Latin American history: major events and themes

Latin American

Critical Book Review

Civantos, Christina. Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab

Immigrants, and the Writing of Identity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006.

Orientalism was a term coined by the postcolonial theorist Edward Said to describe the reduction of Middle Eastern or East Asian culture to a kind of exotic literary trope. Said discusses this development mainly in relation to European powers and their colonial possessions, but Christina Civantos in her 2006 text Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab Immigrants, and the Writing of Identity examines the phenomenon of Orientalism specifically in a Latin American context. Argentina was one of the most ethnically diverse societies of Latin America. The debate over colonialism, Nationalism, Orientalism took on a unique character in the country because of its cross-section of identities. European, Indian, and Arabs were all determined to create their unique subjectivity in relation to the nation.

The history of Arabs in Argentina is a fairly little-known part of the nation's past, but by examining the dual claims of Euro-Argentineans and Arab Argentineans over the native figure of the gaucho, Civantos presents a kind of case study of the difficulty of pinning down the question of what or who is really Argentinean. The wandering, footloose cowboy herding cattle on the plains seemed to be a uniquely Argentinean figure to intellectuals who wanted to create an exclusivist identity, while to Arabs this figure seemed to have a particular resonance with their own equally romanticized tribal, wandering past. As a historian, Civantos is specifically interested in how Arab immigrants in Argentina were at times restricted from entry, restricted in their commercial activities, yet also made use of the available identities provided by the new nation with great enthusiasm, such as the 'gaucho' or the cowboy.

Fostering an identity independent from colonialization was important to many prominent Argentinean writers, and they mined the past to do so. However, no one can access the past in a pure fashion, rather how we see the past, and how the gaucho was perceived, was invariably affected by the nationalist projects of the different authors and refashioners of Argentinean identity. Civantos gives most detail to the authors Sarmiento and Lugones, whom she characterizes as in search of some sort of 'essential' Latin American identity, as distinct from the identity of immigrants to Argentina, including Arabs.

Sarmiento himself had traveled in the Middle East, and engaged, according to Civantos, in an Orientalist reading of Arab culture even apart from Argentinean literature. Like many before him, Sarimento was in particular fascinated by the figure of the gaucho in his own nation, whom he saw as kind of a nomadic, primitive representation of earlier Argentinean life. However, other Arab-Argentinean authors saw a kind of intuitive cultural connection between Arab and Argentinean history, specifically the wandering Arab and the gaucho. The gaucho as a kind of nationalist folk hero thus paradoxically becomes a way of Arab immigrants to participate in native Argentinean culture.

To examine the way Argentinean subjectivity was constructed during this period, Civantos deploys both literary and historical techniques. She creates a distinction in her rendering of how the Arab functioned within Latin American culture. Arabs were real, material presence, workers, writers, intellectuals, and cultural refashoiners of Argentinean culture within their own community. However, as it was in Europe the looming presence of "the Arab" and "the Orient" was also kind of a trope or a construction that had a life independent of real Arabs. Thus immigrants from the Arab nations were an actual presence and community within Argentina, who were intent upon writing their own national literature, and participating in Argentinean life. But Argentine writers were also intent upon writing these individuals 'out' of the true Argentinean national identity as exotic interlopers, rather than 'the real' members of Argentinean society and culture.

Even for individuals who are not specifically devoted to research in this region of the world or these two immigrant groups can find interesting features in Civantos' case study of the construction of Argentine identity instructive. She suggests that there is no singular, pure identity that can be discovered apart from colonization. Argentina was torn between natives and Euro-Argentines even before the influx of new immigrant groups, and the greater diversity of the society both sharpened and blurred this divide. Argentines grew more anxious to define their national identity in an exclusive fashion, but they also adopted Indo-Argentine figures in retelling the tale of their homeland.