the Moslem Ottoman Empire. Unlike many other immigrants who received
subsidies from their home governments, these Arabs paid their own
passage. To make things worse, they arrived with passports issued by
their hated Turkish overlords and were immediately labelled “Turks”
by the Brazilians, who (as any resident foreigner knows) have never
been very good at discerning one nationality from another.
While some Arabs traveled around the country as peddlers others
formed large communities in places like Rio and São Paulo. They
crowded into areas like Rua 22 de Marco in downtown São Paulo and
were active in the textiles and clothing trade. (Jews, meanwhile,
were plying a similar trade in the Bom Retiro district only a few
blocks away.) If you visit Rua 22 de Marco today you will see that
most of the shops and warehouse still bear Arab names. There was a
further influx of Lebanese during the civil war which affected the
country in the 70s and 80s. Many of these were Moslems. There are also
smaller numbers of Palestinians. It has been estimated that around
7% of Brazil´s population is of Arab descent. Personally, I find
this hard to believe but there are certainly hundreds of thousands
of Brazilians bearing Arab names and millions more with some Arab
(and Jewish) blood, whether they know it or not.
The Arabs have done well in a number of areas including trade,
agriculture, finance, industry and politics. A look at the names of
the members of Brazil´s Congress attests to the Lebanese and Syrian
ancestry of a large number of elected representatives. The most famous
politician of Arab descent is Paulo Maluf, the former São Paulo mayor
and state governor, currently in prison under suspicion of massive
fraud during his time as mayor. Despite their political success,
Brazil´s Arabs have not matched their counterparts in places like
Argentina or Ecuador where presidents of Arab descent have assumed
office. Other prominent Brazilians of Arab descent are Adib Jatene,
health minister under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Paulo Skaf,
president of the São Paulo trade federation FIESP. I cannot think of
any footballer of Arab descent but have noticed that a surprisingly
large number of directors of the Corinthians football team have
Arab names.
Religious Freedom The discrimination the Jews suffered is a thing of
the past and the community is free to practice its religion and run
its own places of worship and schools. The Moslems do likewise and
have built the largest mosque in South America in the Foz de Iguacu
region where the frontiers of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet. São
Paulo has a hospital founded by the Arab community (Sirio-Libanese)
and another by the Jewish community (Einstein) although you don´t
have to be of either origin to be treated. There are a number of
clubs, including Hebraica for the Jews and Monte Libano and Homs
for the Arabs. The Jews have their own cemetery in Morumbi. There
are dozens of Arab restaurants in the city and snacks like kibes and
esfihas are eaten by everyone. The Brazilians have even taken Arab
bread and turned it into a sandwich know locally as a beiruti after
the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
This ability to take a foreign ingredient and make it Brazilian is
one of Brazil´s strengths. In fact, I am being a bit inaccurate in
calling these people Arabs because I bet every single “Arab” born here
(and even some born abroad) would describe himself or herself as a
Brazilian. Few of them speak Arabic, as a visiting Lebanese president
learned to his annoyance a few years ago when he tried to give a speech
in Arabic and discovered that almost no-one could understand him.
Boy Meets Girl – Nacib and Gabriela The Arabs have mixed well and
are popular. A heartthrob charmer like Omar Sharif is more the
Brazilian idea of an Arab than a murdering terrorist like Osama bin
Laden. Remember the start of Jorge Amado´s wonderful novel “Gabriela
– Clove and Cinnamon”: “In that year of 1925, when the idyll of the
mulatto girl Gabriela and Nacib the Arab began, the rains continued
long beyond the proper and necessary season”. Amado gave the novel
an alternative title “A Brazilian from the Arabies” and described
it as the “Adventures and Misadventures of a Good Brazilian (Born
in Syria)”. The book describes the goings on in the town of Ilheus
in Bahia during the cacao boom when fortunes were won and lost
and murder and conspiracy were rampant. Nacib, a fat cafe owner,
hires Gabriela as a cook to cover in an emergency and her cooking
proves to be so good that clients start flocking in and his business
takes off. He falls in love with her and she treats him like a god,
calling him her “beautiful man”. She loves when he talks Arabic in
bed and gives her an Arabic name. The “idyll” of Nacib and Gabriela
is a delightful counterbalance to the conspiracy and calumny of the
rest of the book. (Incidentally, this gender reversal is interesting
because Portuguese travelers had always admired the beauty of Moorish
women and were attracted to them. Even today the word “morena”,
used to describe a woman with dark hair and eyes, has a more sensual
connotation than the dull English equivalent “brunette”.)
There is no hostility between the Jewish and Arab communities despite
the problems of the Middle East. I know people from both communities
and have never heard a disparaging remark from either side about the
other. Since most Arabs were Christians, it was easier to integrate
with the Catholic Brazilians than it was for orthodox Jews and the
more recently arrived Moslem Arabs. This intermarriage over a century
has led to many Paulistanos having an ethnic lineage which combines
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Lebanese/Syrian blood. The more
liberal Jews have also intermarried with Christians but there are
several orthodox communities which dress in traditional style and
keep to themselves. On Friday evenings the streets of districts like
Higienopolis and Cerqueira Cesar are filled with groups of Jews heading
for the synagogues. In fact, I was driven to write this article as
I sat in a padaria one Friday evening watching these groups coming
and going.
Terrorist Threat Despite this lack of tension, São Paulo´s Jews are on
the alert. They recall the murderous attacks a decade ago on Jewish
targets in Buenos Aires which killed over 100 people. The authors of
these attacks have never been discovered although suspicion has fallen
on Iranian diplomats acting in tandem with members of the Argentinean
intelligence forces. Anti-Semitism has never been official policy
in modern times although the government of Getulio Vargas secretly
issued an instruction in 1937 preventing entry visas being issued
for Jews. After the Second World War, thousands of Nazis escaped to
Latin America and many of them settled in Argentina and Brazil. When
Israeli commandos kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in 1962 and took him to
Jerusalem, where he was executed, many Argentinean and Brazilian Jews
were afraid that it would lead to reprisals against them. Nowadays,
Moslem extremists rather than Nazis are the more likely threat these
days. Schools, synagogues, clubs and buildings housing wealthy
businessmen are heavily fortified with security guards, concrete
barriers and steel doors. One prominent family is reported to be
guarded round the clock by former members of the Israeli armed forces.
The Arab community is not under the same threat of attack although
there have been some bloody internal spillovers from the Lebanese
conflict. The administration of George W. Bush has claimed that
terrorists have sought refuge in the Foz de Iguacu area and accused
Arab businessmen there of raising funds for terrorist groups. There
may be some truth to this but so far no hard evidence has been
presented. Moslem groups in the Foz area say they have raised funds for
humanitarian purposes in to help Lebanese and Palestinian refugees. The
Jewish community, in turn, makes hefty donations to Israel. For the
moment, both communities seem prepared to maintain a low-profile
approach and keep the conflict far from Brazil.
Finally, it is worth mentioning another persecuted ethnic group which
fled the religious oppression of the Ottomans and has flourished here –
the Armenians. The massacres the Christian Armenian people suffered
at the hands of the Turks were truly horrific but, thankfully, some
of the survivors found safety and a better life in Brazil, a country
which always extends a welcome to foreigners.
Note: The main sources for this article were Historia do Brasil by
Jorge Caldeira, Historia Concisa do Brasil by Boris Fausto, Brasil
2005 – Almanaque Abril, The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800 by Charles
Boxer, Brasil A/Z -Larousse, Nossa Historia – October 2005 issue,
Gabriela Clove and Cinnamon. For anyone interested in the story of
the Armenians I recommend The Rage of the Vulture, a novel by Barry
Unsworth.
© John Fitzpatrick 2005
John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish writer and consultant with long
experience of Brazil. He is based in São Paulo and runs his own
company Celtic Comunicacões. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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