Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil

SIX • Air Turbulence in Homeland Tourism

S I X  Air Turbulence in Homeland Tourism ET-SETTING TO DISNEY WORLD or Tahiti, Brazilians of Syrian–Lebanese descent are avid consumers of international travel.1 Although their preferred destination, like that of many well-to-do Brazilians, is the United States, their itineraries began to diversify in the late 1990s, as suggested by weekly tourism ads and reviews in the mainstream press. In fact, Middle Eastern tourist packages have been familiar features in Brazilian newspaper travel columns since 1996.2 In this context, Syrian–Lebanese descendants have expressed considerable interest in, and have been urged to visit, homelands in the Middle East. During such trips, though, they have toured sites of past bloodshed perpetrated by the Israeli military in Syria and Lebanon. This air turbulence has informed what it means to be árabe in contemporary Brazil. Targeted by airlines and travel agencies, as well as by the Syrian and Lebanese states, Brazilians of Syrian–Lebanese descent have gained greater acknowledgment as a market niche for homeland tourism. Addressing their unexpected tours of anti-Zionist sites that commemorate past Israeli attacks in Syria and Lebanon, this chapter demonstrates that, while some tourists have reproduced the anti-Zionist tenets of Syrian and Lebanese nationalist ideologies , others have criticized them as encouraging “prejudice” among Arabs who relate well with Jews in a “racially tolerant” Brazil.3 Using the exclusionary language of Brazilian nationalism, some tourists have subverted antiZionist ideology in homeland tourism, showing that nationalist ideas can counter the very logics of exclusion that derive from them. J A I R T U R B U L E N C E I N H O M E L A N D T O U R I S M 145 Mindful of novel unfoldings in the diversified travel market, this chapter interrogates the intersecting agendas of Brazilians of Syrian–Lebanese descent, travel enterprises, and Syrian and Lebanese state powers. Second- and thirdgeneration Arab Brazilians have partaken of homeland tourism because of a deeply felt familial connection with Syria and Lebanon. Such personal motives, however, belie the increasingly precise marketing savoir faire of airline companies that targets comunidades étnicas (ethnic communities) presumably interested in flying to diverse homelands. Consonantly,Arab state powers have counted on the travel practices of second- and third-generation descendants to reinvigorate national tourist industries. Despite recognizing the multiple nationalist allegiances of these emigrants, Syrian and Lebanese state officials have sought to impart anti-Zionism to them in homeland tourism. Among such desires and interests, I focus on a still emergent progressive form of identification. The sites of Israeli violence profoundly affected Syrian– Lebanese descendants, only some of whom internalized anti-Zionism. Notably, others expressed ambivalence or repulsion toward what was considered the “racism”of the Lebanese or Syrian states. Their“brainwashing”tactics, stressed Arab Brazilian tourists, were futile because such tensions did not exist in an allegedly racially democratic and mixed Brazil. Using the core language of Brazilian nationalist ideology, ethnic tourists have “enacted an unnamed cosmopolitanism in the space of a very specific institutional site” of Arab statesponsored tourism (Schein 1998: 190). My work holds out the possibility that nationalist precepts can serve as the first step toward this existing yet unacknowledged cosmopolitanism between Brazil and the Middle East. EMOTIVE CONTOURS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF ARAB BRAZILIAN TOURISM Narrating antecedent intentions in homeland tourism, second- and thirdgeneration Syrian–Lebanese have spoken of wanting to know one’s origin (conhecer a origem). A second-generation woman, Márcia, traveled with her uncle to Lebanon in the late 1980s.“Your emotional side speaks a lot, because … there [in Lebanon] you see where your family is from, you know where your origin is really from,” she explained. “I loved having gone there and seeing where my father was born.” Similarly, a second-generation Syrian–Lebanese man reflected, “I went to know my origin. I went to know where my parents came from. … I went to know the land of mother, the land of my father. [Syria] and Homs … Lebanon and Zahlé.” In a similar vein, Arab Brazilians specified the desire to know the very village of parents or grandparents.Abdo, a tourism-industry executive, explained, 146 S I X “I wanted to know the land of my parents, my grandparents.”He stressed that his mother had“transmitted”to him and his siblings“a love for Lebanon”and especially “a love” for their small...