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Phoenicians of the Pacific: Lebanese and Other Middle Easterners in Ecuador*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Mónica Almeida
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Extract

“In Ecuador, the streets are paved with money. All you have to do is go there and pick it up.”

It was this rumor that lured Gabriel Manzur and Juan Adum into trying their luck in such a far-away, unknown land. Little did it matter that this meant a month-and-half journey by sea from Beirut with a stopover in Marseilles, then a train ride across Panama to get from the Caribbean to the Pacific because the Panama Canal did not yet exist. A sailor took pity on them and bought them a pineapple in one of the ports of call, and to Manzur and Adum, this strange fruit tasted like an orange.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , July 1996 , pp. 87 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1996

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Nadim Shehadi for introducing me to valuable Centre for Lebanese Studies contacts in the Andean countries, as well as Ignacio Klich and the evaluators of The Americas for their useful comments on an earlier version of this article, the result of work in progress. Samuel Aponte and Marc Saint Upery are thanked for their kind help in editing the final version.

References

1 With the exception of politicians and persons already quoted in published sources, I have used pseudonyms to respect the privacy of the people interviewed.

2 Lahma nayya [raw meat] is a traditional dish in the mountains of Syria and Lebanon. One of its varieties, lahma madquqa, is similar to tartar steak, but made with lamb.

3 Brazil and Argentina eventually took precedence over the United States as destinations for Middle Eastern immigrants, as highlighted in Klich, I., “ Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina: An Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888–1914,” in Hourani, A. and Shehadi, N., eds., The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration, (London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. for the Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1992), p. 271.Google Scholar See also Hashimoto, K., “Lebanese Population Movements 1920–1939: Towards a Study,” in Lebanese in the World, pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

4 Chinese immigrants were barred by law in October 1899 (Registro Oficial N° 976) until August 1944. During the period, legal Chinese residents were forced to register with municipal authorities and pay especial taxes.

5 Law of July 13th, 1861. Cf. Compañía Guía del Ecuador, Guía Comercial del Ecuador, (1909), pp. 347–8.

6 For example, the Ecuadoran government gave the British Ecuador Land Co. 3,000,000 acres in Gualaquiza (southeast) and 200,000 in Esmeraldas (northwest) for settlers. The immigrants—mainly Germans—only settled in Esmeraldas for some years but never went to Gualaquiza because the land was in a disputed zone between Ecuador and Peru. We have not established yet what happened to the company and its settlers. See Public Record Office, Kew, Diplomatic correspondence, FO 144.37, 144.40, 144.41, 177.299, 177.300, 144.79, 144.83 (1884–1918).

7 Other researchers have emphasized this lack of data, which concerns several subjects. Cf. Kritz, M. and Douglas, G., “International Migration in Latin America,” International Migration Review, 13:47 (Fall 1979).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed According to R. Pineo, about one third of the 1919 Guayaquil census data has been lost, and the remaining two thirds are in very bad shape. “Guayaquil y su región en el segundo boom cacaotero (1870–1925),” in Maiguashca, J. (ed.), Historia y Región en et Ecuador 1830–1930, (Quito: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales-Sede Ecuador [FLACSO] and Corporación Editora Nacional, 1994), pp. 261–3.Google Scholar Y. Saint-Geours notes that: “It is difficult to study nineteenth century Ecuador. After independence, the Ecuadoran government scrapped the filing and document-preservation procedures established by the Spanish colonial bureaucracy. Archives are almost inexistent … National historical documents are privatized and documentary resources are scarce or unreliable.” See “La Sierra Centro y Norte (1830–1925),” ibid. p. 185.

8 Concerning provincial or municipal administrations, Pineo says that in 1880 there were 930 foreigners living in Guayaquil. Ten years later, their number had risen to 4,378. Between 1880 and 1890 male immigrants outnumbered female immigrants by two to one. The expatriate community totalled 9,368 in 1899. The immigrants made up 4 percent of Guayaquil’s urban population in 1880, 10 percent in 1890 and 15 percent in 1899. Cf. “Guayaquil y su región en el segundo boom cacaotero (1870–1925),” ibid. pp. 261–3.

9 These figures, reported by several authors, are estimates with variations in the hundreds of thousands. Ayala, E., Resumen de Historia del Ecuador, (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1993), p. 125.Google Scholar

10 Pérez M., B., Las colonias Syria, Libanesa y Palestina en el Ecuador, (Quito: Talleres Gráficos Kalida, 1931)Google Scholar and Mattar, A., Guía social de la colonia de habla árabe en Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Venezuela y las islas holandesas de Curacao y Aruba, (Barranquilla, 1945).Google Scholar Like many other books published in Latin America at the time, both these books were financed by local Middle Eastern communities. Pérez, for instance, thanks local organizations for their help and several individuals for their financial backing (p. 131). Half of his book is dedicated to instructing Ecuadorans about the native countries of what he calls this “large group of progressive people.”

11 Ibid. pp. 12–3.

12 Naff, A., “Lebanese Immigration into the United States: 1880 to the Present,” pp. 145–49Google Scholar; Nicholls, D., “Lebanese of the Antilles: Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Trinidad,” pp. 342–43Google Scholar; Martínez Montiel, Luz María, “The Lebanese Community in Mexico: its Meaning, Importance and the History of its Communities,” pp. 383–83Google Scholar; Lesser, J.H., “From Pedlars to Proprietors: Lebanese, Syrian and Jewish Immigrants in Brazil,” pp. 398–410,Google Scholar all in Lebanese in the World.

13 Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères de France, Paris, Ε-Levant, Syrie/Liban, 1918–1929–1930–1940, quoted by Hashimoto, op. cit. pp. 92. However, our own data, compiled from various sources ( de Ecuador, Ministerio de Gobierno, Archivo de Inmigración, tomo I, 1921; C. Noboa dir., América Libre, tomo I, [Guayaquil: Empresa Periodística Prensa Ecuatoriana, 1920]Google Scholar; Safa, E., L’ÉÉ migration libanaise, (Beirut: Université Saint-Joseph, 1960]Google Scholar and Moncayo, L., Los Jalil en el Ecuador, Colección Ecuador Mestizo, Sociedad Amigos de la Genealogía, vol. 5, (Loja: Editorial Universitaria, 1994)Google Scholar indicates a larger number of immigrants in Ecuador at the time. We have come across the names of 561 Lebanese, 45 Palestinians and 35 Syrians, for a total of 641 Middle Easterners registered as family heads in Ecuador between 1890 and 1944. For the Lebanese colony we have complete data for at least one third of the families. These 179 families include 986 persons (as well as another 19 non-Arab women married to Lebanese immigrants). In 1933, the periodical L’Asie française (I:315, p. 361) reported that 5,000 Lebanese were then living in Ecuador.

14 Instituto de Estadísticas Nacionales y Censos (INEC), I Censo de Población 1950, single vol., 1991, table 35a pp. 172–73.

15 Nevertheless, the arrival of Iraqi Christians and lews in Argentina, among other Latin American states, has been documented. See, for example, G. Jozami, “El retorno de los ‘turcos’ en la Argentina de los 90,” paper presented at the International Seminar “Discriminación y Racismo en América Latina,” (Universidad de Buenos Aires, November 23–25, 1994).

16 Carbo, L.F., ed., El Ecuador en Chicago (Nueva York: Diario de Avisos del Ecuador, 1894), p. 101.Google Scholar

17 El Comercio (May twentieth, 1914 for Salomón; April 10th, 1915 for Nader and Bucaram, and May 13th, 1915 for Mazil and Mohamad).

18 Compañía Guía del Ecuador, pp. 777–87.

19 Safa, pp. 17, 97–98; Lebanese Foreign Affairs Ministry, “Who’s Who of the Lebanese Overseas”, in Who’s Who in Lebanon, (Beirut, 1982), p. 709; Nabti, P., “Emigration from a Lebanese Village: A Case Study of Bishmizzine, in Lebanese in the World, p. 61.Google Scholar As with other Lebanese sources, it is possible that Safa’s figure includes other Middle Easterners. In Argentina’s case, see Klich, , “Criollos and Arabic Speakers,” p. 250.Google Scholar

20 According to Lebanon’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, as many as two million people of Lebanese descent lived in Brazil in 1982, or 1.6 percent of a total population of 126 million. In Ecuador, out of 8 million people, only 20,000, or 0.25 percent, had Lebanese origins.

21 Sowell, T., Race and Culture: A World View, (Basic Books, 1994).Google Scholar Sowell says in his preface: “The purpose of this book … is to demonstrate the reality, persistence and consequences of cultural differences contrary to many of today’s grand theories, based on the supposedly dominant role of Objective conditions,’ ‘economic forces,’ or social structures.” Sowell, an African American, refuses to attribute these persistent ancestral differences to genetic characteristics, though he abundantly uses the term “race” throughout his book, starting in the title.

22 Light, I. and Karageorgis, S., “The Ethnic Economy”, in Smelser, N.J. and Swedberg, R., eds., The Handbook of Economic Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 648.Google Scholar Bonacich, E., “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market,” American Sociological Review, 37, (1972).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

23 Corm, G., L’Europe et l’Orient. De la balkanisation à la libanisation, histoire d’une modernité inaccomplie (Paris: La Découverte, 1989).Google Scholar Although religious persecution is often mentioned as the chief factor pushing Christians to leave for the Americas, their migration also prompted Muslims and Druzes to follow suit. However, the latter’s religious identity has lapsed in many cases. In Ecuador, Muslims and Druzes were very few among the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants.

24 The following historical background (1890–1930) is based on Ayala, E., ed., Nueva Historia del Ecuador, vol.9, 10 and 11 (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional and Editorial Grijalbo Ecuatoriana, 1990 Google Scholar [especially Chiriboga’s, M. essay “Auge y crisis de una economía agroexportadora: el período cacaotero’, vol. 9, pp. 55–115)Google Scholar; de Roberts, L. Crawford, El Ecuador en la época cacaotero (Quito: Editorial Universitaria, 1980)Google Scholar and Maiguashca, ed., especially Pineo’s essay.

25 Saint-Geours notes that: “the fall of central governments and of the Spanish administration led to the establishment of regional powers. These then turned out to be the only solid structures of the newly independent countries.”, in Maiguashca (ed.) p. 143. Ecuadoran regional powers were based in Guayaquil, Quito (Center North Highlands), Cuenca (South Highlands), and Amazonia.

26 Crawford says that shops in the large cocoa plantations were often sublet to Chinese immigrants (El Ecuador en la época, p. 81). Attracted by the coffee boom, Lebanese and Syrian immigrants settled and went into business in Brazil in the first decades of the century. Lesser, , “From Pedlars to Proprietors,” pp. 398–400.Google Scholar

27 Carbo, El Ecuador en Chicago.

28 Compañía Guía del Ecuador, pp. 108, 110, 448–50, 517, 545, 749–51, 777–789, 1187–89, 1253–55 and 1303–04 for working capital and pp. 83, 539, 606, 608, 610, 612, 672 and 952 for advertisements.

29 Noboa, vol. I, América Libre, pp. 221, 223, 225, 227, 228, 268 and 270 for business’ outlines and pp. XXIII, XXXIII, XXXVII, XXXVI, XXXVIII, XXXIX, L and LXI for advertisements.

30 Noboa, C.M., América Libre, vol. 2 and vol. III (Prensa Ecuatoriana, 1922 and 1934).Google Scholar

31 González, N.L., Dollar, Dove and Eagle: One Hundred Years of Palestinian Migration to Honduras (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 100–108.Google Scholar Tasso, A., Aventura Trabajo y Poder: Sirios y Libaneses en Santiago del Estero (1880–1980) (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Indice, 1988), pp. 218–21.Google Scholar

32 Moncayo, , Los Jalil, pp. 39, 40, 57, 78, 81 and 101.Google Scholar

33 Crawford explains that, since Spanish colonial times, all merchants in Guayaquil indulged in smuggling to such an extent that people ironically said the town had “special customs.” Not only did they smuggle goods into Guayaquil and enhanced their profits by avoiding payment of custom dues, but smuggling also made it possible to export cocoa to ports prohibited by the Spanish authorities. People interviewed by Crawford insisted that all merchants, not only Syrians and Lebanese, indulged in smuggling. Tricking customs agents has always been respectable, they told Crawford (El Ecuador en la época, pp. 100–104.) Moreover, she points out that the fires which periodically gutted business concerns in Guayaquil (and sometimes the whole town) resulted in a bonanza for recently established immigrant merchants because they collected insurance compensation. A French consular report flatly says that a huge fire that partially destroyed Guayaquil in 1927 actually was set by a known merchant. Cf. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères de France, Letter from the French Chargé d’Affaires in Ecuador to the Ministre des Affaires Etrangères in Paris, Amériques, 1918–1940, vol. 145, pp. 23–24, April 18th, 1927. Finally, Elias Raad told us that his grandfather would have his (Raad’s) father urinate and spread dirty water on newly arrived bales of merchandise in order to claim insurance compensation for damaged goods.

34 As a result of both the economic crisis in Ecuador and the growing number of non-ethnic ambulant merchants, many importers—Syrians and Lebanese included—nowadays allow some reliable “informal” retailers to take goods on credit, with post-dated checks serving as warranty.

35 They also stand out in other walks of life. Nicasio Safadi, who arrived in Guayaquil as a child, composed popular traditional Ecuadoran songs known as pasillos. One of them, “Guayaquil de mis amores” has become a sort of anthem in Guayaquil. The Ecuadoran poet Jorge Enrique Adoum, winner of the Casa de Las Americas award in 1960, was Pablo Neruda’s secretary. His immigrant father, Jorge Elías Adoum, is said to have been an adviser to King Faysal and wrote several books on esoterism under the pseudonym of Mago Jefa.

36 Pérez, M., Las colonias, pp. 101 and 114,Google Scholar and Luna, M., ¡Modernización? Ambigua experiencia en el Ecuador: industriales y fiesta popular, (Quito: Instituto Andino de Artes Populares del Convenio Andrés Bello [IADAP], 1993), p. 16.Google Scholar

37 Pérez, , Las colonias, pp. 93, 108 and 124Google Scholar; Noboa p. 228 and Mattar, pp. 74 and 76.

38 Arabs and Jews have established business partnerships in other countries too. The Banco Sirio Libanés del Río de la Plata, established in 1925 in Argentina, had Oriental and Sephardic Jews among its shareholders and/or clientele. Klich, I., “Acerca de la coexistencia entre árabes y judíos en la Argentina hasta fines de la década del ‘40’” in Controversia (1995).Google Scholar

39 Hanson, D., Political decision-making in Ecuador: a case study of Guayas province (Ph. D disertaron, University of Florida, 1971), pp. 352–353 Google Scholar and Navarro, G., La concentración de capitales en el Ecuador (Quito: Ediciones Solitierra, 1976), pp. 80–97,Google Scholar quoted by North, L., “La Estructura del poder socioeconómico y político en el Ecuador entre 1960–1980’, in Ayala, , ed., Nueva Historia del Ecuador, vol. 11, pp. 197–203.Google Scholar

40 Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangeres, Letter from the French Chargé d’Affaires in Ecuador to the Ministre des Affaires Etrangères in Paris, vol. 144, pp. 80–82, May lOth, 1926.

41 Ibid. vol. 144 y 145.

42 “Origen de la Fundación de la sociedad ’Unión Libanesa,” Sesenta Años Sociedad Unión Li-banesa (Guayaquil, 1982), p. 10.

43 Inclusion in the Allies’ “Black List’ could entail having one’s assets frozen or even confiscated. Syrian and Lebanese immigrants on the list included José Nicolás Agami in Quito and the owners of the Hanna & Cattan enterprise in Guayaquil. El Comercio, (Quito, August 22, 1917).

44 Some Ecuadorans of Lebanese descent, especially those affiliated with the Maronite Christian church, now consider themselves as descendants of Phoenicians and thus different from Ecuadorans of Syrian or Palestinian descent. This tendency, which is not exclusively Ecuadoran, grew as conflicts developed in the Middle East. For the Caribbean see Nicholls, in The Lebanese in the World, p. 341.Google Scholar

45 One club member told us that half of the 60 member families were Palestinians who arrived in Ecuador with the first migration wave in the 1890s. The other half arrived after the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict and until the Lebanese civil war. The club does charitable work and supports financially two schools called Club Arabe Ecuatoriano and República de Iraq.

46 In Chile, for instance, the Arab community donated a memorial monument for the country’s first centenary in 1910. The memorial was later destroyed by the authorities during an anti-Arab wave. See Klich, , in The Lebanese in the World, p. 279.Google Scholar

47 Other members of Guayaquil’s elite confirmed these comments to us during interviews.

48 Author’s interviews.

49 One person to whom this motivation was attributed told us that he migrated to Ecuador for other reasons. The fact that these comments persist, however, seems to indicate that members of the Arab community still consider seriously marriages of convenience.

50 Jorge is proud of his Lebanese ancestry and was taught Arabic by his grandmother. However, he insists “I’m Ecuadoran first and I can’t stand newly-arrived Lebanese (immigrants) bad-mouthing our country”.

51 Gabriel Turbay was elected as Senator in Colombia in 1930. In the 1940’s, Carlos Melej Nazar and Alfredo Nazar were elected deputies in Chile and Elías Lludgar in Argentina. Julio César Turbay was President of Colombia (1978–1982) and the current President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, is of Syrian descent.

52 Referring to Brazil, C. S. Knowlton says that: “As many families became affluent businessmen, industrialists or landowners, they found it necessary to make substantial contributions to Brazilian political parties and leaders to protect their economic interests. Politics was also the means by which lucrative government contracts could be secured, political jobs found for relatives, loans obtained at low rates of interest, and import licences secured”. “The Social and Spatial Mobility of the Syrian and Lebanese Community in São Paulo, Brazil,” in The Lebanese in the World, p. 306.

53 Asaad Bucaram entered politics with the Concentración de Fuerzas Populares (CFP). Under the leadership of Carlos Guevara Moreno, this party modernized politics in Guayaquil starting in 1949, with its electoral campaign style—songs, banners, slogans such as “The people against conspiracies” and huge rallies in the town’s slums. The party also set up a clientele network in Guayaquil’s poorest areas. Other Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, like José and Antonio Hanna Musse and Rodolfo Baquerizo Nazur, also entered politics through the CFP. Elsewhere in Latin America, Juan Perón in Argentina (1946–55), Getulio Vargas in Brazil (1930–1945 and 1951–54) and Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in Chile (1952–58) incorporated local Syrian and Lebanese immigrants and their progeny into their respective governments and/or parliamentary lists.

54 El Comercio, May 2nd, 1915.

55 Congreso Nacional, Nómina de Legisladores 1830–1981, (Quito). José M. Velasco Ibarra was Ecuador’s president in 1934–35, 1944–46, 1952–56, 1960–61 and 1968–70. He was also the country’s dictator for a few months in 1946 and between 1970 and 1972.

56 Congreso Nacional, ., and Moncayo, , Los Jalil, p. 111.Google Scholar Ecuadoran mayors are elected only in provincial capitals (21 at present) and large cities. In the 1992 general elections, out of 26 mayors elected, two were of Arab descent.

57 Pérez Pimentel, R., Diccionario Biográfico del Ecuador, vol. 2 (Guayaquil: Universidad de Guayaquil, 1987), p. 293–96.Google Scholar At that time, trade unions and chambers of commerce elected deputies and senators. Since 1979, Ecuador has had a single-chamber Parliament. Other Latin American countries had communist and trade union leaders of Arab descent as well: Shafiq Handal and Fernando Nadra in the respective cases of the Salvadoran and Argentine CPs; trade union leader Juan Lechín in Bolivia.

58 Cueva, A., “El Ecuador de 1960 a 1979,” Ayala, , ed., vol. 11, p. 165.Google Scholar One of the steps he took was temporarily closing the famous Club de La Unión.

59 Ecuadoran social scientists have conflicting views concerning populism in Ecuador. Some consider Velasco Ibarra to be a populist and as such part of a Latin American phenomenon, along with Perón and Gaitán. Most researchers have focused only on Velasco, leaving aside Asaad Bucaram and his nephew Abdalá. In her La conquista del voto, de Velasco a Roídos, (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional and Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales sede Ecuador [FLACSO], 1986), A. Menéndez-Carrión analized in depth CFP’s clientele networks in Guayaquil at the time when Guevara Moreno and Asaad Bucaram led the party. See also Martz, J., “Populist Leadership and the party caudillo: Ecuador and the CFP, 1962–81’, in Studies in Comparative International Development, 18, (Georgia Institute of Technology, 1983)Google Scholar and “The regionalist expression of populism. Guayaquil and the CFP 1948–1960”, in Journal of inter American Studies and World Affairs, vol. XXII, (1980). For an anecdotal account, see the anonymous, Bucaram: historia de una lucha, (Quito: Editorial Conejo, 1981).

60 This campaign was directed by then Interior Minister Jaime Nebot Velasco, who in turn is married to Sulema Saadi, the daughter of a Lebanese immigrant who moved to Ecuador from Brazil.

61 Martz, 1983 p. 31.

62 Abdalá Bucaram obtained the second-largest number of votes in the first round of the 1988 presidential election. For the second round, the political debate focused on him, partly because of his style, but also because of alleged corruption. The documented dislike of the Ecuadoran military for Bucaram also played a part, to such an extent that, towards the end of the campaign, there were persistent rumors that the top brass would take power if he won the election.

63 The only reference to Dahik’s ancestry made during the campaign was a phrase by former president León Febres Cordero of the Partido Social Cristiano who called his former finance minister a “Palestino con barba de rabino” [Palestinian with a rabbi’s beard],

64 Dahik, however, fled to Costa Rica in October 1995 after he was ordered arrested by the chief justice of the Supreme Court on charges of misuse of govermment funds. Costa Rica granted him political asylum in March 1996.

65 Whatever the result of the presidential election’s second round in July 1996, Ecuador seems set to have a Lebanese-descended head of state inasmuch as both contenders the Partido Social Crisiano’s Jaime Nebot Saadi and the Partido Roldosista’s Abdalá Bucaram Ortiz are the offspring of Lebanese immigrants to Brazil and Ecuador.

66 About the myth of Ecuador as a mestizo nation see Silva, E., Los Mitos de la Ecutorianidad (Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 1992).Google Scholar

67 One can even attribute a certain sociological intuition to this multifaceted social and cultural identity. One example is the following comment made to the author in Beirut by a Lebanese business man, who had lived in Ecuador for 25 years: “If (the Shi’ites) rebel it’s because for a long time they have been treated like the Indians in our country (Ecuador).”