More Argentine Than You
More Argentine Than You
Arabic-Speaking Immigrants in Argentina
Winner of the 2018 Alfred B. Thomas Book Award from the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies
Whether in search of adventure and opportunity or fleeing poverty and violence, millions of people migrated to Argentina in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the late 1920s Arabic speakers were one of the country’s largest immigrant groups. This book explores their experience, which was quite different from the danger and deprivation faced by twenty-first-century immigrants from the Middle East. Hyland shows how Syrians and Lebanese, Christians, Jews, and Muslims adapted to local social and political conditions, entered labor markets, established community institutions, raised families, and attempted to pursue their individual dreams and community goals. By showing how societies can come to terms with new arrivals and their descendants, Hyland addresses notions of belonging and acceptance, of integration and opportunity. He tells a story of immigrants and a story of Argentina that is at once timely and timeless.
Very well documented, [More Argentine Than You] results from extensive research in archives and libraries in Argentina, France, Lebanon, Syria, and the United States.
More Argentine Than You is a path-breaking transnational study of Arabic-speaking immigrants in provincial Argentina. Thanks to the author’s familiarity with both Spanish and Arabic sources, the study paints a rich and nuanced picture of a community that through its economic success achieved cultural, social, and ultimately political integration.
Hyland’s study is part of a welcome move within Argentine historiography to expand our knowledge of immigration and ethnic groups beyond Buenos Aires and its surrounding areas.…The breadth of primary sources in the work is outstanding.
A meticulous exploration of the history of Arabic-speaking immigrant communities that arrived in the north of Argentina at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.'Bulletin of Latin American Research
Case studies will provide students and scholars with an essential understanding of the multiethnic landscape of the region. In this regard, More Argentine Than You stands out as an innovative, nuanced, detailed, and well-researched example.
A fascinating and thoroughly researched study of how these immigrants and their descendants emerged as a visible ethnic group and claimed a place in local economic, cultural, and political life.
Steven Hyland Jr. is an associate professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Wingate University, North Carolina.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. "To Forge a New Dream": Emigration from Greater Syria
Chapter Two. "The Charitable Shadow of Its Laws": Syrian Immigration in Argentina, 1880-1914
Chapter Three. Syrians in the Time of Depression, War, and Emergent Nationalism, 1914-1922
Chapter Four. Building Families, Building Communities, 1920-1940
Chapter Five. The Syrian-Lebanese Elite, Community Politics, and the Politics of Community, 1920-1940
Chapter Six. "A Patriotic Work": Women, Education, and the Politics of Charity, 1920-1940
Chapter Seven. "More Argentine Than You": Political Culture, Cultural Politics, and Belonging, 1939-1946
Epilogue
Bibliography
Notes
Index
