Social Science Research Council

"Margins of the Mahjar: Arabic-speaking Immigrants in Argentina, 1880-1946"

On the afternoon of June 12, 1916, in the mountainous Argentinean province of Jujuy, 300 Arabic-speaking immigrants rioted against destitute wages at the sugar mill in Ledesma. The facility’s manager organized a group of irregular security forces and engaged the protestors with violent force. Three workers were killed and eleven were injured, necessitating the deployment of provincial security forces. The incident made national headlines in the press and provoked calls by politicians for labor reforms.

The following month, the elites from the Arabic-speaking collective responded: community leaders in northwestern Argentina conspicuously participated in the installation of the statue of Argentina’s revolutionary hero Martín Güemes in Salta, Province of Salta. This event, held on July 9, 1916, marked the centenary of the declaration of independence by the United Provinces of the River Plate (Argentina). On the same day, La Nación, a leading Argentine daily, published a sympathetic portrait of the editors of the Arabic-language daily Assalam, and their efforts to help integrate the Arabic-speaking community along elite Argentine wishes.

These non-elite actions and the subsequent elite responses demonstrate the internal dynamics, multiple strategies and incongruent priorities within an immigrant group engaged with the realities of life in Argentina. To understand the Arabic-speaking communities’ adaptation to and integration into Argentina, I will examine the intersection of local Argentine realities and transnational politics, of competing value systems and socially-defined gender roles and of economic opportunities and limitations based on social and economic class. By examining these intersections, I will engage fundamental questions about Argentine socio-political history and address larger issues concerning migration to the Americas. Thus, I will examine how transnational politics and ideologies impact immigrant groups far from their homelands. I hypothesize that different elements of the Arabic-speaking collective possessed competing notions of community, independent views of politics and society and divergent priorities.