So Far From Allah, So Close to Mexico: Middle Eastern Immigrants in Modern Mexico (review)

José Vasconcelos’s ideal of the “cosmic race” theoretically embraces all of humanity, but in fact the nationalist ideology that sprang from it acknowledged little beyond Spaniards and Native Americans. The many other ethnic communities that have contributed to the modern Mexican nation have been largely submerged by celebrations of the mestizo. In this innovative book, Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp examines Middle Eastern migrants in order to broaden our understanding of Mexico as a multicultural nation. Building on studies of Mexico’s Lebanese colony by Moisés González Navarro, Luz María Martínez Montiel, and Carmen Mercedes Páez Oropeza, Alfaro-Velcamp provides the most thorough social historical analysis yet of Middle Eastern migrants to Mexico. Moreover, she places them within larger transnational networks extending throughout the Mediterranean and North America, while also examining the changing relationship between United States and Mexican immigration policies.

As is common in studies of ethnic identity, terminology is both controversial and essential for gaining historical perspective. The reference to “Allah” in the title does not imply a predominantly Muslim community; only 4 percent of migrants professed Islam, although then as now, an official preference for Christians may have led some to hide their true religion. Alfaro-Velcamp observes that the word is simply the translation for “God,” and even Arabic-speaking Christians worship Allah. Likewise, she demonstrates that while many Mexicans of Middle Eastern origin now claim a Lebanese identity, about half of all migrants came between 1880 and 1920, when the Ottoman Empire was in the process of unraveling. The subsequent rise of Lebanese nationalism encouraged many within the community to embrace this identity after the fact. Imagined connections with Phoenicians, the iconic traders of the ancient Mediterranean, conveniently bolstered the image they were seeking to project in Mexico as natural-born capitalists.

Alfaro-Velcamp effectively deploys multiple scales of analysis to analyze the emergence of this merchant identity, juxtaposing a close community study focused on the Laguna region of northern Mexico during the decade of revolutionary fighting after 1910 with a broad survey of Middle Eastern migrant networks throughout Mexico from 1880 to the present. She attributes their success to a variety of factors, including a long tradition of marketing, the maintenance of close ethnic connections, an abono system of extending credit to customers, and, in the borderlands region, the ability to obtain merchandise from fellow ethnics in the United States. Of course, much the same could be said for other successful merchants, from indigenous market networks in pre-Hispanic times to Basques of the colonial era. Class also helped to determine these new identities, which varied considerably depending on economic outcomes. Alfaro-Velcamp shows that wealthy capitalists, most notably Telmex mogul Carlos Slim Helú, cultivated a distinct image as “foreign citizens,” while more modest migrants sought to blend into the mestizo majority. Such protective adaptation was important in the 1920s and 1930s as nativist anger raged against supposed foreign exploitation. Eventually, a combination of economic recovery and the sympathetic portrayal of migrants in popular culture, most notably Joaquín Pardavé’s film, El baisano Jalil (1942), helped to allay popular fears.

While providing a rounded picture of the diversity of the Middle Eastern community, Alfaro-Velcamp’s work also suggests many fruitful areas for future research on migrant cultures in Mexico. That quintessential street food, tacos al pastor, is probably the greatest single Middle Eastern influence on the daily life of many Mexicans, and the historical path from shawarma to tacos arabes merits further study. The diverging regional nature of Lebanese culture in Mexico could also be described more fully; Alfaro-Velcamp gives close attention to northern practices but only hints at other regional variants. She also provides a model for future studies of the relations between migrant groups and local cultures. In short, this book adds an...