The Provincial Difference of the Arab of Neuquén during Perón’s Return to Power: Rethinking the Local Political History of Ethnic Minorities in Argentina

ABSTRACT

This article examines the efforts of Elías and Felipe Sapag to mobilise support among the local electorate of Neuquén Province, Patagonia, in the context of Perón’s return to power in Argentina in 1973. Their efforts illustrate how ethnic minorities used their identity as provincial inhabitants to cope with the context of socio-political crisis and uncertainty. From this perspective, this article introduces discussion on provincial differences into the study of ethnic minorities’ political experiences, including how the local political participation of ethnic minorities affected processes of identification in Argentina.

KEYWORDS:

• Provincial difference
• politics
• belonging
• Peronism
• pioneer
• uncertainty
• Argentina
• identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mauricio Dimant is a lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also the Coordinator of the Latin American Unit at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Notes

1. On the impact of Perón’s return to power, see Raanan Rein and Claudio Panella, El retorno de Perón y el peronismo en la visión de la prensa nacional y extranjera (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2009).

2. Movimiento Popular Neuquino (Neuquenean Popular Movement).

3. Frente Justicialista de Liberación (Justicialist Liberation Front).

4. Archive of the Province of Neuquén, Federal Court No. 1 of Neuquén, Electoral Section.

5. Official book of the MPN on its 40th anniversary. Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén.

6. The identity negotiation of Jews and Arab descendants in Neuquén, Patagonia, considering Argentina as a federal country and not only a nation state, was analyzed in my doctoral dissertation and published in a previous article, resulting a conference at the Tel Aviv University. See: Dimant, Mauricio, 'Ethnicity and Federalism in Latin America: Rethinking the National Experience of Jews and Middle Eastern Descendants in Argentina', in The New Ethnic Studies in Latin America, ed, Raanan Rein, Stefan Rinke and Nadia Zysman (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017).

7. Luis Felipe Sapag, Sapag, Del Líbano a Neuquén: Genealogía de Una Pasión (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2008), 58.

8. Orietta Favaro, ed., Sujetos sociales y política. Historia reciente de la norpatagonia argentina (Neuquén: Editorial La Colmena, 2005); Mario Arias Bucciarelli, Alicia Ester González, and María Carolina Scuri, ‘Radicales y Peronistas en la conformación del sistema político neuquino’, Revista de Historia 7 (2011): 129–53.

9. Dimant, 'Ethnicity and Federalism in Latin America', 59.

10. Orietta Favaro, Neuquén. La construcción de un orden estatal (Neuquén: Universidad Nacional del Comahue, 1999), 265.

11. Mauricio Dimant, ‘Participación política e identidad: árabes cristianos, árabes judíos y judíos de países árabes en la Patagonia (1930–1942)’, in Árabes y judíos en Iberoamérica, ed. Rein Raanan (Sevilla: Tres Culturas, 2008), 160.

12. Sapag, Del Líbano, 36.

13. Ibid., 347.

14. Ibid., 32.

15. Ibid., 337.

16. Graciela Iuorno, ‘La historia política en Neuquén. Poder y familias libanesas’, Avances del Cesor (2003); Hamurabi Noufouri and H. Haddad, Sirios, Libaneses y Argentinos. Fragmentos para una historia de la diversidad cultural argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Cálamo d.s., 2004).

17. Census data show some inconsistencies in Patagonia, and should be interpreted with caution due to its geographic extensions, isolated villages, and other characteristics. Argentina’s total population that year was 7,903,662.

18. Abdelouahed Akmir, ‘La Inmigración árabe en Argentina’, in El Mundo Árabe y América Latina, ed. Raymundo Kabchi (Madrid: Ediciones UNESCO, 1997), 71.

19. Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC): National censuses.

20. Akmir, ‘La Inmigración árabe’, 64. 81% settling; Dimant, 'Ethnicity and Federalism in Latin America', 60.

21. Ibid., 66.

22. Silvia Montenegro, ‘Panorama sobre la inmigración árabe en Argentina’, in Los árabes en América Latina. Historia de una inmigración, ed. Abdelouahed Akmir (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores SA., 2009), 69.

23. See, for example, Iuorno, ‘La historia política’.

24. Syrian-Lebanese Association of Charity and Mutual Aid of Esquél (Chubut), Syrian-Lebanese Organization of Zapala (Neuquén), and Syrian-Lebanese Association of Neuquén. For details, see Noufouri and Haddad, Sirios, 299. Similar institutions had existed in Patagonia’s Spanish and Italian communities since 1909.

25. Favaro, Sujetos sociales.

26. Mario Bucciarelli, ‘La Provincialización de Los Territorios Nacionales Durante El Primer Peronismo. Una Mirada Desde La Experiencia Neuquina’, in Las Formas de La Política En La Patagonia. El Primer Peronismo En Los Territorios Nacionales, ed. Aixa Bona and Juan Vilaboa (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2007), 139–54. Martha Ruffini, ‘Ciudadanía restringida para los territorios nacionales: contradicciones en la consolidación del estado argentino’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 17, no. 2 (2006): 61–85.

27. Martha Ruffini, ‘El regreso del peronismo al poder. Memoria y Política en el norte de la Patagonia (1973–1976)’, Revista Pilquen. Sección Ciencias Sociales 20, no. 4 (2017), 96–109; Julián A. Melo, ‘El efecto populista. Territorios nacionales, provincializaciones y lógica populista durante el primer Peronismo’, Revista Pilquen. Sección Ciencias Sociales 15, no.1 (2017): 66–78; Mario Arias Bucciarelli et al., ‘Relaciones Entre El Estado Nacional Y El Territorio Del Neuquén. Notas para una aproximación sobre el origen de los conflictos’, Boletín del Departamento de Historia 10 (2014), 103–30.

28. Dimant, 'Ethnicity and Federalism in Latin America', 54.

29. Héctor Enrique Castillo, Neuquén. Crónica de una época … y la Fundación del M.P.N. (Neuquén: Artes Gráficas Limay, 2005), 264; Dimant, 'Ethnicity and Federalism in Latin America', 63.

30. Favaro, La construcción, 141.

31. Sapag, Del Líbano, 30.

32. From 1963–1966, 1973–1976, and 1983–1993.

33. From 1963–1966, 1970–1972, 1973–1976, 1983–1987, and 1995–1999.

34. From 1963–1966, 1966–1968, 1970–1972, 1973–1976, and 1983–1987.

35. Ariel Noyjovich and Raanan Rein, ‘“For an Arab there can be Nothing Better than Another Arab”: Nation, Ethnicity and Citizenship in Peronist Argentina’, in The New Ethnic Studies in Latin America, ed. Raanan Rein, Stefan Rinke, and Nadia Zysman (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017), 78–98.

36. Iuorno, ‘La historia política’.

37. Norma García, ‘Aproximación a la historia del pensamiento político neuquino’, in Neuquén, la construcción de un orden estatal, ed. Mario Arias Bucciarelli (Neuquén: CEHEPYC, 1999), 170.

38. García, ‘Aproximación a la historia’, 169.

39. Sur Argentino, 12 September 1970 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1970–1972).

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Sur Argentino, 14 September 1970 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1970–1972).

43. ERP (The People’s Revolutionary Army).

44. FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces).

45. Peronist Movement Montonero-MPM.

46. The Trelew Massacre was a mass execution by Argentina’s military government of 16 political prisoners (militants of ERP, FAR, and Montoneros) on 22 August 1972 in the Patagonian city of Rawson.

47. Sur Argentino, 20 October 1971.

48. Felipe Sapag attributed the 1973 failure of Perón’s official party in Neuquén to ignoring the dynamics of politics in the province. According to Felipe, the Peronist leaders from Buenos Aires were wrong to consider the country as politically homogenous, even in the context of Perón’s return to power in Argentina.

49. Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén.

50. Luis Felipe Luis Felipe Sapag, El Desafío (Neuquén: Fundación Neuquén, 1994), 192.

51. The accusation of “opportunism” in seeking to de-legitimate Sapag’s candidature was not unconnected to the popular image of the turcos in Argentina: mercachifles and bolicheros who not only knew how to negotiate but also wanted to take maximum advantage of opportunities (Akmir, ‘La Inmigración árabe’; Christina Civantos, Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab Immigrants, and the Writing of Identity (New York: SUNY Press, 2006); Gladys Jozami, ‘The Return of the “Turks” in 1990s Argentina’, Patterns of Prejudice 30, no. 4 (1996): 27–42; Ignacio Lesser and Jeffrey Klich, ‘Introduction: “Turco” Immigrants in Latin America’, The Americas 53, no. 1(1996): 1–14; Theresa Alfaro Velcamp, ‘The Historiography of Arab Immigration to Argentina: The Intersection of the Imaginary and the Real Country’, Immigrants & Minorities 16, no. 1–2 (1997): 227–48.

52. Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities (London: Frank Cass, 1998).

53. Sur Argentino, 2 February 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

54. Sapag, El Desafío, 190.

55. Sur Argentino, 19 February 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

56. Sur Argentino, 1 March 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

57. Sur Argentino, 2 March 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

58. Sur Argentino, 16 April 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

59. See, for example, a public discourse in the city of Zapala: Sur Argentino, 19 February 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

60. Sur Argentino, 9 March 1973 (Archive of the Province of Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

61. Sapag, El Desafío, 193.

62. Sur Argentino, 9 March 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

63. Archive of the Province of Neuquén: Official Speeches of the Governor of Neuquén.

64. Ibid.

65. Sur Argentino, 2 September 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

66. Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1976.

67. In this context, Sapag told the local press:

the labour leaders are ready to fight for the defence of the village (…) here is clearly the violence engendered by those who are not thinking about the interests of Patagonia, and especially for those who want to damage Neuquén. The decision of the workers of El Chocón will be supported by all Neuquenean people. This is not an excuse for breaking the law, but a necessity that could not be avoided.

Sur Argentino, 20 October 1971 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén).

68. Sur Argentino, 22 December 1973 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

69. On the same day, Perón delivered a speech in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires during celebrations of International Workers’ Day, where he called members of Montoneros “estúpidos que gritan” (stupid people who scream), causing them to leave the celebrations.

70. Archive of the Province of Neuquén: Official Speeches of the Governor of Neuquén.

71. Ibid.

72. ibid.

73. Sur Argentino, 18 June 1974 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).

74. Archive of the Province of Neuquén: Official Speeches of the Governor of Neuquén.

75. Ibid.

76. List of Governors: (1) FREJULI: Oscar Bidegain (Buenos Aires), Hugo Alberto Mott (Catamarca), Deolindo Bittel (Chaco), Benito Fernández (Chubut), Ricardo Obregón Cano (Córdoba), Julio Romero (Corrientes), Enrique Tomás Cresto (Entre Ríos), Antenor Argentino Gauna (Formosa), Carlos Snopek (Jujuy), Aquiles José Regazzoli (La Pampa), Carlos Menem (La Rioja), Alberto Martínez Baca (Mendoza), Juan Manuel Irrazábal (Misiones), Mario José Franco (Río Negro), Miguel Ragone (Salta), Eloy Camus (San Juan), Elías Adre (San Luis), Jorge Cepernic (Santa Cruz), Carlos Juárez (Santiago del Estero), Amado Juri (Tucumán); (2) Movimiento de Integración y Desarrollo (MID, National Political Party): Carlos Sylvestre Begnis (Santa Fe); (3) MPN: Felipe Sapag.

77. This configuration of local-provincial interests during Peronism’s proscription was not only a characteristic of Neuquén. For the historical context of local-provincial interests and Peronism, see: Darío Macor and César Tach Abad, eds., La Invención Del Peronismo En El Interior Del País (Santa Fé: UNL, 2003).

78. Sur Argentino, 13 March 1974 (Private Archive of the Sapag Family, Neuquén: Newspaper collection, 1973–1975).