Pay attention and wake up, Palestinians!” Philip Badran, a journalist of Lebanese descent based in Lima, Peru, wrote these words in an article published on December 26, 1925 in al-Watan, an Arabic newspaper based in Santiago, Chile. Badran was referring to new legislation promulgated by British authorities earlier that year—the Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council. This new citizenship and nationality law was designed as part of the British Mandate over Palestine, under which British authorities created a nationality law that facilitated the naturalization of Jewish immigrants to Palestine as Palestinians. Through this law, British authorities regularly denied citizenship to non-Jewish applicants. It also meant that Palestinians who were not residing in Palestine at the time could not become legal citizens of Palestine. It thereby disenfranchised at least 10,000 Palestinian migrants, barring them from their rights to Palestinian citizenship and nationality.
How did Chile’s Arabic-speaking migrant community in the early twentieth century respond to such developments? Two newspapers in particular, al-Watan and ash-Sharq, printed in Santiago in the early twentieth century, suggest that Arabic-speaking migrants in Chile actively connected with other Arabic-speaking communities regionally and transnationally to defend the economic wellbeing and social reputation of their jaaliya (migrant community) in Chile, and to demand rights for Palestinians—among them the right to Palestinian citizenship and nationality. This activism played a critical role in this community’s formation into a diaspora—or, as Rogers Brubaker puts it, the process through which groups of migrants and their descendants come to see and speak about themselves in terms of groups or collectives. When it came to Chile’s Palestinian migrants, the struggle to secure a legal means to return to Palestine during the British Mandate became an important part of their development into a diasporic community.
Historians estimate that by the start of World War I, there were about 10,000 Palestinian migrants worldwide, and by 1936, about 40,000. Most settled in Latin America. In Chile alone, between 1905 and 1914, Palestinian migrants made up 56% of the total number of migrants of Middle Eastern descent, according to research by Nicole Saffie Guevara and Lorenzo Agar Corbinos. Today, Chile is home to the largest number of descendants of Palestinian migrants in the world. Exact figures vary, but approximately 300,000 descendants of Palestinians are scattered throughout the long and narrow country, and many are active in exploring and preserving their Palestinian heritage. For example, several organizations, sports clubs, and community groups in Chile work to promote awareness of issues related to Palestine and Palestinian identity. These include the Club Palestino, an expansive community center that hosts cultural events, lectures, classes, and more, as well as the famous Club Deportivo Palestino, one of Chile’s most celebrated soccer teams. The history of the Palestinian diasporic community both as part of a larger collective of Arabic-speaking migrants from Greater Syria—which today comprises Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel—and as a distinct diaspora sheds light on the processes of diaspora formation for Palestinian migrants in the interwar years. Arabic periodicals from this period offer invaluable insight into these processes.
More than 10 Arabic newspapers circulated in Chile between 1912 and 1930. With the end of World War I in 1918, what Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern residents of Chile knew to be their homelands changed dramatically. The war terminated the centuries-old rule of the Turkish Ottomans over Arab lands, and starting in 1920, ushered in the age of European mandates, purportedly established as temporary trusteeships by the newly-created League of Nations to guide former Ottoman subjects toward national self-determination. As laid out in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, this was based on the assumption among European powers that: “Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.” Thus, in the Middle East, Britain held mandates over Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq, while France received mandates over Syria and Lebanon. These mandates remained in place until the 1940s.
Chile’s Arabic newspapers responded to the rapidly changing geopolitical terrain of their readers’ watan (homeland), including through adjusting the identifiers they used to address their readers. That is to say, prior to the European mandates, newspapers generally addressed their readers as Arabs and Syrians, especially when calling for collective action to rectify the pejorative “turco” misnomer, a despised slur used against Middle Eastern migrants in Latin America starting in the late nineteenth century. But as the mandate era progressed and new nationalities emerged throughout Greater Syria in the 1920s and 1930s, Chilean newspapers began differentiating between the Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian experiences under French and British rule. Therefore, when it came to Palestine and its unique experience with British and Zionist forces, the newspapers’ coverage of specifically Palestinian experiences reflected and contributed to a growing sense of commonality among Palestinian migrants, who began seeing themselves increasingly as Palestinians and no longer only as Arabs, Syrians, or former Ottomans.
The Club Palestino is one of Chile’s most popular soccer teams today. CARLOS YO/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Palestine became a cause for activism for the entire jaaliya in the interwar years, and different groups and organizations formed to directly address it. These included El Club Deportivo Palestino (The Palestinian Sports Club), El Club Sirio-Palestino (The Syrian-Palestinian Club), and La Sociedad Juventud Palestina (The Palestinian Youth Society). As Myriam Olguín Tenorio and Patricia Peña González point out, La Sociedad Juventud Palestina formed in 1924 with the goal of “the mutual protection of Palestinian residents in the Chilean territory as well as the moral and intellectual advancement of its members.” The authors link these objectives to developments in Palestine surrounding Britain’s support for Zionist aspirations there, especially following the 1917 Balfour Declaration, when Britain promised to establish a “national home” for Jews in Palestine.
These groups, among many others, offered a range of opportunities for members of Chile’s Arabic-speaking jaaliya to support their compatriots in Palestine regardless of their new legal designations as Syrians, Lebanese, or Palestinians. In this way, the struggle to secure Palestinian migrants’ rights to Palestinian citizenship and nationality following the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council became a cause for collective action in the Arabic-speaking diaspora.
The Migrant Community through Newspapers
In 1912, an Arab Orthodox priest, Paul Jury, founded al-Murchid (The Guide), Chile’s first Arabic newspaper. Jorge Hirmas, a Palestinian migrant from Bethlehem, funded the newspaper, which, according to Guevara and Corbinos, sought to create an “Arabic publication in the country to advertise the business community and to discuss events and news on the homeland from [the migrants’] perspective.” Several Arabic periodicals ensued: al-‘Awatif (Sentiments) and al-Munir (The Torch) in 1916, ash-Shabeebah (The Youth) in 1918, and al-Watan (The Homeland), Chile’s longest-running Arabic newspaper. Founded in 1920 by Issa Khalil Daccarett, a Palestinian migrant, al-Watan circulated for nine years, during which time it began printing in Spanish, attracting a larger readership that spanned the continent. Ash-Sharq (The East) was founded in 1927. On August 5, 1928, its editors printed: “We saw to naming the newspaper ash-Sharq out of respect for and pride in our beloved East: the source of the soul, of poetic, philosophical, and human inspiration, and the place of values and the land of civility.”
In Chile, al-Watan and ash-Sharq focused on circulating information that strengthened meaningful and durable connections between the homeland, the diaspora, and the local. These three spheres appeared regularly and often sequentially in these periodicals. For example, in many of its issues, ash-Sharq had separate sections titled “Homeland News,” “Letters from the Diaspora,” and “Local News.” Each provided readers with regular, relatively comprehensive news, contributing to the creation of interconnected networks of communication between local, regional, and transnational Arabic-speaking jaaliyaat (communities). Consequently, these networks strengthened the scattered jaaliyaat’s connectedness around shared calls for social and economic success in the diaspora and for preserving connections with the homeland.
Newspapers offered a range of contributors, including newspaper editors and representatives from the aforementioned organizations and committees, the opportunity to address their jaaliya openly and forthrightly. These included pleas for change and collective improvement, and even admonishments and instructions on how to behave morally, especially in light of increasingly negative stereotypes that were seen as threatening to the jaaliya’s reputation and survival. This was a major concern in the fall of 1927 when the Chilean government implemented restrictions on existing and incoming Arab migrants. On October 18, 1927, al-Watan published a plea to the jaaliya to warn the community of the “very dangerous” circumstances the immigration restrictions posed:
The parliament has unanimously decided to kick out the Syrians from Chile, and if it weren’t for the President’s mercy on us, the [decision] would have passed and we would have been done away with … The Parliament has sufficed with a legislation that prohibits the entry of Syrians to this country.
The author continued with an important point of clarification:
And by Syrian, I mean of course that the Lebanese is Syrian, and that the Palestinian is Syrian, and that we are all turcos in the eyes of Chilean nationals … The Chilean people have decided to kick us out because of the belief that we are leeches on the body of their nation … We must straighten our ways before they straighten them for us.
Al-Watan’s appeal for action and reform was addressed to the entire Arabic-speaking jaaliya. They were all undesirable “turcos” in Chile, and the threat of banishment affected them all. The call for reflection and betterment was thus collective.
To be sure, the term “turco” was synonymous with fraud, treachery, and deceit, referring to the pervasive stereotypes related to the community’s business dealings as shop owners and peddling merchants. The jaaliya was well aware of this. On November 29, 1927, al-Watan published an appeal from El Club Sirio-Palestino to all “Arabic Speakers in the Republic of Chile” with instructions on how to achieve a better reputation as merchants in Chile. Addressing the appeal to its “Dearest muwaatineen” (compatriots),” the club explained the serious situation they were all confronting:
The [Chilean] government wants to encourage the immigration of useful elements into the country … Likewise, it prohibited the entry of harmful elements into its lands. As for us Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese, it is unfortunate that we are of those of little use and desire.
The Club further explained that it had sent representatives to meet with the head of the consular department, who confirmed that the new law was in effect. The consul, according to al-Watan, had evidently explained that the Chilean government “wants immigrants who are useful for the nation … like Saxons [i.e. Germans and English, among others]. As for Asian elements who come to the country to simply sell, the government does not desire them.” Therefore, the club advocated that the jaaliya behave more like European migrants and less like Asian ones. As elsewhere in the world, race and class were critical components of assimilation in Chilean society.
El Club Sirio-Palestino instructed its readers to follow a list of 11 “dos and don’ts” to prove themselves as desirable migrants. This included exhortations against fraudulence, arson, tax evasion, and mistreatment of female customers in “turco” stores. The club also urged the migrants to “respect the feelings of the people of this country with whom we live by closing our shops on church days and national holidays,” and to keep their stores and clothes clean. Finally, it called on migrants to “care for our moral and social institutes so they can appeal to the foreigners and be a source of admiration.” By 1927, El Club Sirio-Palestino, whose mission was the betterment of the jaaliya’s local reputation, had come to represent Chile’s Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian communities, and Al-Watan was its primary platform.
Palestinian Citizenship and Nationality
The pages of al-Watan and ash-Sharq also discussed transnational developments that affected the jaa liya. Citizenship and nationality took on special importance following the instatement of the British and French Mandates in the Middle East. Mandate authorities legislated citizenship laws in Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, and Palestine. While local European and Arab officials designed and implemented the Mandates in the first four countries, Britain’s King George V personally handled the issue in Palestine. The 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council was thus designed to be different from its counterparts in the region. While Palestinians’ Syrian and Lebanese neighbors were able to apply for their respective citizenships from French consulates throughout the diaspora, the ordinance determined by King George V ensured that Jews were naturalized above all other applicants as Palestinians, effectively excluding Palestinians living abroad from this very citizenship and nationality. Therefore, by 1925, Chile’s Arabic newspapers had begun discussing the issue of citizenship and nationality in the context of Palestinians alone.
A passport for British Mandate Palestine WIKIPEDIA
In his December 26, 1925 letter cited above, Philip Badran urged Palestinians to reject being referred to as “Ottomans” by British authorities, since it implied their ineligibility for Palestinian citizenship under the new citizenship ordinance. Specifically, he called on all Palestinians to realize that “the gravest plague and most evil illness threatening the existence and future of the Palestinian migrant is the phrase ‘An Ottoman resident of Palestine,’ which the current [British] Government of Palestine writes in the passports of Palestinians.” The phrase implied that Palestinian migrants were considered former subjects of the Ottoman Empire whose legal status as citizens and nationals would be determined by Turkish, not British, authorities. However, since Britain now had full administrative control over Palestine, Palestinians could not actually secure rights to Turkish or Palestinian nationality through Turkish authorities. There was no recourse for this ambiguous status. Badran expounded: “The Palestinian is therefore deprived of British protection, of his nationalism, and of his nation as well … [Palestinians] are forbidden from returning to their birthplaces and to the life of the country of their fathers and grandfathers.” Finally, he warned:
To prevent this danger, every Palestinian migrant must refuse under any circumstance to have that expression placed in his [passport]. Instead, he must insist that he is a Palestinian, son of Palestine, with Palestinian forefathers, and that he is not an Ottoman … [Palestinians] have the right to return to their nation as nationals and not as foreign Ottomans.
The debates surrounding citizenship and nationality for Palestinians in the diaspora intensified following a slew of rejections of citizenship applications by Palestinian migrants across the Americas starting in late 1926. In Chile, Arabic newspapers thus addressed Palestinian members of the jaaliya more directly. On January 22, 1927, for example, ash-Sharq reported that La Sociedad Juventud Palestina held a public hearing and invited “all members of the Palestinian community” in Santiago to discuss the crisis of Palestinian nationality. The purpose of the hearing was to collect “financial and moral support from every national who has enthusiasm and patriotism and who desires that the English government recognizes their Palestinian nationality.” The committee accepted donations from Palestinians in “all parts of this Republic.” Later that year on November 19, al-Watan published the following call to Palestinian migrants urging them to take action against losing their rights to Palestinian nationality:
Are you Palestinian? If you are a real Palestinian, concerned for the wellbeing of your nation upon which your dignity rests … then hurry to register for the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Palestinians which defends your nation and your nationality against the colonizing ghoul.
“In Palestine, human rights are violated,” reads a Palestinian-Chilean demonstrator’s sign in Santiago, Chile. PINTEREST
Chile’s Arabic newspapers thus became vehicles for public awareness and action, and the loss of Palestinian nationality was a serious concern.
Newspapers also printed acerbic articles about Palestinian nationality and citizenship in Spanish. On January 29, 1927, ash-Sharq printed an article by a contributor named Salvador Sackel. The article was titled “The Concept of Nationality,” and in it, Sackel described his philosophy on nationality and the importance of “the patriotic sentiment.” For Sackel, having nationality was congruous with achieving freedom, and “Only a citizen who has duties and civic rights is worthy to be called man! Others are vile slaves!” True rights, he believed, were only achieved with nationality.
In the second article, “The Denial of our Nationality,” an unnamed contributor urged the jaaliya to action in response to the denial of Palestinian citizenship and nationality to Palestinian migrants:
The British consulates abroad have received strict instructions from His Majesty’s government to not grant visas or passports to any Palestinian citizen who wishes to travel. The alarm caused among the children of Palestine by this arbitrary measure will gradually break out abroad. [The policy] is … illegal and contrary to every rule of international law.
The author explained further that, “the vast majority of true Palestinians have informed Mandatory authorities that the Palestine they are attempting to deliver to Jewish hands belongs legitimately, by Law and Justice, to its native sons who have lived there for centuries.” Despite these attempts, the author concluded, British authorities “have resorted to eliminating the Palestinian element, denying them … passports, thus preventing their return to their legitimate homeland, despite their families and relatives, properties and interests.” The contributor ended with a condemnation of British rule: “We are deeply disappointed with the purposes given to forbid our leaving, and with the discovery that the British Government is doing this, [despite] the freedom and emancipation that it promised the people of Palestine.”
While Palestinians struggled with the consequences of the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council, ash-Sharq emboldened its readers in the jaaliya to stand together with their Palestinian compatriots and with Palestinians in the watan to defend “our nationality.” As Reem Bailony made clear in her discussion of Syrian activism in New York during the 1925 Syrian Revolt, distance from the homeland was not a barrier to transnational solidarity.
Chile’s Palestinian Diaspora Story
Chile’s Arabic newspapers generated language geared toward collective improvement and unity, especially in the face of divisions in the homeland. The different spheres of identification—local, national, regional, and transnational—that the newspapers promoted offered Arabic-speaking migrants in Chile an interconnected and transnational public platform from which to discuss and circulate information that was relevant to them, from how to remain politically, socially, and economically connected to their homeland, to the most effective ways of ensuring the survival of the jaaliya in their host country. Thus, these newspapers functioned as edifying and instructive platforms for the jaaliya of Arabic-speaking migrants seeking to become a patriotic, productive, and welcomed jaaliya, and they tell a great deal about the ways in which these migrants saw themselves within Chilean society, within Latin America more broadly, and in relation to their homeland. Furthermore, they suggest the type of community these migrants aspired to form while growing into distinct, multinational collectives during the interwar years.
These processes parallel, in significant ways, the historical narrative of this community’s formation into a diaspora. When it comes to Chile’s Arabic newspaper subscribers in the 1920s, these diasporic connections developed as readers paged through newspapers and read stories of muwaatineen—compatriots—in Chile, the Americas, and in the homeland, with whom they felt an affinity. Simultaneously, this community’s process of diaspora formation developed as its members paged through newspapers, reading about and reacting to the dramatic changes developing in their homeland following the end of World War I and during the instatement of European mandates.
Nowhere in the region were these developments more dramatic than in interwar Palestine. Chile’s Arabic newspaper editors were prolific in expressing concern over the loss of Palestinian citizenship and nationality following the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council. They urged their readers to action in the form of demanding redress, rights, and citizenship as Palestinians. In this way, the exclusionary measures put in place by British authorities in London and Jerusalem set in motion a transnational campaign to raise awareness among those who identified as Palestinians and their allies about the importance of fighting for citizenship and nationality. In so doing, they contributed to consolidating Palestinian modes of group understanding and connectedness across the world. The emergence of Palestinian modes of national identification in the interwar years was a deeply transnational process.
This community’s struggle with the denial of Palestinian citizenship and nationality starting in the 1920s was a formative part of its diasporic story. Indeed, to this day, Chile’s Palestinian community, like others in the Palestinian diaspora, remains unified and empowered by an ongoing and shared experience of distance from a homeland that holds symbolic and material significance for the collective community. These transnational connections are worth exploring today.
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Notes on contributors
Nadim Bawalsa
Nadim Bawalsa received a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from New York University in 2017. His dissertation is titled “Palestinian Migrants and the Birth of a Diaspora in Latin America, 1860-1940.” His article, “Legislating Exclusion: Palestinian Migrants and Interwar Citizenship,” in the Journal of Palestine Studies, explores in greater detail the challenges Palestinian migrants faced during the interwar period. Nadim is a History and Arabic instructor in New York City.