In the late nineteenth century, during the reign of Porfirio Díaz when the spotlight shone on the ambition of the bourgeoisie to accumulate money, the first group of Lebanese immigrants arrived in Mexico in pursuit of a better life. The country’s top three fortunes back then belonged to two Spaniards, Avelino Montes Molina and Iñigo Noriega Laso, and the American, Thomas Braniff. At that time, there were forty-four fortunes exceeding one million pesos in Mexico. Of the total assets, 26.4 percent belonged to nine Spanish immigrants, 8.2 percent to two Americans, 1.4 percent to a German, and 0.7 percent to a Frenchman.
In Lebanon, the Ottoman Empire was shuddering. It is estimated that the total number of emigrants who left Lebanon between 1860 and 1914 was a bit more than one million people. The majority, around 40 percent, went to the United States while most of the remainder settled in Brazil and Argentina. In that time, a mere two percent immigrated to Mexico, or about 20,000 Lebanese people.
Most of them fled the excesses of the Ottoman Empire. The government’s immigration records state that the first Lebanese people arrived in Mexico at the port of Veracruz in early 1878, right after General Porfirio Díaz finished his first term as President of the Republic. According to the census of 1900, there were 391 Lebanese people in Mexico. Ten years later, that number increased to over two million, representing 2.5 percent of the foreign population under the rule of Porfirio Díaz.
The Lebanese population continued to grow until Díaz was overthrown by Francisco I. Madero and the dictator was forced to leave Mexico. As his hour came and went, Porfirio Díaz, the man who saw to it that immigrants from the Middle East were welcomed, was exiled and fled to Spain. He left Veracruz aboard the ship steamer Ypiranga after spending five days waiting in port. He proceeded to Coatzacoalcos and embarked on a painful journey across the Atlantic to Europe. From the bay, Teodoro Dehesa, Governor of the state, gave the last farewell to the dictator who ended his life in Paris in 1915. In the first months of exile, Díaz withdrew his savings that amounted to 1.5 million francs, the equivalent to approximately a half million pesos at that time, earned from seventy years of pension funds for having been a General in the Mexican army.
In 1936, he saw the first rays of light in the city of Bloiz, France. Bernardo Díaz Casasús, the last great-grandson of General Díaz, was born in exile. Meanwhile, in Mexico, the first generation of native Slims was born. Originally attracted to a mirage of social peace and money in the twilight of the Díaz era, the Slim family gradually established themselves as the richest family of Lebanese origin in the country.
Born Khalil Slim Haddad in 1887, Slim Helú’s father arrived in Mexico after leaving his hometown of Jezzine at the age of fourteen. He arrived through the port of Veracruz and traveled to the port of Tampico, following the footsteps of his four older brothers, Elías, José and Pedro. During a time when all Middle Eastern people were subjects of the Ottoman Empire, many Lebanese people fled due to the imposition of Turkish rule. Slim too left in search of better horizons.
“My paternal and maternal ancestors arrived in Mexico a hundred years ago, in order to escape the yoke of the Ottoman Empire,” said Slim Helú. “At that time, the boys were forced by conscription to join the army. It was because of this that mothers would force their children into exile before they turned fifteen years old.”
This is how Khalil Slim Haddad was brought to Mexican territory in the year 1902. He later changed his name to Julián (Khalil is a common Arab name meaning faithful friend or loyal friend). He was just one of thousands of Lebanese immigrants who arrived in the country by way of Mexico’s three main ports: Veracruz, Tampico in Tamaulipas, and Progreso in Yucatan.
One of the earliest Lebanese immigrants was José María Abad, who became the first Lebanese street vendor in Mexico in 1878. Abad’s sales as a peddler were about fifty percent higher than the average vendor.
Lebanon is in the Middle East and is one of the smallest nations in the world with just under 27,000 square miles. Of its 3.6 million inhabitants, 3.5 million were born in the country, but the Lebanese diaspora in the world is approximately 16 million people. Lebanon is populated by twenty-four villages, twenty-three of which are Arabic and one Jewish. Since the prophets of the three great monotheistic religions come from this region, many of its people bear deep scars from the wars fought in the Holy Lands throughout history.
The Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf tries to find an explanation for this warring spirit in his book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. Maalouf maintains that for the West, the threat of Islam has been permanent. Nearly a century after the prophet’s death in AD 632, the Moors conquered Spain. Finding themselves on the threshold of France, they continued to expand, but their progress was hindered by Charles Martel in the year 732. In 1453, the Turks and the Ottomans captured Constantinople and were at the gates of Vienna in 1529 until they were defeated definitively in 1683.
In the eyes of Islam, conflict with the West has taken different forms: Byzantium versus the Islamic empire, the Christian Kingdoms versus Al-Andalus, Europe versus the Ottoman Empire, colonialism versus Arab nationalism, and so on. For the Muslim world, the West has for a long time attempted to define itself in contrast to Islamic culture and religion.
Always a fragmented territory throughout its five-thousand-year history, Lebanon has survived its tragedy and despair. Though the Lebanese in exile say that the cedar tree—a symbol of their country—is disappearing, they insist that the spirit of the cedar as well as the thistle, the rose, and the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran, will live forever.
Lebanon, the country for which King Solomon sang, “He who adorned the temple and palace with its cedars,” stood for more than 400 years under Turkish rule, the rule of the Sublime Porte2. When the First World War ended, the Lebanese coast was occupied by the French, the interior by the English and the mountainous region by the nationalists, who had banded together to resist the great Turks.
As a result of ancestral war, the first Middle Eastern immigrants to Mexico were Lebanese, arriving between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when the inhabitants of this small nation were subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
Mexican sociologist and historian Martínez Assad recounts in detail the vicissitudes suffered by Lebanon throughout its long history and explores why they have left it in such a fragmented state.
Slim describes that it was between 1918 and 1920, when Lebanon was under an occupation regime, that a new phase in political history began in the small country. Fierce diplomatic negotiations between France and England led to the Treaty of Sevres, which forced the Turks to give up their claims to Syria and Lebanon and left them under French mandate. Palestine remained under the supervision of the British. In 1920, when Greater Lebanon was created, they also added four Muslim-Arab territories. And so a bi-national state was built where a State, in the modern sense of the word, had never previously existed. It was not until Lebanon gained its independence on November 22, 1943, that it became a truly modern state and asserted its place in the world.
Lebanon continued to be weighed down by old problems of secular government. Why? Because the right to command, to do justice, to protect and exploit the people in the Ottoman Empire was distributed across a multitude of local cells. The chiefs, men of the sword, considered themselves God’s representatives and felt responsible for maintaining order; the order that God himself wanted to be represented on Earth. Amin Maalouf, in Rock of Tanios, explained what life was like in Lebanon in the second-half of the nineteenth century. He said:
The whole village then belonged to the same feudal lord. He was the heir of an ancient system of sheikhs … He was one of the most powerful characters in the world. Among the eastern plains and the sea, there were dozens of properties larger than theirs … Above them, and for those who were of the same circumstance, there was Emir of the mountain. And above the Emir, the Pasha of the provinces: those of Tripoli, Damascus, Sidon and Acre. And above him was the Sultan of Istanbul ...
So when independence came to Lebanon, they didn’t have to resign themselves as the people of a State nor did they have to settle to the core idea of modernization. This was due to the departure of thousands of immigrants who sought other lands as a reaction to the impossibility of achieving better living conditions in their homeland. But among these immigrants were many intellectuals. It became very common in the early twentieth century to find important Lebanese intellectuals outside of their home state, particularly throughout Europe. The nationalists met in Paris, most notably in 1913 when the Arab Congress met to announce their support for the independence of Lebanon and urge the international community to recognize their distinct national character. In 1914, Turkey was allied with the Germans and thrust their regime on tiny Lebanon. The following year, the military invaded and announced the end of Mutasarrifiyya autonomy. The repression that followed was brutal. Many decided to emigrate, never to return.
As a result, most of the immigrants who came to Mexico from the Middle East at the turn of the nineteenth century were Lebanese. On a much smaller scale, Iraqis, Palestinians and Syrians also entered the country. It was usual to call these immigrants Turks because of their passports, though they were not Turkish. Until 1918, they were subjects of the Ottoman Empire and were then mistakenly called Arabs because of the language they spoke and wrote. The language, food, traditions and social customs of Lebanese affairs are reflected in a book by Patricia Jacobs Barquet, author of a dictionary3 about Mexicans of Lebanese origin. Jacobs recounts in detail how the Lebanese who drifted to Mexico from the East were initiated into Mexican social customs.
The Middle Eastern immigrants who arrived in Mexico left their small territories and came to a developing host country with sparsely populated peripheral territories. They were grateful that they were able to contribute to a developing country, contributions from which they directly benefitted.
They became more and more integrated into Mexican culture. As part of the trend of assimilation, many were marrying outside of their own Lebanese community. Today, a number of descendants of first, second, third, fourth and fifth generation immigrant families from various countries are prominent Mexicans whose work and participation in the cultural activities of Mexico hold major significance.
Their ancestors came from lands that had been passed from civilization to civilization, like the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Persians, as well as various conquerors such as the Byzantines, Crusaders, Arabs, Ottomans and Alexander the Great. They went in search of a better life, some through a desire to expand their horizons and others because they were forced to run from Turkish rule. The majority were Christians, Maronites and Orthodox; some were Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, and a few Druze and Jews. In Mexico, they found a territory rich in history and ethnicities. Despite their lack of knowledge of the language and customs of their new home, and despite their lack of experience and financial resources, in most cases, they found ways to adapt and grow. They left their families and were attracted by the enchanting land of Central America and the opening of its immigration laws. Young and fearless, they began as merchants in their new adventure and were favored by conditions such as the instability of the Mexican currency. This allowed their goods and services to be converted into capital that would increase in value. They were able to save and invest their earnings. In their struggle to survive, they explored untapped markets in villages that were cut off from all communication, and in these places, they introduced the concept of a market. Since this was both necessary and attractive for the locals, the Lebanese immigrants were welcomed. Earning money became second nature.
This is how they gained their reputation and became the precursors to credit sales; they facilitated the integration of marginalized areas and they favored internal markets. Their austerity and constant struggle made it so that, to become a barillero (a peddler), they had to establish small outposts in markets. They began in the ports and then traveled by foot, mule or rail into villages, cities and towns across the country. They learned to live in back rooms before they had the capital to pay rent or become homeowners. The first to immigrate helped others who sought to do the same. There was always a peasant who was willing to carry a Kashshi (the traditional box filled with knickknacks identified with peddlers). They opened credit accounts so that they could act as creditors. Those who prospered in trade ventured into industry; those who were professionals served the new communities. They did their best to integrate so that their future generations would be better prepared and able to penetrate the world in other professions.
Not forgetting their values, love and connection to a country that had always been coveted and envied by its neighbors as the gateway to the East for Europeans, the Lebanese people and their descendants came to form one of the largest and most prosperous communities in Mexico. Although they never stopped showing their solidarity, they were a community made up of individuals who chose their own paths – individuals who, business aside, were diversified in their activities.
In terms of quantity and ability to integrate, the Lebanese community formed one of the largest and most significant groups of immigrants in Mexico. It has been said that by 1905 they numbered five thousand and were established in several provincial cities as well as the Federal District. This number increased considerably after the First World War, a fact that, along with other factors, stimulated a desire for more Lebanese people to emigrate. The only specific census that has ever been conducted about this population was that of Salim Abud and Julian Nasr in 1948. It recorded about twenty thousand immigrants and their descendants, in a total Mexican population of twenty million, which were then established in more than three hundred cities and towns in all states of the republic. This census assumed all immigrants from the East as a single community. However, in 1927, Julián Slim Haddad had already conducted an initial survey of Lebanese businessmen and traders.
Among Mexicans of Lebanese descent who arrived in Mexico since about 1878, more than a thousand have excelled at some point in Mexican history.
The Lebanese have been mainly businessmen and traders. The majority is Catholic (Maronite), although there have been Lebanese Muslims, of whom built their first mosque in Torreón, Coahuila. It is not uncommon to see the image of Saint Charbel in Catholic churches in Mexico.
In Mexico, there are around half-a-million Lebanese descendants mainly concentrated in the states of Puebla, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, Jalisco, the State of Mexico, Yucatan and the capital.
Furthermore, the scholar Martínez Assad highlights in the book Veracruz: Port of Arrival the involvement of some Lebanese and their identification with the political life of Mexico. “When the Americans invaded Veracruz, a Lebanese with the last name Nicholas offered the President Victoriano Huerta and his sons MX$200,000 to defend the country.”
The name Slim, rooted in Arabic, means peace, tranquility, and repose. However, the semantics of the language create many versions of peace. In the name Slim, the character for peace represents the peace that comes from having one’s own affairs in order.