500 Years of Arabs-Muslims in Brazil: A Fascinating Talk by Silvia Ferabolli

A fascinating discussion about the cultural and political connections between North Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America took place in Luce Hall on March 9th, through a talk co-organized by the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies (CLAIS) and the Council on Middle East Studies (CMES) at the MacMillan Center. In an almost hour-long conversation, Professor Silvia Ferabolli led the audience on a journey of exploration of the five centuries of Arab-Muslim presence in Brazil, starting from the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil in the 1500s and ending with the contemporary cooperative relations between Arab and South American countries.

Professor Silvia Ferabolli candidly opened her talk by introducing herself, dwelling on the importance of emphasizing the human component in academic discourse, and recognizing the challenges thatcome with being a female scholar from the Global South. Proceedingly, she revealed the fruits of years of study regarding early Arab-Muslim presence in Brazil, which started with the arrival of Portuguese colonizers to the coasts of Brazil. Among the enslaved peoples that these colonizers brought from Africa and Iberia, there were Muslim enslaved individuals who, feeling proud in their belief in Islam, felt the need to demonstrate they were Muslims. An additional factor differentiating these Muslims from the rest of the enslaved peoples was their literacy skills. The ability to communicate with each other and organize themselves as a cohesive group of people was a powerful tool feared by the Portuguese, and it was precisely one of the main drivers of important revolts such as the 1835 Revolta dos Malés in the Brazilian state of Bahia, one of the most important slave revolts in Latin America.

Professor Ferabolli then discussed the arrival of Arab peoples in Brazil in the 19th century. She revealed this process started with a visit of Emperor Dom Pedro II to the Christian lands of the Middle East in 1870, in which he encouraged the migration of Christian Arabs into Brazil. Following this, she dwelled on the arrival of Arab literature with Arab migrants from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. The arrival of this literature and its influence was reflected in the rise of the literary movement called Southern Mahjar, or Mahjar al-Janubi (meaning southern Arab diaspora in Arabic), a movement characterized by great hybridity and transnationalism. This movement was of special importance for the identity formation process of the Arabs in Brazil, as one of its main goals was to differentiate themselves and their Arabness from the so-called ‘Turks.’ After this explanation, Professor Ferabolli talked about the arrival of Arab oil and money –highlighting the important role that cheap oil from the Middle East played in the process of Latin American industrialization– and then proceeded to explore the stage of institutionalization of political relations between Arab and Latin American governments, which roughly stated in 2005 and continues to be an important example of interregionalism in the Global South. Professor Ferabolli ended her historical overview of Arab presence in Brazil by talking about the current formal institutionalization of Arab studies in Latin America, a process that is reflected in the creation of several centers and institutes for Arab and Islamic studies throughout the continent.

Ferabolli concluded her talk by opening the floor for questions, a time at which the audience participated enthusiastically in exchanges regarding the so-called “tropical Orientalism” and the importance of pedagogical interventions for addressing it, about the differing experiences and peculiarities of the diverse Arab communities in Latin America – with an emphasis on the communities in Chile; on those of the triple frontier shared between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay; and on the communities in the Brazilian cities of São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Minas Gerais– as well as about the influences of Arab-Middle Eastern food in Latin American cuisine.

Professor Silvia Ferabolli is a Visiting Fellow here at Yale. Back in Brazil, she’s a Lecturer in the Department of Economics and International Relations at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), where she also coordinates the Research Group on the International Relations of the Arab World (NUPRIMA). 

By Leda Blaires Ciotti, Student Programming Assistant, leda.blairesciott@yale.edu