Manifold Destiny

Arabs at an American Crossroads of Exceptional Rule

John Tofik Karam, John Karam

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780826501325
  9780826501332
• eBook ISBN:
  9780826501349
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Electronic open-access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

At the border where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet under the scrutiny of the US and Mercosur (the large South American trade bloc), Arabs have long fulfilled what author John Tofik Karam calls a "manifold destiny." Karam casts Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians at this American border as circumstantial protagonists of a hemispheric saga.

For the more than six decades since they started settling at the trinational border between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, Arabs have animated the hemisphere. Their transnational economic and social projects reveal a heretofore unacknowledged venue of exceptional rule in which the community accommodates and abides multiple states' varied suspensions of norms and laws. Arabs set up businesses and community centers at the border under authoritarian military governments between the 1950s and 1980s; thereafter, when denied full democratic enfranchisement, they instead underwent increasing surveillance from the 1990s to today. Karam reveals an unfinished history of exceptional rule that Arabs accommodate from an authoritarian past to a counterterrorist present.

Karam's riveting account draws on anthropological and historical research from each side of this trinational South American border, as well as from the US—where government bureaucrats still suspect Arabs at the border of would-be-terrorist subversion. Offering a fresh understanding of the hemisphere, Manifold Destiny brings the transnational turn of Middle Eastern studies to bear upon the fields of American studies, Brazilian studies, and Latin American studies.

PART I

AUTHORITARIAN LEGACIES

(1960S-1990S)

CHAPTER 1

Semiperipheral Marches

Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians traded westward and eastward, hardly upsetting the north-south asymmetry of this hemisphere. On the Brazilian side of the border, their exportation of Brazilian manufactures to Paraguay converged with Brazilian military heads of state who renewed the westward expansion previously known as the marcha para o oeste (march toward the west, in Portuguese).¹ Likewise, Arabs in the Paraguayan border town imported consumer goods from Panama that were then sold to a mostly Brazilian clientele, fitting into the Paraguayan military head of state’s own geopolitical agenda, denominated as the marcha hacia el este (march toward the east, in Spanish).²

In step with state-led marches, Arabs helped draw Paraguay, theretofore dominated by Argentina and the US, into Brazil’s expansive manufacturer and consumer markets from 1960s to the 1980s. Arabs led transnational trade and presided over business associations on each side of the Friendship Bridge between Foz do Iguaçu and what was then called Ciudad Presidente Stroessner (named after the Paraguayan military head of state, Alfredo Stroessner). Attracting attention in neither Argentina nor the US, Arabs at the border were investigated and absolved by the Brazilian military government after the 1970 attack on the Israeli embassy in the Paraguayan capital of Asunción. On the Brazilian side of the border, Arabs exported Brazilian-made manufactures to Paraguayan traders. On the Paraguayan side of the border, they imported consumer goods from Panama’s free trade zone for sale to mostly Brazilian clients. Through liberal trade exceptions in illiberal regimes, Arabs animated a semiperipheral America that neither simply led to nor derived from US sway in the hemisphere.

This chapter engages with Paul Amar’s emphasis on the autonomy of the semiperiphery.³ World systems theorists in the 1960s viewed semiperipheral countries like Brazil and Argentina as mitigating between an economic core or center, namely the US, and a periphery, such as Paraguay. Building on Amar’s rethinking of the semiperiphery as “generative,” instead of primarily derivative, this chapter looks at economic hierarchies that cannot be reduced to or explained by US influence in Latin America during the Cold War.⁴ On the Brazilian side, Arabs extended Brazilian manufacturing over Paraguay. On the Paraguayan side, Arabs expanded Brazilian consumption with imports from the Colón Free Zone (CFZ), which the Panamanian government opened to wrest some economic benefit from US control of the Canal Zone.⁵ In helping Brazil “replace Argentina and the United States as Paraguay’s principal source of capital and technology,”⁶ Arabs folded into this semiperipheral America that can “neither fully escape . . . nor be reduced” to America’s so-called core.⁷

Arabs provide a refreshing approach to well-studied liberal economic agendas under authoritarian rule.⁸ Turning from state capitals to frontiers, this chapter asks how migrant traders negotiated liberal economic policies of otherwise illiberal, inward-oriented regimes during the construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam between Brazil and Paraguay.⁹ On the Brazilian side, Arabs used the military regime’s tax exemptions in order to export Brazilian-made manufactures to Paraguayan clients across the Friendship Bridge. On the Paraguayan side, Arabs used the dictatorship’s “special” import taxes to bring in consumer items that were sold to Brazilian “shoppers” (called compristas or sacoleiros, in Spanish and Portuguese) who crisscrossed the same bridge. These state fiscal exceptions begun by illiberal authorities were continued by liberal successors, who became increasingly suspicious of Arab traders due not to perceived political subversion but rather presumed tax evasion and other speculations about economic duplicity. In authoritarian and post-authoritarian times, Arabs came to terms with exceptional rule in ways that undermined their fuller enfranchisement later on.

Redrawing Borders Westward and Eastward

Early Arab migrants helped expand the manufacturing center of São Paulo westward into one of Brazil’s economic fringes, then called a região das três fronteiras (the region of the three borders, in Portuguese) or tres fronteras (three borders, in Spanish). As mentioned in the introduction, in 1951, a sojourner from Baaloul, Ibrahim Barakat, headed to Brazil while his brothers and co-villagers went to Canada and the US. After “peddling with some friends” in the state of São Paulo, Ibrahim’s sales routes led him southwest-ward into the state of Paraná. Eventually, he reached Foz do Iguaçu on the western edge of Paraná that borders with Paraguay. His son recalled: “My father said that at the time, there was not any cloth or clothing. In two or three weeks, he sold everything and, like this, he kept traveling between São Paulo and Foz do Iguaçu.”¹⁰ Supplied from São Paulo, Ibrahim set up a shop of clothing and accessories on Avenida Brasil (Brazil Avenue), the main street of the then small town of Foz do Iguaçu.¹¹

Ahmed Hamad Rahal extended the influence of São Paulo even further. In 1951, with empty pockets, he departed the same village of Baaloul for São Paulo. As his sales routes led him into the state of Paraná, this Rahal continued westward until he reached Foz do Iguaçu, encountering a few other Arab families, including the Barakat’s. Rahal sold clothing and accessories by boat on the Paraná River between Brazil and Paraguay, a decade and a half before the building of the Friendship Bridge. In 1953, his brother, Mohamad, arrived in Foz do Iguaçu. Ahmed’s wife followed three years later. By 1958, with start-up capital saved by commercializing goods from São Paulo and other coastal industries, the Rahal brothers opened A Casa das Fábricas (The Factory Outlet, fig., in Portuguese) on Avenida Brasil. Later, the brothers founded an export firm on the Brazilian side of the Friendship Bridge, catering to clients from Paraguay’s then underdeveloped este (East, in Spanish).¹²

Likewise drawing upon, and being drawn into, the expansion of São Paulo into Brazil’s west and Paraguay’s east, Mohamed Ali Osman traded amid the São Paulo coffee boom overflowing into the northern part of the Paraná state where he settled with his brother.¹³ In the early 1950s, Osman was given a trunk full of clothes, and as he recalled, “I went off peddling. . . . I would sell on the farms, plantations, and in the coffee fields of the region.” This Osman soon started a business buying and selling coffee beans and other grains. In 1959, his younger brother Mustafa arrived and also peddled in northern Paraná, still dependent upon São Paulo’s coffee boom. With their savings, the brothers headed westward to Foz do Iguaçu and opened a lojinha (little store) of clothing and knick-knacks (armarinhos) on Avenida Brasil, with suppliers based in São Paulo and elsewhere. As examined later, these and other Osman brothers went on to establish an export firm, Têxtil Osman Ltda., with mostly Paraguayan customers.

At the time, these continental marches were led by migrants from villages in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. Originally from Baaloul, the aforementioned Ibrahim Barakat, and his wife, Amine, sponsored the migration of the Omairi family from the neighboring village of Lela where Amine was born. In 1967, Akra Omairi arrived from Lela and was later joined by his brother, Mohamad. Together they set up shop on the Brazilian side of the border. Years later another Omairi family from Lela opened an import/export tire company, Ferrari Cubiertas S.R.L. (Ferrari Tires), on the Paraguayan side. Migrants from the Ghotme, Mannah, Tarabain, and other families repeated such trajectories from Lela and equaled in number their counterparts from Baaloul who ran businesses on the Brazilian and Paraguayan sides of the border. Others departed from elsewhere in the Beqaa Valley and South Lebanon, but the largest portion of migrants in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s stemmed from Baaloul and Lela.

These and other Arabs helped redraw a hemispheric border between west and east without upsetting the north-south order of the US Alliance for Progress in Latin America.¹⁴ Mohamad Rahal stated that he and other migrants chose Foz do Iguaçu because “bordering with two other countries was really important. We knew that Paraguay wasn’t industrialized . . . so we were certain that Paraguay would be a great market for industrialized goods” (from Brazil).¹⁵ As noted, he and others peddled manufactures from mostly São Paulo on the Brazilian and Paraguayan sides of the border. Abdul Rahal, another member of beyt Rahal (Rahal “house,” lit., or “lineage,” fig., in Arabic) who arrived on the Brazilian side at mid-century, remembered the “cold” nights he spent on his sales routes that brought Brazilian goods into the “East of Paraguay.” Rahal continued, “at that time, around 1959, Argentina was the power over Paraguay. Only Argentine products were allowed.” So when he straddled the river by boat selling Brazilian-made wares to Paraguayans, Rahal laughed, “it was if they had seen a snake with two heads.”¹⁶ Indeed, in 1960, Argentina and the US were the largest sources of imports into Paraguay, while Brazil accounted for less than 1 percent.¹⁷ Arab traders helped strengthen Brazil’s economic expansion over Paraguay with continental ramifications.¹⁸

In sidestepping the town of Puerto Iguazú on the Argentine side of the border, Arabs signaled the end of Argentina’s “long-run advantage” over Paraguay, to borrow a phrase from historian Harris Gaylord Warren.¹⁹ In 1969, the Argentine official, Isaac Rojas, warned of Argentina’s loss of influence to Brazil in the River Plate Basin (Bacía do Prata, in Portuguese, and Cuenca del Plata, in Spanish), a watershed basin of three million kilometers whose center is the border where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet.²⁰ At the time, Argentina’s largest newspaper, Clarín, bemoaned this geopolitical loss in a series of reports on “Puerto Iguazú,” located in the Argentine province of “Misiones,” named after the ruins of Jesuit missions, flanked by Paraguay to the west and Brazil to the east. Though mentioning the cataratas (waterfalls) as a “Giant of America,” Clarín bemoaned Puerto Iguazú’s lack of “progress” in relation to not only other parts of Argentina but also the “booming” Brazilian and Paraguayan sides of the border.²¹ “Argentina is losing the battle against Brazil and Paraguay,” decried Clarín, expressing envy of the “developed infrastructure” along “the Friendship Bridge, over the Paraná River.” The Argentine daily called to connect the Argentine side of the border to the Brazilian side as well as a paved roadway to Posadas, the provincial capital of Misiones.²² Arabs generally avoided the Argentine side that was relatively detached from the wider border.

Figure 1.1. Transcontinental view of the Brazilian federal highway BR-277, from the Brazilian port of Paranagua on the Atlantic coast that turns into the Paraguayan Ruta 7 after the Friendship Bridge and ends in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion. © OpenStreetMap contributors

Trading across the Friendship Bridge between Brazil and Paraguay, Arabs helped to displace Argentina without drawing attention from the US.²³ On the Brazilian and Paraguayan sides of the border, Arabs brought in goods on Paraná’s federal highway, the BR-277, which led from and to the Atlantic Ocean port of Paranaguá where the Brazilian government had conceded a duty-free zone for Paraguay.²⁴ The infrastructure enabled the transportation of manufactures westward from Brazil to Paraguay, and in return, agricultural goods eastward from Paraguay to Brazil.²⁵ The Paraguayan military ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Destined for America
• Part I: Authoritarian Legacies (1960s–1990s)
• Part Ii: Counterterrorist Liaisons (1990s–2010s)
• Conclusion: Make America Exceptional Again?
• Notes
• Acronyms
• References
• Index