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UMI
Between Argentines and Arabs:
The Writing of National and Immigrant Identities
by
Christine Elsa Civantos
B.A. (Duke University) 1992

M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1994
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Comparative Literature
in the
GRADUATE DIVISION
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Committee in charge:
Professor Francine Masiello, Chair

Professor Karl Britto
Professor Margaret Larkin
Spring 1999
UMI Number: 9931213
Copyright 1999 by
Civantos, Christine Elsa
All rights reserved.
UMI Microform 9931213

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copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
300 North Zeeb Road
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The Writing of National and immigrant Identities
Copyright 1999
by
Christine Elsa Civantos
The dissertation of Christine Elsa Civantos is approved:
Chair Date
S) , . / /
\ /D ate
l/u ~ r/ a
Date
University of California, Berkeley
Spring 1999
iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter 1: 23
HISTORICAL FICTIONS AND FICTIONAL HISTORIES:
THE ARAB GAUCHO
Chapter 2: 82
WRITING THE ORIENT TO WRITE THE SELF:
ARAB ARGENTINE AND EURO-ARGENTINE
DISCOURSES ON THE ORIENT
Chapter 3: 167
PERFORMING MOTHER TONGUES:
PURITY OF LANGUAGE, MORALS, AND NATIONAL AFFILIATION
IN THE FORMATION OF ARAB ARGENTINE IDENTITIES
IN CLOSING: 235
THE IMMIGRANT AND THE ORIENT
IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
BIBLIOGRAPHY 240
1
INTRODUCTION

In an important sense, we are dealing with the

formation of cultural identities understood not as
essentializations (although part of their enduring
appeal is that they seem and are considered to be
like essentializations) but as contrapuntal
ensembles, for it is the case that no identity can ever
exist by itself and without an array of opposites,
negatives, oppositions...
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
In the southern tip of Latin America, especially in Argentina and Uruguay, there is one
drink which reigns supreme across all social sectors-yerPa mate, a tea-like brew made
from the locally grown plant of the same name and ritualistically consumed in vast
quantities. It is a curious testament to little-studied historical links that, while Argentina is
the largest producer and consumer of mate, the largest importer of Argentine mate is Syria.1
The consumption of mate in Syria is a material trace of the migration of some 250, 000
Levantines to Argentina, and the eventual return of some of these emigres to their
homeland, whether to visit or to stay for good, with a taste for mate. The study that I
carry out here is concerned with Arab-Argentine connections of a different sort-discursive
intersections and dialogues-but ones which arise out of the same historical events.
The main questions I address are: How do Euro-Argentines employ the figure of the
Arab-images of the Orient and the Oriental immigrant-in constructing an Argentine
national culture, and how do Arab immigrants in Argentina make sense of the linguistic and
cultural dislocations which they experience while responding to Euro-Argentine
discourses? I answer these questions by reading contrapuntaily the writings of Euro-
Argentines and Arab immigrants in Argentina. I examine the textual conversations
between Argentines of European descent and Arab immigrants to Argentina in order to
2
both shed light on the reciprocal nature of processes of representation and identity
formation between national and immigrant groups, and to open up the study of Latin
American immigrant and ethnic literatures. This study is then both a literary history--of
Argentine Orientalist literature and Arab Argentine immigrant literature-and a critical
analysis of how the formation of identities in these two bodies of work are rhetorically
enmeshed.
* * *
It was in the 1860's that a flow of Arab immigrants began to arrive in the Americas-
where they mainly settled in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Most of
those who went to Argentina were coming from what was then the province of Greater
Syria under Ottoman rule, which consisted of what are today Syria, Lebanon,
Palestine/Israel, and parts of Jordan.2 Because they were coming from the Ottoman
Empire they were given the name turco~aTurk in Spanish-a usually derogatory term still
used to this day. A variety of reasons have been cited for this Arab immigration
movement, most of them linked to the crisis that arose in the Ottoman empire in the mid-
1800's and which would later culminate in the dissolution of the empire after its defeat in
World War I. Many historians point to Ottoman persecution of the Christian minorities:
the internal conflicts that began in the 1850's ended up in the massacre of a large number
of Christians in Damascus in 1860. Others also point to the Ottoman policy of forced
military service. Later, as the process of Ottoman decolonization began in the Arab
World, conflicts arose between Arab nationalists and the colonial projects of England and
France. This shift in colonial domination also caused changes in the economic structures of
the region: land tenancy was affected and there was a crisis in local industries because of
the competition created by imports. Added to this was the rise in population in Lebanon
and an incipient industrialization which affected the livelihood of craftsmen and small
merchants. Thus, the Syro-Lebanese immigration movement arose out of a combination
of political, economic, religious, and cultural factors with differing degrees of importance at
3
different times.
In terms of the numbers of immigrants, there are many difficulties involved in arriving at
precise statistics on how many emigrated, both because many left illegally and because
in the countries they entered the terms used to record the origins of immigrants were not
standardized or very accurate. Also, some immigrants returned to the Middle East after a
few years. It is estimated, though, that between 1875 and 1914 among the 45 million
immigrants that arrived in the Americas, there were more than a million emigres from the
Ottoman Empire. Up until 1870 the majority went to the U.S., then the flow moved toward
the Caribbean and South America.
As for Argentina specifically, it is estimated that, amid the flood of European immigrants,
between 1887 and 1913, almost 131,000 Arabs arrived in Argentina. The numbers of
Arab immigrants peaked between 1904 and 1913, and then went down because of World
War I which created, on the one hand, difficulties in travel and, on the other hand, the hope
of political independence. Another wave, this time of lesser numbers, started in 1931 and
lasted until the 1950's. During this period some Palestinians also arrived, and then there
was a later influx of Lebanese in the 80's as a result of the Lebanese civil war. Thus
Arabs-and the majority of them Christians-make up roughly the 4th largest immigrant
group in Argentina, where they settled mostly in Buenos Aires and the Northwestern
region of the country. Those who arrived at the turn of the century usually started out, as
they did elsewhere in the Americas, as itinerant salesmen and then set up shops for the
sale of cloth, notions, and housewares. Though many are still small business owners, a
number have also became major industrialists or key figures in regional politics, as can be
seen in the case of Carlos Menem who rose from local Peronist politics in the agricultural
region of La Rioja to become president of Argentina.3
Although a good number of Arab Argentines have enjoyed political and economic
success, or precisely because of this success, anti-Arab sentiment in Argentina lingers to
this day. As I will present in greater detail in the chapters that follow, a reaction against
the massive influx of immigrants from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean began in the
last two decades of the 19th century and in the 1910s it began to manifest itself clearly on
4
political and institutional levels. In the mid-1930s xenophobic nationalism became the
central political movement. During these first decades of the 20th century, Semitic
immigrants, that is Jews from Europe and the Middle East as well as Arabs of different
faiths, were seen as the most undesirable of immigrants. These views, based on
positivist notions of ethnicity as well as on economic concerns, operated into the 1950s
with Peronist immigration policies.
Renewed anti-Arab bigotry surfaced in 1988 when Menem, a political as well as
cultural outsider, won the presidential nomination of the Peronist Justicialista party. Since
that time the press has often linked his shortcomings as president to his ethnic origins.4 A
1990 magazine article, La pampa arabe [The Arab Pampas] illustrates this in a subtle
yet powerful way. While the body of the article begins by telling the story of Arab
immigrants particular ability to assimilate to Argentine life, the series of insets-three
sidebar boxes, one per page for the last three (out of four) pages of the article-tell a very
different story. The first inset, entitled, Los arabes en la politica [Arabs in politics] lists
major political figures of Syro-Lebanese descent. The second inset starts off by stating
that Arabs love politics and then presents a paragraph or more on each of five politically
active Arab Argentine families. Each of these descriptions begins with the subheading El
poder de los [family name] [The power of the (family name)]. The last inset, entitled El
poder economico arabe lists the major manufacturing corporations owned by Arab
Argentines and notes that thirty years ago many fewer Arab names were found among
the prominent businessmen of Argentina. After presenting the notion that Arab Argentine
clans are politically and economically powerful, and that their numbers in positions of
power are on the rise, the body of the article closes by referring to Arab fatalism and
stating that Quiza la principal diferencia entre un gaucho y un inmigrante siriolibanes sea
que mientras el gaucho tenia la certeza de que la pampa desertica le pertenecia, el arabe
sabia que debia conquistarla.na5 What is emphasized then is the conflict between the
gaucho or criollds rightful ownership of the heart of Argentina and the Arab immigrants
a Maybe the main difference between a gaucho and a Syro-Lebanese immigrant is that while the
gaucho had the certainty that the desert pampa belonged to him, the Arab knew that he would
5
desire and ability to conquer Argentina.6
Such conceptions of Arabs as a separate, clannish, and politically and economically
powerful group within Argentina are echoed in two opinion polls conducted in Argentina in
1992. In one of these opinion surveys, earned out jointly by a Jewish Argentine and
Jewish American association, about a third of the participants considered Jews and Arabs
to be the groups least integrated into Argentine life, with an even higher number
considering them to belong to a separate people. More than half of the respondents
thought of Jews and Arabs as richer than other Argentines. In another survey earned out
earlier that year almost a third of those surveyed considered Arabs to be rich and powerful
while almost half considered that Arabs were one of the ethnic groups which only worked
for its own benefit.7 Thus, to a certain extent the notion of inherited ethnic characteristics
and the political and economic resentment of non-Arabs persist to this day in Argentina.
* * *
Interestingly, the stereotypes about Arabs which play such a central part in the
enduring anti-Arab essentialist views have roots that stretch back before the arrival of
Syro-Lebanese immigrants in Argentina. As early as 1845, some twenty years before the
entry of the first Arab immigrants, the Orient--an Orient1 assembled through readings in
Orientalist academic studies and literature produced in Europe and through travels in the
Middle East-was already a presence in Argentina. Images of the Orient appear in the
founding texts of Argentine literature and Argentine cultural nationalism written by authors
such as Domingo F. Sarmiento and Leopoldo Lugones. It was not until long after actual
Orientals" began settling in Argentina that the presence of Arabs in Argentina was noted
in literary texts. Aside from reference to the departure of Arab ifrimigrants en route to
Argentina in a 1909 travelogue, the reality of Arabs in Argentina is not represented
textually until the 1920's when the figure of the turco begins to appear in literary works.
Meanwhile a far away and fantastic Orient continued to function in Argentine letters, for
have to conquer it. [This translation as well as all subsequent translations are my own, unless
6
instance in the short stories of Roberto Arlt and Jorge Luis Borges, into the early 1950s.
By focusing on the formation of Argentine national identity in the Orientalist texts of
non-Arab Argentines, I hope to expose both how the Orienti-as imagined and
experienced by various figures in Argentine cultural history-has played an important but
heretofore unacknowledged role in Argentine national identity, and how conceptions of
orientalism8can be reconfigured in light of this. I consider the Euro-Argentine texts within
the frameworks of the legacy of the Spanish Reconquista and European orientalism.
Together these elucidate how the presence of the Arab, both abroad and at home, has
played a role in Euro-Argentine literature's construction of an Argentine national identity.
Additionally, by reflecting on the workings and implications of orientalism in the Latin
American context, I point to the ways in which the notion of orientalism, as established b y
Edward Said, can be reformulated in order to take into account a variety of inter-connected
historical circumstances and discourses.
Although there is no dearth of critical commentary surrounding discourses of orientalism
in general, or Edward Saids theorization of orientalism, I find that there is at least one more
stone to be overtumed-another complex unfolding of the social world"9 to be
acknowledged. I am referring to the intersection between the construction of a criollo
identity--both a subject position and a national character for people of Spanish descent
born in Latin America-and the practice of forms of orientalism. It was Said's Orientalism
that first pointed to knowledge about the Orient as a means to attaining power over it, and
to positioning the self against an exotic other. However, his work does not account for
more heterogeneous forms of orientalism, such as those which arise from the relationship
between creole colonials of Spanish descent and the Arab world.
In certain ways, and to varying extents, the writings by Sarmiento, Lugones, Arlt,
Borges, and others fall within the type of orientalism which Said formulates; however, on a
variety of levels they do not fit within, and thus cannot be understood through, Saids rigid
conceptualization. These texts call for a more fluid, context-based notion of
essentialization of the Orient than that which Said offers. Said characterizes orientalism
otherwise noted.]
as a monolithic discourse which manages to transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to
another" (he only questions how it does this).10 The following quote, though lengthy, is
useful in that it is indicative of Saids totalizing notion of orientalism and Orientalists:
It is perfectly natural for the human mind to resist the assault on it of
untreated strangeness; therefore, cultures have always been inclined to
impose complete transformations on other cultures, receiving these other
cultures not as they are but as, for the benefit of the receiver, they ought to
be. To the Westerner, however, the Oriental was always like some
aspect of the West [...] Yet the Orientalist makes it his work to be always
converting the Orient from something into something else [...]This process
of conversion is a disciplined one: it is taught, it has its own societies,
periodicals, traditions, vocabulary, rhetoric, all in basic ways connected to
and supplied by the prevailing cultural and political norms of the West [...]
as one surveys Orientalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the
overriding impression is of Orientalisms intensive schematization of the
entire Orient. How early this schematization began is clear from the
examples I have given of Western representations of the Orient in
Classical Greece. How strongly articulated were later representations
building on the earlier ones, how inordinately careful their schematization,
how dramatically effective their placing in Western imaginative geography,
can be illustrated [.]11
As this quote demonstrates, and as Aijaz Ahmed and Sadik Jalal al-Azm have noted in
their criticisms of Orientalism. Said tends to fall into an essentialization of orientalism and
Orientalists themselves as emphatically schematic.12 James Clifford describes this
problem, using the terms of cultural anthropology, as the absence in his book of any
developed theory of culture as a differentiating and expressive ensemble rather than as
simply hegemonic and disciplinary."13
This is not to say, of course, that the images of the Orient produced by Argentine
writers are simply stylistic devices with no broader implications. The orientalisms of
Argentine writers of European descent--as well as those of Arab Argentine writers14~are
linked to significant questions of identity formation. Julia Kushigian, in Orientalism in the
Hispanic Literary Tradition,15 takes steps toward taking into account the particularities of
orientalism in Latin America by examining what she terms Hispanic Orientalism.
However, her analysis suffers because of flaws in the formulation of certain concepts-the
relationship between the Hispanic world and the Orient, the understanding of the Orient
itself, and the notion of dialogue-which form the foundations of her study.
Although Kushigian brings up the important point that Spanish and Latin American
orientalisms are different from (other) European orientalisms because of the history of
8
cultural contact between Arabs and Spaniards, she then forgets about the specificity of
this contact and does not distinguish between Borges' treatment of the Arab world,
Severo Sarduy's of China, and Octavio Paz's of South Asia. For Kushigian all of these
places are an undifferentiated the Orient; these locations are not spoken about, or
categorized as, or reduced to the Orient," rather they simply are the Orient. This
problem is linked to a broader tendency in her study to reduce the Orient to one unified
entity and to accept the Orient as a site of radical difference without ever historicizing or
contextualizing the formation of the signifier the Orient." For instance, in relation to
Borges Orientalist works Kushigian herself promotes a notion of the Orient as wholly and
essentially Other: In the Orient Borges has located a culture that is radically different
from our own.'6 With a similarly essentialist stance, elsewhere Kushigian states that she
is focusing on Latin America instead of Spain because both Latin America and the Orient
are mysterious and mystical.'7
Likewise, Kushigians use of the term Orientalism itself is not very clear, perhaps
because she all but completely disavows the implication of the political in Orientalist
practices. While it is obvious that she does not use the term Orientalism in the critical
way that Said does, she never makes it clear what definition of the word she is working
with. Instead, she refers to Saids work and the fact that he does not address Hispanic
Orientalism in a way that makes it seem as though she is not concerned with any form of
critique of orientalism, but rather with showing that orientalism also occurs in Hispanic
letters. She states, for instance, that Said's usage is so polemical as to place Hispanic
Orientalism in a dubious and inferior position in relation to the Anglo-French
phenomenon.8 In this passage and elsewhere her approach is to show how Orientalist
certain Latin American writers are without ever distinguishing her use of the word
Orientalism from Said's, in which it clearly stands for a negative, exoticizing, controlling
discourse. In effect, Kushigian uses the Arab-Spanish connection to completely close off
the realm of the political. In doing so she not only disregards the broader issues of
Spanish colonial history (in North Africa and the Americas) and both Spain and Argentinas
efforts to align themselves with Europe, and thus against the Arab Other, but she also
ignores the workings of power outside of the directly political realm: the power dynamics
involved in national and individual identity formation.19 In addition, by labeling the
orientalisms of the works she studies as Hispanic Orientalism, Kushigian creates a static
critical category which like Edward Saids Orientalism" is a fixed orthodoxy.
Moreover, the linchpin of Kushigians study, the claim that Hispanic writers
relationship to the Orient is one of cultural interchange, is centered around what she terms
dialogue. However, her notion of dialogue is actually entirely unilateral since it is all the
product of the Hispanic writers imagination.20 She fails to consider what the implications of
this (of a Westerner, and more specifically a Latin American understood as a Westerner,
speaking for the Orient and of the reduction of dialogue to this) are. Therefore, Kushigians
claim that these writers' relationship to the Orient is one of cultural interchange and use as
literary imagery, rather than domination, is undone by her using the same type of
reductive, exoticizing vision which Said and other critics problematize.
Though Kushigians is the only extensive study of orientalism in Spanish American
literature, there are insightful critical studies of orientalism in Spanish literature. Foremost
among these is Luce Lopez-Baralts Huellas del Islam in la literatura espariola21 which
brings out the interconnectedness of Spanish and Arab letters from Medieval times to the
present. In particular, in her analysis of the ideological contradictions and unwitting
consolidation of exoticizing, essentializing notions of the Arab other in Juan Goytisolos
Makbara, Lopez-Baralt points the way to a more nuanced understanding of Hispanic
Orientalism and orientalism in general. For this reason, her work serves as background as
well as a conceptual guide for my analysis of how the historical relationship between
Spain and the Arab world lingers as Argentine criollos define their identities against both
the indigenous peoples of Argentina and immigrants to Argentina.
Outside of the realm of Spanish and Spanish American letters, the most noteworthy
reconceptualization of the notion of orientalism is Lisa Lowes Critical Terrains: French and
British Orientalisms.22 Lowe calls for a conceptualization of orientalism which takes into
account the various other discourses which intersect and interact with orientalism. Her
purpose in to point to the ways in which orientalism is linked to multiple systems of
10
representation and informed by particular social and literary conditions and thus allow for
attempts at countering orientalism. Her work provides a building block for my investigation
of Latin American processes of mutual self-definition and their relationship to orientalism. In
this study, I draw from these existing formulations of orientalism and bring them together
with theorizations of the heterogeneity of Latin American identity. In this way, I elaborate
a conceptualization of orientalism which fosters greater awareness and understanding of
orientalisms in post-colonial and immigratory contexts.
* *
By focusing one side of this counterpoint of identity formation on works written b y

Arab Argentines, I initiate the study of Arab Argentine writings and the immigrant
subjectivities which they establish in order to reveal the ways in which immigrants can
both challenge and gain entry into formulations of Argentine national identity or Arab
cultural identity. Surprisingly little scholarly attention has been paid to immigrant and
ethnic literatures in Argentina-especially when one considers the sheer numerical
presence of immigrants in Argentina as of the turn of the century. While there are a fair
number of studies on representations of the immigrant in literature written by criollo
Argentines,23 works on the writings produced by immigrants or ethnic minorities are
relatively scarce. It is only in the last fifteen years or so that scholarly studies have been
devoted to two groups of minority writers: Jewish Argentines and, to a much lesser
extent, Afro-Argentines. The authors of these critical works make important statements
about the purpose of studying ethnic writers, and the ways in which to go about doing
so.
In the only book-length study of Afro-Argentine literature, Marvin Lewis takes up the
task of recovering the Afro-Argentine literary legacy and reconstructing the impact of blacks
in Argentine culture.24 In La orilla inminente. Saul Sosnowski calls for the conceptualization
of Jewish Argentine literature as part of a national culture which should be defined
according to its multiplicity of ethnicities and their contributions.25 Leonardo Senkman, in La
11
identidad judfa en la literature arqentina, in addition to pointing to the need for a pluralist
view of Argentine national culture, makes a case for the importance of studying the
process of assimilation in Argentina. Moreover, Senkman raises the de-essentializing
question of what is a Jewish or Jewish Argentine writer?26 In the spirit of these studies, I
would like to document the literary presence of Arabs in Argentina and expand the
pluralization of Argentine culture to another minority group, one which goes unmentioned
even by these scholars who focus on the multiple cultures of Argentina. In addition, I
seek to consider the writings of Arab Argentines, whether written in Spanish or Arabic, in
relation to the Argentine literary corpus-including, but not limited to, works which feature
Orientalist themes or imagery-as well as to the Arabic literary corpus of Syria and the
surrounding region.
Within Arab studies, although a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the
writings which come out of the mahjaf7--the place of exile or emigration, the vast majority
of it has focused on works in Arabic and, in particular, on works written in North America.
While the innovative Arabic poetry of the United States mahjar writers of the tum-of-the-
century has been studied by many scholars, the writings of those in Latin America, in
particular outside of Brazil, have been almost completely ignored as a result of being
dismissed as aesthetically insignificant in terms of Arabic poetics. Along with this focus on
Arabic-language texts and verse forms, there is a prevailing tendency to study the texts
only in relation to Arabic literature, to the exclusion of the literature of the host1 country.28
There is one study specifically devoted to Arab Argentine literature, which does take into
account both the Arab and Argentine literary contexts: Margot Scheffolds Doppelte
Heimat?. Zur literarischen Produktion arabischsprachiqer Immigranten in Argentinien.29
While Scheffolds study has been of immense value to me as a historical and bibliographic
resource, her analysis of the works is limited (particularly in terms of strategies of
discursive identity formation), as is the number of prose works she covers. Most of the
texts I examine here were not addressed by Scheffold-and probably not known to her.
Indeed, there is still much more work to be done-more texts to be recovered through
research, as well as more studies to be earned out, in particular comparative studies
12
across immigrant and ethnic groups and/or across national and regional borders.30
I return now to Senkmans question about Jewish Argentine writers, in order to define,
for the purposes of this study, what is an Arab Argentine writer? For Jewish Argentines
group identity was first constituted, and marked for others, through the immigrant
experience and then in later generations mainly through religion and a linked sense of
ethnicity (as well as cultural practices and given and family names). Religion and ethnicity
remain then as the basis for group identification as well as exclusion by others as not
truly Argentine. The case of Arab Argentines is similar yet less clear cut (though partly
overlapping) because the label Arab itself--and even Syro-Lebanese, or Syrian, etc.--
covers a variety of religious groups with sometimes indeterminate ethnic boundaries.
Among those who emigrated to Argentina from Greater Syria there were Christians (of
different rites, some very close to Catholicism, others not), Muslims, Druze, and Jews.31
After the first immigrant generations, in which the Arabic language and memories of the
homeland were still a strong presence, religion and surname, and perhaps also cultural
practices and physical appearance,32might allow for varying degrees of assimilation into a
normative Catholic, criollo or European, definition of Argentineness. However, barring
cases of religious conversion or name change, a non-Catholic religious affiliation and a
non-European surname remain as markers of Syro-Lebanese descent. And, as we have
seen, to this day Syro-Lebanese descent is still to some extent linked by Argentines to
an ethnic difference.
Notwithstanding religious or other differences, given the xenophobic Argentine cultural
climate of the first half of the 20th century, the drive toward assimilation among Arab
Argentines seems to have been strong. This, at least, is the story which their writings tell.
Scheffold, citing the very Argentine nature of the writings of third-generation Arab
Argentine Jorge Asi's and second-generation Juan Jose Saer,'concludes that Arab
Argentine literature is a literature of transition into assimilation.33 Thus, rather than search
for ethnic themes in the texts of third and fourth generation Argentines of Arab descent--
and perhaps end up simply reading the elusive category of ethnic identity into the texts, I
have limited my study to the writings of first and second generation Arab Argentines.
13
These are the works of those who were connected to the Arab world either as immigrants
or children of immigrants, though it may not be readily apparent in their writings, because
they are also the works of those who first dealt with the pressure and pull of assimilation.34
Given this delimitation of the body of works I analyze, most of the works covered were
written from the 1910s through the 1930s, though a few are from as late as the early
1990s.
The first two generations of Syro-Lebanese, in addition to figuring as the objects of

non-Arab Argentine cultural production, have a cultural and literary history of their o w n -
and one which reveals that they have been active in various modes of literary
expression. In the realm of journalism, in the first half of this century they founded more
than 60 newspapers and magazines in Arabic, Spanish, and bilingual editions. While
some did not stay in print for long, as late as the 1970's several were still being published
regularly, and today there are still a few which appear weekly. These newspapers have
stayed true to the typical format of newspapers in the Arab world by including regular
sections on literature and printing short fiction and poetry.
In the 1920's a group of Syrian and Lebanese writers in Buenos Aires formed a/-
Rabitah al-Adabiyyah~The Literary Union-an association of Arab writers which included
poets such as Jurj Saydah, Jurj Assaf, Zakf Qunsul, and IlySs Qunsul. While perhaps
not as innovative as their North American counterparts in al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyyah, they
did carry out some efforts to depart from the traditional structure of the bayt and regular
meter and rhyme. These poets writing in Arabic far from their homeland took up the
themes of Arab identity and Arab nationalism. Aside from this poetry, Arab Argentine
writers of the period also produced works in various prose genres: novels, short stories,
dramas, travelogues, and autobiographies in both Spanish and Arabic.
I devote my study of Arab Argentine literature to prose works for a variety of reasons.
On the one hand, early Arab Argentine poetry overwhelmingly deals with the Arab world
and nostalgia for home, while my interest lies in tracing the intersections between Arab
and Argentine literatures in the Argentine mahjar. On the other hand, very little scholarly
attention has been paid to Latin American mahjar prose writings. Within the prose works, I
14
focus on the two areas of most prolific production: novels and historiographic writings.
The novels written by first and second generation Arab Argentines are characterized b y
sharp contrasts. Almost none of the novels in Spanish directly refer to Arab issues and
none of them depict Arab immigrant life; instead they enact strategies of discursive
assimilation. Yet, very few of the novels in Arabic address in any form Argentina and
immigrant life, defying--or denying-their geographic surroundings and its cultural climate
by writing as if they had never left home. Nonetheless, in the Spanish-language works
interesting breaks occur in the silence surrounding all things Arab and immigrant, and
among the Arabic novels there is one that is dedicated to depicting immigrant life and
delineating an Arab identity distinct from that found in Arabic letters.
The field of writing in which Arab Argentines seem to have been especially prolific is
historiography. The plethora of articles, essays, and book-length works of history written
in Arabic and Spanish range from histories of the Arab world (mostly in Spanish), to
commentaries on the Arab community in Argentina (mostly in Arabic), to histories of
Argentina itself (mostly in Arabic). One set of Arab Argentine historical texts consists of
works written in Spanish which present the rich cultural heritage of the Arab World and
even attempt to debunk myths about it. These works, unlike most of the Arab Argentine
novels, contest Orientalist images of the Arab world-though not without ambiguity-in an
effort to negotiate the position of persons of Arab descent within mainstream Argentine
culture. In another group of historical works the writers try to establish long-standing
connections between themselves and the Americas in general, or Argentina specifically,
on the basis of alternate versions of history which they present as fact. In this way, they
highlight the textual and narrative basis of history, so much so that they blur the
commonly accepted boundaries between history and fiction.
Indeed, in reviewing all the works of Argentine mahjar writers currently available, it
soon becomes apparent that literary and historical projects were often closely connected.
This is seen, on one level, in the urge to narrate their origins in historical texts, as well as
in the type of literature, understood in its stricter sense, that they wrote, which often
thematizes a particular historical period. The close connection between the literary and the
15
historical is also seen in the indeterminate, hybrid genres which Arab Argentines produced.
Many of their works are a melange of history, legend, anecdote, fictional narrative,
philosophical essay, and/or philological treatise. In this way, the corpus of Arab Argentine
writings-as well as many of the Euro-Argentine texts-is particularly rich terrain in which to
observe and explore historical texts as imaginative narrative, and literary texts as
documents linked to specific historical conditions, and even as constructors of reality. The
Foucauldian and New Historicist projects of highlighting the textual and interpretive nature
of history and the contingent discursive and material context of literature are central to my
interest in the historical and the literary as forms of representation and narrative. The
opposition between history and literature-conceived of as the empirical versus the
conceptual-is untenable when we acknowledge that history is a textual phenomenon
built upon events that can be said to be objective reality but which are selected,
organized, and framed within a narrative and are shaped by interpretation. Inversely,
literature is implicated in a web of material practices which, I would like to emphasize, it
both refracts and has an impact upon. Thus, history and literature are functionally, though
not ontologically, distinct.35
For this reason, the historical works that I treat here are read as social narratives, and
the literary works that I study are understood as manifestations of specific social
circumstances, which in turn stand to create or disturb cultural structures. With all of these
works in different genres and languages, and from different time periods, my interest is in
the representational and rhetorical strategies of these writers and how they might lead to
new conceptualizations of immigrant subjectivities, nationalisms, and cross-cultural
contact. Looking at how Arab Argentines try to reconfigure the borders of the Arab world
by continuing to participate in its cultural production, or try to disrupt the national cultures
which exclude them in Argentina by responding to Orientalist discourses, or try to connect
themselves to national discourses and thus insert themselves into the Argentine national
community, sheds light not only on the construction of immigrant subjectivities, but also on
the claims that underlie nationalisms and shape national subjects both in Argentina and
their Arab homelands. Likewise, an examination of the ways in which Argentines of
16
European descent experience, imagine, and textualiy deploy the Arab world and Arab
immigrants elucidates both the construction of Argentine national culture and the discursive
and day-to-day cultural climate in which Arab Argentines operated. Moreover, juxtaposing
the two bodies of work allows us to see the different discursive strategies and pitfallsas
well as those which are shared--in the writings of both groups.
I begin to address the discursive relationship and intersecting construction of identities
between Arabs and Argentines in Chapter 1 by examining the intertwined invocations
and representations of gauchos and the pampas, and Arabs and the Orient, in the works
of two canonical criollo writers and two Arab Argentine writers. I examine how the pairing
of two figures-the Arab and the gaucho-is used rhetorically to negotiate both
conservative nationalist and immigrant identities in a time frame that spans the mid-1800s
to the mid-1900s. Sarmiento, in Facundo and Viajes, uses the figure of the Arab as a
graspable counterpart to the gaucho and in this way formulates a national identity which
balances between eschewing barbarism and embracing the gaucho as that which is most
Argentine. Similarly, Lugones in El payador employs the Moor to make the conflict-ridden
gaucho an Argentine icon, and one which represents pre-immigration Argentina. Arab
Argentines Hallar and Yaser make use of Sarmiento and Lugones correlation between
Arabs and gauchos to create a deep connection between the Arab immigrant and
Argentina. They turn the gesture of rejection of the immigrant, that is, the elevation of the
gaucho to national hero, into an entry point for the Arab immigrant into Argentine
subjecthood.
In Chapter 2 ,1compare the representations of the Orient1and the Oriental immigrant
that are produced by Euro-Argentines and Arab Argentines during the first half of the 20th-
century. During a time of intense backlash against immigrants, and in particular Semitic
immigrants, many Euro-Argentines wrote texts in which they define themselves through or
against the Orient, while other writers, such as Borges and Arlt, take that which is marked
as different-Middle Eastern cultures-and use it to destabilize identity constructions.
However, a certain ambiguity remains in terms of their positioning vis-a-vis the Orient and
notions of difference. The Arab immigrants Arslan, Guraieb, and Adoum, as a type of
17
response to these discourses, wrote works about the Arab world which bridge the genres
of history and literature. As historical narratives they act as defenses of self which
emphasize fact over image; however, at the same time, by maintaining elements of a
fantastic, literary Orient these self-representations fall into the reinscription of stereotypes
about the Orient. Thus, there are representational correspondences between some of the
texts in the Arab Argentine and Euro-Argentine bodies of works which serve to emphasize
how oppositional representational practices simultaneously reinscribe established
discourses and open up new discursive arenas and subject formations.

In Chapter 3, I analyze the relationship between linguistic identities and national or
cultural identities among Euro-Argentines and Arab Argentine immigrants who wrote in
Spanish and Arabic. During the first third of this century the emphasis on a pure, national
mother tongue in criollo Argentine discourses was part of the reaction against the
immigrant influx. Correct or traditional criollo language are central in both the regionalist,
social realist, and popular sentimental fictions of the day. The popular sentimental works
in particular, geared as they were toward the emerging literate middle class made up of
criollos and immigrants, both enacted and taught purity of language and morals-Argentine
language and character. The works in this very genre written by the Arab immigrants
Arslan, Khury, and Achem not only demonstrate that the immigrant can also speak
correctly, can also be a legitimate national subject, but due to their departures from the
melodramatic genre they highlight the performative nature of the Argentine discourses of
pure language, morals, and national affiliation. The novel written by the Arab Argentines
al-Hamatland Baqirnfalso addresses the correlation between pure language and cultural
identity, but in relation to Arab identity formation. By writing in an oral-based register of
Arabic about impersonation and role play, they not only establish identity as a series of
enactments, but they also point to the performative basis of any linguistic identity. In this
way they disrupt prevailing conceptions of written Arabic as a single mother tongue which
delineates a unitary culture. This examination of the role of language in the structuring of
national and immigrant identities demonstrates that in the same way that there is no single
national mother tongue, there is no single, undivided whole identity; rather, the staging of
18
discourses and linguistic registers both constitutes, and highlights the contructedness of,
identity.
Though the first two chapters treat images and representations of the Orient and the
third centers on language and the performance of group identities, performance-whether
actual role play, textually represented role play, or discursive impersonation-also plays
a significant part in some of the texts in the first two chapters. Throughout then I will be
concerned with the Orient as an object of representation-who can speak about it, and
how--and with language as a means of establishing identity-who can use it, and how--
and the performance of orientalism and of pure/impure language by both Euro and Arab
Argentines.
19
1See (in spite of some incorrect details) Larry Luxner, The South American Leaf," Aramco World
46:6 (November-December 1995) 28-29. Many thanks to Kate Kolstad for bringing this article to
my attention and sending a copy of it to me.
21will be using, more or less interchangeably, the terms Levantine,' Arab, and Syro-Lebanese,
to refer to immigrants from the Ottoman province of Greater Syria. The term Syro-Lebanese
began to be commonly used in Argentina in the 1920s, however it does not do a good job of
including the one Palestinian Argentine who is part of this study. When wishing to highlight the
Euro-Argentine perspective on the Arab Argentines, I also use the term turco-which is generally
considered offensive by the Syro-Lebanese. (The term turco is also used elsewhere in Latin
America, and in Argentina similar terms are used for other groups, e.g. 'ruso' for those of Eastern
European descent.) I should note here as well that, because I find the term non-Arab Argentine
not only cumbersome but also problematic since it defines through negation, I use it sparingly and
only for the sake of variety. In general, I prefer to use either criollo whenever possible (i.e. when
referring strictly to descendents of Spanish colonizers) or the broader term Euro-Argentine (in
order to include turn-of-the-century immigrants of European descent). It is to criollo (see note 6
below), as well as to some extent to Euro-Argentine culture, that I refer when I use the terms
mainstream or dominant culture, recognizing nonetheless that these are not stable,
undifferentiated cultural units, but rather networks cross-cut by issues of class and gender, as well
as immigration versus creolism. The main difficulty with using this terminology is that it leaves
Jewish Argentines in an ambiguous position--since even Eastern European Jews cannot easily
be categorized as European, and Arab Jews cannot be said to be non-Arab. (See note below on
Arab Jews.)
3 For histories of the Syro-Lebanese migration to Argentina, see Klich, Criollos and Arabic
Speakers in Argentina: an Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888-1914 in The Lebanese in the World: A
Century of Emigration. Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, eds. (London: The Centre for
Lebanese Studies, 1992) 243-284; Klich, Introduction to the Sources for the History of The
Middle Easterners in Latin America Temas de Africa v Asia 2,1993, 205-233; Jorge Bestene, La
inmigracibn Sirio-Libanesa en la Argentina, una aproximacidn," Estudios Migratorios
Latinoamericanos 3:9 (August 1988) 239-268; and Abdelhuahid Agmir, Acerca de las
motivaciones de la emigracion arabe a America Latina y faces de su evolucibn," Temas Arabes 2,
December 1986,63-67. Some other historical and sociological studies on the Arab communities
in Argentina include: Ignacio Klich, Arabes, judfos y arabes judfos en la Argentina de la primera
mitad del novecientos," Estudios interdisciplinarios de America Latina v el Caribe 6:2 (July-
December 1995) 109-143; Klich, Argentine-Ottoman Relations and Their Impact on Immigrants
from the Middle East: A History of Unfulfilled Expectations, 1910-1915." The Americas (Academy
of American Franciscan History) 50:2 (October 1993) 177-205; Gladys Jozami, The Manifestation
of Islam in Argentina" The Americas (Academy of American Franciscan History) 53:1 (July 1996)
67-85; Gladys Jozami, La identidad nacional de los llamados turcos en la Argentina, Temas de
Africa y Asia 2, (1993) 189-204; Gladys Jozami, Aspectos demograficos y comportamiento
espacial de los migrantes arabes en el NOA, Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 2:5 (April
1987) 57-90; Michael Humphrey, Ethnic History, Nationalism, and Transnationalism in Argentine
Arab and Jewish Cultures" in Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America. Images and Realities.
167-188; Marta H. Saleh de Canuto and Susana Budeguer, El aporte de los sirios v libaneses a
Tucuman (Tucuman: s.n., 1979); Marfa Elena Vela Rfos and Roberto Caimi, The Arabs in
Tucuman, Argentina, in Asiatic Migrations in Latin America. Luz Marfa Montiel, ed. (Mexico, D.F.:
Colegio de Mexico, 1981) 125-146; Alberto Tasso, Aventura, trabaio. v ooder-sirios v libaneses
en Santiago del Estero 1880-1980 (Santiago del Estero: Ediciones Indice, 1988).
20
4lgnacio Klich refers to the impact of the Menem nomination in Arabes, judfos y arabes judfos"
141-142, n. 92. See also Jozami, La identidad nacional de los llamados turcos en la Argentina,"
190-191.
5Cristina Noble, La pampa arabe Noticias de la Semana February 25,1990.
6The standard equivalent for this word in English is Creole." However, because Creole" often
not only denotes a person of Spanish or French descent born in the Americas, but also connotes
a person of mixed African and European background, I have chosen to use the Spanish criollo."
Although the term criollcf cam'es in it the potential for racial mixture, by virtue of birth in the
Americas, by no means does it necessarily denote this. Also, the term has a particular valence in
Latin American cultural history where the criollo is first at odds with the colonial Spanish
administration and then with immigrants. Rather than the indigenous elite of many post-colonial
contexts, in Argentina (and to this day in many Latin American countries) one finds an upper-class
that is criollo or of European descent.
7 Klich goes into detail about these two surveys in Arabes, judfos y arabes judfos [...]" 142, n. 94.
81use the term orientalism without capitalization in order to allow for thepossiblity of more than
one form of this discursive, academic, and/or insitutional phenomenon, rather than a single
hegemonic form. Orientalist" remains capitalized because it refers to one who studies the
Orient," a geographic location of unclear, and Euro-centric definition, which is nonetheless
recognized as the object of Orientalist discourse.
9 Edward Said highlights, in praise of one of Frank Lentricchias points in his After the New
Criticism, the impoverishment and rarefication that overtake any theory relatively untested by and
unexposed to the complex unfolding of the social world, which is never a merely complaisant
context to be used for the enactment of theoretical situations. [Said, Traveling Theory," The
World. The Text, and the Critic. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1983), 242.]
10Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978), 15.
11Said, Orientalism. 67-8, the underlining is my emphasis.
12Aijaz Ahmed, Orientalism and After: Ambivalence and Metropolitan Location in the Work of
Edward Said. In Theory: Classes. Nations. Literatures. (New York: New Left Books, 1992), and
Sadik Jalal al-Azm, Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, Khamsin. 8, (1981).
13Clifford, On Orientalism, The Predicament of Culture. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University,
1988), 263. Clifford, a few pages later, notes that despite the often essentializing modes" and
totalizing habits of Western humanism in Said's work, it succeeds in questioning a number of
important anthropological categories, most important, perhaps, the concept of culture." Clifford
then goes on to explore some of these questions (271).
141discuss the issue of auto-orientalism, or self-essentialization, in chapters 1 and 2, as well as in
the conclusion.
15Kushigian, Orientalism in the Hispanic Literary Tradition: In Dialogue with Borges. Paz. and
Sarduy. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991).
16Kushigian, 23.
17Kushigian, 11.
18Kushigian, 1.
19The one exception to this is that in a footnote Kushigian accedes that the Spaniards did commit
acts of violence against the Moors after the Reconquista, when they switched from conquered to
conquerers. See Kushigian, 2.
20See Kushigian, 3,19, 23, 26, 36, and 42.
21Lopez-Barait, Huellas del Islam in la literature espariola. De Juan Ruiz a Juan Govtisolo (Madrid:
Hiperion, 1985).
22Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1991).
22On studies of representations of immigrants in Argentine literature, see Chapter 3.
24Marvin A. Lewis, Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora (Columbia
and London: University of Missouri Press, 1996), see in particular p. 23. See also, for a social
21
history of Afro-Argentines, George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Aroentines of Buenos Aires: 1800-
1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980). The rather large 19th-century community
of Argentines of African descent has nearly disappeared as a result of war, disease, migration
north, and exogamous marriage.
25Saul Sosnowski, La orilla inminente. escritores fudfos arqentinos (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Legasa, 1987) see in particular 9,11,12, and 160..
26Leonardo Senkman, La identidad iudfa en la literature aroentina (Buenos Aires: Pardes, 1983)
see in particular 10,11,443, and 470. For more on Jewish Argentine literature, see also Naomi
Lindstrom, Jewish Issues in Argentine Literature: From Gerchunoff to Szichman (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1989) and Myriam Escliar, Mujeres en la literature y la vida
iudeoaraentina fBuenos Aires: Editorial Mila, 1996). Olaa Elaine Roiers Exile in Aroentina. 1933-
1945: A Historical Introduction (New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, and Paris: Peter Lang, 1989)
covers some Jewish writers within her study of German-language writers in Argentina.
27In transliterating Arabic words into the Roman alphabet, I follow the system used by the
International Journal of Middle East Studies. For proper names that are familiar to non-Arabic
speakers I use simplified transliteration to facilitate recognition (e.g., Muhammad and Quran).
In quotations from texts that include Romanized Arabic words, I preserve the transliteration that
appears in the text from which I quote. For the names of Arab authors writing in Spanish (or
English), I of course use the transliteration which they themselves use.
20While various surveys of Arabic literature have general sections on Latin American mahjar
literature, there are only a few studies devoted exclusively to the topic. See for instance, Ahmad
Matlub, Suwar Arabiwah min al-Mahiaral-JanubT (Bagdad: Dr al-Shuun al-Thaqafiyyah al- *
Ammah, Wizarat al-Thaqafah wa-al-llam, 1982); Mahmud A. Makki, La poesfa arabe en America
Latina, Estudios Orientales 5:12 (1970) 22-36; and Ilyas Qunsul, Maas3t al-Harf al-ArabTfTal-
Mahaiiral-Amrikiyyah (Damascus: Manshurat IttihSd al-KutSb al-Arab, 1980). Fora social history
with sections on literature, see al-Badawr al-Mulaththam, al-Natioun bil-Dad fT-Amirkg al-Janubiwah
(Beirut: Dar RThanflil-Tibaah wal-Nashr, 1956).
29Margot Scheffold, Dopoelte Heimat?. Zur literarischen Produktion arabischsorachioer
Immigranten in Argentinien (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1993). Presented as a masters thesis
in the Faculty of Language and Literature at the Otto-Friedrich-Universitat (Bamberg, Germany). I
am very grateful to Ken Garden for being so generous as to sketch out an English translation of
Scheffolds German text and thus make this study accesible to me. Aside from Scheffolds study,
most of the small, but growing, body of scholarly work on Arab Argentines is sociological or
historical in nature (see references throughout). One exception is Estela Valverde, The
Question of Argentinidad: The Self-Image of Arab and Jewish Ancestry in Recent Argentine
Literature in Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Imaoes and Realities. 189-203.
30A project which unfortunately does not fit within the focus of this study, but which I hope to
pursue in the future, is a comparison of the immigrant and ethnic literatures of the United States
and Latin America and their scholarly treatment. In trying to pinpoint the immigrant literatures of
Argentina, one is immediately struck by the question: what counts as an immigrant literature in a
country where around 1910 the immigrant population far out-numbered the creole population of
descendants of European settlers? The inverse of this question becomes equally compelling:
How is a national literature constituted in a nation of recent immigrants? While there have been
few studies of this or other immigrant literatures in Argentina, much has been written about the
United States where a similar history of initial European settlers and later waves of immigrants has
unfolded. What insights into the workings of immigrant literatures, the formation of national
cultures, and cross-cultural discourses might be gained by comparing this Arab/Argentine textual
dialogue with the place of other immigrant literatures in Argentina and with the creole-immigrant
relations witnessed in the United States? It would be interesting to consider how the notion of an
immigrant literature itself, as well as the issues of essentialist images of the Other and language,
have been investigated in Argentine immigrant literatures (mainly in the one immigrant literature
22
which has received more critical attention: Jewish Argentine literature) and in U.S. immigrant
literatures. Such an Ethnic Studies of the Americas could shed light upon why it is that in
Argentina immigrant literatures have for the most part not been constituted as a category-while
the study of immigrant literatures is a burgeoning field in the United States-and upon the notions
of difference that underlie conceptions of particular immigrant groups.
31Arab Jews, along with Iranian and Turkish Jews, are also known as Oriental or Mizrahi Jews.
Unlike Ashkenazi Jews, they never went through the European diaspora experience; instead
they established communities throughout the Middle East. (Sephardic, strictly speaking, refers
to Jews who settled in the Middle East after expulsion from Spain.) The Arab Jews in Argentina
had identified with the Arab community on the basis of shared language and cultural practices-or
at least had socialized with them as members of Syro-Lebanese social clubs and associations,
until political divisions began to emerge after the formation of the state of Israel. For more on the
position of Arab Jews in Argentina, and Arab-Jewish relations in Argentina, see Ignacio Klich
Arabes, judfos y arabes judfos en la Argentina de la primera mitad del novecientos" and Klich,
Arab-Jewish Coexistence in the First Half of 1900s Argentina: Overcoming Self-Imposed
Amnesia in Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America.
Images and Realities. (London: Frank Cass, 1998). On the small number of North African
immigrants to Argentina (both Jews and Muslims), versus those from Greater Syria, see Klich,
Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina: an Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888-1914 in The
Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration. Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, editors
(London: The Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1992) 246, n.1.
32There are also a range of skin tones and physical features among Arabs of all faiths, as well as
among Eastern European Jews, some of which would be perceived by others as European, and
others not.
33 Scheffold, 108-111.
31For this reason, throughout this study I refer to the writings by Arab Argentines which I discuss
as immigrant literature and/or ethnic literature.
35On the discourse of history see Hayden White, Metahistorv: The Historical Imagination in
Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). On the
methodologies of New Historicism see Tom Healy, New Latitudes: Theory and English
Renaissance Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1992), and H. Aram Veeser, ed. The New
Historicism (London: Routledge, 1989). As examples of these critical approaches at work see
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York:
Vintage Books, 1970) and Stephen Greenblatfs Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980). Although I conceive of literature and history as only
functionally distinguishable, I do use the terms at different points in this study to designate either
these functional roles, or the categories of writings commonly understood as imaginative fiction
and historical fact. I trust that the context will clarify the use of the terms.
23
Chapter 1
HISTORICAL FICTIONS AND FICTIONAL HISTORIES:

THE ARAB GAUCHO
Cristobal Colon lleva al judio arabizado [iberico] Luis

de Torres en su primer viaje de descubrimiento
creyendo que van a corte del Gran Khan y que
necesitaran a alguien que domine la lengua arabe
para hacerse entender alii. El judio se baja en la isla
de Cuba y habia arabe a los indios confundidos: la
anecdota, tan pintoresca hoy, nos obliga a
considerar el hecho de que la lengua coranica fue
una de las primeras en hablarse en el Nuevo Mundo.
[Christopher Columbus takes the Arabized [Iberian]

Jew Luis de Torres on his first voyage of discovery
believing that they are going to the court of the Great
Khan and that they will need someone who is fluent
in Arabic to make themselves understood there.
The Jew disembarks on the island of Cuba and
speaks Arabic to the confused Indians: the
anecdote, so picturesque today, forces us to
consider the fact that the Quranic language was one
of the first to be spoken in the New World.]
Luce Lopez-Baralt,
Huellas del Islam in la literature espariola (1985)
Lopez-Baralfs comment upon the arrival in Cuba of the Arabic-speaking Luis de

Torres serves to remind us, not only of the extent to which Arab culture dominated the
Iberian peninsula precisely at the time when Iberians were first encountering the Americas,
but also that Arabo-Jewish Spanish culture was, quite literally, taken to the Americas.
What I will elaborate upon here is other ways in which the relationship between Spain
and the Arab world was transferred to the Americas and also invoked by South Americans
of Spanish as well as Arab lineage. The cultural context which informs the practice of
orientalism among criollo Argentines in some cases not only includes the particular
moments of nation formation that the writers lived through, but also the relationship to
24
Spain--both as Esparia and as al-Andalus~which is a part of these historical moments.
Attitudes toward Spain were particularly significant during the first century after Argentine
independence from Spain, first as part of the establishment of a separate nation, and later
as part of the alignment of the national culture with Spanish culture. For this reason, both
the history of Arab presence in Spain and the constitution of Argentina as a nation play a
part in the intertwined invocations and representations of the gaucho and his pampas,
and the Arab and his Oriental deserts, in the works of two canonical criollo w riters-
Domingo Sarmiento and Leopoldo Lugones. Later, Arab Spain as well as Argentine
nation-building arise in the works of two Arab Argentine writers-lbrahim Hallar and Juan
Yaser-who reformulate Sarmiento and Lugones figure of the Arab gaucho.
Part of Spanish culture which has been heatedly debated from the 18th through 20th
centuries is the legacy of the almost 900 years of Arab presence in the Iberian peninsula
and the process of the Spanish Reconquista. Spains failure to modernize, in both a
political and economic sense, since the 1600s led to attempts to explain the countrys so-
called decadence. This created basically two intellectual camps in Spain throughout the
next centuries: those who saw the expulsion of Jews and Arabs and the Inquisition as
the cause of this decline, and those who saw the Jews and Arabs as a negative influence
on Spain which needed to be eliminated. This debate went on to produce, in the 18th
century, positions as diverse as the resistance to the French cultural invasion and
defense of Spain vis-a-vis Europe by re-evaluating Spanish history and pointing to the
glories of the period of Arab rule; the notion that Arabs were barbarians; and a renewed
desire to conquer North Africa (earlier interest in doing so had been redirected into the
conquest of the Americas). Then in the early 19th-century the Spanish Romantics were
inspired by the history and culture of the Moors of Granada1 and with the Generation of
1898 the questioning of Spains identity reached a peak.
Domingo F. Sarmiento-a prominent Argentine statesman2and prolific author-as part of
the Argentine Generation of 1837, had a very conflictive relationship with all things
Spanish.3 While anti-Spanish sentiment had stemmed, understandably, from the Latin
American colonies independence movement, it reached particular intensity later among the
25
liberals of the Generation of 1837. These thinkers blamed the political turmoil of mid-
1800s Argentina on its having been colonized by a backward country, one which they
saw as inferior to, and distinct from, Europe. In terms of Spains own questioning of its
relationship to Europe versus North Africa, although Sarmiento tended toward the strain of
thought which blamed the expulsion for Spains decline,4 his different positions toward
Arabs ran the gamut of the stances found in Spain. With his characteristic ambivalence as
well as his Romantic leanings and readings in French orientalism, he not only saw Arabs
as the erstwhile civilizing force in Spain, but also at times as barbarians and at other times
as romanticized figures. It is possible, as some have suggested, that Sarmientos more
sympathetic views of Arabs come from his awareness of his mothers Arab ancestry.5
This can only be taken so far, however, when we consider that Sarmientos greater and
more recent Spanish heritage was not enough to alter his views of Spaniards. What I
would like to argue is that Sarmiento uses the multi-valenced figure of the Arab as a way
of translating the difference--the cultural identity in formation-of Argentina, for himself as
well as for Europeans.
A few decades later, when Leopoldo Lugones wrote, the tide of sentiment toward
Spain had completely changed. Early 20th-century Latin America is known for its
hispanismo, or Hispanism, a spirit of reconciliation with Spain which entailed a
revalorization of Hispano-Americas Spanish heritage. The Argentine search for a national
tradition, influenced by the Spanish Generation of 1898s search for the essence of the
Spanish being, focused on the notion of defining the national race or soul of Argentina.
In looking to the Spanish roots of Argentina to try to delineate this national soul, Lugones
focused on the Arabs of Spain. As we shall see, however, he gave the Moorish element
of Spanish cultural history a positive and primary position which even the Spanish
thinkers of the time had not granted it.
In 1962 the Arab Argentine writer Ibrahim Hallar takes up this web of relations
between Spanish and Latin American searches for identity, and the Orientalist images
which operate therein, in his negotiation of an Arab Argentine identity. In the late 1970s
and early 90s another Arab Argentine, Juan Yaser, incorporates some of Halter's ideas on
26
the Arab heredity of the Argentine gaucho into his own additions to this textual dialogue
between criollo Argentines and Arab Argentines. I focus mostly on interpreting Hallars
theories on the gaucho, and the ways in which he substantiates them, while also making
some references to Hallars other works, as well as Yasers writings. My aim is to
understand how Hallar constructs his Moorish gaucho, and how this in turn allows him to
use the Argentine search for a national identity to formulate a stronger Arab Argentine
identity. By considering the linked figures of the Arab and the gaucho, which in some
cases becomes the genealogically fused Arab gaucho, in the works of the canonical Euro-
Argentine writers Sarmiento and Lugones, and in the works of Arab Argentine immigrant
writers, Hallar and Yaser, I consider the shared rhetoric, appropriations, and counter-
appropriations, used in formulations of conservative nationalist, as well as Arab immigrant,

subject positions.
The Gaucho-Bedouin Barbarian and the Performance of Barbarism
Sarmiento is widely considered to have inaugurated Argentine literature by writing

Facundo o Civilization v barbarie fFacundo or Civilization and Barbarism; hereafter
Facundol. It is in this very text, the cornerstone of Argentine and even Latin American
literature, that we first find Argentine images of the Arab and the Orient. Facundo. which
was published in 1845, first serially in two Chilean newspapers and later in book form, is
largely an historical and political essay which Sarmiento fashions as the biography of
Juan Facundo Quiroga,6 the leader of La Rioja province during the Rosas dictatorship of
the mid-1800s. Sarmiento wrote Facundo in Chile where he worked for the Chilean
government after having been imprisoned and then exiled from the Argentine provinces for
his opposition to local authorities. Sarmientos strong anti-Rosas stance in Facundo and in
other writings created fears among Chileans of armed retaliation on the part of Rosas. As
a result, a friend of Sarmiento in the Chilean government sent him on a government-
sponsored trip which kept him abroad for more than two years. During this trip Sarmiento
27
visited Europe and North America, as well as Algeria. He wrote a travel essay about his
experiences in Algeria in the form of an extensive open letter-his letter to Juan
Thompson, dated January 2 ,1847.7 This account of actual contact with the Orient forms
part of Sarmientos travelogue Viaies por Europa, Africa v America ITravels in Europe.
Africa and America! published in 1849.
In Sarmientos time, the former administrative units of the Spanish empire were
struggling to decide upon political systems and national borders. Although the Viceroyalty
of the Rio de la Plata, which consisted of most of what is now Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay
and Argentina, declared independence from Spain in 1810, it remained the Provinces of the
Rfo de la Plata through the mid-1800s. In 1853 a constitution confederated the interior
provinces of what would be Argentina, but the province of Buenos Aires continued to fight
for dominance over the interior. It was not until after 1880 that all the provinces united in a
federation stable enough to create the nation of Argentina. Thus, Benedict Andersons
definition of the nation as an imagined political community~and imagined as inherently
limited and sovereign8 can be applied in its most literal sense to the Argentina that
Sarmiento writes about in Facundo. It is worth noting, to further emphasize the importance
of the imaginary in Sarmientos textual and political project, that when Sarmiento writes
Facundo not only does he conjure up the Orient without ever having visited it, but he
evokes the Argentine pampas without ever having seen the pampa proper. He knows
both only through books. In fact, he visits North Africa before he is able to return to
Argentina and travel to the pampas as an army officer.9
The struggle for power in the region of the Rfo de la Plata primarily consisted of the
conflict between Unitarians, who wanted power to be centralized in Buenos Aires, and
Federalists, who wanted the provinces to be autonomous. In 1829, in the midst of these
clashes, Juan Manuel de Rosas was elected Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires.
When the authoritarian leader left office the stability he had created-or enforced-crumbled
and he was re-elected in 1834. As Governor, Rosas took on such powers as to become
a veritable dictator of the province until he was ousted in 1852. Nominally a Federalist, he
actually increased Buenos Aires control over the interior provinces with the support of
28
various other provincial leaders or caudillos (such as Juan Facundo Quiroga) and their
gaucho militias.
Sarmiento himself is difficult to categorize as strictly Federalist or Unitarian. Born into a
struggling rural family of Federalists, he was an autodidact who became aware of the
discrepancies between his concept of Federalism, and Federalism as it was practiced b y

the local caudillos. In this way, his outlook came to resemble the federalism of the United
States.10 Moreover, Sarmientos political opinions were similar enough to some Unitarian
ideas for him to link himself to the Buenos Aires literary salon known as the Generation of
37. The Generation of 37 was a group of young writers and intellectuals who held in
common the desire to rid the Argentine provinces of Rosas and the caudillo system in
general. They sought to delineate what problems hindered the Argentine provinces
unification and how the provinces could develop into a modem nation. In the process
they produced, as Nicolas Shumway puts it, some of Argentinas most durable guiding
fictions.11 Foremost among these nation-building fictions propagated by the Generation of
37 is the binary opposition of civilization and barbarism which was central to the
construction of an Argentine national identity. These discursive categories which emerge
in the European Enlightenment are first used in the Provinces of the Rfo de la Plata at the
beginning of the 19th-century. They are then taken up by early Romantics of the region
in the late 1830s and finally put into general use by Sarmientos publication of Facundo.12
Sarmientos use of these dialectical antitheses does not completely coincide with the
process of self-definition through negation which Hayden White describes in his analysis
of Classical and European notions of wildness.13 While Sarmiento often invokes the
barbaric and the barbarian in order to define by contrast and opposition, he also very
obviously appropriates and/or expresses identification with elements of barbarism as he
delineates his hybrid, Spanish American criollo position. Moreover, his imitation of, and
identification with, the barbarian is linked to his practice of orientalism, a topic which is just
beginning to be discussed.14 Not only does Sarmiento participate in orientalism when
writing about his travels in the Arab world-which is not surprising-but also, prior to that,
when writing about Argentina.
29
Facundo is Sarmientos attempt at understanding the turmoil in the Argentine
Republic, an upheaval so incomprehensible that Sarmiento calls it La Esfinge Argentina
[the Argentine Sphinx] (8).,s As he looks out over the Argentine provinces in the throes
of disunity he identifies civilization and barbarism as the forces struggling against each
other. The standard reading of Facundo, and of Sarmientos literary and political career as
a whole, focuses on the positioning of the civilized above the barbaric and on the distinct
separation of the categories of civilization and barbarism. However, Facundo (as well as
the travel narrative about Algeria, as I will show) is, in fact, marked by deep
ambivalence.16 Consider, for instance, that in Facundo Sarmiento points to the struggle
between civilization and barbarism as that which gives Argentina its particular poetic
essence. The ambiguous use of the terms civilization and barbarism-their constantly
shifting values-reflects Sarmientos efforts to combine both into a distinctly Argentine
identity.
In puzzling over Argentina, Sarmiento describes the landscape of the Argentine interior
and the humans that inhabit it. All those who inhabit the pampas, the plains of the
Argentine interior, are outside of the European, urban ambit and thereby marked as
barbarians. There are three groups of inhabitants: the indigenous peoples, the usually
mestizo (part Spanish, part indigenous) cattle herders and ranch hands known as
gauchos, and the criollo farmers and ranch owners. Sarmiento mainly focuses on the
gauchos-but I should note here that the word gaucho itself is, to this day, somewhat
ambiguous. Debate surrounds not only the origin of the term but to whom exactly it refers.
As Shumway points out, in its narrowest sense gaucho designates the nomadic, often
outlaw inhabitants of the great plains of Argentina, Uruguay and BraziT-though because
of works like Facundo the gaucho is basically only associated with Argentina. In its
broadest sense, and according to current usage, gaucho refers to cam pesinos-lhe rural
working class."17 In Facundo, Sarmiento refers to the soldiers of Juan Facundo Quiroga
(and Quiroga himself) as gauchos, although these men were from western provinces and
not the plains the gauchos called home. Thus, in Sarmientos text the term becomes
roughly synonymous with country-dwelling nomads whom [Sarmiento] viewed as natural
30
supporters of caudillismo.n'B
Sarmiento manages to recognize in the gauchos-the supposed barbarians of the
frontier region-an intelligence and poetic sensibility particular to them. Yet Sarmientos
descriptions are a form of classification, an attempt to define and control that which is
frightening and threatening in the barbarian. He describes the barbarian and his special
form of knowledge, different from the European, through gaucho types which he lists and
characterizes: the tracker, the guide, the bad gaucho, and the singer. Each one has his
own science, skill, or art. (44-53) As Julio Ramos points out, Sarmiento seems to want to
give voice to the barbarian when he emphasizes the special knowledge of the peasant
and the gaucho or when he quotes their oral narratives and their particular vocabulary.
However, this collection of types, as well as the always italicized gaucho words, have
the function of ordering and controlling barbarism. In addition, Sarmiento not only
classifies, but he also comments on how unorganized, inconsistent and inexact their
knowledge and poetry is. On the one hand, Sarmiento explicitly defends the necessity
of hearing the confused voice of the Other--within the space of poetry--before the
requirement of truth and a modem, rationalized knowledge; but on the other, the special
knowledge of the mestizo gaucho Other remains in a subordinate position.19
Sarmiento also often examines rural uncivilized society as a doctor would diagnose a
sick patient. Sarmiento locates the source of the interiors ills: queda solo la familia feudal,
aislada, reconcentrada; y, no habiendo sociedad reunida, toda clase de gobiemo se hace
imposible* (33) Additionally, in the rural interior El progreso moral [...] es [...] imposible
[....] Asf, pues, la civilizacion es del todo irrealizable.0 This region lacks certain necessary
elements: faltale la ciudad, el municipio, la association fntima, y, por tanto, faltale la base
de todo desarrollo social e (34) Sarmiento prescribes the cure for this barbarism and at
the same time determines what the cultivated city (Buenos Aires) needs in order to be a
Latin American, rather than Spanish or European, city. Thus, although the European
*only the feudal family remains-isolated and reconcentrated; as there is no gathered society, any
form of government is impossible
6Moral progress [...] is [...] impossible [...] civilization is completely unrealizable
c it lacks city, municipality, close association, and thus, it lacks the base of all social development.
31
needs the barbarians special forms of knowledge, the barbarian appears to need much
more, because without the cultured, Europe-oriented urban center it is impossible for the
people of the interior to develop.
What is particularly striking about Facundo is that in imagining both the status of
Buenos Aires vis-a-vis the barbarous interior and the character of the barbarian,
Sarmiento repeatedly makes references to the Arab and the Orient--a stylized or
stereotyped version of West Asia and North Africa. Furthermore, Sarmientos images of
the Orient and the Arab are as ambivalent and contradictory as his attitudes towards
Argentine barbarism--in fact, these Orientalist references are deeply intertwined with his
attitudes towards the barbarism of Argentina. Thus, Sarmiento participates in an
orientalism, an ideology of essentialization of the Other, but in doing so from his particular
cultural context and in his distinct ways, he forces us to complicate, if not reconsider,
Edward Saids conception of the construction of an essentialized Near East, as put forth in
his Orientalism.
Sarmiento deploys images that range from evocations of biblical antiquity, as the
source of all civilization, to deterministic geographical descriptions, to equations of the
Argentine gaucho with Arab and Asian nomads and tribal leaders, at times in a negative
light and at times in a positive one. At a ranch in the mountains northwest of the pampas,
he witnesses a scene of makeshift religious devotion which moves him to cry, and to feel
like he is in los tiempos de Abraham, en su presencia, en la de Dios y de la naturaleza
que lo revela This anecdote and biblical reference are used to prove that on the frontier
religion has been reduced to la religion natural. (35) However, in doing so there is a
sudden turn from an emotional biblical scene to a very negative description of what is
termed la religion natural-religion without doctrine and full of superstition. (35)
Further on in Facundo, Sarmiento brings up the image of the biblical patriarch again
(conflating Asia and the Near East) as he expounds upon the connection between a
peoples dress and their level of civilization and system of ideas. Suits, the clothing of
athe times of Abraham, in his presence, in the presence of God, and of nature which reveals Him
[....] natural religion
32
high civilization, and any changes in fashion are being fought by Facundo and the dictator
Rosas. Likewise, if one fixes thought and enslaves it, styles of dress will be invariable.
As an example of this, Sarmiento mentions Asia, where man lives under governments
like Rosass and has worn since the time of Abraham, long dresses. (120-1) Here the
Middle East is a static place of fixed thought, unchanging since biblical times. Wrapped
around this theory of fashion are Sarmientos thoughts on the significance of the color red--
the official color of the Rosas regime which was harshly imposed on the people. For
Sarmiento this is another matter que revela [...] el espfritu de la fuerza pastora, arabe,
tartara, que va a destruir las ciudades.* Sarmiento then leads us through ruminations on
the color red, in which it is established as the color of barbarism around the world. (118-
21)
Before entering further into Sarmientos significant references to the nomadic and the
tribal, I will continue to trace his identification of Argentina with the ancient Orient. In
addition to negatively identifying the people and dress of Argentine barbarism with the
times or the people of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, he likens Buenos Aires to the cities
of that world-a world of Orientalist images apart from historical reality. Sarmiento notes
that Buenos Aires, because of its position as the only Argentine port city, fuera ya la
Babilonia americana si el espfritu de la pampa no hubiese soplado sobre ella (25)
Interestingly, this usage of the Orient reflects positively on Babylon, but laments the
stifling of Buenos Aires at the hands of barbarians.
The comparison between Babylon and Buenos Aires is then woven into descriptive
passages that reflect a deterministic conception of geography. In describing the pampas
Sarmiento states that Esta extension de las llanuras imprime [...] a la vida del interior,
cierta tintura asiatica, que no deja de ser bien pronunciada.' He notes that oftentimes he
has been inspired to salute the landscape with a quote from Volney describing the ruins of
Palmyra, and then goes on to say:20
awhich reveals [...] the spirit of the Arab, Tartar pasturing power that is going to destroy the cities
0would already be the American Babylon, if the spirit of the pampa had not blown over it [...]
ethis extension of the plains imprints [...] upon the life of the interior a certain Asiatic tinge, that is
not unpronounced.
33
Y, en efecto, hay algo en las soledades argentinas que trae a la memoria
las soledades asiaticas; alguna analogfa encuentra el espfritu entre la
pampa y las llanuras que median entre el Tigris y el Eufrates; algun
parentesco en la tropa de carretas solitaria que cruza nuestros soledades
para llegar, al fin de una marcha de meses, a Buenos Aires, y la caravana
de camellos que se dirige hacia Bagdad o Esmima.a (27)
For Sarmiento Buenos Aires is a great legendary Near Eastern city and the pampas are a
Fertile Crescent--but one marked not by fecundity, but by solitude and wearying
expanses. Similarly, a few pages later he describes his great Argentine city as unos
estrechos oasis de civilizacion [some narrow oases of civilization] besieged by savagery
(31). Thus, in order to establish the civilization of Buenos Aires and the barbarism that
threatens it, Sarmiento turns to, on the one hand, symbols of a cultured Orient--the cities
of the ancient Near East--and, on the other hand, a symbol of the savage, merciless
Orient--the desert.
Sarmiento continues to employ such geographic imagery, shifting his focus to the
desert, and combining topography with images of the people of Argentina as Arabs. He
notes that the landscape of the Argentine interior looks so Asian that without thought we
imagine las tiendas del calmuco, del cosaco o del arabe.6 (32) In a later passage he
writes about the Argentine frontier city and province La Rioja, saying that it is solitaria, sin
arrabales y marchita como Jerusalen, al pie del Monte de Olivos. [...] He tenido siempre la
preocupacion de que el aspecto de Palestina es parecido a la de La Rioja [....] Hay una
extraha combinacion de montarias y llanuras, de fertilidad y aridez [....]c (87, my
emphasis). The dry fecundity of the city and province of La Rioja seems uncanny to
Sarmiento and makes him worry that it is like Palestine. Here the Middle East arises as an
anxiety of similarity, but one that is to be fostered and even reveled in. In spite of its
sometimes troubling nature, Sarmiento repeatedly indulges in associations between
aAnd, in effect, there is something in the solitude of the Argentine wilderness that brings to the
mind the Asian solitudes; there is some analogy between the spirit of the pampas and the plains
that mediate between the Tigris and the Euphrates; there is some kinship between the solitary
troop of wagons that crosses our solitudes to arrive, after months of travel, in Buenos Aires, and
the caravan of camels that directs itself toward Baghdad or Smyrna.
6the tents of the Mongol, the Cossack, or the Arab
34
Argentina and the Orient. In this passage he immediately goes on to say that Lo que
mas me trae a la imaginacion estas reminiscencias orientales, es el aspecto
verdaderamente patriarcal de los campesinos de La Rioja. [...]."* He expresses surprise
at seeing people that speak Spanish yet always have full beards and has [un] aspecto
triste, tacitumo, grave y taimado; arabe que cabalga en burros y viste a veces de cueros
de cabra."0 (87-8) Sarmiento has absorbed so fully his readings in European Orientalist
texts that he himself has vague memories of the Orient in spite of not having been there
yet. He takes as fact the images which his readings offer him-the oddness of the
landscape and the primitiveness and craftiness of its people~and relates it to vast areas
of the region he is trying to build into a nation.
In particular, Sarmiento directly links the aggressive survival tactics of the indigenous
people, the roaming, unfixed lifestyle of the gauchos, and even the seasonal lifestyle of
the interiors criollo subsistence farmers, to the nomadic and the tribal-more specifically, to
savage, desert-dwelling nomadic Orientals. In the passage which I referred to above in

which Sarmiento compares Buenos Aires to great Near Eastern cities, he goes on to
describe an Argentine caravan traveling through the pampas. The leader of such a
caravan must fend off marauding savages-the indigenous people of the region-whom
Sarmiento characterizes as beduinos americanos [American Bedouins."] (28) As
Sarmiento describes conditions among the fanners of the frontier, he says that though
they are not organized as nomadic tribes, their individual families are so spread apart that
there is no social organization. El progreso moral, la cultura de la inteligencia descuidada
en la tribu arabe o tartara, es aquf no solo descuidada sino imposible. (34) Thus, the
fanners are even more barbaric than the Arab savages he compares so closely to the
esolitary, without surroundings, and withered like Jerusalem, at the foot of the Mount of Olives [...]
I have always had the concern that the look of Palestine is similar to that of La Rioja [....] There is a
strange combination of mountains and plains, of fertility and aridity [...]
a[w]hat brings these Oriental reminiscences to my imagination the most is the truly patriarchal
appearance of the farmers of La Rioja
Dan appearance that is sad, taciturn, grave, and sly-an Arab that rides a donkey and sometimes
wears goat skins
c Moral progress, the cultivation of intelligence which is neglected in the Arab or Tartar tribe, is
here not only neglected, but impossible.
35
Argentine gaucho. In reference to the spontaneous uprisings of gauchos, and perhaps
also farmers, Sarmiento writes: Las hordas bedumas que hoy importunan con su
algazara y depredaciones las fronteras de la Argelia dan una idea exacta de la montonera
argentina.* (63)21 In this designation of the nomadic and tribal as barbaric, we see
Sarmientos preoccupation with unrooted persons or small tightly connected units of
people. Neither of these groups contributes to the construction of a nation; instead, they
challenge the power of national authorities and the very existence of the nation as a
unified community.
The establishment of a unified national community can in part be earned out by the
delineation of a national character, often centered around a particular figure. The term
national character* was put into circulation by the German Romantic Johann Gottfried von
Herder to refer to the distinctive qualities of a national grouping. While certain conditions
can lead to particular predilections among a group of people, it is an understanding of the
nation as an organic entity that underlies Herders coinage of the term. In contrast, I would
like to use national character* here to refer to a constructed notion of a national
temperament, as well as to the figure who is taken to exemplify that temperament. The
qualities which this figure is deemed to have--or invested with-are in turn considered to
be-or promoted as-the most authentic and distinctive qualities of a national group. In this
way the double meaning of character-temperament as well as a fictional person in a
narrative-is particularly appropriate.22 The national character is a self-propagating fiction;
however, it is a fiction with very real functions, as this icon can be used to cultivate a
specific sense of national community.
In the case of Argentina, the gaucho emerged from his history as part of the wars of
independence as the national character of Argentina-a figure for the heroic yet ruggedly
individualistic persona which certain Argentines wished to project.23 The appropriation of
the gaucho by the Argentine ruling classes is the topic of Josefina Ludmeris important
study B genero gauchesco: Un tratado sobre la patria. Ludmer describes how the
aThe Bedouin hordes that today, with their din and depredations, stir up the frontiers of Algeria
give an exact idea of the Argentine guerrilla bands.
36
gaucho, without property, steady work, or a fixed dwelling place-and thus an outlaw or
vagabond according to the law of the elites--is first demarginalized when used by the
independence army. After being pressed into military service and heroicized, the gauchos
voice, his oral form of expression, is used by high literary culture to form the gauchesque
genre. Finally, this genre is used to place the gaucho within the bounds of liberal law.
The body and voice of the gaucho are institutionally disciplined such that they become
part of civilization.24 Nationalists and populists romanticized the gaucho as the authentic
Argentine, displaying the virtues of the Argentine spirit; while liberals maintained that
gauchos were uneducated masses easily manipulated by demagogues.25 In short,
these groups struggled over exalting the gaucho as the true criollo, or looking to Europe
for cultural orientation. Within Facundo, gauchos are viewed as natural supporters of
caudillismo. The term gaucho and all its connotations of barbarism become a symbol for
Facundo Quiroga, the local caudillo, and Rosas, the caudillo of all the provinces of the Rfo
de la Plata. Along these lines, as we have already seen, Sarmiento extends the parallel
between gauchos and caudillos to Arabs, placing them all under the rubric of barbarism.
However, part of the ambivalence in Facundo with regard to the categories of
civilization and barbarism stems from Sarmientos contradictory depictions of the gaucho,
from his own struggles with valorizing or demonizing the gaucho. Sarmiento struuggles
between building a nation oriented toward criollo values or one oriented toward European
ones-but potentially difficult to distinguish from Europe culturally. In addition to the many
negative connections that Sarmiento makes between Arabs and gauchos, he also
attributes positive qualities to the gauchos-again in connection with the Orient.
Sarmiento credits the gauchos for being skilled, devoted horsemen and having a great
appreciation for music, and notes that Aquf vuelve a aparecer la vida arabe, tartara."8
(51, 55) Moreover, when Sarmiento refers specifically to Juan Facundo Quiroga, he
notes that he perceives in Facundo Quirogas public life el hombre grande, el hombre de
genio, a su pesar, sin saberlo el, el Cesar, el Tamerlan, el Mahoma. Ha nacido asf, y no
aHere the life of the Arab, the Tartar appears again.
37
es culpa suya; descendera en las escalas sociales para mandar, para dominar, para
combatir el poder de la ciudacP (83) Thus, the terrible Facundo Quiroga emerges as an
innocent who was simply bom to rule.
However, the characterizations continue to contradict each other--and even
themselves. A few pages later in a passage that uses very similar figures, Facundo, like
Atila in Rome and Tamerlane in the Asian plains, is a genio barbaro [barbaric genius]
who leaves civilization in ruins. (94) Then the tone of the characterization shifts and in a
completely negative portrayal Sarmiento describes Facundo as worse than Muhammad

Ali--Ottoman conqueror of Egypt. While Muhammad Ali is able to desear la civilizacion
europea e injertarla en las venas del pueblo que oprime. Facundo, por el contrario,
rechaza todos los medios civilizados [...] los destruye y desmoraliza.6 (96)
When Sarmiento moves into his portrait of Facundo Quiroga by describing Facundos
terrifying sideways glance as similar to that of the Alf Baja--a title of Muhammad Ali--in a
painting by Monvoisin (76), the depictions take yet another turn.26 Sarmiento recounts
anecdotes about Facundo and notes that the infinite number of sayings and stories about
him that exist in the memory of the people tienen un sello de originalidad que le daban
ciertos visos orientales, cierta tintura de sabidurfa salomonica en el concepto de la plebe.6
(85) In a similar vein, in the midst of an anecdote about Facundos visits to the province
of Tucuman, Sarmiento asks: ^Creeis, por ventura, que esta description es plagiada de
Las mil y una noches u otros cuentos de hadas a la oriental?"*1 (175) To this criollo
intellectual, Facundo and his American environment are unbelievable and fantastic--yet a
fascinating reality.
4[A] great man, a man of genius, despite himself-without his knowing it-a Caesar, a Tamerlane, a
Muhammad. He was bom that way, and it is not his fault; he will descend social strata to rule, to
dominate, to fight the power of the city.
Bdesire European civilization and implant it in the veins of the people that he oppresses.
Facundo, on the contrary, rejects all the methods of civilization [...] destroys and demoralizes
them.
c have a stamp of originality that gave them a certain Oriental air, a certain tinge of Solomonic
wisdom in the common peoples conception
dDo you think, by chance, that this description is plagiarized from the Tales of The 1001 Nights or
other Oriental fairy tales?
38
With an eye to developing a conceptualization of orientalism which can elucidate these
types of references, I would like to consider what function Sarmientos orientalism has in
Facundo. Ana Marfa Barrenechea explains Sarmientos Orientalist imagery as a matter of
support for his thesis of geographic determinism and a source of local color and the
distance which charges them with poetic value in the Romantic period." It may well have
been almost an obligatory observance in the period to compare the gaucho or plainsman
with these nomadic peoples, for reasons of historic or literary interest;"27 however, as
Jaime Concha notes in passing:
The asiatic" (Egypt as well as North Africa are part of this
suprageographic notion) is much more than a picturesque reference in the
conception of Facundo. [...] Straddling both the Enlightenment and exotic
romanticism, this element stands as a central component in the ideological
landscape of the work: together with the European Middle Ages it supplies
a basic paradigm for the representation of barbarism. [...] The topic is quite
an important one because it covers the entire artistic map of Facundo: the
iconographic, the metaphoric, and the lexical registers among others."
A few other scholars, also noting the significance of the Asiatic and Oriental in Facundo.
have attempted to discern what its particular function is.
Although Carlos Altamirano is right to try to pinpoint the conceptual scheme which links
Sarmientos Orientalist images, he limits the imagery to acting as a figure for despotism.29
While in certain passages the references do stand in for the idea of despotism, this is only
one of the many levels on which the references operate and, furthermore, it does not take
into account the positive references to the Orient. Ramos notes that it is the European
figure of the Oriental which is superimposed on American reality. He then reads
Sarmientos citation of European orientalism as an attempt to insert himself into the
European/civilized realm: it projects, on the part of one who is not European, a desire to
inscribe oneself in the interior of Occidental culture. It implies a-fictitious-place of
enunciation outside of barbarism (the non-European), one which is emphatically
civilized.30 Although the Oriental citation certainly is a very telling gesture in terms of
Sarmientos relationship to Europe and the place from which he speaks, this interpretation
does not explain the positive depictions of the gaucho and Arab which Sarmiento
presents. Additionally, it does not recognize Sarmientos desire, concomitant to that of
positioning himself as civilized, to define the enigma of Argentina, including the enigmatic
39
Argentine subject.
Ramos himself is quick to point out the complexity of Sarmientos imitation of
authoritative European models. In mimicking a European discourse Sarmiento disrupts the
authority of the model with his barbarous subalternity, but Sarmiento does not simply
disrupt or corrupt a perfect European model, rather he maneuvers through it: Sarmiento
not only occupies, but rather manages, a subaltern location with respect to the European
library. Sarmiento formulates a new place of enunciation for the subaltern and thus claims
a new type of intellectual authority.31
How does Sarmiento manipulate the European construction of the Arab to establish
this Argentine intellectual subject position? Throughout Facundo the Arab and his desert
is paired with the gaucho and his pampas. Sarmiento uses the most deeply-rooted
European figure of the Other, the Arab, as an analogy or metaphor for the Argentine
Other. However, it is unclear which term acts as the illustrative equivalent of the other,
which term is the known and which the unknown. It might seem that Sarmiento is using
the gaucho as a frame of reference for that which is unknown to him-the Arab-as he
attempts to master European knowledge about the Other. But we could almost say that
for Sarmiento the gaucho and the Arab are equally unknown; certainly he visits Algeria
before the pampas. Putting aside actual contact, as Altamirano points out, that which
Sarmiento knows (understood here as the gaucho) is not known by Europeans--it is not
within their territory of knowledge. Conversely, what is unknown to Sarmiento (the
Arab) is part of the intellectual knowledge of Europeans-what they have mastered as a
realm of knowledge. Since Sarmiento recognizes the Orient as terrain which is known
intellectually, it is the gaucho who must be mapped out.32 For this reason, I propose that
Sarmiento is using the Arab to frame the gaucho in a comprehensible way for Europeans
as well as for himself, and he is using the gaucho-Arab to mark off the territory of
knowledge about the gaucho as his own, as an Argentine domain.
Furthermore, it appears that, rather than a straight relationship of analogy, a translation
of sorts takes place. Integral to the textual functioning of Sarmientos pairing of the gaucho
and the Arab is the desire to differentiate the Argentine from the European. Even the way
40
in which Argentines know or master their Other is different from the Europeans mastery
over their Other. While the Arab is not accepted as part of that which is European
(keeping in mind that for Sarmiento Europe does not include Spain), the gaucho, however
subordinately, is constructed as part of the Argentine. Sarmiento uses the gaucho-Arab
analogy as a way of translating that which is known to Europeans (the Arab Other) and
the way in which they know it (through overseas colonization) into a picture of the
somewhat different type of relationship which exists between Argentines and gauchos.
In this way, the Argentine, as Europes other Other* cannot slip into the position of
barbarian, and can also stake out its own particular form of knowledge and establish its
own cultural identity.
* * *
It is quite useful in exploring Sarmientos creation and deployment of the O th er-

whether Arab or Argentine barbarian-to analyze his account of his actual voyage to the
Orient. In this text we can see the full extent of Sarmientos fascination with both the
gaucho and the Arab. In Sarmientos Carta a Juan Thompson [Letter to Juan
Thompson], which he wrote from Algeria while it was under French colonial rule, he seems
to continue to search for a way in which to resolve the enigma, the Sphinx, of Argentina.
Once again he describes the barbarian Other--this time actual North African Arabs-in a
very ambiguous manner. Arabs are vengeful barbarians that do not know how to
appreciate Frances civilizing project, but are also noble, elegant, and hardy horsemen.
Although Sarmiento tries to find the features of the idealized barbarian of his pampas
among the Arabs, and in that way arrive at a solution to the enigma of Argentina,
throughout his travelogue his efforts seem to end in disillusionment. Upon arriving at the
desert camps of some Arab tribes, Sarmiento becomes greatly disillusioned-he
immediately recognizes what he sees. It is the barbarism of the pampas and even
worse. Everything and everyone--children, women, pitchers, water, and food-are in a
state of uncleanliness that fills him with disgust: {Dios mfo!, |Dios miol, jcuantas
ilusiones disipadas de un golpe, cuanta poesia, cuantos recuerdos historicos, y sobre
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout permission.
41
todo, cuantas descripciones de escritores echadas a perder por la realidad mas prosaica y
miserable que no se se palpo jamas!8 (259-62)13
Near the end of the letter, in a similar process, Sarmiento looks out at Oran and has a
vision of the modernization that he still thinks might take place there.34 However, this
modernization which he sees as established and enjoyed by Europeans, is soon made
impossible. As he emerges from this vision and tries to assure himself that he is awake,
Sarmiento hears the news of an Arab attack against a group of French colonizers.
Sarmiento looks at one of the corpses and sees jHe aqui, me dije, la realidad de las
cosas! jAhora puedo, por lo menos, estar seguro de que no sueno! jHay sangre y
crfmenes! jHe aqui lo unico posible y hacedero!0 (274) Sarmientos grand dream of
modernization, just as the images literature had given him, becomes hollow and impossible
because of the dirty and chaotic reality he sees.
As Said points out, Romantic Orientalists often experienced such disillusionment. In
reference to Nerval, Said explains that there is disappointment that the modem Orient is
not at all like the texts [....] Nervals lament is a common topic of Romanticism. 35 In
addition to the lament of the Romantics, on a more general level the images Sarmiento
invokes are well-described by Saids formulation of orientalism: a generalized-not to say
schizophrenic--view of the Orient. 36 Thus, Sarmientos orientalism appears to mirror that
of so many other writers and scholars, such that at first glance he might seem to be firmly
entrenched within the tradition of orientalism that Said formulates.
However, we must take into account Sarmientos particular uses of orientalism and the
cultural and political context from which he writes. Many of the ways in which he
responds to Arabs and the Orient do not at all fit within the Romantic Orientalist tradition.
At times he uses Orientalist imagery in order not only to describe what he considers
positive characteristics of the Argentine gauchos, but to identify with them. In one
8My, God!, My God!, So many are the false hopes dissipated in one blow, so much poetry, so
many historical recollections, and above all, so many writers descriptions ruined by the most
prosaic and miserable reality that ever was seen!
6the reality of the situation. Now at least I can be sure that I am not dreaming! There is blood and
crime! Here we have the only thing that is possible, that is feasible!
42
passage in the travelogue, Sarmiento goes on for half a page singing the praises of the
Arab guides and trackers in Algeria. He starts off by saying:
Entre otras cosas los baqueanos arabes me llamaron la atencion por la
singular identidad con los nuestros de la pampa. Como estos, huelen la
tierra para orientarse, gustan las raices de las yerbas, reconocen los
senderos, y estan atentos a los menores incidentes del suelo, las rocas, o
la vegetacion. Pero los arabes dejan muy atras a nuestros gauchos en la
asombrosa agudeza de sus sentidos." (267, italics in the original)37
Sarmiento admires the Arab guides for what he understands to be their instinctive
capacity to master their environment. But rather than carry this essentialist view of the
Arab into a full-blown notion of the Arab as primitive-nearly animal in terms of his acute
senses-he connects these qualities to the similar, though weaker, gaucho abilities, which
he has referred to earlier in the letter as our gaucho instincts (see below).
This identification is even clearer in a significant episode of this travel narrative in
which Sarmiento describes his journey across the desert en route to the Arab camps
which cause him such disillusionment. In this passage, as Sarmiento rides horseback with
his Arab guides he enjoys immensely the freedom of riding through open terrain-going so
far as to imitate and to identify to a certain extent with the Algerians. It is not surprising
that Sarmiento at times mimics and shares the voice of the Argentine gaucho, since he is
positioning the gaucho as the emblem of Argentine national character. Nor is it surprising
that he quotes European scholars and writers throughout Facundo.38 However, it is very
intriguing that in his exploration of the civilized, the barbarian, and the Argentine, he
engages in mimetic and identificatory acts in the Arab world.
Sarmiento rides horseback through the Algerian desert wearing an Arab burnoose and
in doing so feels as though he were in the Argentine pampas. He enjoys el placer de
verme a caballo en campo abierto e inculto0and in this setting Los instintos gauchos que
duermen en nosotros mientras no podemos disponer de otro vehfculo que carruajes,
1Among other things the Arab baqueanos caught my attention because of their singular
identification with ours from the pampa. Like these, they smell the soil to orient themselves, they
taste the roots of grasses, recognize paths, and are attentive to the smallest circumstance of the
ground, the rocks, or the vegetation. But the Arabs leave our gauchos very far behind in the
amazing sharpness of their senses.
6the pleasure of seeing myself on horseback on the rough open range
43
trenes o vapores [...]na come out (256). Rather than being on horseback or horseback
riding-esfara caballo o montar a caba/to-Sarmiento phrases it as verme a caballcr that
is, he looks at himself on horseback, as a gaucho. Paul Verdevoye understands this
moment as one of pure pleasure free of theorizing:
The intellectual in love with European civilization, gives himself over,
without restraint, to the delight of galloping wrapped in a burnoose [....]
there are no theoretical lucubrations, but rather free reigning pleasure, in the
proper and figurative senses, with the result of amazing those [...] who
accompany him.39
However, though I agree that it is a moment of pleasure, I believe that it is important to

note that it is not one of abandon, but rather one of self-conscious pleasure. Sarmiento
not only enjoys riding like a gaucho moro, but he also enjoys envisioning himself, finding
himself, in the act of doing so.
Immediately after this Sarmiento recounts his efforts at imitating his Arab guides in the
way that he wears his burnoose, wanting to look like an Arab prince or nobleman. (265) It
is interesting that he goes so far as to use the burnoose in his imitation of the Arab guides.
In almost every one of Sarmientos previous mentions of this hooded cloak worn by the
local Arabs it is laden with negative symbolism: it is el albomoz [...] sucio y desgarrado"8
40 (239) that disrupts his feeling of being in Europe, rises up against France, and puede
encubrir el purial del fanatico o el rosario del santon que anda convocado a la guerra
santa.c (242-3)
After directing his mimetism at the burnoose, here as a positive symbol of Oriental
nobility and graceful elegance, Sarmiento tries to match, if not outdo, his guides in their
horseback riding ability. He wants to go faster and tells them, swearing by the Prophet
Muhammed, j [...] puedo sin fatigarme ir a tirar la rienda al ultimo oasis del Sahara!...."8 He
then nearly falls from his horse when it starts to gallop. (256-7) This episode is an
attempt on Sarmientos part to prove to himself and to his Arab guides that he does have
athe gaucho instincts that sleep in us while we have no other vehicle available but carriages,
trains, or steam boats [...]
0the dirty and torn burnoose
c can cover the dagger of the fanatic, or the prayer beads of the sanctimonious holy man who goes
around calling for a holy war
a I can ride unfatigued to the last oasis of the Sahara
44
something of the barbarian in him. However, the only time in which he succeeds in some
way is when, upon arriving at the camp, he tries to sit on the ground as the Arabs do. He
finds this position very uncomfortable but then sits with ease como lo hacen nuestros
gauchos.3 (258) Thus, Sarmiento is ultimately successful in establishing that there is a
noble, rugged barbarian within him. In a Bedouin camp in Algeria he clearly appropriates
the gaucho; in speaking of our gauchos he helps to establish an us--a we the
Argentines. And not only is there a connection between Sarmiento and the gaucho, but
the gaucho is in him, a part of him, as witnessed by his phrase: the gaucho instincts [...]
in us. He is able to arrive at the gaucho-to be a gaucho--with and through the Arab.
Furthermore, in this passage he speaks from, he establishes, a we: us, the Argentines.
As Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria mentions, in discussing the impact on Facundo of travel
narratives read by Sarmiento, If the gaucho is the origin of Argentine culture, the deep
stratum of the Argentine self, that origin is the solidly literary figure of a gaucho dressed in
the garb of a Bedouin as described by French, German, and British travelers [to the
Argentine pampas].41 Sarmiento is not the first to describe the gaucho in Oriental terms,
yet he is the first to mimic and identify with both of the figures involved in such a
description--and thus to use the gaucho-moro in building a national we.
Nevertheless, it is at this point in Sarmientos narrative, in the first experience of
disillusionment which I commented on above, that he notices his surroundings and is
repulsed by their extreme barbarity. Sarmientos experiences of disappointment and
disgust could be read as a failed attempt at identification with the barbarian Other1 (both
Arab and gaucho) which leads to disillusionment and a definitive positioning of himself
within a civilized European ambit Such a reading can be countered by pointing out that
Sarmientos imitation of Arabs did not end in Algeria. As he continues his travels he takes
a nighttime gondola ride in Venice-wearing his burnoose, the quintessential marker of
Arab-ness and carrying his Arab pipe, in order to make the ride more picantd' [piquant].42
Moreover, it is only by underestimating Sarmientos moments of imitation and
identification that such a conclusion can be reached. Thus, it is precisely the episode of
3the way our gauchos do
45
mimesis in the desert which Mary Louise Pratt fails to take into account when, as part of
her study of travel writings, she comments on Sarmientos position in Algeria:

The world becomes simpler for Sarmiento when he goes to North Africa,
where his status with respect to the civilization/barbarism dichotomy is
clear. Here, and perhaps only here, does he get to be European pure and
simple, and a colonialist In a surprisingly schematic fashion Sarmiento
identifies completely with the French and their colonial project in Algeria.
The Bedouins become the exact analogue of the Argentine gauchos,
primitive and ignorant; the world divides off into civilization and barbarism
much more clearly than in Sarmientos own book of that title.43
Pratt glosses over the complexity of both Sarmientos position as a Spanish-American
criollo, and his letter from Algeria. Sarmientos stance within his travel narrative is anything
but clear and simple. Pratt draws a parallel between the French colonizers and the Latin
American elite of the post-independence period, and certainly some similarities do exist.
However, to say that Sarmiento identifies entirely as purely European is, in the first place,
an overly simplified reading of his text. By adhering to the binary opposition of
colonizer/colonized, Pratt loses sight of the type of position this Latin American subject is
in: Sarmiento is neither the colonized nor the colonizer, and yet both at once. The
Algerian commentator Slimane Zeghidour echoes this very eloquently: Sarmiento [...]
seems to me to prefigure the intellectual of what would later be called the Third World [....]
the struggle between the barbarian and the civilized became, in him, an intimate tearing
and a rupture.44 Sarmiento inhabits an ambiguous, doubled, and ultimately in-between
space in which he constructs his sense of self by identifying with various different subject
positions.
As with any gesture of imitation carried out by a subject in the ongoing process of his
or her constitution, Sarmientos mimesis, directed by turns at Bedouins and gauchos, is of
great significance. Mimetism is a way of exploring and defining subjectivity, and thus, of
imagining a stable or coherent identity. In imitating another, the subject plays at being that
Other. This impersonation is indicative of Sarmientos search for both an Argentine
identity for himself and for the nation of Argentina.
Role play or dress-up of this sort is certainly a pattern for Sarmiento, and the donning
of each costume has its significance. In the most famous of Sarmientos many
autobiographical works.45Recuerdos de provincia M8501, Sarmiento describes his habit of
46
dressing as a miner, while working as the supervisor of a mine in Chile. He says that he
does this out of the desire to economize as well as to have mischievous fun.46 Later, as
an officer in the Argentine army, Sarmiento wore a European military uniform, complete with
frock coat and gloves.47 Yet, he is also known to have worn under his frock coat, a chiripa-
-the loose pants worn by gauchos and peasants.43
Clearly, with this many different roles being played, we must consider the
heterogeneous elements that shaped Sarmiento. Among these complicating elements is
the fact that, on the one hand, Sarmiento was born into an impoverished criollo family in
Western Argentina. Thus, he was raised in the countryside in contact with mestizo
culture. On the other hand, though, through self-education Sarmiento moved into a
position among the urban elite of Buenos Aires. And as Pratt herself points out, [t]he
newly independent elites of Spanish America [...] faced the necessity for self-invention in
relation both to Europe and the non-European masses they sought to govern.49
Sarmientos position among the elite ties in with a particularly important complicating
factor which I have already mentioned: the need, in the wake of independence and in the
process of the demarcation of a specific geographic space to be called Argentina, to

formulate a distinct national culture, headed by a national character. For the criollo
statesman, such a unified national identity is also a potentially useful method of managing
the masses.
Sarmiento is between the pampas (the indigenous) and Buenos Aires (the Europe-
oriented), between Argentina and other Latin American countries, and between Latin
America and Europe. His formulation of an identity suitable for himself and all Argentines
can be understood as a maneuvering which moves within the foreign without entering
foreignness (or strangeness). These two terms, used by Wilhelm von Humboldt as he
describes the guidelines that lead to great translation, are useful in describing identity
formation in hybrid spaces:
[A] translation should indeed have a foreign flavor to it, but only to a certain
degree; the line beyond which this clearly becomes an error can easily be
drawn. As long as one does not feel the foreignness (Fremdheit) yet does
feel the foreign (Fremde), a translation has reached its highest goal; but
where foreignness appears as such, and more than likely even obscures
the foreign, the translator betrays his inadequacy.50
47
This desire for a limited amount of foreign flavor with no sense of strangeness is an apt
explanation of the workings of criollo self-formation, particularly in the case of Sarmiento.
In Recuerdos de provincia, Sarmiento himself describes the process of his formation as
traduciendo el espfritu europeo al espfritu americano, con todos los cambios que el
diverso teatro requen'a.* 51 Sarmiento translates himself--he carefully crafts himself as
different yet not strange--in order to act1on the Argentine stage-to perform a particular
identity. He strives to be different from the European (that is, somewhat barbaric) and
different from, say, the Peruvian (somewhat barbaric in a specific way)--but not so
different as to be too barbaric (or uncivilized). Sarmiento displays at certain points
obvious disgust and disdain for barbarism in both Argentina and North Africa, as well as
an overall ambivalence towards it; however, in his attempt to construct an identity b y
translating established types, Sarmiento not only goes so far as to view gauchos in a
positive light, but also approvingly regards gauchos as Arab-like, and Arabs as gaucho-
like.
The presence of this mimesis and identification within Sarmientos practice of
orientalism leads me to question Saids conceptualization of orientalism. Sarmiento
certainly fits, however obliquely, within Saids definition of orientalism as a phenomenon
which establishes the Orient as ontologically and epistemologically different from Europe
and as a discourse with close ties to imperialist power and the imperialist tradition.
Sarmiento builds his notions on the idea that Europe and the Orient are essentially
dissimilar and his project can be seen as a remnant or offshoot of colonialism. Sarmientos
conceptualization of the Orient, as is apparent in many of the examples I referred to
above, also fits within Saids description of the construction of the Orient within
orientalism: the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of
characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a
citation from someones work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an
atranslating the European spirit into the American spirit, with the changes that the different theater
required
48
amalgam of all these.52 However, as we have seen, Sarmientos orientalism goes
beyond references and citations alone to instances of mimesis and identification, and it is
certainly not disciplined in the way that Said emphasizes. Saids Euro-centric conception
of orientalism does not allow for the manifestation of Orientalist discourses in different
contexts, that is, in conjunction with various other discourses-such as those which come
together in both Facundo and the epistolary account of Algeria.
Yet Sarmientos images of the Orient cannot be reduced to Barrenecheas
characterization of them as Romantic poetics and evidence for geographical determinism.
In these references we find an essentialization of the Orient and the performance of certain
roles, which, especially because they are on the part of a criollo writer, lead us to
significant issues of identity formation. One could attempt to explain Sarmientos
orientalism as an instance of transculturation, as put forth by Pratt:
Transculturation is a phenomenon of the contact zone. [... Tjhe concept
serves to raise several sets of questions. How are metropolitan modes of
representation received and appropriated on the periphery? [...] A
contact perspective emphasizes how subjects are constituted in and b y
their relations to each other. It treats the relations among colonizers and
colonized, or travelers and travelees, not in terms of separateness or
apartheid, but in terms of copresence, interaction, interlocking
understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations
of power.53
Sarmientos position vis-a-vis European Orientalist writers would then be that of a
transculturator. While such a conceptualization takes into consideration reciprocality and
interaction, it may lead to viewing Sarmientos orientalism as a particular appropriation of
orthodox orientalism. Such a stance accepts the assumption that there is an authentic
Orientalist discourse.
For this reason, I find Lisa Lowes approach in her study of French and British
orientalisms more useful in understanding Sarmientos orientalist discourse. Lowes
purpose in her study is to treat orientalism as a tradition of representation that is crossed,
intersected, and engaged by other representations.54 Lowe argues for a new conception
of orientalism in which
orientalism is not a single developmental tradition but is profoundly
heterogeneous. French and British figurations of an oriental Other are not
unified or necessarily related in meaning; they denote a plurality of
referents, do not necessarily have a common style in the production of
49
statements about their Orients, and are engendered differently by social
and literary circumstances at particular moments.55
Lowe does this in order to allow for the existence of interventions and resistances to such
controlling discourses. I find that this type of theorization of orientalism also allows for
other cultural positions, aside from the strictly Oriental or Occidental which are involved
in imagining in their own various ways both Europe, and the Orient, as well as their own
cultural spaces. Lowes Foucauldian notion of heterotopicality," that is, a condition of
multiple and interpenetrating positions and practices [...]--the continual yet uneven
overlappings, intersections, and collusions of discursive articulations,"56 is very suitable
to the discursive practices of the hybrid creole spaces, the contact zones, of the world.
I would like to take Lowes formulation even further, and thereby make it even more
suitable to the discursive practices of hybrid creole spaces, by emphasizing the
heterogeneous functions, as well as sites, of orientalism. Not only is orientalism
interconnected with a variety of discourses, but it takes place in a variety of sites. This
interplay of discourses is particularly salient in cultural locations of marked heterogeneity,
such as Latin America. A more fluid and multiple, rather than binary, theorization of
orientalism, in addition to allowing for the existence of interventions and resistances to
controlling discourses, also allows for other cultural positions-positions outside of the
strictly Oriental or Occidental whose subjects are involved in imagining, in their own
ways, both the Orient, and Europe, as well as their own cultural sites.
One of the discursive practices which is highly visible and significant in Latin America,
and is at the core of Sarmientos orientalism and his role-playing, is the establishment and
management of the categories of self and Other. Gonzalez Echevarria succinctly
describes the place of the Other in modem Latin American culture:
In the nineteenth century and after, lawlessness does not exclude, the
criminal other is an other within [...] From now on the Latin American
narrative will deal obsessively with that other within who may be the
source of all; that is, the violent origin of the difference that makes Latin
America distinct and, consequently, original. [...] The Latin American self
both fears and desires that other within.57
In struggling with (both fearing and desiring) the Others within (the gaucho and the
European) Sarmiento turns to a more removed Other (the Arab). He passes through
50
moments of identification as well as opposition and comes to understand his gaucho
Other, and his gaucho self, through his orientalism. While his own identity--and that of
Argentina-remains a moving kaleidoscope with personas shifting in and out of focus, ii ie
gaucho, the Arab, and the European are recurring figures.
Sarmientos texts display the overrunning, intersecting enunciations of various
discourses which arise out of his historical, social, and political position: the legacy of the
first European (and specifically Spanish) image of the barbarian Other (the Arab); the
dissemination of Orientalist works (as far as the southern cone of South America); the
effort to construct a manageable Argentine identity, and as part of this establish a national
character (the figure of the gaucho); and the connected drive to formulate an identity on the
level of the elite criollo subject. Thus, situated among these various discourses,
Sarmiento likens gauchos to Arabs, engages in opposition to, as well as identification
with, the Arab-gaucho, and struggles to comprehend his gaucho Other, and his gaucho
Self, through his orientalism. In short, he uses the figure of the Arab as a graspable
counterpart to the gaucho, and as part of the translation, the crafting, of the Argentine.
Lugones El Payador and The Legacy of Moorish Blood
Leopoldo Lugoness construction of the Argentine self is similarly located at the nexus
between the discourses of the Reconquista, European orientalism, and early Argentine
nationalism. Likewise, his El payador58 highlights the limits of Saids conceptualization of
orientalism. Lugones is a transitional and protean figure in Argentine cultural history. While
his poetry was at different times Romantic, modemista, and even an influence upon the
avant-garde,59his politics shifted from outwardly socialist to very obviously authoritarian.
Among Lugones non-fiction prose works we find, in addition to his laudatory biography of
Sarmiento, his reframing of the figure of the gaucho and the major literary work which
represented the gaucho, Jose Hernandez's Martin Fierro (1872).
In 1911, while Lugones was living in Europe feeling the pull of nostalgia, he conceived
51
of this project as the introduction to a critical edition of Martin Fierro. Upon his return to
Argentina in 1913 he was invited to deliver a series of lectures which he based on the
material on Martin Fierro which he had written abroad. At the Teatro Odeon, the most
illustrious auditorium of Buenos Aires, Lugones delivered six lectures which became the
literary event of the season. Among the audience members were the president of
Argentina, Roque Saenz Pena, and his ministers. In 1916 Lugones made some changes
to the lectures, added other sections, and published them on their own as a book-length
text entitled El payador. This defense of Martin Fierro and the role of the gaucho in
Argentine history was central in turning the attention of the literary establishment to
Hernandezs narrative poem which had up until then been revered within popular culture
but disparaged among the elite.60 Lugones work caused urban literati to revalorize
Hernandezs ballad by pointing to Martin Fierro as an Argentine epic, a foundational text in
an autochtonous Argentine tradition.
Lugones positioned El payador as part of the espiritu del centenario--the spirit of

celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the beginning of the Argentine independence
movement. This urge to celebrate Argentine nationhood arose from a desire on the part of
the oligarchy-which was facing the failure of its liberal capitalist visions as well as the
discontent among the largely immigrant working class--to assert a national culture. From
the 1870s to 1890s Argentina went through a series of economic depressions, based on
foreign investment and debt crises, and times of economic boom. By the mid 1890s, the
most recent of the economic crises was over and modernization had become palpable.
Nonetheless, this period also saw the growth of intense class conflict which largely pitted
the old Argentine elite against immigrant laborers. Thus the plans for the development,
and civilization, of Argentina through immigration, which Sarmiento and others of his
generation had envisioned, resulted in tensions between the criollo viejo-th e old creole
elite-and the immigrants.6
The centenario celebrations, a showpiece for invited foreign dignitaries and a
fashioning and promulgation of Argentine culture, were themselves intertwined with the
anti-immigrant violence of the period. After the 1902 Ley de Residencia [Residence
52
Law], which, in response to a massive anarchist-led general strike, gave the Argentine
government the right to expel foreigners without any judicial process, strikes and violence
only escalated. This state of affairs reached a peak during the 1910 centennial
celebrations. Plans were announced for a general strike during these extravagant
festivities. In order to preempt this the police and a corp of upperclass volunteers earned
out a sweep which led to summary deportations, anti-immigrant violence, and increased
scapegoating of immigrants for problems actually caused by urban modernization and
class inequalities. Out of this came the Ley de defensa social [Social Defense Law]
which, among other things, outlawed anarchist meetings, barred the entry of anyone
considered politically or socially dangerous, set up a system of penalties for ships that
brought in barred immigrants, and allowed for the immediate deportation of foreigners
deemed to be a danger to the public.62
The positions of immigrants and gauchos had shifted to such an extent, since the
days of the Generation of 1837s push for immigration, that rather than the immigrants
being the element of civilization which would tame barbarian gaucho culture, the gaucho
was invoked as the true Argentine who would keep the barbarous immigrants at bay.
Turning the gaucho into a revered icon was part of intellectuals search for an historically
rooted national culture that would contravene rising mercantilism with more enduring
values, and counter the immigrant onslaught with a strong autochtonous tradition. This
interest in establishing a national heritage was focused largely on the delineation of a
literary tradition.63
Although earlier writers had already begun to romanticize the once vilified gaucho,64 it
was Lugones who first set out to purposely turn the gaucho into a mythic, national figure.
As Rafael Olea points out, by singing the praises of a dead hero, and one who was part
of an Argentina which predated the immigrant population, the cultural nationalists of the
twentieth-century recast the gaucho as a way of opposing the immigrant class. 65 In
Lugones treatment of the gaucho as a civilizing force, rather than a symbol of barbarism
encroaching on civilization as he had previously been seen, Lugones explains certain
gaucho characteristics as atavisms inherited from the Spaniards who had been living in
53
close contact with the Moors, and even as the result of descent from these Moors
themselves. While many commentators have analyzed the significance of Lugones
references to Ancient Greece, none has considered the frequent presence of the Arab in B
payador.
It is very likely that Lugones conceptualization of the place of the Moor in Spanish
culture, and as a corollary in Spanish-American culture, was inspired by the work of the
Spanish scholar Angel Ganivet. Latin American intellectuals who were swept up in the
hispanismo movement read the work of Ganivet, a precursor to the Spanish Generation of
1898, as well as that of members of the Generation of 98. This generation of writers
including Unamuno, Maeztu, Baroja, and Azorin were driven to soul-searching by the
apparent decline in Spanish culture and the question of how it had come about and how
Spanish culture could be understood in a positive light Although this inquiry came to a
head in these intellectuals work, which responded to the Spanish-American War and the
loss of Spains last New World colonies, Ganivet had already taken up this line of
questioning in his 1897 work Idearium espanol v el porvenir de Esparia. It was in
Idearium that Ganivet first introduced the issue of the role of Arabo-lslamic influence on
Spain to the modern period's deliberations on the ser espanol-lhe Spanish way of being.
Ganivets primary purpose in Idearium is to make a case for Spain's difference from
the rest of Europe based on its stoic or Senecan ethos-what he terms senequismo
espanof [Spanish Senecism]. While arguing for this notion of the ser espanol he
mentions the Arab presence in Spain as one of the key elements in the formation of
Spanish culture-one which was generally denied at the time.67 Notwithstanding,
Lugones stance toward the role of Arabs in Spanish cultural formation goes beyond that
which Ganivet suggests. Lugones gives the Arab element a centrality which is not
expressed again until a few decades later when the Spanish literary scholar and historian
Americo Castro published his polemic-inspiring Esparia en su historia. cristianos, moros v
judios. 66
Rather than trace the specific intellectual influences that might have led Lugones to his
notions of the centrality of the Arab in Spanish culture, I would like to consider what is at
54
stake in Lugones conception of Spanish culture. Why is it important to Lugones to point
to a historical contact which came to a close, at least officially, in the early 1600s? How
does Lugones use of references to the Arab world impact the conceptualization of
orientalism? How does Lugones perspective on Spanish culture, as part of the
hispanismo movement, relate to his participation in the construction of a particular type of
Argentine national subject?
In El payador Lugones praises the gaucho as a mediator, or translator, between
civilization and barbarism: lo unico que podia contener con eficacia a la barbarie, era un
elemento que participando como ella de las ventajas locales, llevara consigo el estfmulo
de la civilizacion. Y este es el gaucho, producto pintoresco de aquel mismo conflicto.
(41) The payador, or gaucho bard, brought verse and song to the frontier areas and in
this way had an edifying impact: La poesfa gaucha era, pues, un agente de civilizacion.
Representaba para el campesino las letras antes de la lectura; la estetica como elemento
primordial de enserianza. El gaucho fue, por ella, el mas culto de los campesinos.8 (75)
Lugones describes the gauchos as a sub-raza de transicion [sub-race of transition]
(42). They civilize the barbarous and in the process are somewhat barbarized;
moreover, they pave the way for the cultured American, the more genteel Argentine criollo.
They not only tame the pampas for the urban criollo, but they draw from the uncivilized,
indigenous ways and distill these characteristics into a more cultured Argentine form.
Although the figure of the gaucho had been greatly transformed by the genre of
literature known as gauchesca, or gauchesque, Lugoness portrayal of the gaucho and his
poetry was still a departure from that of his contemporaries. As Ludmer explains in EJ
genero qauchesco. in the early 1800s literatura gauchesca emerged in the region of the
Rfo de la Plata in conjunction with the Federalist politics of Artigas. Bartolome Hidalgo,
known as the founder of this genre, wrote populist poetry which redefined earlier
athe only element which could contain barbarism effectively was an element that, while
participating like barbarism in the local advantages, would carry with it the stimulus of civilization.
And this element is the gaucho, picturesque product of that very same conflict.
8Gaucho poetry was, then, an agent of civilization. For the peasant it represented letters before
reading; aesthetics as the primordial element of teaching. The gaucho was, for this reason, the
most cultured of the peasants.
55
conceptions of the gaucho by positioning him as the symbol of Argentine patriotism and
spirit.69 Martin Fierro is one of the most famous works in this genre, which is defined by its
focus on the depiction of the lives of the poor in the countryside. The stylistic features of
this genre include the use of type characters, local color, and rural dialects and speech
patterns. There are two opposing strains of the gauchesque genre: what could be
termed the romantic and the parodic versions. Hidalgos poetry is an example of the
romantic form which sought to establish an appreciation of folk ways and thus carve out a
space for the disenfranchised of the rural areas. Many of these works, even when written
by upper class writers, were sung and memorized by members of the rural lower class.
In this way, they were incorporated into folk culture.
The strain of the gauchesca which became more famous was that which served the
purpose of entertaining the elite through parodies of gaucho speech and backward
w ays.70 It is as a result of this context that Martin Fierro had been disparaged by the
literary establishment as popular entertainment of no literary merit In arguing that Martin
Fierro was an epic, that it held a place in Argentine cultural history similar to that of The
O dyssey in Greece, Lugones sparked a reconsideration of Hernandezs work, and a
concomitant reconceptualization of the gaucho, among intellectuals who were trying to
establish specifically Argentine traditions as part of their advancement of cultural
nationalism.
Lugones arrives at his formulation of the gaucho as cultural translator through a rhetoric
of comparisons with and references to the Arab component of Spanish culture. This
rhetoric is a reflection of the conceptual model of cultural mediation and of contact with the
Other which is most common in the Hispanic tradition: moros y cnstianos. In Lugones
formulation Moors and Christians are at times at odds but also closely connected socially
and biologically.
The figure of the Arab is prominent as Lugones explains gaucho culture in terms of
biological and geographical determinism. Living on the frontier and dealing with the raids of
the indigenous groups gave the Spanish colonizers
la experiencia del desierto, la fe en el caballo, la amplificacion del instinto
nomada. Esparioles recien salidos del cruzamiento arabigo, la analogfa de
56
situacion en una vida tan semejante a la de los desiertos ancestrales,
reavivo en su ser las tendencias del antepasado agareno; y su mezcla
con aquellos otros nomadas de llanura, acentuo luego la caracterizacion del
fenomeno.* (41)
In this passage Arabs are understood according to the common stereotype: they are
strictly desert-dwelling nomads who live off of raiding other camps. However, here Arabs
are also an ancestor: the Spanish carry within them the blood of Hagar [Agar], a Muslim.
The desert landscape ignites forgotten tendencies in the colonizer and in this way the
gauchos emerge as a mixture of the civilizing, conquering Spaniard, and the nomadic Arab-
-who in the Iberian context is both conqueror and conquered.
Elsewhere the commonplace of the mystical East1 and the mystery and spirituality of
the Other is part of the characterization of gaucho speech:
A esta suerte de misticismo poetico, mezclabanse el mutismo peculiar del
indio y el no menos caracterfstico del arabe cuyas sangres llevaba el
gaucho en sus venas. Con ello, volviose sentencioso, definiendo su
economia de palabras con frases generales y sinteticas que solfan ser
refranes. (63)
This leads to Lugones explanation of how it is through the gauchos poetry and music
that the gaucho acts as a civilizing agent in the pampa. The Moor is present here again,
linked to the very core of the gaucho's civilizing powers-his role as a payador.
Ahora bien, si el origen de las tensiones provenzales y de los romances
con ecos, estaba, sin duda en las eglogas grecolatinas, puesto que la
civilizacion romana persistio vivaz sobre toda la Europa meridional, hasta
el siglo VII, fueron los arabes quienes continuaron y sistematizaron aquel
genero de poesfa, que les era tambien habitual, cuando en la epoca
mencionada, dominaron alia a su vez. Precisamente, los trovadores del
desierto habian sido los primeros agentes de la cultura islamita,
constituyendo con sus justas en verso, la reunion inicial de las tribus, que
Mahoma, un poeta del mismo genero, confedero despues. Asi se explica
que para nuestros gauchos, en quienes la sangre arabiga del espanol
athe experience of the desert, faith in the horse, the expansion of the nomadic instinct.
Spaniards recently coming out of the mingling with Arabs, the analogy of the situation in a life so
similar to that of the ancestral deserts, revived in their beings the tendencies of the Hagarian
forebear; and their mixture with those other nomads of plains, marked later the characterization of
the phenomenon.
6To this type of poetic mysticism were mixed the peculiar silence of the Indian and the no less
characteristic one of the Arab, whose blood the gaucho earned in his veins. With it he became
sententious, defending his economy of words with general and synthetic phrases that tended to
be proverbs.
57
predomino, como he dicho, por hallarse en condiciones tan parecidas a las
del medio ancestral, tuviera el genero tanta importancia.* (67)
All of these different types of references to the Arab world-from the war with the Moor"
[la guerra con el moro] (196), to the Arabic gas/das [las cassidas arabigas] (67), to
the Arab ancestor" [el arabe antepasado] (177) and the Arab atavism" [el atavismo
arabigo"] (60)--continue throughout El payador. In this way, Lugones moves between
references which invoke the image of a savage marauding Arab, a mysteriously terse
Other, and a cultured, refined poet.

Lugones, by presenting stereotyped, albeit varied, images of the Arab participates in
orientalism. Nevertheless, his orientalism is outside the boundaries of Saids
conceptualization of this phenomenon. Said indicates that Orientalism is an ontological
and epistemological distinction made between the Orient* and (most of the time) the
Occident.71 Although his qualification does away with the necessity for the Orientalist
subject to be European, this statement precludes the type of relationship to the Arab
world that can arise in Hispanic cultures and which we witness in El payador. Lugones
positioning of the moro as a part of every Spaniard is interesting not only because it
predates a time when this notion became a common topic of discussion, but because it
indicates how Hispanic orientalisms72 can differ from other orientalisms and how the
Hispanismo movement came to bear upon the structuring of relations between indigenous
peoples and nation-building criollos in a very particular way.
Lugones, like many other Latin American intellectuals of his time period, turned to Spain
in formulating that which is Argentine. But curiously he bases lo argentino on Spaniards
convivencia with Arabs (to borrow Americo Castros term). Lugones references to the
a Now then, if the origin of the provengal tensions and of the Romances with echoes, is to be
found, without a doubt, in the Greco-Latin eclogues, since Roman civilization remained vigorous
in all of Southern Europe until the seventh century, it was the Arabs who continued and
systematized that genre of poetry, which was also customary among them, when in the era
mentioned they dominated there in their turn. Indeed, the troubadours of the desert had been
the first agents of Islamic culture, creating, with their competitions in verse, the initial gathering of
the tribes, which Muhammad, a poet of the same genre, later confederated. Herein we find the
explanation for why among our gauchos-in whom the Arab blood of the Spaniard predominated,
as I have said, because of their having found themselves in conditions so similar to the ancestral
environment-the genre was to have so much importance.
58
Orient are striking because through them he unambiguously states that the Arabs are
among the main ancestors of the Spaniards and in particular of the romanticized Argentine
gauchos. In this way, He positions himself as culturally and biologically connected to the
object of his discourse. Thus, Lugones participates in an orientalism, but his particular
type of essentialization of the Other emerges from this specific positioning.
Furthermore, in El payador Spains first experience of contact with the Other becomes
a framing metaphor for Argentinas relationship to its own interior Other. The cohabitation
of Moors and Christians in Spain is the Spanish metaphor par excellence for the
coexistence of cultural hybridization and armed conflict. Lugones uses this metaphor to try
to paint a coherent, even biologically and geographically based, picture of the
contradictory role of the gaucho in the discourses and politics of the elite. Gauchos are
fought against and then incorporated into the national culture, according to the interests of
upper-class conservatives. The gaucho was first made the object of the civilizing mission
and then depicted as the agent of that project, or at least as a mediator between
civilization and barbarism. But he takes this role not only historically, as Lugones
describes it, but also during Lugones time. Lugones and other conservatives define
themselves against the indigenous peoples, the barbarians, of Argentina. Yet they also
wish to define themselves as traditionally Argentine in the sense that they have a national
culture which is both distinct from the rest of Latin America and Spain, and previous to the
wave of immigrants to Argentina. Through the figure of the Arab and his ambivalent
position in Spain, Lugones tries to establish the place of the gaucho, contradictory as it is,
in the cultural nationalist project. The gaucho moro" allows Lugones to map out a subject
position which is at once separate from natives, Spaniards, other Latin Americans, and
recent immigrants-an Argentine national subject.
59
Custom-Building the Fictions of the Nation:
Arab Argentines Re-Writing the Arab Gaucho
Sarmiento and Lugones comparisons of Arabs and gauchos do not go unnoticed b y

certain Arab immigrants to Argentina.73 In a sort of inversion of Sarmiento and Lugones
references to Arabs, two Arab Argentine authors-lbrahim Hailar and Juan Yaser-make
use of the established writers work as they write Arabs into the early history of the
Americas.74 Ibrahim Husayn Hailar, the son of Lebanese immigrants and a practicing
Muslim, was bom in San Luis in the Argentine interior, in 1915 and died in Buenos Aires in
1973. In conjunction with being one of the founders of the Centro Islamico de Buenos
Aires [Buenos Aires Islamic Center], and promoting Muslim-Christian dialogue,75 Hailar
wrote three historiographic works which seek to present the Arabo-Muslim world to
Argentines, as well as to create links between these two cultures. In his El gaucho, su
oriqinalidad arabiga (1962; hereafter El gaucho) he incorporates Sarmiento and Lugones
writings as part of the supporting evidence for his claim that the Argentine gaucho arose
out of the relationships between indigenous women and Arabs from Spain who had
arrived with the Spanish to conquer and settle the New World.76
Juan Yaser was born in the village of Tayibah in Palestine in 1925. In 1952, as a
result of the Israeli occupation, he emigrated to Cordoba, Argentina where he lived until his
death in 1996. In addition to composing and publishing poetry in both Spanish and
Arabic,77 Yaser wrote historical and literary studies. In two of these studies, Herencia
arabiga en America (1979; hereafter Herencia) and Fenicios v arabes en el genesis
americano (1992; hereafter Fenicios), Yaser presents basically the same argument as
Hailar about the Arab origins of the gaucho with similar support, basing himself at least
partially on Halter's work.78
In their works Halter and Yaser take the similarities between Arabs and gauchos which
Sarmiento, and to a lesser extent Lugones, base on the notion of geographically
determined character and make them literal. That is, they take these notions to a concrete,
biological realm. In addition, they take to its limits Lugones description of the link between
60
Arabs and gauchos as a biological one. Rather than a genealogy of Arabs intermingling
and intermarrying with Spaniards who then carry Arab atavisms with them to the New
Worid, Hailar and Yaser narrate a much more immediate heredity. They point to the
probable presence of Arabs from Spain among the Spanish conquerors of the Americas.
According to their narrative these Arabs, who were not under the jurisdiction of Spanish
laws which forbade sexual relations between Spanish Catholics and indigenous peoples,
had children with indigenous women. These children were the first gauchos. The histories
written by Yaser and Hailar make it such that the infusion of Arab blood took place not
only in the Iberian peninsula but also more recently and on Argentine soil itself.
The basic rhetorical strategy which Hailar and Yaser deploy is the invocation of the
historical connection between the Hispanic world and the Arab world in al-Andalus. The
two immigrant writers literally bring this Hispano-Arab connection to Argentina to establish
a direct biological link with the gaucho-the Argentine par excellence. This formula for
revising history continues in other ideas presented by Hailar and Yaser in these texts and
elsewhere.79 In a 1978 article, Hailar purports that the tango, the cultural product which
most symbolizes Argentina, has its early origins in Arab Spain.80 In Yaseris Herencia and
Fenicios and in another text by Hailar, Descubrimiento de America por los arabes (1959;
hereafter Descubrimiento),81 in addition to speculating that Magellan was actually an Arab,
both authors assert that it was in fact either Arabs or Phoenicians (the forebearers of the
Lebanese) who were the first to discover the New World. These writers conceive of their
works, if not as accomplished scholarly studies, at least as studies which open the door to
a much needed revision of history. My purpose in examining their works, with a focus on
Halter's writings on the gaucho, is to investigate the rhetoric which they use in making their
claims, the motives which might propel such insistence on inserting the Arab into Argentine
history, as well as the discursive relationship between these Arab Argentine texts and
those of Sarmiento and Lugones which I have discussed above.
Yaser and Hailar themselves consciously present their works as alternative histories.
At the beginning of Herencia, Yaser says in reference to Arab civilization: En la
apasionante epopeya del descubrimiento de America, como en la formacion etnologica y
61
cultural de los pueblos americanos, se ha omitido injustamente registrar la participation de
una importante y genuina civilizacion, considerada la primera de las civilizationes. (1)
Likewise, in Hallars introduction to Descubrimiento he states that he wrote his book con
el objeto de sacudir la modorra de los historiadores, de la que somos partfcipes, en esta
cuestion tan afin y de vital importancia para el mejor conocimiento de los pueblos
americanos y arabes6 (11). In the epilogue he expresses this idea with more pointed
criticism of historians to date. He says that with Descubrimiento he is certain haber
cumplido con un impostergable deber hacia un pueblo a quien los historiadores, salvo
raras excepciones, han tratado de silenciar, menoscabar, y algunas veces, ignorar su
trascendental transito en la historia de la humanidad.' (125) With these narratives of a
historical Arab presence in Argentina, Hailar and Yaser are able to make a space, however
small, for themselves in Argentina. They are able to assert, as Hailar puts it, that El
arabe esta aquf de incognito, diluido, desconocido, pero esta.(11, Descubrimiento) For
this reason, I would like to put aside any judgment of the historical validity of their claims
and take into consideration the ways in which these works can be read as alternative
histories.82
While Yaser, focusing more on the Phoenician discovery of the Americas, only
devotes short sections of his works to the gaucho question, Hailar dedicates all of B
gaucho to presenting an alternative narrative about the gaucho. The text consists of
revisionary and oppositional, albeit often convoluted, conceptions of the gaucho and of
the ethnic origins of both Arabs and Argentines. From the start of his book Hailar offers a
picture of the gaucho which diverges in certain ways from this Argentine figure's
established image. Immediately after emphasizing the centrality of the gaucho to
* In the captivating epic of the discovery of America, as with the ethnic and* cultural formation of the
American peoples, the recording of the participation of one important and genuine civilization,
considered the first of civilizations, has been unjustly omitted.
0with the object of rousing historians from their slumber, of which we partake, in this issue which is
so relevant and of vital importance for the better understanding of the American and Arab peoples
c to have fulfilled an unpostponable duty toward a people whom historians, aside from rare
exceptions, have tried to silence, undermine, and sometimes, ignore their transcendental
movement in the history of humankind.
The Arab is here incognito, diluted, unrecognized, but he is here.
62
Argentine character and virtue, Hailar presents a portrait of the gaucho as a figure of
paradoxical origins: Hijo de nadie. Figura estelar de nuestras pampas. Indomito,
rebelde, feroz, generoso y libre, arraso con la cobardia, la avaricia y la esclavitud.
Cimiento una patria en la guerra y supo perpetuarla en la paz.,,a (3) On the one hand,
this romantic portrayal of the gaucho establishes him as an orphan, someone who has
nobodys support, but who also owes his greatness to no one. Yet, on the other hand,
Hailar is stating in this work that the gaucho is the son of Arabs.
This apparent contradiction is addressed in the next paragraph: No pertenecio a
ninguna raza y fue la amalgama de todas las estirpes; mejor dicho, fue una clase social,
con aquellos atributos precedentes, afirmando, sin temor a equfvocos, su gran
originalidad arabiga.0 (3) By playing up the proverbial independence of the gaucho but
replacing his Spanish and Amerindian origins with Arab and Amerindian heritage, Hailar
creates a figure who is at once no ones son and the son of Arabs in his greatest qualities.
We could go so far as to say that this gaucho is like the Lebanese immigrant's son, Hailar;
in the eyes of criollo culture Hailar is no ones son, yet he insists that he is also someone
importants son.
In a passage soon after this one Hailar redefines the identity of the prototypical Arab
such that the Arab forbear of the gaucho is not a threatening Other, but rather, more
Spanish than even a Spanish king. Hailar reworks the identity of perhaps the most
famous Moor in Spanish history, Boabdil, in opposition to Carlos V, based on what his
readers already know about them: Sabran sin duda los lectores que este rey era oriundo
de Belgica y no conocia ni pizca del espanol. Por lo tanto, mas espanol era Boabdil, el
ultimo monarca granadino, de la Espana arabe, cuyos antepasados durante siglos fueron
enterrados en todas las tierras de Andalucfa.0 (4, El gaucho) The effort to make Arabs
a Nobodys son. Stellar figure of our pampas. Indomitable, rebellious, ferocious, generous and
free, he tore down cowardliness, avarice, and slavery. He founded a country in war and knew how
to perpetuate it in peace.
13He did not belong to any race and was the amalgam of all stocks; rather, he was a social class, with
those preceding attributes affirming, without fear of equivocation, his great Arab originality.
eThe reader must of course know that this king was a native of Belgium and did not know one bit
of Spanish. Therefore, more Spanish than he was Boabdil, the last Granadan monarch of Arab
Spain whose ancestors for centuries were buried all over the land of Andalusia.
63
more Spanish, or at least less different from the Spanish, becomes prominent in B
gaucho. Yet Hailar must not only assert the greatness of Arabs, but also insist that they
are not a threat to a nation which prides itself in being the most European of Latin America.
It seems that in order to do so he must address the issues of race and whiteness.
Historically gauchos often were, and often were thought of as, mestizos (and to a
lesser extent mulatos, part Spanish and part African). It is interesting then that in Halter's
account Arabs are paired off with indigenous women as the progenitors of the gaucho.
This version of the origins of the gaucho places Arabs within the position of the white
element which is mixed with the Other. Yet, at the same time, the Leyes de Indias which
forbade Christians from having sexual relations with the indigenous peoples, and which
Hailar cites as corroboration of his thesis, does not apply to Arabs because of their
difference from Spaniards. In effect, it is the Arabs very difference which allowed them to
create the gaucho. This positioning of the Arab delineates a nuanced identity which is at
once non-Christian, but white, different, but the same.
Throughout El gaucho Hailar continues to not only emphasize the non-European
whiteness of the Arabs, but also the need to celebrate racial mixture and the mestizo.
Hailar makes a point of mentioning the mixed race of a famous gaucho, Sargento Cabral,
as well as the revered Nicaraguan modemista poet Ruben Dario. (15, 17) Hailar even
goes so far as to speak of the need to be proud of Argentinas racial mixture, including
indigenous and African blood: Somos, salvo raras excepciones, el amasijo de arabes-
hispanos, de negros y de indios, en la iniciacion historica de America del Sur y Centro.
Raza nueva que debe movemos a orgullo por tan tremenda conjunci6n.a (46, my
emphasis) In this way he counters the commonly held notion that Argentina is a Latin
American nation of mostly European descent. What might motivate him to express an
opinion which runs so contrary to mainstream Argentine notions of national identity?
In part this interest in highlighting the mestizaje in Argentina might be a way of creating
aWe are, save rare exceptions, a mish-mash of Arabo-hispanics, blacks, and Indians, in the
historical initiation of South and Central America. A new race which should move us to be proud of
such a remarkable conglomeration.
64
space for all different types of peoples, including immigrants whose whiteness is not firmly
established. If Argentines were already a mixed race before the influx of immigrants at the
turn of the century, then the new immigrants, whether European or not, could not possibly
taint the national stock. The emphasis Hailar places on mestizaje in Argentina might also
be linked to Hallars interest in characterizing the Spaniards and Moors as a fused people.
At one point Hailar directly counters the statement made by the historian Carmelo Bonet
that there were many different razas83 in Argentina at the time of independence from
Spain. What Hailar argues is that there were "Moorish-Andalusians, Indians, and blacks"
[andaluces-moriscos, indios y negros"] (38, my emphasis) at that time and that it was not
until later with the immigration wave that others arrived in Argentina. What is of importance
here is that Hailar takes opposition to Bonets opinion as an opportunity both to insert
Arabs in early Argentine history and to have their presence be part and parcel of the
Spanish Andalusian presence. Later in his text, when referring to differences in racial
make-up between North and South America, Hailar quotes Jose Ingenieros to qualify the
European element in Latin America as racially mixed with Arabs [mestizados de
arabes]. (41,42)
This portrayal of Spaniards and Moors as a combined racial group could serve to
further bolster the notion that the Arabs are a white people. This is a point which Hailar
takes care to emphasize as he discusses the racial/ethnic make-up of Argentina after the
onset of the great wave of immigration. Yet the passage becomes rather convoluted as
he tries to establish both that Arab immigrants intermarried a great deal with the indigenous
peoples, thus helping to whiten Argentina, and that the whiteness of Argentina is limited.
Hailar refers to the project of whitening Argentina which was promulgated by the 19th-
century liberal Argentine elite, Sarmiento among them, and claims that the only immigrant
groups who mixed with the natives were Spaniards, Italians, and Arabs. Making this
claim positions Arab immigrants as one of the few immigrant groups who truly helped to
further the founding fathers plan to whiten the race and improve the national stock through
immigration.
Nevertheless, Hailar then uses this claim as counter-evidence against Bonets belief
65
that Argentina is becoming whiter" [se esta blanqueando] and that one can already see
light eyes and blond hair all over the country. (38) Thus, directly after touting the Arab
participation in the whitening of Argentine stock Hailar limits the degree to which this
whitening was successful. What begins to emerge in the text, however, are the two
different types of whiteness with which the founding fathers themselves operated-one
which is the Mediterranean white and another which is the whiter than white blond, blue
eyed Northern European white. Hailar uses statistics to show that although the majority
group in the Argentine population shifted in the mid-1800s from non-whites (blacks,
mulattos, natives, or mestizos) to whites because of the immigrant wave, these whites
no eran todos rubios, ni tampoco todos eran europeos.* (40) He presents a list of
different immigrant groups registered in the 1916 census, among them the Syro-Lebanese,
and repeats: no todos eran rubios ni todos eran europeos."0 (40) Through this splitting of
the terms white and European Hailar redefines the term white for his own inclusion in
that category.
However, in order to claim whiteness for Arabs via their Spanish connection, and
whiteness for Mediterranean peoples in general, Hailar must contend with the stance of
the Argentine founding fathers toward Mediterraneans. The division between Northern
European and Mediterranean whites played a notable part in the 19th-century
statesmens push for immigration into Argentina. These men specifically indicated that the
immigrants whom they wanted were Northern Europeans; although they themselves were
of Spanish descent they considered the Iberians to be of inferior stock. Ironically, the bulk
of those who actually emigrated to Argentina as a result of this project were Spaniards,
Southern Italians, and, as the third or fourth largest group, Syro-Lebanese. Hailar states
that he does not agree with the low opinion of Iberian stock held by Argentine
sociologists and founding fathers such as Alberdi and Sarmiento: Lamentamos tener que
discrepar con muchos sociologos argentinos con respecto a nuestro tipo nacional, que
sostienen la superioridad definitiva de la variedad argentina de las razas europeas no
awere not all blondes and neither were they all Europeans
0not all were blond nor were all European
66
peninsular.3 (41) He discredits Alberdi and Samnientos preference of Anglo-Saxons by
saying that hoy esta visto y probado que los anglosajones no se confunden con otras
estirpes, a pesarde ser ellos, cumulo de extranjeros.6 (41) Here Hailar relativizes racial
mixture such that even the supposedly pure Anglo-Saxons are mestizos. Hailar even
uses a quote from Alberdis Bases to support this statement. At a moment in the text
which seems contradictory, considering Halter's positive attitude toward mestizaje, Halter
takes his argument on yet another turn by pointing to the idea that the Anglo-Saxon
peoples no longer mixed with other racial groups. Thus, unlike the Arab immigrants, they
would have been useless to the project of creating an overall whiter Argentina, albeit one
that is not blond.
Throughout the twists and turns in Halters argumentation we see that he is

manipulating Argentine notions of racial purity and patriotic miscegenation for the purpose
of bolstering the position of Arab immigrants to Argentina from a variety of different, and
often contradictory, angles. He undoes fear of ruining a pre-existing racial purity, makes
Arabs more white and European, redefines the term white" so that it need not mean
European, and says that Arab immigrants helped to whiten Argentina. El gaucho,
therefore, can be understood as an attempt at shoring up the position of Arabs in
Argentina through a variety of entry points into the ideologically charged issue of race that
has played a major role in Argentine identity formation.
One of the main ways in which the concern for the racial make-up of Argentina
manifested itself early on in Argentine history was the mid-19th-century intellectuals call
for immigrants, and specifically Northern European immigrants. The impetus behind this
project was the desire to populate-to make productive-Argentinas vast rangelands and
agricultural zones in the interior; concomitantly the remaining indigenous peoples would be
absorbed into the national body, and the mestizos and criollos would be counter-balanced
with superior* Northern European stock. The Generation of 1837s immigration project,
3We lament having to differ with many Argentine sociologists with respect to our national type,
which they maintain is definitively superior to the Argentine variety of the non-peninsular
European races.
67
however, did not come to fruition as its promoters had believed it would.84 Rather than
mostly Northern European immigrants, it was mostly Mediterraneans and Eastern
Europeans who arrived; rather than populate the interior, most immigrants stayed in
Buenos Aires. The city teeming with poor and labor-organizing immigrants, together with
modernization and the rise of a nouveau riche class, created within the elite a climate of
fear about foreigness and materialism, as well as a nostalgia for the countryside, lost
values, and pre-immigrant Argentina. In this turn-of-the-century Argentina, which I
described previously in reference to Lugones, cultural nationalism and anti-immigrant
sentiment reigned among the upper classes.
In the 1910s the immigrant backlash was seen on a political and institutional level in
the work of the Liga Patriotica Argentina. In the mid-1930's, after the military coup of 1930
that ushered in La decada infame, nationalism became a full-blown major political
movement characterized by authoritarianism and xenophobia. From the teens through the
thirties Semitic immigrants, whether Christian Arabs, Eastern European Jews, Muslim
Arabs, or Arab Jews, were targeted as the most undesirable of immigrants.85 This anti-
Arab and anti-Jewish sentiment has continued into the present, albeit in more subtle
forms.86 Hallar and Yaseris writings, then, must be read in light of this socio-historical
context. By expounding upon the Arab heritage of the gaucho they attempt to maneuver
around the whole issue of the great wave of immigration. The gaucho-moro allows them to
establish a pre-immigration Arab presence and thereby disassociate themselves from the
negative image of the Semitic immigrant.87
One of the conceptual frameworks which Hallar and Yaser use to support their
argument about the Arab heredity of the gaucho comes out of the positivist understanding
of human character and cultural formation that is part of the Generation of 1837s desire for
immigration. The 19th-century project of literally creating a particular type of national body
arose out of the positivist scientific theories which spread from Europe to Argentina at that
time. The biological and geographic determinism which are the hallmarks of positivist
6today it is evident and proven that the Anglo-Saxons do not mix with other racial stocks, despite
they themselves being an accumulation of foreigners
68
notions of human nature are strongly evidenced in Sarmientos writings and those of
Lugones. Hallar makes some references to similarities between the gaucho and Arab
based on similar geographic environments, emulating in this way much of Sarmientos
configuration of the gaucho-Arab connection. In these formulations the desert habitats of
both Arabia and the pampas become prominent. However, because Halter's aim is to
establish the biological link between gauchos and Arabs, he tends more toward the
biological determinism of inherited character and atavisms in which Lugoness El payador
is steeped. What relationship could be stronger than the biological one which binds
together both Spaniards and Arabs and Arabs and gauchos? For this reason, throughout
El gaucho. as well as in Yasers treatment of the gaucho, similarities between gauchos and
Arabs are attributed to their common lineage.88 Moreover, the principle ways in which
these Arab Argentine writers support the gaucho-moro narrative are also methods of
creating additional direct links between Arab culture and those people and things which
are considered most authentically Argentine: the Spanish language, the word gaucho
itself, and distinguished criollo intellectuals such as Sarmiento and Lugones.
In addition to legitimating their claims about the Arabs role in New World history
through biological determinism, Halter and Yaser make use of the linguistic influence of
Arabic on Spanish. Halter and Yaser refer to the testing linguistic hegemony of Arabic in
Spain as a way of emphasizing the greatness of Arab culture and its impact on Spain and
the Hispanophone world. Both authors seem to take pleasure in listing many of the large
numbers of Spanish words which come from Arabic. Yaser makes a particular effort to
transfer this to the Americas by saying that En hispanoamerica se habla diariamente el
arabe en un 25%a (Herencia, [9]) and pointing to Arabic words used in Latin America that
never passed through Spain (Fenicios, 257-9).
The tour de force, however, is Halters insertion of Arabic'into the uncertainty
surrounding the word gaucho. The etymology of this term remains very unclear.
Shumway (in the context of a discussion about both the etymology and the connotation
a In Hispano-America Arabic is spoken daily 25% of the time.
69
of the word) cites an established scholarly study on the gaucho in which the author,
Fernando O. Assungao, details up to 38 different theories about the origins of the word.
The theories run from a Gallic origin connoting outlaw, to an indigenous American origin
meaning orphan. Shumway notes that River Plate intellectuals continue arguing over
the true meaning of the term in a polemic that apparently will not accept the idea that
words have and acquire new, even contradictory, meanings according to how, when,
where, and by whom they are used." Hallar, and later Yaser who follows his lead; tries
to take advantage of this ambiguity, this gap where no stable knowledge has been
established, to further his claims about the Arab heredity of the gaucho.
While Hallar makes use of this contested space, this space in which there is no fixed
origin or meaning, as an opportunity to create his own meaning, he does so in a way that
becomes absurd. He goes so far as to present, not one, but several separate Arabic
etymologies for the word gaucho: chauch, meaning shepherd; uactf meaning savage
and orphan; gauch, meaning lack of culture; "uajcho," meaning solitary, orphan, and
rebellious; and uajschtf meaning figuratively a savage beast. (7-9, El gaucho) This
absurd overabundance can be read as Halter's attempt to fill up the space of unfixed
meaning and thus stabilize it in accordance with his theory, even if it is by means of
presenting etymologically unrelated words as being somehow simultaneously the root of
one single word.
Although Hallar also uses his knowledge of Arabic to access some Arabic-language
documents related to Sarmientos trip to Algeria, most of his support of his thesis comes
not from language but from figures such as Sarmiento. Throughout Halter's El gaucho. as
well as Yaseris Fenicios, prominent Argentine writers are referred to and quoted
extensively as part of the documentation of the Arab origin of the gaucho. Sarmiento,
Bartolome Mitre, Lugones, Ricardo Rojas, Vicente Rdel Lopez, F. Sanchez Zinny, and
other Argentine historians are among those whose texts are cited in support of the smaller
and larger points which Halter and Yaser put forth in their histories. Even the works b y
Sarmiento which are considered literary and not historical, that is, Facundo, Viaies. and
Recuerdos de Provincia, are used by the two Arab Argentine writers as factual proof for
70
their arguments. In this way, Sarmiento and Lugoness invocations of the Arab as a
means to delineate a specifically Argentine identity are in turn used by Arab immigrants,
ihose left out of this national identity, to stake a claim for their central place in Argentine
culture.
Hallar and Yaser take many of the references to the Orient found in Sarmiento and
Lugones writings, which I have discussed above, at face value and use them to
corroborate a thesis about the gaucho which places Arabs at the heart of that which is
Argentine. Hallar also ventures further afield than Sarmientos most significant texts and
hunts up quotes which, on the one hand, illustrate perfectly Sarmientos interest in the
figure of the Arab, and, on the other hand, play right into Halter's argumentation. For
instance: El chileno-observa Sarmiento--no es semejante al Argentino, que es mas
arabe que espahol.8 (13) Here we see that the nation-building fictions that Sarmiento
creates are taken up by Hallar, at least ostensibly, as fact. Hallar then uses these
fictional facts in order to build a valued position for the Arab immigrant in Argentina.
The la d s which Hallar and Yaser glean and the lengths to which they take them
become preposterous; yet on another level their works are taking advantage of the
already blurred lines between the imaginary and the factual in the work of Sarmiento, and
to a lesser extent Lugones. Sarmientos Facundo is a work of vaguely defined genre; it
lies somewhere between history, novel, and biography. The places which Sarmiento
describes-the pampas and the Arab World-are places he has yet to see. The nation
over which he is puzzling has not as of yet defined its national borders. He somehow
writes non-fiction about the imaginary for the purpose of constituting that which is as of
yet not a reality-the Argentine nation. Lugones similarly uses an amalgamation of
historical fact and that which he imagines to write the history of a largely fictional national
tradition. He delineates a historical context about literature (Martin Fierro) in an effort to
establish the national history of Argentina.
4The Chilean-observes Sarmiento-is not similar to the Argentine, who is more Arab than
Spanish.
71
Part of the ambiguity in Sarmientos texts, and even to a certain extent in that of
Lugones, comes from the difficulty in knowing when references to the Orient are sheer
rhetoric and metaphor, and when they are meant as fact-based reality. Hallar and Yaser
take this ambiguity and completely elide distinctions between metaphor or rhetoric and
factual reality. Using this ambiguous realm of metaphors about the Arab and of the
hearkening back to documented, historical contact with the Arab, they write themselves
into the historical fictions or fictional histories of Argentina. In an attempt to undo the
tensions between the old Argentine criollos and particularly unwanted immigrants, Hallar
and Yaser insert themselves into the nations need to establish a history for itself. That is,
they write themselves into pre-immigratory Argentina and attempt to affiliate themselves
with the criollo. Thus, they can be seen as taking advantage (unwittingly or not) of the
ambiguity between fiction and history which is part of Sarmiento and Lugones work in
order to negotiate their identities as Arab Argentines.
Nonetheless, in using literature to rewrite history and playing with the hazy line
between the two, the textual practices of the two Arab Argentine writers can be read as
self-essentializing. A large part of Hallar and Yaseris support for their statements about
Arab culture comes from the Orientalist literary and historical texts written by Sarmiento
and Lugones, as well as those of classic European Orientalists. In light of this, their texts
could be termed auto-Orientalist. For example, Hallar describes the Spirituality of the
gaucho and his Arab forbear by writing: El gaucho es tambien poeta. Triste y
contemplativo como el arabe, que habla en verso e improvisa baladas.* He then
substantiates this by quoting Lugones El pavador (16, El gaucho). Hallar presents
stereotypical portraits of the Orient-here the melancholic Arab speaking in verse-based
on Euro-Argentines depictions of Arabs and in that way he himself participates in
Orientalist practice.
At another point in El gaucho Halter's orientalism echoes that of Sarmiento in Facundo.

Amid anecdotes about Facundo Quiroga and a region he frequented, Sarmiento asks: Do
aThe gaucho is also a poet. Sad and contemplative like the Arab, who speaks in verse and
improvises ballads.
72
you think, by chance, that this description is plagiarized from the Tales of The 1001 Nights
or other Oriental fairy tales? (175) That which is fantastic and inconceivable is
conceptualized by Sarmiento through the lens of the Orient. This mechanism of
comprehending the strange through the analogy or metaphor of the Oriental Other is used
by Hallar as well. To illustrate gaucho and Arab similarity Hallar presents stories about
incredible valor and honor taken from Argentine history and Arab history and then frames
them as intelligible through the Orient. Estos hechos autenticos, desglosados de la
realidad historica y que parecen escaparse de leyendas orientates de la fantasia fueron

factibles en toda su majestuosidad, entre pueblos de una sola raigambre y de indenticas
conformaciones teluricas ambientales."* (36, El gaucho) In this passage, even more so
than in Sarmientos texts, the framing of gauchos by Arabs is also a framing of Arabs b y
gauchos.
The fantastic tales of the East are a way to understand both Arab and gaucho reality.
Although on the one hand this reduces the Arab to the representations of the Tales of The
1001 Nights, on the other hand it puts the outlandishness of the Arab and the gaucho on
par. The Arab who seems so foreign can be understood through that which is, particularly
by the time Hallar writes, most familiar and intrinsic to the definition of the Argentine national
subject--the gaucho. Hallar uses his orientalism as a way to package Arabs for Argentine
understanding. The ends then, if they do not justify the means, temper and qualify them.
The context and motivations behind Hallar and Yaser's reliance on quotations and
rhetorical devices taken from Orientalists make it such that they participate in a specific
sort of orientalism-one in which the re-inscription of stereotypes and the re-framing of the
Arab for an Argentine audience occur simultaneously.
In spite of Hallar and Yasers orientalism, or perhaps because of its particular context,
it is possible to view their texts as a sort of writing back-a n intervention and resistance.
I understand their claims as arising out of the desire to legitimate their position as citizens
of Arab descent in Argentina through a double-pronged rhetoric. On the one hand, they
aThese authentic facts, culled from historical reality and which appear to have escaped from
fantastic Oriental legends were factual in all of their majesty, among peoples of one single root and
(continued on next page)
73
create an organic and primary relationship between themselves and the Americas. Hallar
and Yaser not only invoke the historical connection between the Hispanic world and the
Arab world, but they bring this connection to Argentina and avow a biological link with the
gaucho. In doing so they point to an Arab-Argentine connection which pre-dates the
immigrant wave and the very evidence they present to support this creates further
connections between Arabs and those people and things which are most Argentine. On
the other hand, Hallar and Yaser also speak to the presence of Arab immigrants in
Argentina. By representing Arabs as white immigrants who did their part to help whiten
Argentina and who have wholeheartedly adopted Argentina as their new homeland, they
also counter negative images of the Arab immigrants and their descendants. Writing of
our pampas and our gaucho in Spanish is certainly a way of attesting to this. In this
way, Hallar and Yaser insert themselves into Argentinas past and create a space for
themselves in its present.
Hallar and Yaseris texts constitute a response not only to the anti-Arab immigrant
sentiment around them, but to Sarmiento and Lugones projects for Argentina-
exclusionary nation-building projects which make use of the figure of the gaucho-moro.
Hallar and Yaser insert themselves into a national culture through their management of an
icon that was developed first to establish a specifically Argentine character and then to
shut out the immigrant population through this national character. In these Arab
Argentines version of the fictional history of the gaucho they use that which was meant to
delegitimize the immigrant as a means of legitimization.
* * *
Sarmiento uses the figure of the Arab as a conceptual model, a graspable counterpart
to the gaucho, and in this way formulates a national identity which balances between
eschewing barbarism and embracing the gaucho as that which is most Argentine.
Lugones uses the moro to make the conflict-ridden gaucho an Argentine icon, and one
which represents pre-immigration Argentina. Hallar and Yaser utilize Sarmiento and
of identical telluric and environmental formation.
74
Lugones links between Arabs and gauchos to create a deep connection between the
Arab immigrant and Argentina. In the process they turn the gesture of rejection of the
immigrant, that is, the elevation of the gaucho to national hero, into an entry point for the
Arab immigrant into Argentine subjecthood. By drawing out this textual dialogue between
Arabs and Argentines I hope to have elucidated the ways in which the rhetorical
management of two figures-the moro and the gaucho-have been used in negotiating
both conservative criollo and immigrant Argentine identities.
75
1James Monroe, Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Sixteenth Century to the Present)
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970).
2Among various government posts, Sarmiento served as President of Argentina from 1868 to
1873.
3As Andrea Pagni describes it, Sarmiento suffers from a peculiar orfanhoodmbecause he has
killed his parents, Spain-but they remain in his cultural unconscious." [Los viaies y el lugar de la
escritura en los textos de Friedrich Gerstacker y de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Ri'o de la Plata
8(1989): 154.]
4 See Santiago Kovadloff, Esparia en Sarmiento," Viaies Dor Europa. Africa v America 1845-1847
v Diario de gastos. Javier Fernandez, ed., 776.
5 Paul Verdevoye, Viajes por Francia y Argelia, Viajes por Europa. Africa v America 1845-1847 v
Diario de gastos. Javier Fernandez, ed. (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica de
Argentina, 1993) 707. In Recuerdos de provincia Sarmiento traces his mothers maiden name
(and thus his second last name)--Albarracfn-back to a 12th-century Saracen leader.
6This genre-resistent text has also been said to have elements of travelogue and romance. See
Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, A Lost World Re-discovered: Sarmientos Facundo, Sarmiento.
Author of a Nation, ed. T. Halperfn Donghi, et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California, 1994) 220-56, and Marina Kaplan, The Latin American Romance in Sarmiento,
Borges, Ribeyro, Cortazar, and Rulfo." Sarmiento. Author of a Nation, ed. Tulio Halperin Donghi,
et al. 314-46.
7 It is important to note that while the rest of Sarmientos trip consisted of an official mission to leam
about educational systems, his trip to Algeria was not part of the program. In spite of having no
official business in Algeria Sarmiento had been planning, since before leaving Chile, to go there.
His interest in going to Algeria stemmed from the desire to confirm his notions about the
similarities between Arabs and gauchos and the possibility of civilizing the gaucho through
immigration/colonization as the French were attempting to do with the Algerians. Paul Verdevoye
draws attention to this (689-690).
8 Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities. (London and New York: Verso, 1991) 6.
9 See Gonzalez Echevarria, 237; and Solomon Lipp, Sarmiento Revisited: Contradictions and
Curiosities. Sarmiento and His Argentina, ed. J. Criscenti (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienne,
1993) 12.
10 See Lipp, 13.
11 Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California, 1991) 112.
12 See Felix Weinberg (especially pp. 8-9), La dicotomia civilizacion-barbarie en nuestros
primeros romanticos." Rio de la plata 8 (1989): 5-18.
13Hayden White, The Forms of Wildness: Archaeology of an Idea. Tropics of Discourse.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1978) 150-182.
14At a few points throughout this section on Sarmiento I will bring in some of the works which, to
varying degrees, touch upon the Orientalist imagery in Sarmientos writings. Nevertheless, I
would like to present here a brief review of all of these works: Ana Marfa Barrenechea [Funcion
estetica y significacion historica de las camparias pastoras en el Facundo" in Nueva revista de
filologi'a hispanica 15,1 -2 (1961) 321 ] refers briefly to the Orientalist imagery in Facundo and
Ricardo Piglia (Sarmientos Vision," Sarmiento and his Argentina, ed. J. Criscenti, 73-75) makes
some reference to the Orientalist moments in Facundo and Viaies. however neither of the two
scholars problematizes this essentialization of the Other. Jaime Concha, in his essay relating
Facundo to the late 20th-century socio-political scene in the Southern Cone, points to the
implications of the orientalism in Facundo in a footnote without elaborating on them (On the
Threshold of Facundo. 153, n. 9, in Sarmiento. Author of a Nation, ed. T. Halperfn Donghi, et al.).
Margot Scheffold, in Dopoelte Heimat?. Zur literarischen Produktion arabischsprachioer
76
Immigranten in Aroentinien [(Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1993) 15-18], devotes a couple of
paragraphs to images of the Orient in Facundo. Scheffold sees Facundo as an attempt to
construct a spiritual kinship between Argentines and Arabs. She points out that it is notable that
the motif of the Arab enters Argentine literature at the moment in which a national literature is
arising and the search for an Argentine essence begins, yet she does not elaborate further on
this issue. Julio Ramos devotes a few paragraphs to a consideration of the orientalism in Facundo
as it relates to Sarmiento's attempts to establish an authoritative subject position as a subaltern to
European knowledge fDesencuentros de la modemidad en America Latina. (Ciudad de Mexico:
Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1989) 21 -22].
In terms of longer treatments of Facundo. Ricardo Orta Nadal presents a general review of
the manifestations of Ihe Orient in Facundo with some interesting historical background. But
overall his article lacks a critical approach, not to mention any notion of orientalism as essentialist or
as part of a power structure [Presencia de Oriente en el Facundo," Anuario del Instituto de
Investiaaciones Historicas. Facultad de Filosoffa y Letras, Universidad Nacional del Litoral
(Rosario, Argentina) 5 (1961) 93-122]. Carlos Altamirano takes on the important goal of
understanding the workings of the Orientalist imagery in Facundo. but in my view the result is
overly reductive [El orientalismo y la idea del despotismo en el Facundo." Boletfn del Instituto de
Historia Argentina y Americana Dr. Ravignani. Facultad de Filosoffa y Letras, Universidad de
Buenos Aires (3:9, 1994) 7-19].
Olga Fernandez Latour de Botas presents an insightful reading of Africa/Algeria as a
concept and discursive strategy in Viajes. but she never makes the connection between this
conceptual and rhetorical figure, and Orientalist practices [La parabola africana como pre-texto de
Sarmiento Viaies por Eurooa. Africa v America 1845-1847 v Diario de oastos. Javier Fernandez,
ed. (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica de Argentina, 1993) 1053-1071]. Paul
Verdevoye also provides an interesting interpretation of Sarmientos letter from Algeria. His essay
is full of rich historical detail, however, though he mentions the correspondences between
Sarmientos views of the Arab world and those of European writers, he does not relate this to any
notion of orientalism [Viajes por Francia y Argelia," Viaies oor Europa. Africa v America 1845-
1847 v Diario de oastos. Javier Fernandez, ed. (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica de
Argentina, 1993) 689-715]. Mary Louise Pratt presents a brief analysis of Sarmientos epistolary
travel narrative on Algeria, however I find that there are serious oversights in her interpretation
flmperial Eves. Travel Writing and Transculturation. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 192-193].
Slimane Zeghidour, in his newspaper article on Sarmientos letter from Algeria, points to the
relationship between European imperialist notions of the Arab World and Sarmientos views of
Ihe Orient [Sarmiento y su viaje a Argelia, La Gaceta (San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina)
September 4,1983]. My study, then, is the first effort to carry out an in-depth reading of the
Orientalist imagery in both Facundo and Viaies in relation to a critical notion of orientalism.
151am including page references to Sarmientos Facundo (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de
America Latina, 1979) parenthetically within my text I will reference the other main texts being
analyzed in the same manner.
16A few literary critics have pointed to this ambivalence in Facundo: see the work of Noe Jitrik
(Muerte y resurreccion de Facundo. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de America, 1968), Noel
Salomon, Realidad, ideoloofa. v literature en el Facundo de D.F. Sarmiento (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1984), and Carlos Alonso (Facundo y la sabidurfa del poder. Cuademos Americanos 5 (1979):
116-130.
17Shumway, 12.
18Shumway, 70.
19Sarmiento explfcitamente defiende la necesidad de ofr la voz confusa del otro-en el lugar de
la poesfa-ante el requisito de verdad y de saber modemo, racionalizado, Julio Ramos,
Desencuentros de la modemidad en America Latina. (Ciudad de Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
77
Economica, 1989) 24-31.

20Constantin-Frangois de Chasseboeuf Volney, a French Romantic, is, according to Said, one ot
the orthodox Orientalist authorities. rorientalism. 39] Volney wrote The Ruins of Palmyra, from
which Sarmiento quotes in Facundo: La pleine lune a [sic] I'Orient s'elevait [sic] sur un fond
bleuatre auxplaines rives de I'Euphrate (27) Palmyra was once a large city that served as a
desert way-station for caravans. Ricardo Orta Nadal makes reference to an article on the influence
of Volneys writings upon the intellectuals who were active in the Argentine movement for
independence from Spain, known as the hombres de mayo"--men of May-- because of the
Argentine declaration of independence on May 25,1810. [Orta Nadal, Presencia de Oriente en
el Facundo," Anuario del Instituto de Investiaaciones Historicas. Facultad de Filosoffa y Letras,
Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Rosario, Argentina) 5,1961.]
21 Here and throughout the letter from Algeria in Viaies. Sarmiento elides the Berber population
and refers to all of the natives of Algeria as Arabs or Bedouins.
22 Nancy Ruttenburg emphasizes the fictional and performative qualities of such characters' by
referring to them as personalities. See her Democratic Personality: Popular Voice and the Trial
of American Authorship (Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 1998) 8-11.
23Although mixed-race cowboys known as gauchod" have also been a part of Brazilian history, it
is Argentina that comes to mind when we hear the word gaucho, and inversely it is the gaucho
that comes to mind when we hear Argentina. Clearly the gaucho has been promoted in
Argentina as an identificatory symbol of that which is truly Argentine.
24Josefina Ludmer, El aenero oauchesco. Un tratado sobre la oatria (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 1988), 16-18.
25Shumway, 11; also see Shumway, 69-70.
26The French painter Raimundo Augusto Quinsac, known as Monvoisin, lived in Chile for three
months. In 1843 he held an exhibition there of his paintings, including the All Baja," which
Sarmiento attended. Additionally, Monvoisin taught painting while in Chile and among his pupils
was Sarmiento's sister Procesa, who at some point painted a portrait of Sarmiento in which he is
dressed in full Arab garb and seated on a camel. See Orta Nadal (114), Verdevoye (693), and
Ricardo Rojas, El profeta de la pampa. Vida de Sarmiento (Buenos Aires, Losada, 1951).
27Ana Marfa Barrenechea, Funcion estetica y signification historica de las camparias pastoras en
el Facundo." Nueva revista de filoloofa hispanica 15,1-2 (1961) 321.
28Concha, On the Threshold of Facundo." 153, n. 9, in Sarmiento. Author of a Nation, ed. T.
Halperfn Donghi.
29Altamirano, El orientalismo y la idea del despotismo en el Facundo." Boletfn del Instituto de
Historia Argentina v Americana Dr. Ravionani. Facultad de Filosoffa y Letras, Universidad de
Buenos Aires (3:9, 1994).
30La cita del orientalismo en Sarmiento es asf un gesto muy significativo: proyecta por parte de
quien no es europeo, un deseo de inscribirse en el interior de la cultura occidental. Implica un
lugar de enunciacion-ficticio-fuera de la barbarie (lo no europeo), enfaticamente civilizado.
Ramos, 21 -22.
31Sarmiento no solo ocupa, sino que maneja, un lugar subaltemo respecto a la biblioteca
europea. Ramos, 22-24.
32Altamirano, 9. Altamirano builds his analysis on that of Piglia. However, I find that Piglia ignores
the ambiguities of Facundo (as well as that of Sarmientos letter from Algeria) and reduces all of
Sarmientos imagery to binary oppositions when he addresses Sarmientos cultural position and
style of writing: the context for the [analogies and] equivalencies is almost always cultural:
comparison with the Orient (something that was then common) is based upon his reading [....] if
one compares the known with the unknown (Sarmiento's key technique to which we will return) it
is because the unknown (the Orient, Africa, Algiers, etc.) has already been judged and defined by
European thought. They are the regions of the world that endure the expansion of colonialism,
the regions that liberal ideology has begun to define as barbaric and primitive, the regions that
78
must be civilized. Comparison with Europe is the obverse, in the book, Europe is utopia.
Civilization and barbarism each have their own terms of comparison. [...] Gauchos are compared
[...] with Bedouin hordes, not only because the similarity involves a value judgement, but because
of a will to demonstrate that the existence of something in common makes them what they are.
[Sarmiento's Vision," Sarmiento and his Argentina, ed. J. Criscenti., 73-75.] There is no
consideration here of Sarmientos desire to identify, in some way, with the gaucho/Arab.
33Sarmiento, Viajes por Europa. Africa y America (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1981).
34Here, what is at first identical to passages written by European travelers in Latin America which
Mary Louise Pratt appropriately designates industrial revery," becomes the horror of the
colonies. See Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eves. Travel Writing and Transculturation. (New York:
Routledge, 1992), 150.
35Said. Orientalism. 100.
36Said. Orientalism. 102.
37 Interestingly, as the passage continues Sarmiento seems to transpose the terms and refer to
gauchos as Arabs and vice-versa. Orta Nadal indicates that two Argentine historians have
deemed it necessary to defend the gaucho against Sarmientos praise of the Arabs greater skill
(Orta Nadal, 107).
38Sarmiento m/squotes a French author in Facundos epigram. For insightful interpretations of
Sarmiento's mis-quotation (or Americanization) of European sources, see Ricardo Piglia,
Sarmiento the Writer, 127-44; and Concha, both in Sarmiento. Author of a Nation, ed. T.
Halperfn Donghi, et al.
39El intelectual enamorado de la civilizacion europea, se entrega sin restriccion al deleite de
galopar envuelto en el albomoz [....] Ahf no hay lucubraciones teoricas, sino placer a rienda
suelta, en sentido propio y figurado, con la fruicion de asombrar a los [...] que lo acompahan.
Verdevoye, 697.
40 It is noteworthy that desgarrado, which primarily means tom, also has the secondary meaning of
wicked.
Gonzalez Echevarria, 238.
42Domingo F. Sarmiento, Florencia, Venecia, Milan in Viajes oor Europa. Africa y America
(Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1981), 304.
43 Pratt, 192-3, my emphasis.
44Zeghidour, Sarmiento y su viaje a Argelia," La Gaceta (San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina)
September 4, 1983.
45 For a fascinating examination of Sarmientos urge to write not only autobiographies, but
biographies, and of Facundo as an autobiography of Sarmiento, see Sylvia Molloy, The Unquiet
Self: Mnemonic Strategies in Sarmientos Autobiographies. Sarmiento. Author of a Nation. 193-
212.
46On one ocassion a visitor believes Sarmiento to be a miner and is later very suprised by his level
of education. Sarmiento. Recuerdos de Provincia. (Buenos Aires: Hemisferio, 1952) 182-184.
See also Carlos Altamirano and Beatriz Sarlo, The Autodidact and the Learning Machine." ed.
Halperfn Donghi, et al, Sarmiento. Author of a Nation. 166, and 167-8 n. 20.
47See Lipp, 11 and Shumway, 181.
48See Lipp, 14. In another type of role play which seeks to dominate the Other, Sarmiento sits at
Rosas desk after the defeat of his arch-enemy, and writes with Rosas pen. As Kirkpatrick and
Masiello note, the enemies are merged as one in the scene of writing [....] The dichotomies of
self and other are thus resolved through the pen, suggesting the desperate necessity of
Sarmiento to dominate his opponent in order to become fulfilled as an author. The fiction of the
other serves to sustain the self. [Gwen Kirkpatrick and Francine Masiello, Introduction:
Sarmiento between History and Fiction. ed. Halperfn Donghi, et al. Sarmiento. Author of a
Nation. 10.]
43Pratt, 112, my emphasis.
79
50Wilhelm von Humboldt, From the Introduction of His Translation of Aoamemnon." Theories of
Translation. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, eds. Sharon Sloan, trans. (Chicago: University
of Chicago, 1992), 58.
51Sarmiento, Recuerdos de Provincia. 186. For more on Sarmiento and translation (figurative and
literal), see Altamirano and Sarlo, The Autodidact and the Learning Machine," 161.
52Said, Orientalism. 177. Concha (153 n. 9.) begins to answer the question of what particular
texts Sarmiento was reading: Montesquieu, of course. Also, among much else, the works of
Volnev--Les Ruines de Palmvre (1791) without a doubt, since Sarmiento quotes it; and, probably,
Voyage en Svrie et en Eavpte. pendant les annees1783. 1784. et 1785 (Paris, 1787,1792, and
the definitive 1799 edition)--not to mention the numerous miscellaneous articles he must have
explored as an assiduous reader of Revue de Deux Mondes." Zeghidour also points to the fact
that at the time of writing Facundo Sarmiento was reading Sallusts De la historia de las auerras de
Yuaurta and Alixs La historia del imperio otomano.
53 Pratt, 6-7.
54Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University,
1991) ix.
Lowe, ix.
56Lowe, 15. She derives this idea from Foucaults concept of heterotopia, put forth in a
posthumously published essay Des Espaces Autres," translated as Of Other Spaces" by Jay
Miskowiec in Diacritics 16. no. 1, Spring 1986, 22-27.
57Gonzalez Echevarria, 223.
58 Lugones, El pavador (Caracas: Ayacucho, 1979).
59See Gwen Kirkpatrick, The Dissonant Legacy of Modernismo (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1989).
60 For more on the debate which was earned on in a Buenos Aires magazine after Lugones
lectures see Carlos Altamirano and Beatriz Sarlo, Ensayos argentinos. de Sarmiento a la
vanouardia (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de America Latina, 1983) 109-111.
61 See Ezequiel Gallo and Roberto Cortes Conde, Historia Argentina, v.5: La republica
conservadora (Buenos Aires: Paidds, 1972) 163-233 and David Rock Argentina 1516-1987
(University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987) 147-173.
62Carl Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism. Argentina and Chile 1890-1914 (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1970), 110-116. For more on the centennial see also page 147.
63To this end, during the same time period the position of Professor of Argentine Literature was
first set up at the University of Buenos Aires.
64See Josefina Ludmer, El oenero oauchesco. Un tratado sobre la patria. (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1988).
65Rafael Olea, Lugones y el mito gauchesco, Un capitulo de historia cultural argentina (Nueva
Revista de Filoloofa Hispanica. 1990, 38:1) 317.
^ e e Altamirano and Sarlo, Ensavos aroentinos. de Sarmiento a la vanouardia. 74.
^Ganivet, Idearium espariol y el porvenir de Esparia [sixth edition] (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1962).
See pages 17,146, and 151.
68When Castro published this work (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1948) he sparked a debate which was
to continue into the early 1970s. Castros basic thesis was that it was the conflicts, as well as the
daily contact (/a convivencia), between Christians, Moors, and Jews which was central to the
formation of the ser espanoP-the Spanish way of being. Castros Esparia en su historia came in
the wake of the deep questioning brought about among Spanish intellectuals by the Spanish-
American War and the loss of Spains last New World colonies. The Generation of 1898 can be
seen as having posed the questions about Spanish cultural identity which later scholars such as
Castro and Claudio Sanchez Albomoz tried to answer.
80
It is when Castro expanded on the notion of the Arab role in Spanish culture, first
expressed by Ganivet, that other intellectuals began to accept it--although many still rejected it in
an often heated debate. Opposition to Castros argument had to do either with objections to his
placement of Semitic influences alongside Christian traditions at the core of Spanish culture
(rather than Visigoth influences or purely Christian ones as others have argued), with his
historiographic methods and concepts, or with some combination of these. Sanchez Albornoz is
seen by some as the moderate in this debate because rather than privilege either Senecan,
Visigoth, Christian, or Semitic influence he recognizes the impact of all of these groups.
However, his recognition is not an egalitarian one. His view of Arab culture differed from Castro's
to the extent that he considered Arab civilization to be part of Spain but only as the root of all of
Spains ills. See Sanchez Albornoz Esparia v el Islam (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana,
1943). Incidentally, because of his involvement in Spanish politics, Sanchez Albornoz was exiled
from Spain, from 1940 to 1983, in Argentina where he held a university position. See Jose Luis
Gomez-Martmez, Americo Castro y el oriaen de los esoarioles: Historia de una polemics (Madrid:
Editorial Gredos, 1975).
Ludmer, El aenero oauchesco. See also Shumway, 67.
70See Shumway, 68.
71Said, 2.
72In the introductory chapter I discuss the notion of Hispanic Orientalism in Julia Kushigians
Orientalism in the Hispanic Literary Tradition: In Dialogue with Boroes. Paz. and Sarduv
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991). Although my term Hispanic orientalisms"
is a variation on Kushigians Hispanic Orientalism, I find significant theoretical problems in
Kushigians study. I discuss these problems as well in the Introduction.
73While Lugones points to the Arab genealogy of the gaucho in El payador. in other works he
writes about the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants to Argentina. I will consider his portrayal of Arab
immigrants in Chapter 2.
74 A third Arab Argentine, Julio Chaij, also refers to the connection between Arabs (specifically
Bedouins in his case) and gauchos, but sees it as an affinity which arises from geographic and
social, rather than mainly biological, factors. In addition, Chaij points to similarities between the
gaucho and the Syrian fallSh, or peasant. Chaij puts forth these ideas in his seven-page Spanish-
language introduction to the Arabic translation of Martin Fierro by Jawad Nadir [Yauad Nader]
(Martin Fivyaru. Dar Maysalun lil-Tibaah wal-Nashr, [Buenos Aires?] 1956). The Arabic-language
introduction to Nadirs translation, written by the Argentine Orientalist Osvaldo Machado, makes
no mention of Bedouins or Syrian peasants.
75 See Scheffold, 87, n. 304.
76Hallar. El gaucho. su originalidad arabiga (Buenos Aires: Ibrahim Hallar, 1962). Given Halters
apparent intention to point to the Arab origins of the gaucho, it is curious that he uses the word
originalidad" [originality] rather than origen [origin]. It seems that Hallar is trying to emphasize
that that which is new and unique about the gaucho is actually Arab. Scheffold devotes a few
pages to Halter's El gaucho. She raises the important point that Halter downplays his own identity
by foregrounding the Moor and only mentioning in passing the Syro-Lebanese immigrant;
however, her interpretation of the text is skewed by the fact that she conceives of Argentine
culture as pluralistic, that is, free of xenophobic impulses (Scheffold, 90-94, in particular 94; many
thanks to Laura Schattschneider for providing me with a detailed translation of these pages.)
77Yaser published his Arabic works under his original name: HannS Jasir. While Yaser" is the
transliteration of Jasir from Arabic script into Argentine Spanish, Juan is the Spanish-language
equivalent of Hanna."
70Yaser, Herencia arabiaa en America (Cordoba, Argentina: Juan Yaser, 1979) and Fenicios v
arabes en el genesis americano (Bogota: Colgraphex, 1992).
79Others have also undertaken to write the Arab into Argentine history; for example, in an official
publication of the Arab League Hussein Trikis Los drabes y America Latina was published
(Delegacion de la Liga de los Estados Arabes, Buenos Aires, c. 1963) and several articles by
81
Cesar Quiros, President of the Instituto de Estudios Historicos de las Camparias del Desierto,
appeared in the also institutionally affiliated periodical Asuntos Arabes.
80El tango paso por la Andalucfa arabe" (Asuntos Arabes. 5:22, January, 1978).
81 Hallar, Descubrimiento de America por los arabes (Buenos Aires: Ibrahim Hallar, 1959).
82Some of their claims in fact may not be as far-fetched as they seem. Manoelito de Omellas wrote
about the Arab influence, via Portugal, on the Brazilian gaucho in Gauchos e Bedufnos. A oriaem
etnica e a formayao social do Rio Grande do Sul (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio Editora, 1976 [1st
edition, 1956]. The study was in its 3rd edition in 1976 and at least this edition, if not previous
ones as well, was published in conjunction with the Instituto Nacional do Livro, Ministerio da
Educagao e Cultura. Thus, the work was deemed to have scholarly credence by the Brazilian
governments educational branch. There is no indication that Hallar (or Yaser) had any knowledge
of de Omellas text.
83Races" in the broader and older sense of the word, that is, according to current usage, ethnic
groups.
84 For details on the disappointment and subsequent anti-immigrant stances of Sarmiento,
Alberdi, and others see Gladys Onega, La inmioracion in la literature aroentina (1880-19101
(Universidad Nacional del Litoral: Santa Fe, Argentina, 1965).
85 See Solberg for coverage of anti-immigrant sentiment and movements during the 1890 to 1914
period.
86See the Introduction for more on anti-Arab sentiment into the 1990s.
87 In addition Hallar, and to an even greater extent Yaser, express the idea that the immigrant
becomes attached to his/her new land leaving behind previous loyalties.
88A related strategy used by Hallar and Yaser for legitimating the Arab within the Argentine
involves pointing to prominent Argentines with Arab heritage, for example, General San Martins
connection to Algeria and Sarmientos acknowledged Arab ancestry.
89Shumway, 69.
It is difficult to tell, given Halter's irregular transliteration from Arabic script, but it seems that by
chauch he is referring to while by all the other words which he presents as if they were
separate Arabic words he is referring to different forms of the root . Yaser limits himself to
one Arabic etymology, Haushi," meaning marginalized. (Fenicios, 316). By this he is most likely
referring to the root .
82
Chapter 2
WRITING THE ORIENT TO WRITE THE SELF:

ARAB ARGENTINE AND EURO-ARGENTINE
DISCOURSES ON THE ORIENT
To the degree that dissenting positions and

practices are implicated in the very formations they
address and oppose, the articulations of resistance
and opposition by emergent or subaltern positions
are not in themselves necessarily powerful or
transforming. But [...], every position and practice
shifts the conditions and alters the criteria,
arguments, and rhetorical terms of enunciation and
formation in the discourse. In this sense power is not
static, nor does it inhere in an agency or a position or
practice in itself; rather, it is found in the spatial and
relational nonequivalences of the discursive terrain,
in the active shifting and redistribution of the sites of
inscription.
Lisa Lowe
(Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms.
1991)
The gaucho-moro textual nexus-seen in the writings of Sarmiento, Lugones, Hallar,

and Yaser-is part of a much larger body of Euro-Argentine and Arab Argentine texts
which address Ihe Orient.1 Arab Argentines wrote a great deal in Spanish about the
Arab World, though their works are all part of what could be considered a single genre.
Euro-Argentines, conversely, were prolific in writing about the Orient, or using Oriental
imagery, and also wrote about Arab immigrants in Argentina, in both cases using a variety
of literary genres.
The representations of the Orient by Arab and Euro-Argentines-in historico-literary

anecdotes and legends, novels, travelogues, poetry, plays, and short stories-form a
textual dialogue of an oblique kind, one made up, at least to a certain extent, of missed
signals. In spite of the numbers of works published, and the fact that they were all written
in Spanish, this body of writings is as much characterized by communication at cross
83
purposes as it is by actual textual conversation.2 In contrast with the instances of direct
textual dialogue which arise in other sections of this study, these texts establish a
conversation inasmuch as they constitute a field of discourses about the Orient written
from Oriental and Occidental Latin American subject positions. That is, the intersections
are found on the level of representational practices and effects. In this chapter I compare
the representations of the Orient and the Oriental immigrant that are produced by Euro-
Argentines and Arab Argentines during the first half of the 20th century in order to examine
the different, and similar, representational strategies which implicate the Orient in the
formation of identities-whether individual, ethnic, or national.
Unlike Hallar and Yaseris utilization of the figure of the Arab gaucho for insertion into
Argentine culture, the Arab Argentine texts about the Arab world are concerned with
defending and explaining their culture. In this way, their cultural intervention is directed at
the roots of the Arab Argentine situation-orientalism. While in the first fifty years of this
century no Arab Argentines published literary texts written in Spanish about the Arab
immigrant, they produced an abundance of texts about the Arab world which have in
common their joining of the literary with the historical. These narratives are poised at the
juncture between history and literature, as if insisting (as many of the works titles
suggest) upon presenting the truth about Arabs through fiction~or perhaps the fictions
through truth? Some of these historical fictions attempt to directly counter or reformulate
Euro-Argentine discourses; however, in the process, their Arab Argentine authors
sometimes find themselves in a contradictory position vis-a-vis Orientalist discourses.
In contrast with the paucity of entirely fictional writings about the Arab world (not to
mention the Arab immigrant) written by Arab Argentines, there is a plethora of such works
written by Euro-Argentines. Aside from Sarmiento and Lugones deployment of the Arab
gaucho in the formation of Argentine national identity, there is a corpus of Argentine
Orientalist texts which in a variety of ways defines the Argentine through the Arab.
Rather than use the Arab as a metaphor or translation of an Argentine national character,
the authors of these texts define themselves and Argentines in opposition to Arabs, or, in
some cases, they use the web of images surrounding the Arab world to comment on
84
identity constructions--but without extricating themselves completely from that essentialist
web. The Orient, as a far away place or as a new element in Argentina, appears with
particular frequency in Argentine literature from the early to mid-1900s. The role of the
texts within this Argentine Orientalist phenomenon in the construction of self-in marking
difference and toying with sameness-becomes even more salient when we consider that
this escalation in Orientalist production occurred at a time when Oriental immigrants were
being rejected from the Argentine national body.
The Oriental in Argentine Immigration Policy, Law, and Public Opinion
By considering in greater detail the history of anti-Arab sentiment in Argentina,

specifically from the late 1800's through 1955, we can understand what conditions certain
Arab Argentine writers were contending with and responding to, as well as what sort of
milieu fostered the works of many Euro-Argentine writers. Ignacio Klich cites both ethnic
and economic reasons as the main factors behind Euro-Argentine elites consideration of
the Syro-Lebanese as undesirable immigrants.3 In terms of the issue of ethnicity, Carl
Solberg explains that in the early 1900s, although Argentine intellectuals still regarded
Western European immigrants highly,
they generally viewed Syrian, Jewish, or Oriental immigrants with a dislike
approaching disgust. These groups, it was claimed, had deteriorated
biologically to such low levels that they could contribute nothing to the
improvement of the mestizo. Journalists [...] led this defamation. Bitter
newspaper articles frequently appeared condemning Syrians, Jews, and
Orientals as inherently disease-ridden, immoral, and lazy.
Solberg refers to articles, published in La Prensa and La Nation in 1910, which claimed
that the Syro-Lebanese were racially inferior.4 Klich also cites an earlier article which
appeared in The Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language daily. This July 5th, 1898
article displays fear of an ethnic shift in Argentina: The Herald wondered: Are we
becoming a Semitic republic? The immigration of Russian Jews is now the third largest on
the list, whilst Syrian Arabs (Turcos) and Arabians [sic] are also flocking to these
shores.5 In addition to considering Semitic peoples inferior, Euro-Argentines equated all
85
Syro-Lebanese with Muslims.6 Thus, like Jews, Arab Argentines were looked upon as
different and detrimental because of both racial stock and religion.
In terms of the economic factor, Solberg explains that along with the Russian Jews,
Levantine immigrants in Argentina experienced spectacular economic success after 1900.
By 1910 the so-called Turcos owned at least 6,900 businesses scattered throughout the
republic. This led to fears among the Argentine elite about the challenge that the Syro-
Lebanese posed to other small-scale businessmen and complaints that their itinerant
sales not only filled no need in the Argentine economy, but drove established shops out
of business. These opinions were exhibited in the press (from as early as 1902), as well
as in government reports. Government immigration reports of 1899 and 1900 referred to
the dangers posed by Syro-Lebanese ambulatory commerce and referred to these
salesmen with derision as dirty and ragged." A 1910 article in La Nacion went so far as to
say that the deplorable peddling of trinkets by the Syro-Lebanese was a dishonor to the
nation, and to call for the restriction of the immigration of Levantines.7 In addition, Euro-
Argentines took issue with the fact that, aside from the male Syro-Lebanese hawkers,
Syro-Lebanese women were engaging in peddling. In a society in which women were
only beginning to enter the work force, and in which this change was inciting much concern
over morals and traditional values in the face of modernity, these foreign women selling
wares in public spaces were not considered a welcome addition.8
The Syro-Lebanese immigrants, though usually merchants, and with time economically
comfortable and even wealthy ones, were connected to two threats in the Argentina
newly transformed by modernity: the laboring masses and the rising middle class. On
the one hand, the smaller-scale Arab merchants, especially the ones who were just
starting out, targeted the lower income market offering them cheaper goods and a system
of credit They maintained a very low overhead by selling on the street or from door to
door--that is, in public spaces. Thus, they were connected to the public urban spaces,
as well as the immigrant masses whose labor organizing in such spaces was challenging
the oligarchy. On the other hand, whether they had been working in the city or the
countryside, many Arab merchants were accumulating wealth and moving into not only
86
wholesaling but also manufacturing and large-scale agricultural concerns. By around 1914
some immigrants were already in the process of attaining increasing control over commerce
and industry.9 In this way, they embodied the other threat to the elite: the social and
economic changes introduced by middle class entrepreneurial immigrants.
In the case of the Arab (as well as Jewish) immigrants, race, and not economic
concerns, could be raised as the reason for undesirability. Although prosperous Italians
and Spaniards could only be put down through the portrayal of them as dishonest b y
nature,10the category of Semitic" allowed Euro-Argentines to racialize Arab and Jewish
immigrants. This notion of racial difference provided a means by which to easily denigrate
Arab and Jewish immigrants, regardless of whether it was their affluence and rising
influence, or their itinerant street commerce that was really at issue. What was most
probably a pre-existing racial prejudice fed into socio-economic issues which could then
be veiled as racial concerns, such that the factors of ethnic and economic threat became
mutually reinforcing.
Anti-Arab sentiment manifested itself in specific instances of discrimination in the early
part of this century. As Klich phrases it, The bias against Arabs and Jews resulted in
their exclusion from the benefits accorded to the desirable.11 Among the benefits denied
Arab immigrants, was that of a place to stay and food to eat at no cost upon am'val in
Argentina. Humphrey reports that They were denied access to the services, meagre as
they were, of the Immigrants Hotel which provided European immigrants accommodation
and board on arrival."12 More alarmingly, the benefit of equal protection under the law
was routinely not bestowed upon the Syro-Lebanese. Klich, in analyzing Emin Arslans
tenure as Ottoman Consul in Buenos Aires, details the high number of murders of Arabic
speakers during the 1910s, in which the perpetrator of the crime met with impunity. Klich
contextualizes these incidents and also draws out their importance by saying:
Undoubtedly, some Syro-Lebanese committed crimes too; however, this
does not condone the barely veiled lack of interest reportedly displayed
by the Argentine authorities when faced with grievances from this quarter.
Incident followed incident, and always the apprehension prevailed that the
turcos were second-class residents whose lives and deaths were really
matters of indifference to the police and judiciary.13
87
Fourteen such cases were reported to Arslan during a four-year span. Even in an
exceedingly grisly case in which two Syro-Lebanese were hacked to death and left half
buried in a forest, the confessed murderers were held for only four weeks and then set
free. Klich notes that those who petitioned Arslan for help in attaining justice usually felt
at a serious disadvantage when their accusations implicated Argentine nationals. In such
situations, their occasionally articulated fear was that their turco identity would result-if it
had not already done so-in discrimination against them, whether by the police or the
judiciary."4 Considering these cases as well as other factors and sources, Klich
concludes that supplementary evidence points in the direction of these fourteen [cases]
only being the tip of the iceberg, indicative of a larger sample that went unreported.
Thus, these cases prove "that the anti-turco atmosphere afforded their victimizes a not
inconsiderable degree of impunity; put differently, the aggrieveds rights had undoubtedly
been prejudiced in more than one instance."15
Although Argentina never went so far as many other Latin American countries in
establishing legislation banning Arab entry,16 anti-Arab discrimination was seen on a
variety of institutional and legislative levels in Argentina into the 1950s. With regard to
immigrants entry into Argentina, Juan Alsina, the Director of Immigration for nearly 20 yeas
at the turn of the century, expressed, in both official and unofficial publications, preference
for Western European immigrants and the belief that Syro-Lebanese were not suitable
and not assimilatable.7 His influence was wide enough, and his sentiments shared
enough, that the Argentine Senate passed a resolution in 1910 to encourage
governmental tidying up of immigration legislation, among other things to deny entry to the
Syro-Lebanese.18
In 1928 the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Relations (Ministerio de Relaciones
Exteriores) sought to block Arab entry while at the same time avoiding explicit legislation.
Argentine health inspectors started to deny entry to many Syro-Lebanese claiming that
they were infected with trachoma, although Uruguay accepted the entry of these very
same emigres. Mainly, though, Argentina pursued the restriction of Arab am'vals b y
sending specific, though not explicit, new instructions to Argentine consulates abroad.
88
Using coded directives, in January of 1928 foreign ministry officials communicated to the
Argentine consulate in Beirut and other cities what seems to be only the reiteration of
article 3 of law 817 which restricts dissolute or useless immigration However, the
Patronato Sirio-Libanes (a Buenos Aires Syro-Lebanese immigrants protection group)
maintained that the Directorate of Immigrations request to have Syro-Lebanese entry
restricted, pushed that consulate to become systematically resistanf to issuing visas.
The Patronato had the right to intercede on behalf of visa applicants, but even this was
later revoked by the Directorate.19 Syro-Lebanese continued to arrive in small numbers

by entering illegally, but the bad press which this sometimes occasioned only made the
community look worse.20 Apparently the Directorate of Immigrations steps were not
enough for some considering that calls for the limitation of West and East Asian immigration
continued into the late 1930s, as witnessed by a response to a survey of the Museo
Social Argentino (a private center for positivist anthropological research), published in its
bulletin: Restrict the immigration of exotic races, allowing only minimal quotas [....] The
immigration of Orientals should be very restricted.21
The period of nationalist xenophobia reached its height during 'la Decada Infam e'-or
Ihe Infamous Decade of conservative oppression-which began with the 1930 military
coup detat and ended with the military overthrow of 1943, in which Colonel Juan Domingo
Peron took part. Afterwards there was a change in the attitude toward immigration, but not
toward Semitic immigration. Following World War II, the first Peronist government actively
promoted immigration. Perons first quinquennial plan sought to bring in 4 million
Europeans from 1946 to 1951, with the expectation that this would bolster the nations
economic progress. At this time the Immigration Bureau (Direccion General de
Migraciones) and Immigrant Hotel, which had been closed during the 1930s, were
reopened and the National Ethnic Institute (Instituto Etnico Nacional} was founded.22
The National Ethnic Institutes role was to carry out biological and social behaviorist
research on immigrants, in the tradition of Argentine positivist--and sometimes outright
racist-social and natural sciences which had commenced in the late 19th century. The
Institutes research was part of the Peronist plan to mold a homogeneous, unified national
89
body. This research as well as government pamphlets and other official propaganda
expressed a rhetoric of egalitarian assimilation and biological fusion, regardless of race or
ethnicity, using the melting pot metaphor. However, other official documents point to a
preference for the groups who already formed the Argentine majority-Spaniards and
Italians, as well as for Northern Europeans, and a concomitant bias against Middle
Eastern, Eastern European, and Asian immigrants.23
As Amd Schneider puts it the very notion of the melting pot, though apparently
conveying the meanings of equality and homogeneity among immigrants and their
descendants, also contained elements of an ideology of the superiority of certain
immigrants over others, and was based on a supposition that racial differences would
account for social differences.24 Monica Quijada stresses that the Peronist government
was particularly interested in Latin, that is Spanish and Italian, immigrants because there
was a belief that the incoming immigrants should share Argentinas official Roman
Catholicism and Spanish language (or the linguistically related Italian).25 Thus, the
Peronist immigration project, like that of the 19th-century liberal Argentines who started the
last wave of immigration, welcomed only certain kinds of immigrants. However, unlike the
19th-century founding fathers of Argentina, the Peronist government was particularly
interested in Latin immigrants, and, moreover, earned out its promotion of immigration in a
very interventionist manner.25
Against the backdrop of the social, racial, economic, juridical, and governmental policy
dimensions of Argentine orientalism and anti-Semitism we can better understand the
insistence of Arab Argentines upon presenting and re-presenting Arab history and culture
to a Spanish-speaking audience.
Arab Argentine Re-Presentations of The Orient
One area of writing in which Arab Argentines were particularly prolific during the first
half of the twentieth-century is historiography.27 In addition to Hallar and Yaseris works on
90
the Arab origins of the gaucho (as well as tango), and the works on the Phoenician or
Arab discovery of the New World, which try to establish historical connections between
the Arab authors and Argentina, there are texts which display their authors urge to narrate
their Arab origins to Argentines-irrespective of any direct connection to the Americas.
These works, written in Spanish, attempt to debunk myths about the Arab World and
present its rich cultural heritage. Amid the plethora of historical works on the Arab World
only one Arab Argentine wrote a Spanish-language novel which takes place in Greater
Syria--yet it too self-consciously presents the history and culture of the region.28
The most prominent and prolific of the Arab Argentine history writers was Emir Emin
Arslan. Unlike the other Arabs in Argentina, who arrived as immigrants, usually with very
little economic or cultural capital, Arslan arrived as an eminent diplomat of the Ottoman
government. Due to the efforts of certain Arab immigrants in Argentina, an Ottoman
Consulate was established in Buenos Aires in 1910. The Ottoman government then
appointed Arslan as their Consul General there. Arslan was a member of an important
Lebanese family-one of only three Lebanese families in which the male descendants
earned the title Emir [AmTr], that is, prince of a ruling house. A Druze who had been
educated at Beiruts Christian institutions, Arslan had been active in political organizing
and diplomacy.29 He was involved in the Young Turks movement which in 1908 led the
uprising that forced the Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid II to constitutionalize his absolute
monarchy. At that time Arslan was serving as Consul General for the Ottoman
government in Brussels and he stepped down from his diplomatic position in order to be a
part of the Young Turks new government After this, while he was again serving as a
diplomat in a European post, he requested to be transferred to the consulate in Buenos
Aires.
Arslan acted as Consul General in Buenos Aires until 1915 when he publicly censured
the World War I Ottoman alliance with Germany. As a result of his outspokenness he
was discharged from the Ottoman foreign service. His initial criticisms of the Ottoman
government as well as his reluctance to give up the Consulate (which was going to be
handed over to the German diplomatic corps) and his refusal to report back to
91
Constantinople for a hearing, led to the Ottoman governments trying him in absentia and
sentencing him to death. Although the sentence was eventually revoked, Arslan decided
to make Argentina his permanent home.30
Once his official diplomatic career was over Arslan continued his work as a cultural
ambassador1by founding three periodicals and writing La verdad sobre el harem (1916),
La revolucion siria contra el mandato frances (1926), Misterios de Oriente (1932 [2nd ed.]),
La verdadera historia de las desencantadas (1935 [2nd ed.]), Los arabes (c. 1938), and
Las mentiras (1939).31 In addition, throughout the 1930s he regularly wrote pieces for two
of Argentinas leading newspapers, La Nacion and El Mundo.32
While La revolucion siria contra el mandato frances and Las mentiras, a booklet that
focuses on Zionism, express political opinions about specific historical conflicts, La verdad
sobre el harem, and La verdadera historia de las desencantadas focus on the societal
mores surrounding women in the Orient. Misterios de Oriente, a collection of historical
anecdotes and legends, Los arabes, mainly a history of Arab civilization, and many of
Arslans newspaper articles are more general attempts to present the history of the Arab
world and its rich cultural heritage. In some places in these works Arslan goes so far as to
directly counter Orientalist myths; nonetheless, in other ways in these texts he actually
reinforces Orientalist practices and notions.
La verdad sobre el harem [The Truth about the Harem]--given its title and first pages--
seems like an attempt to set the record straight1vis-a-vis women in Arab culture. Yet the
contradictory games of its rhetoric are already hinted at in Arslans preface to the work,
which starts as follows:
Desde aquel entonces, en que abandone mi pafs de Oriente, la
cuestion del Harem se ha convertido en mi en una verdadera obsesion,
hasta transformarse a veces en pesadilla. No pod fa presentarme en
sociedad, ya fuese en reuniones o comidas, sin que me formularan la
siguiente pregunta: el Harem? i k cuantas mujeres tiene derecho? [...]
--Es cierto que en Oriente tiene uno el derecho de poseer varias mujeres?
[....]
Y en resumen; raro es el caso que [...] me he escapado de tal
pregunta, y es curioso ver, cuando el tema se halla sobre el tapete, los
distintos gestos del auditorio; en los ojos de los hombres se perciben la
llamas de la envidia, mientras que en los de las mujeres puede traducirse el
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odio entremezclado de colera, y sin embargo, no merezco ni colera de
unas, ni ia envidia de otros [...]* (5-7, my emphasis)33
Arslan goes on to defend himself personally by saying that he neither came up with the
Islamic laws pertaining to marriage nor has he ever put them into practice in his own life.
In this passage La verdad sobre el harem is established as a defense, yet, in the first
sentence, there is also an undertone of excessive desire. Arslan speaks of the question
of the harem as a true obsession and yet also a nightmare. As he continues and
describes how people constantly ask him about the harem it is the phrase true
obsession which does not seem to fit. Arslan refers to the harem as his obsession, but it
is really everyone elses obsession with the harem and their resulting questions which
become a nightmare for him. Understood in one way, though Arslan constantly thinks
about the harem, he blames others questions for making the topic omnipresent in his life.
Or, conversely, Arslan takes upon himself that which is the fixation of others. This odd
ambiguity concerning to whom this excessive desire to think about the harem belongs is
no doubt linked to other forms of equivocal desire elsewhere in the text.
At the end of the preface Arslan states his core purpose in writing this work and makes
a warning about the contents of the book:
Yo no intento en este libro justificar ni condenar las costumbres;
simplemente pretendo presentar las razones y explicarlas desde un punto
de vista fisiologico y social.
He aquf por que deseo que este libro, tal como un tratado de cirugfa
ilustrado, no se encuentre sobre las mesas al alcance de todas las manos,
y honni soit qui mat y pense...0 (7-8)
aSince that point in time, in which I left my country in the Orient, the question of the Harem has
turned into a true obsession forme, to the point of sometimes becoming a nightmare. I could not
go out in society, be it to a gathering or a dinner, without being asked the following question:
What about the Harem? How many women do you have the right to have? [...] -Is it true that in the
Orient one has the right to have various women? [....] And in sum; the cases in which [...] I have
escaped such a question are rare, and it is curious to see, when the topic is placed on the table,
the different gestures of the listeners; in the eyes of the men one sees the flames of envy, while
in those of the women one can translate hate mixed with anger, however, I deserve neither the
anger of some, nor the envy of others [...] [added emphasis]
131am not trying in this book to justify or condemn custom; I simply seek to present the causes and
explain them from the physiological and social point of view. It is for this reason that I would like
that this book, such as an illustrated surgical treatise, not be found on tabletops within reach of ail
hands, and honni soit qui mal y pense..." [shame on he who has bad thoughts...]
93
Although Arslan presents La verdad sobre el harem as an objective, scientific explication,
whose explicit contents should not fall into the wrong hands, and should not be looked to
with bad thoughts, that is, with a dirty mind, his treatment of the subject of the harem
belies this presentation.
A large part of La verdad sobre el harem is dedicated to historicizing the myths
surrounding marriage in Muslim societies, the harem, and the veil. For example, Arslan
explains the Qurans stipulation that Muslim men are allowed a maximum of four wives for
whom they can care equally, and he notes that this was a reform of earlier pagan
polygamic practices. In terms of the harem, he describes how the last harem that was
actually like those of Oriental legends came to an end when the Sultan Abd al-HamTd was
dethroned, tells of prominent women in the Ottoman harem throughout history, and
explains the hierarchy and ceremonial protocol of the harem. Arslan also offers a history of
the veil in which he presents an anecdote about the prophet Muhammad and his favorite
wife Aishah, as well as certain Quranic verses, as the origin of the practice of veiling. He
then complicates common notions about the veil by pointing out that Oriental women
speak of the advantages of the veil and that many Christian women in the Orient choose
to wear the veil.34
However, early on in his account of these Middle Eastern practices and institutions,
Arslan presents certain positivist, biologically determinist views, which, while common
currency at the time in which he wrote, undoubtedly open the door to the very titillation
which Arslan professes to not be the intention of his writing. In addition to expressing
various biologically determinist notions pertaining to womens sexuality, Arslan cites
Darwin (as well as other European scientists and sociologists) and statistics on the birth
rate of males versus females as scientific proof for the need for polygamy. As part of this
argumentation Arslan cites el sabio A. Debay who has proven that Los orientates
poseen un cerebelo y un sistema sexual mas desarrollado que los pueblos del Norte, y
94
esta conformation ffsica, predispone mas a los primeros a la propagation.8 (18-19)
Later, in the midst of his otherwise straightforward account of the veil, the desire for
titillation reappears. After recounting the story of Muhammad and Aishah, Arslan jumps
from some Quranic quotations to an anecdote which he introduces as Lo mas picante de
la historia.6 (45) The anecdote consists of the recounting of a debate between a Turkish
diplomat in Paris and one of the desencantadad (the women of the Turkish harem
portrayed by Pierre Loti in Las desencantadas35) which took place in the pages of the
newspaper El Figaro. The desencantada (living in Paris after her escape from the harem)
presents an alternate version of the story about Muhammads institution of the practice of
veiling in which Muhammad convinces a friends beautiful wife to marry him, and then
realizes that any other man who saw her face might do the same. By framing this version
of the genesis of the veil as picante Arslan undoes his claims to scientific objectivity and
his admonishment of those who look upon his expose of the harem as a source of erotic
material.
The realm of the erotic surfaces more clearly after Arslan presents European cultural
cognates to contextualize Islamic polygamy and the physical separation of women in the
space of the harem and moves into other details of harem life. Arslans comparative line of
argumentation forms a central part of his efforts to historicize Middle Eastern social
practices and institutions. Interspersed throughout, as well as in particular chapters on the
institution of the harem and the harems courtesans, concubines, and slaves, we find
information about analogous customs in Ancient Greece and Rome as well as in
contemporary Europe in general. The goal of these comparisons is to bring out the history
of such practices in Europe and thereby make the Oriental customs less foreign and
reprehensible. Among other things, Arslan points out that polygamy, as well as
courtesans and concubines, have existed in European history; that in contemporary
Europe prostitution and amorous affairs take place because of official monogamy, and
8the learned A. Debay [who has proven that] Orientals possess a more developed cerebellum
and sexual system than the peoples of the North, and this physical structure predisposes the
former to propagation.
6The most risque part of the story
95
constitute a de facto polygamy; and that the harem is analogous to the gynaeceum of
Ancient Greece. Arslan continues to use this type of argumentation in his chapter on a
famous component of the harem: eunuchs. He indicates that eunuchs existed in ancient
civilization (corroborated by their appearance in the Bible), in the early Church, and in
medieval Italy. Then, after detailing the three different methods of castration and
mentioning clitoridectomy (as womens castration) he presents a series of legends and
anecdotes about castration whose aim of titillation is obvious.
All three of these short historical narratives take place in Europe, and, while the first
presents the joint horror and fascination of the violence of castration, the second and third
pieces use female protagonists to present castration with risque humor. The first narrative
is the legend of the eunuch Hermotimes vengeance against his castrator, Pannonius, as
told by Herodotus. The graphic detail of this narrative, like that in the relation of the
methods and effects of castration and clitoridectomy, functions to evoke aversion
commingled with curiosity, horror together with a desire to know more. In the next two
narratives this perverse fascination becomes direct sexual suggestiveness. The second
narrative tells the story of the wife of a soldier in Italy during the Middle Ages, when, we
are informed, it was common practice to castrate prisoners of war. The wife goes to the
Marquis in charge of the troops who have taken her husband prisoner and reproaches him
for waging war against women. When the Marquis claims to have never hurt a women
she responds: --jComo! <j,No es acaso la guerra a las mujeres, y la mas terrible,
quitaries a sus maridos los organos que dan a nuestro cuerpo la salud, y que son para
nosotras la esperanza de la posteridad? Mi marido tiene ojos, orejas, pies, manos; todas
estas partes son enteramente de el; haced lo que querais de ellas, pero respetad las
demas que son de vuestra servidora. (81) In response, the Marquis laughs but also
returns her husband to her in his entirety. The third piece is a short anecdote about a
French princess in the 16th-century. The princess hears a blind man begging for alms
a-What! Does it not happen to be war against women, and of the most terrible sort, to take from
their husbands the organs that give our bodies health, and that are for us the hope of posterity?
My husband has eyes, ears, feet, hands; all of these parts are entirely his; do what you please with
them, but respect the rest for they are your humble servants.
96
with the following words: Tened piedad de un pobre desgraciado que ha perdido todas
las alegrfas de la vida,aand she immediately assumes that he is a eunuch. (82)
After establishing his explication of the harem as a serious work not meant for erotic
enjoyment, Arslan goes on to include titillating tidbits of information and suggestive
narratives. This equivocation can be understood as either fulfilling (or at least gesturing
toward) his readers expectations concerning the sensuality of the harem and the Orient in
general, or as toying with readers images about the Orient by first taking a stance of
scientific objectivity and then teasing the reader with several suggestive passages.
Whether actually intending to provide some measure of erotic material as the fulfillment of
preexisting notions about the East, or simply trying to toy with readers expectations, the
final effect would be the same: the images of a voluptuous and sensual East are
reinforced. However, we must not forget that the three main sources of eroticism in the
text--the three anecdotes presented above-take place in Europe, among Europeans. In
this way, the sensuality as well as oddity and violence of the sexuality of the Other is
turned back on itself, as the titillation provided comes from the o/Other self-the self which
like the Other is violent and sexual, and violently sexual. The desire for sensuality,
expressed in the obsession with the sexual mores of the Other-the constant questioning
about the harem-is satisfied with the equally perverse sexual mores of the self.
These reversed desires, rather than feed the wish for lurid Eastern tales, help to
position Arslan as the arbiter of all things Oriental. In the last sections of La verdad sobre
el harem Arslan directly counters European representations of the Orient and establishes
himself as one who can speak with authority about the Middle East. He criticizes
European depictions of what life is like for women in the harem, rectifies the common image
of scantily clad women lounging about with a troop of slaves in attendance, and
specifically finds fault with Lotis Las desencantadas in this regard. He points out that
Lotis claim that Las desencantadas was a fiction that Loti himself produced is false and
points to the fact that the book was written in collaboration with the actual women whose
lives it describes. Arslan purports to set the record straight on the basis of his personal
aHave pity on a poor unfortunate one who has lost all the joys of life.
97
connection with some of the people involved in the lives of the desencantadas and he
closes the text with a very dismissive attitude toward Lotis work and others like it. He
indicates that in spite of the stir which the book caused around the world, in the Ottoman
empire nobody took offense at what Loti wrote about Oriental women, because Se
sabia a Loti amigo del Islam, y por otra parte, mis compatriotas son tolerantes por
naturaleza, sabiendo que se han escrito infinidad de zonceras a su costa, y un libro mas o
menos no les podia impresionar."3 (154) In this way, Arslan both reserves for himself
(and for other Orientals) the right to represent the Orient--and even to manage the Orient
as the site of erotic desire, to present fact alongside titillating narrative, and discredits Lotis
work and the web of zonceras, of foolishness or trivialities, surrounding the Orient in
general.
Curiously, in La verdadera historia de las desencantadas [The True Story/History of

the Disenchanted] the highly critical perspective on Lotis work that Arslan expresses in
La verdad sobre el harem is nowhere to be found, yet his interest in establishing who has
the right to represent the Orient is elaborated further. Arslan starts La verdadera historia
by proving-mostly through a statement published in a Paris newspaper by one of the
women depicted in Las desencantadas--that the novel was in fact the recounting of actual
events. He then mentions that this letter by Zennur (Zeyneb in the novel) in Le Figaro
Es una contestacion a unas criticas de algunos periodistas que jamas habfan puesto los
pies en Turquia y no conocian nada del Oriente, como suele encontrarse a menudo en el
periodismo europeo y sobre todo en el norteamericano.0 (8)* This censure of statements
made in the press about the Orient, which seems to skirt any implication of Argentine
newspapers, is then followed by praise for Loti as someone who did know Turkey well--
and as a result knew how genuine the Ottomans were:
a Loti was known to be a friend of Islam, and, on the other hand, my compatriots are tolerant by
nature, knowing that an infinite amount of foolishness has been written to its detriment, and one
book more or less could not affect them.
DIt is a response to criticisms by some journalists that had never stepped foot in Turkey and were
not familiar with the Orient, as one frequently tends to find in European, and especially in North
American, journalism.
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nunca el Oriente en general, y Turquia en particular, han tenido un amigo
mas entusiasta, mas sincero y mas fiel que el famoso escritor y academico
trances Pierre Loti. Es verdad que muchos escritores, antes y despues de
el, que han vivido en Turquia y se han mezclado con los turcos, estaban
de acuerdo con Loti, y participaban de su opinion respecto al caracter
genuino de ellos, pero nadie ha sido mas consecuente, y mas persistente
que Loti.a (12)
Arslan follows this panegyric for a Turcophile with citations of the positive estimations of
Ottomans written by French and English writers, among them Lord Byron. Arslan then
tells the story of Lotis love for Aziade (which inspired Lotis novel Aziade37 and recounts
the events which form the basis of Las desencantadas (relying heavily on quotes from
the novel itself). Arslan adds at the end of La verdadera historia the story of how he and
his cousin were involved (rather tangentially, in the case of Arslan) in the events of the
novel and in two of the desencantadas?s subsequent escape from the harem.
One can only conjecture what communication with Loti, what publishing market
interests, or what specific events in Argentina might have led to Arslans change in attitude
toward Loti and Las desencantadas. Regardless, this change becomes part of a set of
specific strategies used by Arslan in this text: to criticize unfounded commentary about
the Middle East, to present first-hand accounts of events in the Middle East, and, rather
than criticize someone who has lived in the Ottoman Empire and said relatively positive
things about the Orient, to praise him and his confreres. In the final page of La verdadera
historia Arslan states very clearly his objective of clearing up myths about the Orient and
his advocacy of doing so through self-representation or speaking on the basis of some
form of lived experience or contact with the Middle East:
Tal vez algunos encontraran que he abusado en mi relato de las citas. Mi
objeto es, como ya lo manifesto en el Prefacio, poner fin a todas las
leyendas y fantasias acerca de las heroinas de la novela de Pierre Loti,
que tanto ha apasionado al mundo. Pues bien; no es la mejor prueba de
la veracidad de un acontecimiento la de dejar que sus protagonistas
refieran directamente los sucesos en que les toco actuar?6 (158)
a never in the Orient in general, and Turkey in particular, have they had a more enthusiastic, more
sincere, and more faithful friend than the famous French writer and academic Pierre Loti. It is true
that many writers, before and after him, that have lived in Turkey and have mixed with the Turks,
were in agreement with Loti, and shared his opinion with respect to their genuine character, but
nobody has been more true to his word, and more persistent than Loti.
0 Perhaps some will find that I have abused of the use of quotes in my account. My objective is, as
1already stated in the Preface, to put an end to all of the legends and fantasies surrounding the
heroines of Pierre Loti's novel, which has so impassioned the world. Now then; is it not the best
99
Misterios de Oriente [Mysteries of the Orient] is in a sense an enactment of this type

of quest for veracity, though, as occurs in both La verdad sobre el harem and La
verdadera historia, the Orient is presented through pseudo-historical narrative. In this
text, Arslan presents eight separate short narratives in which he recounts historical
events, legends, and anecdotes from Ottoman history of the seventeenth through
nineteenth-centuries, as well as events from his own youth in Lebanon. Although Arslan
is not personally connected to all of the stories he narrates, he can claim some authority
based on his ties to the Ottoman empire. In an inversion of what we saw in La verdad
sobre el harem, the title of this collection of legends and anecdotes leads one to believe
that it will not simply present facts, but rather that it will disclose tantalizing pieces of
information. That is, what is foregrounded in the title, as well as in certain passages in the
text, is not bare truth, but compelling mystery. Thus, like Arslans monograph on the
harem, on a certain level Misterios de Oriente creates the impression that Arslan is
reinscribing the exotic mystique of the Orient.
Arslan starts the first piece in Misterios de Oriente, Una sultana francesa, [A French
Sultana] by putting the events he will recount on par with the stories from the 1001
Arabian Nights: La aventura de esta pequeria francesita que ha llegado al trono del
imperio otomano [...] es digna de ser contada por Scherzade en sus Mil y una Noche1
[sic]."* (9) He then continues with the story of a French girl who, at the age of two, was
kidnapped by corsairs, was eventually given as a present to the Ottoman Sultan, and
then became a powerful Sultana, even though she was still a Christian. Interestingly, the
next story, Un hijo de sultan fraile Dominico, [A Sultans Son Dominican Friar"] acts as a
counterpoint to this first one in that it recounts the tale of the son of an Ottoman Sultan
who at age two was kidnapped by the Knights of Malta, was soon baptized into
Catholicism, and then became a Dominican friar. However, unlike in the first tale in which
the fact that the little French girl became a powerful and beloved Sultana is emphasized, in
proof of the veracity of an occurrence to let its protagonists relate directly the events in which it
was their lot to take part?
100
this story what is highlighted is that the Sultan-to-be turned friar was used as a pawn b y
the friars of his order in their international political machinations. The upshot then of this
point-counterpoint structure is to subtly praise the East-for raising a woman to power and
treating her with affection-and also to indirectly vilify the W est-for turning an heir to the
sultanate into a pawn. Although the first story is compared to a fantastic Oriental tale, in
the end the Orient at least offers the Occident a fabulous rise to power, while the
Occident offers the Orient only the position of an exploited fool.
The other six tales in Misterios de Oriente interconnect as counterbalanced pairs in a
similar fashion. In the third narrative a European (the French grandfather of the
desencantadas) who is taken in by Orientalist visions is made fun of:
Como todos los europeos, [el conde de Chateauneuf] tenia ideas
extravagantes y fantasticas sobre el haren. Muchos siguen creyendo que
se vive todavia hoy, en Oriente, como en Las mil y una noches. [...] B
conde, pues, al pisar el suelo de Turquia, no tuvo mas que una sola idea:
formar un haren. Como no podia hacerlo siendo cristiano, no vacilo en
convertirse al islamismo.
Hay que suponer que su fe en la religion de sus padres y
antepasados no era muy firme [....] Una vez disfrazado de turco, el ex
conde se caso con una circasiana [...;] el senor conde no conto con ese
sentimiento elevado y divino [el amor], pues la pequeha y pobre
circasiana supo apoderarse sin ningun esfuerzo del corazon del frances
burlon, a tal punto que renuncio a su proyecto y no quiso saber mas nada
del haren.(33-35)
Meanwhile in the fifth piece we are presented with the enticing mysteries of the Orient in
the form of an account of the idiosyncrasies of the Sultan Abd al-Hamfd and the opulence
of his court. With passages resembling the zigzagging rhetoric of La verdad sobre el
harem, the tale provides by turns titillating details and corrections of misconceptions about
the harem and palace life.
* The adventure of this little French girl who reaches the throne of the Ottoman empire [...] is
worthy of being told by Shahrazad in her 1001 Arabian Nights.
Like all Europeans, [the Count of Chateauneuf] had extravagant and fantastic ideas about the
harem. Many continue to believe that still to this day life, in the Orient, is lived like in The 1001
Arabian Nights." [...] The Count, then, upon touching Turkish soil, did not have other than a
single idea: to form a harem. Since he could not do so as a Christian, he did not hesitate to
convert to Islam. One must suppose that his faith in the religion of his parents and forebears was
not very firm [....] Once he was disguised as a Turk, the ex-Count married a Circassian [...;] his
excellency the Count did not count on that elevated and divine sentiment [love], for the small and
poor Circassian was able to take over with no effort the heart of the French mocker, to the degree
that he abandoned his project and did not want to have anything else to do with the harem.
101
The fourth piece consists of Arslans recollections of a boyhood trip through the
Lebanese countryside in which his path nearly crossed with that of the lascivious King
Milano of Serbia-whose pedophilic orgies were within earshot. Then in the sixth narrative
Arslan describes the eccentricities and prodigious spending of a Persian Shah visiting
Paris. Although he introduces the piece by saying Las cosas de Oriente interesan
siempre a los lectores por su exotismo. Muzafer Edin, rey de los reyes... y cha de Persia
era el soberano mas pintoresco,* (75) he emphasizes that these extravagances exist
only among the elite, and it is implicit that they are much tamer than those of the lecherous
European monarch described earlier. It is worth noting that his one reference to Argentines
in this entire collection of narratives occurs in this story and points to a fault shared by the
Persian Shah and Argentines. The shared inability to be on time and maintain a schedule
creates a fledgling cultural identification between Argentines and Easterners (albeit
Persians and not Arabs).
The seventh piece, a glowing appraisal of the life of Enver Pacha, a figure in Ottoman
politics, forms a counterbalance to the last piece, a sardonic estimation of the French
Orientalist Chateaubriand. In this last piece, Arslan criticizes what Chateaubriand calls
his pilgrimage to Jerusalem as a stopover on his way to meet his lover in Granada. Thus,
throughout the collection of historical narratives and anecdotes, the Mysterious East is
consistently counterbalanced by an insidious, or at least laughable, West. While the title
extends a promise of mysteries revealed, the text does not so much reiterate the Orients
exotic mystique, as it uses it to at once critique Europe and qualify notions about the
Middle East.
By the late 1930s Arslans approach to representing the Orient had changed
somewhat as witnessed in Los arabes: Reseria historico-literaria v levendas [The Arabs:
An Historico-Literary Account and Legends].39 This work begins with some one hundred
pages of information about the history, geography, culture, and religious groups of the
Arab world, including chapters with titles such as: La democracia de los arabes, La
aThings about the Orient always interest readers because of their exoticism. Muzafer Edin, king
of kings... and Shah of Persia was the most colorful sovereign.
102
Tolerancia Musulmana, La poesfa arabiga, La astronomfa de los arabes, Los arabes
llevaron la antorcha de la civilization a traves del mundo," La filosoffa arabe en Europa,
and En la Edad Media, Europa recibio de los arabes casi todas sus ciencias. In addition
to highlighting the historic contact and interchange between Arabs and Europeans, and
especially the advances of Arab civilization that spread to Europe, Arslan refutes certain
commonly held notions about Muslim religious intolerance, the prophet Muhammad, Arab
women and the harem, and Arabic poetry as obscurantist and overly hyperbolic (which
he blames on poor translations).
At some points Arslan takes his defense of the Arab world further and uses a type of
counterpoint argumentation in which he proves the falsehood of a negative event
associated with the Orient and adds that such a thing actually did occur in the Occident.
For instance, he disproves the burning of the library of Alexandria by Arabs, and then
points to the actual burning of books earned out by Europeans in the Crusades and the
Spanish Reconquista, and later he clarifies the notion of Islamic jihad and brings up the
Spanish Inquisition and Spaniards forced conversions of the indigenous peoples of the
New World.
Los arabes also serves to break down the separation of the categories of Argentine
and Arab; that is, it brings out intersections between those things which are understood
to define each category and thereby dissolves these categories enough to insert the Arab
into the Argentine. This is seen, for instance, when Arslan brings in a criollo Argentine
adage to help explicate Islamic law as it pertains to women and mam'age. In another
section, the existence of prominent, accomplished Christian Arabs is evinced, such that
the conventional Argentine belief that Arab (cultural or ethnic Other) means Muslim
(religious Other) cannot hold. The numbers of Muslims present in Argentina, along with
practitioners of various other Near Eastern religions, is also referred to explicitly in the text.
aArab Democracy, Muslim Tolerance," Arabic Poetry, Arab Astronomy, The Arabs Took the
Torch of Civilization throughout the World, Arab Philosophy in Europe," and In the Middle
Ages, Europe Received from the Arabs Almost All of its Sciences.
103
The historical section of Los arabes is followed by about seventy pages of Arab
legends in which more than a dozen legends are presented in a straightforward manner;
that is, without the titillation seen in La verdad sobre el harem or the structure of
juxtaposition with narratives about Europe seen in Misterios de Oriente. Rather than play
with the Orient as a site of erotic desire or make a statement about Europe through the
contrast between different legends, these pieces simply present a complimentary picture
of Arab civilization. Often centered around a proverb or moral, they illustrate the literary
and philosophical abilities, generosity, faithfulness, nobility, and/or honorable love of Arab
men and women from the pre-lslamic period through the era of the Arab empire. Thus, on
the one hand, in this work Arslan moves away from presenting only anecdotes and
legends; he distances himself from the hazy area between historical and fictional
narratives. Yet, on the other hand, though the legends are present almost as an
addendum to the explication and clarification of Arab culture, by including them Arslan still
does not completely disconnect Arab history from the realm of legend.
In addition, Los arabes is not without its rhetorical incongruities, similar to the
reinforcement of stereotypes of Oriental sexuality and mystery which arise in his other
works. A curious contradiction which occurs with particular frequency in Los arabes.
though it is also present in some of Arslans other works, is that in addition to Arab sources
and personal knowledge, Arslan often uses as support for his statements the very
histories produced by European Orientalists which find their way into Euro-Argentine
intellectuals' hands. The same European scholars, such as Gustave Le Bon and the
Baron Silvestre De Sacy, whose works had educated, and stood to continue educating,
Argentines in the logic and imagery of orientalism are cited by Arslan as authorities. In this
way, Arslan finds himself in the contradictory position of contesting Orientalist images of
the Arab World while using the type of support that will legitimate his claims the most--the
works of European Orientalists. The pattern that emerges in Arslans works, then, is that
neither fact nor fiction, but a melange of the two, is the privileged form for re-presenting the
104
Arab world and that every work of re-presentation contains within it some element of
ambiguity in the form of (potential) reinscriptions of the very discourses being resisted.
* * *
Arslans publications, which seem to have enjoyed success in the marketplace,40 were
accompanied during the next few decades by various other Arab Argentine texts which
present the history and culture of the Arab world, often including a component of legends
and anecdotes.41 One such work is Jose Guraieb's Sabiduria arabe (1949).42 Guraieb
was a Maronite Syrian (bom in Tartus, Syria in 1896) who immigrated to Argentina in
1913. There he worked in a sugar mill and in journalism, and, by the time of his death (in
Cordoba, Argentina in 1988), he had written plays and poems in Arabic and published a
long list of literary, philosophical, and anecdotal works mostly in Spanish, as well as a
number of translations (chiefly from Arabic into Spanish).43 In the wake of the success of
Sabidurfa arabe, which four years after its first publication (of 3,000 copies) already had
two more editions printed (each of 5,000 copies), and by 1978 had a sixth edition,
Guraieb was elected to the writers union of Cordoba and became the first chair of Oriental
Studies at the Escuela Superior de Lenguas [The School of Languages] of the National
University of Cordoba.44
As the title Sabidurfa arabe [Arab Wisdom] might suggest, Guraieb wrote in a more
mystical, proverbial vein than Arslan. Sabidurfa arabe, after a twenty page preface
which presents information on various Arab philosophers and poets, mostly contains
sections dealing with topics such as superstition, dreams and visions, oratory, truth,
justice, family, gratitude, destiny, and death by way of Guraiebs own philosophical
meditations or anecdotes and proverbs from the Arab world. These sections provide
some information on the history, culture, and customs of the Arab world, but mostly it is via
strings of proverbs attributed to famous Arabs, and anecdotes about famous Arabs or
ordinary Bedouins. Thus the work attempts to treat what is designated by the Arabic
word hikmah, which Guraieb refers to briefly in his preface and means wisdom; sagacity;
philosophy; maxim; rationale, underlying reason.45 Yet, even more so than the mystery
105
and eroticism in Arslans works, these esoteric philosophical meditations, anecdotes, and
proverbs, do as much to present a more positive picture of the Orient as they do to
redraw the lines which fix the Orient as the mysterious land of mesmerizing spirituality and
recondite wisdom. In short, though a positive projection of the Arab world, Guraiebs work
engages in a form of essentialism.
In contrast to the corpus of historico-literary works that defend, or at least represent,
Arab culture, almost none of the Arab Argentine writings in Spanish published before the
1980's, that are fiction proper, represent in any way Arabs or the Arab World.156 The
single exception to this is Jorge E. Adoums Adonay. Novela iniciatica del colegio de los
magos (1948 [2nd ed.])47 Set in Lebanon in the early 1900s, this novel is, in turn, highly
historical in content. Along with the story of the spiritual journey, and romantic
relationships, of a young Lebanese Christian man who goes to live with the Druze, the
novel presents a great deal of historical and cultural material, often outright explanation,
regarding the Arab world. Additionally, in connection with the mystical-philosophical
experiences of the protagonist, notions about the unity of humankind across religious and
ethnic lines are expounded upon. This work too, though, reinscribes, and fulfills the desire
for, an esoteric, mystical Orient.
Arslan, and even more so Guraieb and Adoum, in the process of presenting their
versions of the Orient also re-present stereotypical notions about the Orient, thereby
raising questions about the limitations of attempts at resisting dominant discourses. In
Arslans case, it seems that, at least at certain moments in his texts, he is consciously
manipulating these essentialized notions about the Middle East as part of the rhetoric of
his textual defiance. One added element of this incorporation of that which is known to
be the Orient--of this fulfillment of the desire to find eroticism, mystery, and mysticism in
the O rient-of which all three writers may have been aware, is its appeal in the
marketplace. Perhaps interest in manipulating publishing houses and readers alike, b y
augmenting the Oriental allure of their works, was to some extent responsible for putting
these writers in the precarious position of creating interest through one set of stereotypes
while attempting to counter another set of stereotypes. These Arab Argentine writers
106
would then be appropriating the difference with which they had been marked in order to
use it for their own purposes.
Another question about these Arab Argentine texts remains: what was the impetus
behind bridging the genres of history and fiction, why did these writers respond to the
often hostile atmosphere surrounding them with different combinations of the real and the
Yictive? Certainly, the emphasis on a historical component attests to a desire to combat
free-floating images about the Arab world with a grounding in fact. But why also include
elements of the literary in the mix? Perhaps these works are not more purely historical-
according to the common conception of history as fact-because the social climate was
such that a direct and completely obvious defense--an entirely factual account--wou!d not
have been accepted or at least would not have been as effective, and instead more
oblique approaches would be more useful. Conceivably, issues of marketability and
readership were also a factor in this sense.
Furthermore, how do these historico-literary works function within a cultural field of
fantastic European constructions about the Orient? What effect can such representations
have? Although as historical accounts they act as defenses of self which emphasize fact
over image, at the same time, by maintaining elements of a fantastic, literary Orient these
self-representations can fall into the reinscription of stereotypes about the Orient.
However, by presenting history with a markedly imaginative vein and literary narrative
with a claim to truth, these writers not only present the truth about Arab culture through
fiction, but they accentuate the fictions about Arab culture through truth. That is, their
works stand to highlight that even fact is not devoid of fiction.
The Orient in Argentine Letters
The history of anti-Arab prejudice in Argentina that I outlined above also helps in
understanding a whole body of Euro-Argentine literature. Throughout the first decades of
the 20th-century, alongside nationalist xenophobia and specifically anti-Semitic
107
discrimination, images of the Orient abroad as well as the Orient at home circulated
simultaneously in both popular and high literary forms. In this section on Argentine
Orientalist texts, my aims are not only to establish that a substantial body of Orientalist
works was written by Argentines during the first half of the 20th century, but to consider
the connections between this proliferation of Orientalist writings and the time period in
which they were written when anti-Arab sentiment was particularly strong. Moreover, b y
examining several examples of the variegated orientalisms produced by these writers, I
consider both how these works represent the Orient and how the Orient functions in
these works.
This corpus of writings by Euro-Argentines either responds in some way to the
historical reality of the Arab presence in Argentina, or, more often than not, to the world of
images surrounding the Orient and by extension Orientals in Argentina. I use the works
of Julian Toscano, Leopoldo Lugones, Napoleon Taboada, the sainete theater genre,
Roberto Arit, and Jorge Luis Borges as illustrations of some of the different types of
Argentine orientalisms.48 In analyzing these writings about the sands, as well as the
emigres, of the Orient, instead of necessarily presenting holistic readings of the works, I
focus on the Orientalist thread that runs through each of them. This is not to suggest,
however, that the internal consistency which Edward Said speaks of in regard to the
history of orientalism49 is to be found in these texts. On the contrary, in these Argentine
Orientalist writings, other discourses operating along different axes come into play in some
of the texts and not in others, thereby producing a variegated set of Argentine
orientalisms. As Lisa Lowe points out: Discourses operate in conflict: they overlap and
collude; they do not produce fixed or unified objects. Orientalism is bound up with--
indeed it reanimates some of the structuring themes of-other formations that emerge at
different historical moments.50 The intersecting discourses which are most apparent in
these texts are those of race and social and economic class. For the Argentines who
wrote these texts cannot simply be categorized in opposition to Arab Argentines; rather,
they represent a variety of sectors and groupings, from the European immigrant to the
criollo, from the Jewish to the Catholic, from the urban to the rural, and from the working
108
class to the oligarchic.
Notwithstanding the intersection and interaction of these different discourses and
subject positions, what these Argentine Orientalist texts do have in common is their
cultural context of Argentine anti-Arab sentiment. The timing of the appearance of this
Orientalist sub-genre in Argentine literature cannot be ascribed to mere chance. Rather,
these works can be understood as the textual reflections and refractions of the nationalist,
anti-Semitic attitudes of the early 1900s. They are, indeed, accompanied by a more
scholarly literary interest in the Orient which burgeoned during that same time period.
Adela Silvia Guena de Zmmermann, in her booklet on the study of la literatura del
siempre enigmatico Oriente"8 in Argentina, states that the first translation (done by a
dilettante of good intentions and solid judgmenf) of Oriental poetry produced by an
Argentine and published in Argentina appeared in 1896; the next work appeared in 1915.51
Subsequent to that there was an increase in Orientalist translations (mostly from other
European languages) and scholarly activity. Guena de Zimmermann mentions in particular
that El ario 1936 fue, sin duda, proficuo entre nosotros en lo que atafie a ediciones de
obras orientales o estudios a su respecto and goes on to emphasize that that year was
el mas fecundo en la publication de traducciones de literatura oriental.652 She also notes
that between the delivery of this essay as a lecture in September of 1940 and its
publication in 1941 the Institute Argentino de Estudios Orientaies [The Argentine Institute
of Oriental Studies] was founded.53 Thus, the corpus of Argentine Orientalist literary texts
was part of a broader phenomenon of orientalism which included scholarly and institutional
dimensions, and which was the cultural manifestation of specific socio-political conditions.
The notions about Arabs and the Arab world which these literary texts express are
therefore not only the product of their time, but a shaper of it as well.
8the literature of the always enigmatic Orient
DThe year 1936 was, without a doubt, an accomplished one among us with regards to editions of
Oriental works or studies about them. [That year was] the most fecund in the publication of
translations of Oriental literature.
109
* * *
In SeptemDer of 1908 a group of Argentines set out for the Middle East on a religious
pilgrimage. The next year, Julian Toscano, a member of the group, published his account
of their journey to the Catholic holy sites, via Europe and various Middle Eastern cities:
De America a Oriente, Primera peregrinacion arqentina a Tierra Santa, Reserias breves de
viaie con otras noticias de Europa.854 Toscano was then the Vicario General of Salta, that
is, the priest who was assistant to the Bishop in the administration of the diocese of Salta
in northwestern Argentina. His travelogue, written as they traveled (6), bursts with
Catholic zeal and contains the predictable disparaging remarks about the lack of progress,
the dirtiness, and even the depraved evil of the 'Orientals'-in particular Muslims and
members of the "schismatic congregations" (Eastern Rite Christians).
Toscano finds it impossible to describe the beauty that he sees in Europe, "Tanta
belleza es indescriptible"0 (26); yet the Orient, though it at first is an ineffable marvel,
ends up being a very describable disappointment. Toscanos disdain and disgust for all
things which he labels Muslim is particularly salient when he first crosses from Greece
into Turkey: "jCuanta variedad de ayer a hoy en el mar, en tierra, en las ciudades y
hasta en los individuos!* (45) This leads into a few pages of complaint about the lack of
hygiene and the tortuously twisted streets of Smyrna. In the midst of this we find the
Romantic disappointment in the Orient, as described by Said, which I discussed
previously in connection to Sarmiento. After describing the city and its bazaars Taboada
notes: Esperaba encontrar algo interesante, pero sufrf un buen desengario.*3(48)
Likewise Damascus and even Jerusalem's beauty turns out to be a deception. They
are beautiful on the outside but ugly and savage on the inside. Only Cairo escapes this
judgment and instead surprises Toscano with its wide, paved, tree-lined avenues that
aFrom America to the Orient, The First Argentine Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Brief Descriptions
of Travel with Other News from Europe
0So much beauty is indescribable
cWhat difference between yesterday and today in the sea, on land, in the cities, and even in the
individuals!
a I expected to find something interesting, but I suffered a sizable disappointment.
110
iook Parisian. As he explains it La sorpresa producida tenia su explication logica.
Habiamos dejado las ciudades turcas.na (210-211, my emphasis) Although Toscano
never directly mentions this, Cairo was not Turkish because it was no longer part of the
Ottoman empire since the British occupation in 1882. Moreover, this is one of innumerable
places in the text where we see the deeply negative associations of the word turco
which continues to be used by Argentines to refer to the Syro-Lebanese immigrants.
The pejorative and dismissive valences of the term turco are clear in a very
paradigmatic passage of De America a Oriente. In the section on Constantinople,
Toscano describes the Argentine pilgrims reaction to their guides mention of a church and
then abruptly shifts into a completely different relationship to his surroundings:
todo fue oir al guia que dijo: la iglesia de San Antonio, que dirigimos a ella.
Nuestro espiritu sentfa verdadera necesidad, era un deseo
vehemente de postramos ante el augusto Sacramento del Altar y adorar la
presencia real de N. Senor Jesucristo, cansados como estabamos de tanta
cosa turca, de tanta mezquita.
jQue contento!
Todos los peregrinos estaban dominados por iguales sentimientos.
Al pasar por una calle, sin saber por que se detiene nuestro coche,
y los demas comienzan tambien a pararse. ^Que hay? Es un bazar de
cuanto objeto se busque: ricas telas en sederia, porcelanas, alfombras,
objetos en bronce, oro, cristal, etc., etc. En un santiamen nos encontramos
convertidos en turcos con el gorro o fez rojo calado en la cabeza. Los
seglares peregrinos, no todos, guardaron sus sombreros y continuaron
usando el distintivo turco.0 (59-60, my emphasis)
On the one hand, we find the disparaging and dismissive phrase tanta cosa turca which
l will pick up on again below. On the other hand, Toscano describes the utter joy of his
group at the thought of going to a church, but then immediately switches to getting excited
about buying and donning fezzes. It is not clear whether the travelers ever even make it
to the church. (The church of San Antonio is never mentioned again after this passage.)
* The surprise produced had its logical explanation. We had left the Turkish/turco cities.
0As soon as we heard the guide say: the church of San Antonio, we directed ourselves toward it.
Our spirit felt a true need, it was a vehement desire to prostrate ourselves before the venerable
Sacrament of the Altar and adore the royal presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ, tired as we were of
so much Turkish/turco' stuff, of so many mosques. What happiness! All of the pilgrims were
overcome with similar feelings. In going down a street, without knowing why our carriage stops,
and the rest of them also begin to stop. Whats going on? It is a bazaar of whatever object one
might look fo r rich silk textiles, porcelain, carpets, works in bronze, gold, crystal, etc., etc. In a jiffy
we found ourselves converted into Turks/turcos' with the red hat or fez snugly donned [literally
111
Either they do, but description of it is upstaged by the purchase of the fezzes, or they are
actually sidetracked by the fezzes and made to forget completely their yearning for a
church. Toscano and his fellow pilgrims swiftly shift from disillusionment and distaste to
fez shopping and becoming an Oriental-and what mediates this change is the quickly
forgotten church. Just when the travelers are fed up with tanta cosa turca, when
Otherness becomes particularly threatening, the threat is assuaged somewhat by the
promise of seeing a church-assuaged enough for them to inhabit the space of the Other.
In a very Catholic-toned jiffy (en un santiamen" [in a jiffy] would literally be something
like as fast as you can say a holy Arnenm) the pilgrims are able to neutralize, if not
control, the menacing Other by playing at being that Other.
As Lisa Lowe points out in her discussion of 18th-century French and British travel
writings, travel narratives often function to address internal national struggles, by
transfiguring internal challenges to the social order into fantasies of external otherness."55
In the case of this Argentine traveler, he attends to his nations modernization process b y
transferring its conflicts to the Oriental Other and then, by donning a fez, managing that
Other. As it happens, this external Other coincides with the main issue within Argentine
modemization-immigration, and more precisely, unwanted immigrants. Thus, in using the
turco as a figure for domestic issues at one and the same time Toscano addresses what is
in actuality a major part of those issues: the undesirable turco immigrant.
Moreover, in addition to the treatment of turcos seen in the fez passage, elsewhere in
the travelogue turco travel and immigration to Argentina are dealt with specifically.
Toscanos first mention of a local inhabitant who wishes to go to Argentina is framed in a
very particular way. On a train the Argentine priest and some of his fellow pilgrims meet a
young Lebanese Maronite, Alexander, who is culto, [cultured, refined] speaks French
correctly, and is very courteous. When the young man learns that his companions in the
compartment are Argentines he expresses the desire de viajar por Buenos Aires [to
travel around in Buenos Aires] and Manifesto, ante todo, que era catolico [He
penetrated by our heads]. The laymen pilgrims, not all, put away their hats and kept using the
Turkish/turco' insignia, (my emphasis)
112
expressed/showed above all else that he was Catholic].56(78, emphasis added) Just a
few pages before this we have been told by Toscano that Lebanon is better than the
rest of Turkey because it is Christian (74-75). This young man, it seems, can be
admired for his education as well as his warmth and kindness with the travelers because
he is, like them, a Catholic and a (would-be) traveler. Alexander wishes to travel in--not
to--Argentina. A distinction begins to emerge then not only between religious groups,
but between travel in the sense of tourism and pilgrimages--in which one travels around in
a country and then leaves, and immigration-in which one travels to a place and stays
there. Moreover, the categories of immigrant and Muslim become intertwined in Toscanos
narrative.
In addition to presenting various negative comments about the schismatic Christians,

the Muslims who have brought ignorance and ruin to the Classical world, and Jews,
Toscano specifically says that Jews and Muslims no tienen habitos de trabajo" [they
have no work habits"]. For this reason the people of Jerusalem are haragana y
pordiosera [indolent and beggars]. (151) This religious prejudice as well as the lines
between travel and migration become clearer when we consider perhaps the most telling
passage in the text in relation to the study at hand.
In describing the group's return passage-from East to West, from Alexandria, Egypt
to Mesina, Italy-Toscano refers for the first, and only, time to the immigrants from the
Ottoman Empire to Argentina whose numbers were peaking during those very years.
What is interesting is that his mention of these immigrants occurs within the context of the
sanitary inspection of the boat in which both the patriotic Argentine religious pilgrims and
the numerous immigrants travel. Both groups travel on the same ship, but the former
travels first-class while the latter travels third-class and holds up all of the passengers
because of how long it takes to complete their inspection and disinfection:
Era [Mesina] el primer puerto europeo que tocabamos al regreso de
Oriente.
No obstante que, desde muy temprano, nuestro buque habfa
hechado sus anclas, la operacion de la visita sanitaria retardo nuestro
desembarco hasta tanto se llenaran las formalidades rigurosas que exigen
las leyes del caso. Sin embargo, hubo tanta deferencia de parte de las
autoridades de tierra y de mar, que la operacion de la visita y desinfeccion
de forma, se efectuo de una manera rapida para con los pasajeros de
113
primera, formados por la peregrinacion argentina; pero como los pasajeros
de tercera sumaban muchos centenares, gente levantada de ciudades
diversas de Turquia, que iban en clase de inmigrantes para la Argentina, la
operacion resulto larga empleandose mas de dos horas para terminarla.
(222-223)*
An interesting contrast between notions of travel versus immigration arises here. Travel
is, simply put, upper-class and clean. Whereas immigration is underclass, multitudinous,
and in need of lengthy disinfection. Considering that Toscano later describes Argentina as
being tan llena de atractivos para las naciones europeas, para el comercio y para los
hombres de labor y de ciencia"6 (287), it seems that this vision of immigrants as dirty
masses is reserved for non-European immigrants.
Indeed, this brief mention of Syro-Lebanese immigrants occurs within a web of
negative images about Muslims that establishes a picture of Arab immigrants as dirty and
lazy; these images affiliate them with turcos, that is, with Muslim Ottomans rather than the
refined and educated Maronite Catholics, or even another Christian sect. The pilgrims
can consider Alexander worthy of esteem both because he is not a Muslim and because
he is not an immigrant. But this very conception of him makes it such that those emigrating
to Argentina are expected to be (dirty, lazy) Muslims. Toscanos bias can certainly be
seen as linked to the tensions of the times, in which the conviction that more immigrant
laborers were necessary for the economy was in conflict with the threats posed b y
immigrant labor unrest and a rising immigrant middle class.57 These tensions and the
consequent move toward restricting immigration come together with Toscanos perception
that Muslims and Jews are lazy, and that the majority of Ottoman emigres are of one of
these faiths,58to mark turco immigrants as undesirable-as injurious to the elites plans for
Argentina. By addressing the turco (whether immigrant or not) in the way in which De
a[Mesina] was the first European port that we stepped foot on upon our return from the Orient. In
spite of the fact that our ship had been anchored since very early in the day, the process of the
sanitary inspection delayed our disembarking until the rigorous formalities which regulations
require were met with. However, there was such deference on the part of the authorities of land
and sea, that the inspection and disinfection was earned out quickly with the first-class
passengers, made up of the Argentine pilgrimage; but since the third-class passengers
amounted to many hundreds, people lifted from various cities of Turkey, that were going as
immigrants [/in immigrant class] to Argentina, the process turned out to be long, taking more than
two hours to finish.
114
America a Oriente does, it not only echoes the vilification of Arabs in Argentina, but it
stands to shape further its Argentine readers anti-Semitic sentiment and practices.
* * *
Although Toscano generally treats the Middle Easterner and the Middle Eastern
immigrant in similar ways, such that their depictions become fused, he does distinguish
between Maronite (that is, Catholic) Arabs and other turcos. In contrast, rather than
evince religion-based differentiations, Leopoldo Lugones writings about the Orient reveal
class-based distinctions. In addition to the gaucho-moro figure that Lugones makes use of
in El payador, he also has several stories and poems that take place in the Orient and/or
emulate Oriental styles of writing. Lugones work presents another type of orientalism in
the sense that in most of his Orientalist poetry39 he is not only trying to describe the
Orient, but trying to imitate the stylistics and themes of classical Arabic and Persian verse.
Borges, in his prologue to El payador mentions Lugones love of The 1001 Nights as an
inspiration for Lugones poems on Oriental themes. Similarly, Juan Yaser, in a
newspaper article, points to Lugones interest in the Arab World and the manifestations of
this in his writings.60The poems use the motifs and imagery of love, courtly life, falconry,
and sumptuous gardens. In this way, in keeping with the aesthetic of Latin American
modemismo, they identify the Orient as the site of precious, that is, hyper-refined and
stylized, artistry. Thus, in these texts, it is the Arab as a cultured, refined poet, that
reverberates throughout.
Two poems by Lugones are directly linked to the presence of Arabs in Argentina; one
Rpem is written in the precious Oriental style of modemismo while the other is not, yet the
differences in how they represent the Syro-Lebanese goes beyond the stylistic.
Lugones Romance del rey de Persia (Romance of the King of Persia; Romancero, 1924),
about a Persian kings search for a poet who can sing about love, is linked stylistically
and thematically to both Arabo-Persian poetry and the Spanish romance tradition which
itself often dealt with Moorish topics. In this way, the forces behind modemismo, the shift
0so full of appeal for European nations, for commerce and for men of labor and science
115
in the social functions of literature and the interest in creating a new space for literature,
intersect with Orientalist practices. As literature is delegitimized during tum-of-the-century
modernization, modemista writers re-legitimate it as the place where the values of
humanity are maintained in the face of modernity. At this time of uncertainty and
awareness of cracks in the social order, the Orient is turned to as the site of precious
aestheticism-art for arts sake, and also as the object of the modemista poets longing for
a vanishing cultural order.
Interestingly, this romance is dedicated to the prominent Arab Argentine whose

historical works I discussed above. As Lugones puts it: Al emir Emin Arslan,
descendiente de los reyes persas.61 Yaser reports that Arslan and Lugones developed
a deep friendship out of both writers publications in La Nacion.62 In this friendship
Lugones found a real live Arab prince with whom to kindle and identify his desire for a pre
modem space in which poets were a part of courtly lifethe Orient as imagined by
modemistas. Incidentally, though, this friendship was not enough to keep Lugones from
conflating Persians and Arabs and calling Arslan, a Lebanese Druze, a descendant of
Persians. Additionally, the personal and professional relationship between Lugones and
Arslan, which is seen in the dedication of this poem, was not enough to prevent the
stereotyped images present in another of Lugones poems.
Rather than depict an aestheticized royal court in the Orient, in homage to a prince and
former ambassador, El hombre-orquesta y el turco" (Poemas solarieqos. 1927) portrays a
lowly immigrant peddler with a frightening scowl. This narrative poem, of six stanzas with
differing lengths and rhyme schemes, describes the scene of a hombre-orquesta, or one-
man band, arriving in a town plaza along with an itinerant merchant of Arab origin. The
speaker in the poem is an adult who is remembering having been one of the many
children who gathered around the two visitors in delight and awe. The phrase Magnffico
y grotesco [magnificent and grotesque] is used in the second line to describe the sight of
the hombre-orquesta, but it becomes clear that magnificence is more the domain of the
aTo the emir [prince] Emin Arslan, descendent of the Persian kings.
116
one-man band, while the grotesque is tied to the lurco peddler.
The hombre-orquesta's music, movements, instruments, and physical appearance are
described in the first and second stanzas:
Chispeante en sfntesis piramidal su orquesta
Bajo las campanulas del sombrero chinesco.
Tocaba un viejo clarinete
Con escapes en falsete,
Mas tambien relumbrante de Haves argentinas
Que libertaban alegres marianinas.
Relampagueaba el bronce su chafado estridor,
Y tanto relumbraba su centelleante gorro,

Que solo al cabo de un rato,
Pudimos distinguir su barba bermeja,
Sus ojos verdes y un rulo
Que le caia al disimulo* (3-8,11,17-21)
Everything about the one-man band is shimmering and bright, whether it be the silver or
argentine (/Argentine) keys of his clarinet or his sparkling hat, red beard, and green eyes.
In contrast, the turco standing next to the hombre-orquesta is described in the third
stanza in the following way:
A su lado, un hombre moreno,
De manos tatuadas y rostra agareno
Descolgaba del hombro
* His orchestra in pyramid-like synthesis shining

Under the little bells of the chinesque hat.
He played an old clarinet
With falsetto releases,
And also shining with silver [argentine] keys
That let loose joyous marianinas.
The bronze flashed its flattened intake,
And so greatly did his sparkling hat shine,

That only after a while,
Were we able to discern his vermilion beard,
His green eyes and a curl
That fell with dissimulation
117
Una vitrina no menos digna de asombro,
De la cual fue sacando con pausas astutas,
Artfculos extraordinarios:
Entre los intervalos de una y otra tocata,

La vitrina seguia volcando en la vereda,
Al pregon de la cosa linda, barata" (23-28, 48-50)
Lists of wondrous objects follow lines 28 and 50, such that the magnificence associated
with the turco only has to do with the merchandise from distant lands which he is
displaying. The only things noted about his person are that he is dark, has a Hagarian
or Muslim face, and that his hands are tattooed.63 As soon as the musician begins to
play again, the children turn to him sumisos al dominio del arte [submissive to the power
of art]. (53) The children are so amazed by him that one of them yells out: jEs el rey!
[Its the king!] (57) The fifth stanza begins directly after this with the speaker of the poem
commenting on how the musician really was a king:
Y he aqui que lo era, en efecto.
El rey de la farandula, monarca indestronable,
Omnipotente y miserable,
Bienhechor, attorante y perfecto.
i,No llevaba consigo hasta ese turco
De las manos tatuadas con crecientes azules,
Que desplegaba prodigiosos tules
Y tenia en las cejas un terrible surco
De verdugo de sultan,
Como aquel que en la estampa que el mismo vendfa,
Con despiadada herejfa
a At his side, a dark man,

Of tattooed hands and Hagarian visage
Hung from his shoulder
A glass case no less worthy of amazement,
From which he would remove with astute pauses,
Extraordinary items:
Between the intervals of successive toccata,

The case remained spread out on the walkway,
To the call of nice, cheap stuff
118
Le cortaba la cabeza a San Juan?...a (58-69)
The musician really was the king-albeit the king of entertainment. Furthermore, the
evidence of this which the speaker presents, in the form of a rhetorical question, provides
a fuller depiction of the merchant, and one which positions him as a subordinate, a
henchman, to the king of entertainment. But more precisely, the turco, with his
frighteningly furrowed brow, like that of the executioner of San Juan, is not simply a
subject of this musical king, but a violent enemy of Christianity.
Earlier in the poem, in the midst of the listing of the peddlers trinkets, the speaker
brings up fantastic Middle Eastern narratives which in other parts of the world have
become synonymous with the Arab world. The trinkets and baubles seem like something
out of The 1001 Nights to him, and he notes that they already knew about Aladdin and
Sinbad-although as rural children they misunderstood their names, turning them into more
familiar ones. (32-39) In this way the poem displays some awareness of the network of
images which are connected to the Arab, and even transformed locally, but in the end the
images are not undone. Rather they are fastened to the peddler, inscribed on his skin
with the crescent moon tattoos. Similar to the looping back of the literary images of The
1001 Nights-produced in the Middle East, circulated abroad with the added meanings
created by literary and cultural translation, and then used in the essentialization of the
Orient-the peddlers devotional card with an image of the decapitation of Saint John the
Baptist comes back to haunt him. The peddler is likened to a sultans executioner" who is
in turn linked to the executioner of Saint John in the illustration (in spite of the fact that
Saint Johns death was ordered by Herod, ruler of the Israelites). One could try to argue
a And here we have what he was, in effect.

The king of entertainment, undethronable monarch,
Omnipotent and miserable,
Good-doer, good-for-nothing, and perfect.
Didnt he even bring with him that turco
Of the hands tattooed with blue crescents,
That unfolded prodigious tulle
And had in his brow a terrible furrow
That of a sultans executioner,
Like the one that in the small print that he himself was selling,
With ruthless heresy
119
that this portrayal of the peddler is presented with irony--the irony of recalling how ones
childhood perspective was made up of a haphazard collage of images. However, I
believe that the next stanza in the poem precludes any ironic tone and leads to a different
reading of the piece.
The closing stanza presents the actual banality of the king of the show: the children
later find out that his name is Pascual and he is from Basilicata (a region of southern Italy).
After a time he left his work as a music man, became the village gardener, married, and b y
now has a son who is a representative in the government. The phrase used to refer to
the music-playing that the Italian immigrant left behind-la musical maravilla [the musical
marvel] (79)--further underscores the designation of the musician as the marvelous and
magnificent element of the pair of sights the children saw. This in turn fixes the tattooed,
scowling peddler as the more grotesque element of the dual performance.
Similarly, the hombre-orquesta who is at first unmarked as a foreigner, and perhaps
even linked to Argentina through his a/Argentine clarinet, later turns out to be an Italian
immigrant who settles into a respectable life with a son in the government and all. Yet, it is
the Arab peddler who from the start is marked as foreign and whose integration in
Argentine society does not occur. In the very title of the poem he is referred to b y
ethnicity or background-e/ turco-rather than by his occupation. Additionally, while the
one-man band is first described in terms of his instruments and his music, that is, in terms
of his work, the peddler is first described on the basis of his body and then later on the
basis of his merchandise and his call for customers. Moreover, his body is one that is
marked, quite literally by the tattoo, but also by his skin color and Muslim features. In
view of the fact that by the time this poem was published Lugones had proven himself to
be anti-immigrant across the board, it would be difficult to consider his description of the
Italian immigrant as actually positive.64 However, it is clear that in this poem it is the Arab
immigrant who is not only more grotesque, but is immediately and permanently visibly
different.
Was severing the head of Saint John?...
120
Yaser, in Lo arabigo en la obra de Lugones," states that this poem ademas de
reivindicar las virtudes de los inmigrantes, marca a la vez, la vivencia de una epoca de la
inmigracion en que los chiquilines se envolvi'an alrededor de hombres extrarios, alelados
por el asombro de ver y escuchar cosas raras. It seems that rather than critique
Lugones poem for its stereotyping of the Arab immigrant--and perhaps be exposed to the
charge that he (Yaser) is un-Argentine--Yaser chooses not to notice the differences in
how the two immigrant performers in the poem are portrayed. In this way, he can read the
poem as a portrait of the wonderful mix of cultures during the height of the influx of
immigrants into Argentina-and by extension he can frame his own presence in Argentina
in a positive light.65 Contrary to Yasers claims, this poem is conspicuously linked to the
negative attitudes toward the Syro-Lebanese in Argentina at the time in which Lugones
wrote itthis poem was, after all, published a year before Argentine consulates in Middle
Eastern cities stopped issuing visas. In addition to Argentine concerns about the
numbers of Syro-Lebanese entering the country, Argentines had long been adherents to
positivist understandings of race and ethnicity. Since the late 19th-century the positivist
racial theories produced in Europe, like those of the Comte de Gobineau, had had a great
impact on Argentine intellectuals, and by extension, also became common currency in the
popular press (as witnessed by the racist remarks about the Syro-Lebanese which I
presented at the beginning of this chapter). El hombre-orquesta y el turco, with its
emphasis on the corporeal markers of difference in the Arab merchant, is both a symptom
and a constitutor of Argentine anxieties about being able to recognize the Semitic
immigrant-anxieties related to picking out the presence of those considered too different to
be assimilated, and/or to substantiating the attribution of economic concerns to racial
qualities.
* * *
ain addition to revindicating the virtues of the immigrant, it also underscores the experience of a
period of immigration in which the little ones gathered around strange men, dazed by the
astonishment of seeing and hearing strange things.
121
The short story El barrio turco," which predates Lugones El hombre-orquesta y el
turco by a few years, takes the vision of a permanently marked, unassimilatable Arab
immigrant to an extreme. The story was published in the local newspaper of Santiago del
Estero, a city and province in the Northwest region of Argentina.66 Although in print the
author is noted only as B., according to Alberto Tasso, who refers to "El barrio turco" in
his history of the Syro-Lebanese in Santiago del Estero, the story was written by
Napoleon Taboada, a lawyer and journalist who was part of a prominent and powerful
Santiago del Estero family.67 The story presents a cruel, hairy, smelly, intoxicated, and
hedonistic turco who is married to a criolla. This turco has become somewhat assimilated
until his children, affected by his own enduring vaho de turco" [turco vapor or stench],
encourage him to practice with them his Turkish customs, while his Argentine wife stands
by, complicitous in these activities. The couple lives with their seven daughters and two
of their three sons in the barrio turco of their unnamed city.
One of the central ideas of the story, which presents more of a convoluted portrait of
this family than a plot, is the dissolution created by mixed marriages. The story is, in the
words of the author, Una caudalosa confluencia de turco obstinado y de criolla
desbordante...8 In it the language of naturalism and modemismo come together in an
excess of unusual adjectives used to describe an unusual excess:
En aquella modesta familia se consumaba un empalme voluminoso, que no
encausaba una tercera resultante en fuerza, multiplo [sic] de capacidades,
sino infartaba los cursos en una especie de voluminacion incontinente,
cuantiosa, tiroidea, un poco degenerativa y monstruosa pero
profundamente definitriz [....] Se percibia ante todo el exceso desbordado
In this work, what is even more hideous than the Syro-Lebanese immigrant from the
Ottoman empire, is the union between such an immigrant and an Argentine woman. This
mixing of bloodlines produces an aberration in nine of their ten children: an interest in
indulging in turco customs and tastes rather than in assimilating into Argentine culture.
aa rushing confluence between an obstinate turco and an overflowing criolla

0In that modest family a voluminous conjunction was consummated, that did not channel a third
resulting in force, multiple in capacities, but rather infarcted the flows in a type of incontinent
volumination, profuse, thyroidic, somewhat degenerative and monstrous but profoundly defining
[....] One perceived above all else overflowing excess [....]
122
The founding elements at the center of this turco-criollo fusion have marked the bodies
of the children, and in particular of the daughters, with a spongy pastiness. It has also
given them souls which are predisposed to todas las ambiguedades nostalgicas [all
nostalgic ambiguities]. In this text the immigrant body and mind are marked, very
negatively, even into the next generation. Along with these inner and outer weaknesses,
the daughters are shaped by the presence of their father.
Although the narrator describes the turco father as ya sencillo despues de treinta
afios de America, [already ordinary/simple after thirty years of America] we are also told
that he has un vaho--a vapor, breath, or smell--that is unmistakably turco and which, on
the one hand has a magnetic, racial influence on his daughters, and, on the other, gives
him a particular odor. It seems though that the effects of this miasma together with filial
love are enough to make his daughters not smell the vapor and only succumb completely
to his turco influence:
la influencia paterna [...] vaporizaba como un influjo ondeado de una

especial imantacion racica, de que estaba recubierto todo el. Ese vaho
irradiado, de vago prestigio mil-y-una nochesco, ese vaho de turco, en
suma, que con un poco de carifio se ha podido ver que ha sido capaz
alguna vez de ahogar el mismo olor del turco, prestigiado por una vocation
de curiosidad, casi religiosa al milenario noctumo de Sharazada, y al
narguile mas [sic] espirituoso de la musica arabe, eso las acababa, las
sumergfa moribundas en un eter bochornoso y espeso. (my emphasis)a
As a result of their biological make-up and the turco miasma, the daughters put pressure
on their father until he practices turco customs at home with his family. The daughters
dream of going to Turkey, want to wear the veil, and at carnival time dress up as a
harem. Although the youngest son believes that the turco neighborhood is only visited
by gente decente [decent folks] in order to buy cheap goods, the oldest son thinks that
simply seeing the barrio turco makes the rest of the citys blanca insipidez [white
insipidness] obvious. At home in this isolated ethnic enclave, la familia vivfa como
athe paternal influence [...] vaporized like an influence rippled with a special racial magnetization,
with which he was completely covered. That irradiated miasma, of a vague 1001-Nights-esque
prestige, that turco miasma, in sum, that with a little bit of affection, one can see, it has been
capable at some point of drowning the very smell of the turco, given prestige
by a vocation of curiosity, almost religious in the way of the nocturnal millennial of Shahrazad, and
of the most spiritous water-pipe of Arab music, that finished them off, it submerged them
moribund in a hot (/disconcerting) and heavy ether, (my emphasis)
123
opificada de una especie de vanidad racica vergonzante.8 By making the racial pride of
this family both ridiculous and repulsive--an opiate to which they are addicted--EI barrio
turco, parodies not only immigrant nostalgia but also any desire to maintain a non-
Argentine cultural heritage.
The youngest son is the only one who has not entered into the sickly state of the rest
of the family, although he does not escape satirizing. Upon returning home from Buenos
Aires, where he is a medical student, he finds los primeros sintomas del paludismo
familiar...0and makes some effort to pull the family back to the (Argentine) center-literally
and figuratively. For this reason the narrator says that he represents una obscura
promesa mesianica'* for the family. However, other passages, by poking fun and at the
youngest sons study of medicine and his supreme interest in himself, criticize his lack of
initiative in intervening in the decline of his family and also make him into a somewhat
ridiculous figure. For instance:
El, inteligente de veras, no definio nada, ni imagino ninguna solucion a un
mal que, en el mejor de los casos, hubiera escapado a su presunta ciencia.
Estaba demasiado entregado a su carcajada abovedada, y a su perfmetro
toracico de atleta, para ocuparse en esas, que en definitiva le hubiesen
parecido ridiculas zancajadas.0
In the same way that this story parodies immigrants maintenance of home country
cultures, it mocks the youngest sons inability to see the seriousness of the situation.
All this son does to counter his familys degeneration is to complain about the turco
neighborhood and to constantly suggest taking walks in the plaza in the center of the city,
away from the barrio turco. He looks upon the Arab neighborhood with severe distaste:
--"No se como pueden respirar esta atmosfera gruesa, musilaginosa, de
bano turco-romano, que tienen todos los barrios turcos [....] Hay un olor a
jabon, y otro olor intruso, extranjero, que anestesian, [....] tiene un aire de
inmenso conventillo, porque el turco es un idioma que no puede hablarse
athe family lived as if opified by a type ot shameful racial pride

0the first symptoms of the familial malaria/swamp fever
c a hazy Messianic promise
d He, truly intelligent, did not notice anything, nor did he imagine any solution for a malady which,
in the best of cases, would have escaped his supposed science. He was too immersed in his
arched guffaw, and in his athletes thoracic perimeter, to occupy himself with these, which in the
end would seem to him like ridiculous strides.
124
sino a gritos, a grunidos estentoreos. - Da verguenza tener que
intemarse en este barrio a
At one point he even finds a house on the plaza for the family to move into, but his
exhortation Vamonos al centro1[Lets go to the center (of town)] does not induce anyone
in his family to make any steps toward the town plaza or in the direction of assimilation
into the Argentine mainstream.
Nonetheless, at the end of the story the youngest son, through the substitution of his
cultural heritage with the trappings of science, breaks, at least momentarily, the spell in
which his sisters are held. It is important to note here another facet of the familys
degeneration, since it comes into play in the final scene. Throughout El barrio turco there
is the suggestion of incest between the father and his seven daughters. We read that in
the turco-criollo fusion todo emergfa con una abundancia vegetativa y glandular, con un
rebasamiento espermatoso inmoderado y esparcido (emphasis added). The overflowing
excess no habfa acabado de cuajar en el objeto propio cuando en aquel preciso punto
habfa encontrado tambien el de menor resistencia, la membranita impalpable, de la
esfericidacf (emphasis added). The daughters souls languished con una delicuescencia
lotiana, enervadora, eyaculante? (emphasis added).6 That is, spermatic excess enters,
with a minimum of resistance, the membrane of sphericalness--or the hymen--and the
daughters are weakened in a Lotian decadence; like the daughters of Lot in the Bible, they
seek sexual relations with their father. The immigrant fam ily-even when mixed with a
criolla-is portrayed as the most extreme version of a closed community.
The not-so-subtle insinuation of incest resurfaces at the end of the story when the
youngest son comes home late one night to find the light on in his fathers room: la luz
flufa de las orgias desatadas, y revolcaba por el patio un enjambre rumoroso de
4- I do not know how you can breathe in this thick, musty, atmosphere of a Turko-Roman bath,
that all the turco neighborhoods have [....] There is a smell of soap, and another intrusive, foreign
odor, that anesthetizes, [....] it has the atmosphere of an immense tenement house, because
turco is a language that cannot be spoken other than by yelling, by stentorian growling." - It is
embarrassing to have to enter into this neighborhood [....]"
6everything emerged with a vegetative and glandular abundance, with an immoderate and
scattered spermatic excess [...that] had not finished coagulating on the suitable object when at
125
conversaciones fervientes y cordiales. Intrigued he opens the door con el brusco
ademan del marido celoso,6 and finds his seven sisters in a state of abandon upon
various luxurious, oversized pillows: Entregadas en cuclillas a la acogida de hondura
progresiva y suspicaz de los almohadones, a su seno cedente que bajo el peso del
cuerpo tiene el aire de desfallecer como en una suprema introduction,--las siete hermanas,
con la sangre y la mirada desvanecida en el ensueno, hacfan el grupo de una arabia [sic]
inefable, plenilunica, remota... (my emphasis)' These yielding, breast-like cushions,
which take bodies in deeper and deeper, and seem to faint in 'a supreme insertion,' that is,
a supreme sexual act, entice the youngest son. All that stops him from joining his sisters
is the unexpected sight of his father, laid out similarly on fine pillows:
Su padre, el buen turco solido y estable [...] el buen turco humilde [...]
exaltado en el bochomo de la fntima tertulia, a una representation de gran
turco, presidfa esta imposible sesion del desahogo pecaminoso y
clandestino, blandamente recostado en el divan, en la actitud sultanica del
que medita voluptuosidades mientras fuma, como el fumaba, al narguile...0
A very sexually suggestive description of the narguile, or water-pipe, as a dancer
follows. Then we find out that the son, though he wants to say something, has forgotten
long ago the word narguile. What he ends up saying then is: --Pero, padre...
jHagame el favor! No faltaba mas, sino que, en esta locura de la casa, usted se pusiese
a fumar en entetroclisio!..." The word that comes to mind for him is the name of some sort
of medical device or procedure. By using this mock scientific term the author of El barrio
turco is able to have science, however ironically, save the day. Upon hearing these
that precise point it had found as well that of least resistance, the impalpable little membrane of the
sphericalness.... with an enervating, ejaculatory Lotian decadence (emphasis added)
1the light flowed from the unleashed orgies, and a swarm of fervent and cordial conversations
romped about in the courtyard
6with the brusque gesture of a jealous husband
c Given over, squatting, to the cushions' taking-in, of progressive and suspicious depth, upon
their yielding breast, that under the weight of the body seems to swoon as in a supreme
insertion,-the seven sisters, with their blood and their looks evanesced in fantasy, made up the
group of an ineffable Arabia, full-mooned, remote... (my emphasis)
0His father, the good, solid and stable turco [...] the good, humble turco [...] enraptured in the
sultriness of the intimate gathering, representing a great turco, presided over this intolerable
session of sinful and clandestine release, comfortably reclined on the divan, in the sultanic
attitude of one who ruminates over voluptuosities while smoking, as he smoked, the narghile
[hookah or water pipe]...
126
words the seven sisters fall back, unconscious con el encanto asesinado [with their
enchantment killed].
El barrio turco" at once lampoons immigrant nostalgia and the desire to maintain ones
home culture, and presents a horrific picture of the aberrations that result from a turco-criollo
union, including the inability for even the children of such a mixed marriage to assimilate
into Argentine society. In this story, Taboada presents a vision of racial mixture which
reflects Argentine intellectuals espousal of positivist racial theories, complete with their
notions of miscegenation as resulting in the degradation of the races. Taboadas fears of
the dissolution of the Argentine national body as a result of the infusion of Arab/exotic
elements are so great, that all of the twelve members of this Arab-Argentine family are
either contaminated with participation in the most primal of vices, or inept and laughable.
Perhaps in the hinterlands of Argentina, from which Taboada wrote, the question of racial
mixture was all the more charged given the greater indigenous and mestizo presence and
the apprehensions that this created among aristocratic criollos intent on whitening
Argentina.
* * *
Although certain works within the sainete genre-a popular theatrical genre of late 19th-
century and early 20th-century Argentina-not only have different means, but a very
different message about assimilation, in a way they too use the Arab immigrant as a
symbol of extreme difference and difficult assimilation. The sainetes were one-act musical
comedies, peopled by type characters-often caricatures-complete with their particular
forms of speech. Argentine sainetes mixed comic and sentimental tones as they
parodied the costumbrismo70 of the Spanish sainete out of which they had grown.
Moreover, the sainetes commented upon the social conditions of the working class
immigrants and displaced rural poor--or gauchos--who lived together in the tenement
houses of Buenos Aires and were the authors and audiences of these theater
8- But, father... Please! All we needed was that, in the midst of the insanity of the household,
you should start smoking by entetroclisium!..."
127
productions. Looked down upon by the elite and literary and theatrical critics, these plays
were enthusiastically attended by the lower and middle classes.71 They typically
presented a happy or tragi-comic ending and a utopic vision of their world; however, this
mixture of sentimental, tragic, parodic, and comic elements make for a situation in which it is
difficult to tell (particularly in the form of a text and not a performance) where the satire
ends and the straight sentiment begins, and vice-versa. Additionally, arising when Latin
America was transitioning into modernity and the relationship between high-brow literary
forms (formerly produced within a system of patronage) and the capitalist economy was
at issue, the sainete was clearly connected to the market economy. For this reason, Silvia
Pellarolo describes the plays as ideologically ambiguous.72 Pellarolo emphasizes,
nonetheless, that this popular theatrical genre which is a product of the transculturation
which took place between immigrants and rural criollos in the poor and working class
suburbs of Buenos Aires, is a carnivalesque and compensatory cultural form that
expresses the trials and tribulations of a disenfranchised and silenced class.73 In the
twenties, with the growing repression that was a prelude to the oppressive dictatorship of
the 1930s, a sub-genre of plays grew out of the sainete. This sub-genre, the grotesco
criollo, is characterized by pathos and tragedy taken to ridiculous extremes; likewise, it too
is marked by interpretive ambiguity.74
At least four plays within the sainete genre have turccf immigrants as their main
protagonists: Samuel Eichelbaum and Pedro Picos Un romance turco (1920), Antonio de
Bassi and Antonio Bottas El turco Salomon (1924), Juan Pintos La suerte del turco Alf
(1922), and Armando Discepolos Mustafa (1921).75 Rather than offer a picture of
separatist decadence that threatens criollo culture, like Taboadas Barrio turco," most of
these plays exhibit the possibility of a fortuitous assimilation. Eichelbaum and Picos Un
romance turco epitomizes the utopic vision of assimilation by presenting Argentina as a
land of freedom in which love across religious lines-between European Catholics and
Ottoman Jews and Muslims--is possible. In spite of this plays happy ending, there is
an element of sadness embodied in the character of the Jewish Arab grandmother.
Always quiet and sad, she sighs for her deceased daughter and her desire to return to
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Jerusalem. Though her wish to return to the land of oranges and olives is so great that,
frail as she is, she is willing to work as a peddler to raise the money, her son-in-law
refuses to let her. Symbolically, at the end of the play the young heroine, after deciding
that she is willing to put aside religious differences and familial opposition for love, runs
from her sad grandmothers arms-from immigrant nosfalgia-in order to be reunited with her
Muslim beloved. The star-crossed lovers are reconciled, but the grandmother, the figure of
unresolved tragedy, remains on stage, with added tragic valence now that her
granddaughter has left her behind.
Assimilation, as well as turco sadness, are also portrayed in de Bassi and Bottas B
turco Salomon; however, the need for assimilation in the younger generation is presented
even more strongly, and, concomitantly, assimilations high price is also presented more
forcefully. In this sainete, which takes place in the countryside, the father and mother of
the Arab family, Maria and Salomon, are stubborn bastions of traditionalism who in the
end must be given up by their four children. Two of the children represent different forms
of assimilation: Asem, struggling against his accent, and with the help of his gaucho
mentor, is the turco acriollado who fashions himself as a gaucho-turco, while his brother
Ricardo, a medical student in Buenos Aires who finds it difficult to visit his family because
of his distaste for turco customs and business, has turned into the cultured, urbane
Argentine. Their sister Margarita, in love with a criollo, is going to be married off by her
father to a rich, scary-looking Arab immigrant who in exchange has lent him money for
Ricardos studies. Ricardo helps his sister escape this fate and marry her criollo
boyfriend. But the parents are the ones who are financially ruined by having to repay the
rich would-be turco husband.
In the final scene we find an even more criollo Asem, a Ricardo who is comfortable
visiting his siblings, and both the gaucho mentor and the turco parents out of the picture.
The idea of turcos as a sad people is reiterated in expanded form in Marfa and Salomons
crying and what Ricardo calls the infinita tristeza [infinite sadness] of their songs that
reflect toda la monotonia de la raza [all the monotony of the race], (scene [cuadro] 1)
They are also marked by a vehement traditionalism: the father prefers the hard life of an
129
itinerant merchant to living with his children, and forces his wife to join him, because he
wants children with the same cultural and religious values as himself. In the same way,
the gaucho mentor leaves because things are no longer criollo enough for him. The
message of the play comes out clearly in Ricardos words: Nuestro padre no cambiara
nunca. Sus hijos estabamos en la obligation de orientamos hacia nuevos horizontes. Es
la invariable ley de la evolution [....] Se van las dos tendencias opuestas, queda la que
surge de las dos... fuerte y grande...8 (scene 3)
Discepolos Mustafa, like the previous two plays, portrays love across religious and
cultural lines, but focuses more on the relationship between the two heads of the families-
the turcd Mustafa and the Italian Gaetano-and its difference from the relationship
between their daughter and son who are in love with each other. Although the accents of
both men, and to a lesser extent the Italians son, as well as their curses in their first
languages, are the source of humor, it is Mustafa who is the negatively stereotyped agent
of conflict. What in the other plays was only turco sadness here shifts into despair and
then turco madness in the figure of Mustafa. This characters anguish and irrationality is
one of the reasons why this play has been characterized as a transitional piece which
displays some of the elements of the grotesco criollo.
At the beginning of the play, through word, gesture, and posture, Mustafa takes turco
sadness to an extreme. Not long after hearing that Gaetano makes in a day what it takes
him a month to make he is overcome with sorrow and despondency: (Sufre una extraria
pesadumbre que lo dobla, lo achica) [....] Durco esta triste... Una pena adentro...
Grande... De punta de gabeza a punta de pie. Bienso Durqufa. Batria querida. Bienso
badre... madre... muertos... Durco piensa... durco esta triste... (Le da un escalofno; pone
los ojos bianco). [...] Bodre durco... siempre bodre... No se. Pena hunda... hunda...6
(scene 1) Gaetano, meanwhile, is presented in the play as the good friend who trusts
8Our father will never change. We, his children, had the obligation to orient ourselves toward new
horizons. It is the invariable law of evolution [....] The two opposing tendencies are leaving, the
one that arises from the two remains... strong and big...
D(He suffers a strange affliction that doubles him over, that makes him smallei) [....] Durk [Turk] is
sad... A pain inside... Big... From top of heed to tib of toe. I tink Durkey [Turkey]. Beloved
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Mustafa and speaks of how the love between their children should not surprise people
iL a razza forte no sale de la mezcolanza? iE donde se produce la mezcolanza? Al
conventillo [...]* (scene 1) He goes on to say that this mixture produced in immigrant
tenement houses, which are a paradise of harmony and understanding, is what is making
Buenos Aires great.
Gaetanos words soon become very ironic when a feud erupts between himself and
Mustafa because Mustafa tries to keep for himself the winning lottery ticket that the two
had purchased together.76 Here sadness gives way to a grotesque, bestial single-
mindedness as Mustafa emerges as a money-hungry man crazed by his nostalgia to the
point that he will do anything in order to move his family back to Turkey. In his
obsession with keeping the lottery ticket for himself, Mustafa swears to his son that he
does not have the lottery ticket and the stage directions tell us Hay algo de demencia en
eP [There is something of dementia in him], he gets other turcos to come to his aid and to
join him in his crying about the fate of a bobre turco," and he mistreats his wife who is
introduced as Constantina, la esposa esclavsP [Constantina, the enslaved wife], (scene
1) Later as Mustafa looks out from between the bars of his tenement window uParece un
chimpance cansado en su jauisP (scene 2) and as he guards the lottery ticket parece
demente [...] tiene un gruhido bestial.0 (scene 3) It is Mustafas son who attempts to
brings about a resolution by trying to do right by Gaetano-and in the process be disloyal
to his father; however, his efforts are useless because the hidden lottery ticket has been
eaten by rats.
Although this play ultimately mocks idealized notions of the immigrant melting pot, it
does offer as a possibility assimilation into a greater Argentine society. This is
represented by Gaetano and Mustafas children: the young cross-cultural couple of
Mustafas daughter and Gaetanos son, Peppino. Peppino, in particular, enacts this
hoomland. I tink fazer [father]... mozer [mother]... dead... Durk tinks... durk is sad... (he shivers;
his eyes roll back). [...] boor [poor] Durk... always boor... I don know. Deep... deep suffering...
aDosn [doesnt] da strong race come from da mixture? An where is da mixture produced? In da
tenement [...]
0He looks like a tired chimpanzee in its cage [...] he looks demented[...] he has an animal-like
grunt
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vision by taking night classes in order to improve his Spanish. Nevertheless, even this
projected assimilation is clouded, accompanied as it is by Mustafas extreme emotions and
actions-the one potential obstacle to the young couples marriage. In fact, the agent of all
discord in the tenement-melting pot, and the most pathetic and ridiculous figure in this
sainete is the turco character. Interestingly, within the uncertainty of intention created b y
the pathetic mixed with the parodic (should we cry, be outraged, or laugh?), it is clear with
whom the audience is supposed to identify. Most of the asides in the play are spoken
by Peppino who uses them for comic effect to make fun of or put down Mustafa while
conversing with him.77 Through these inside jokes shared between Peppino and the
audience, the audience members come to align themselves with Peppino in opposition to
Mustafa. While the audience affiliates itself with the Italian immigrant trying hard to be an
Argentine, the sadness which is associated with the turco burgeons into a crazed
nostalgia which endangers assimilation.
Pintos La suerte del turco Alf creates the same type of positioning of the audience vis-
a-vis the turco protagonist; moreover, it corroborates the link between the sadness
attributed to the turco and difficulty in assimilation. In this play the title character, All, is a
pathetic man who is taken advantage of by criollos. He is ridiculed because he has a
thick accent in Spanish and because he is rich yet ugly, gullible, and always sad. In the
words of Alf: Oh, yo no agosdumbra aqui... Durco raza drisde.... [...] durco Alf mucha
drisdesa aquf. (Corazon) Durco Alf quere alegrfa... quere amor... quere sonar...8 (scene
1) After being fooled into thinking that an Argentine woman loves him, and in the process
being conned out of expensive presents and money, he tells the police that nothing has
happened. Then he allows the woman to keep the gifts, says that this is the way his
luck would have it, and walks away insisting that he is very happy-yet sobbing. The
stereotype of turcos as sad dreamers that emerges in all four of thee sainetes is amplified
all the more in this play. This play is also the only one of the four in which assimilation or
cross-cultural unions are not promoted in any way; instead, the two secondary turco
* Oh, I don get use to tings here... Durk a sad race.... [...] Alf ze durk much sadness here, (heart)
Alf ze durk want happiness... want love... want to dream...
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characters are paired off together and Alf, who is unable to accustom himself to Argentine
life, remains alone. Thus, a connection is clearly established between turcos main
characteristic, melancholia, and their difficulty in assimilating.
On the one hand, the positive vision of assimilation and miscegenation seen in some
of these plays is vastly different from the anxiety surrounding mixed marriages witnessed
in Taboadas Barrio turco. This difference can be ascribed to the different social
positions of the authors. Taboada, a member of the criollo elite, had no vested interest in
believing in assimilation, whereas the sainete writers themselves were mostly immigrants
or children of immigrants from the middle class. For this reason, the playwrights tended to
champion the fusion of cultures and the creation of an Argentina which includes the
immigrant Yet, on the other hand, in the first two theater pieces examined here, the
message that assimilation among the different immigrant groups and with criollo culture will
create a better people and a brighter future is tempered by the high price this entails in
lost relationships. Furthermore, the authors of these plays, all of European extraction
(whether Christian or Jewish), formulated a particular stereotype about the turco as
melancholic and for that reason unable to assimilate without a high emotional cost. In all
four of these sainetes the sadness and nostalgia of the turco immigrant makes him/her the
epitome of the loss experienced by all immigrants for the sake of assimilation.78
* * *
Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Arlt, two outstanding figures in Argentine letters, also
produced works in the Orientalist vein--and works which like the sainetes feature an
ambiguity-generating irony. However, the short stories written by both of these often
contrasted writers are very different from the works looked at up until now because these
writers irony is directed at the notion of the Orient as a constructed image, a site of
particular desires, and at the very construction of images and stereotypes. While there is
a hint of irony in relation to the production of images of the Orient in the works of Lugones
and Taboada, in some of Arlt and Borges stories there is distinct irony which can be seen
as undoing set ideas not only about the Orient but also processes of identity construction
133
in general.
Roberto Arlt is often associated with the social realist Boedo group of early 1900s
Buenos Aires. The writers of Boedo were concerned with the public role of the intellectual
and, because of this stance as well as the stylistics which arose out of it, they are seen
as the opposite pole to the Florida group, the sphere of the Argentine vanguardia. Rita
Gnutzmann explains, however, that due to the intersection of his working class
background and political views, together with his friendships with Florida writers and his
publication in a Florida journal, Arifs writing occupies a position between the two groups.79
In a variety of ways Arlt, who wrote with an idiosyncratic style about freakish, marginal
characters caught up in a frenzied struggle with their surroundings, is an unclassifiable,
borderline figure in Argentine literary history. To begin with, his literary merit has been
much-debated. As Omar Borre points out, it was only several years after Arifs death in
1942 (at age 42) that scholarly studies, that is, anything more than a review or short
newspaper commentary, were written about Arit. And it was nearly ten years before a
substantial number of critical studies began to appear. Although some prominent writers
of Arifs time found his work promising, the first reviews of his work were moralistic: he
was criticized for his brand of naturalist realism-which was seen as being in bad taste, for
what was deemed his incorrect usage of Spanish, and for the (dis)organization of his
narratives.80 With regard to Arifs non-standard Spanish, although Gnutzmann indicates
that it is the result of Arifs self-education,01the more commonly held reason is that Arlt, the
son of German and Austro-ltalian immigrants, grew up in a home where Spanish was not
spoken. Whatever the provenance of Arifs incorrect orthography and odd syntax, he
was certainly looked down upon by many in the literary establishment because of both
his working-class background (Arlt wrote for a living, publishing stories in various popular
periodicals) and his immigrant parentage. Arit treated, and perhaps himself disparaged,
his socio-economic group textually by populating his works with oddball, underworld
immigrant characters and parodying their speech. In a play and a series of travel
essays and stories written during and after a trip to Morocco, Arlt transfers his fascination
with the bizarre to the setting of Morocco and the otherworld of the Easf in general
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(stretching from Indonesia to sub-Saharan Africa).
When Arlt traveled to Morocco in 1935, he dressed in Arab garb for a portrait, like so
many other Europeans and Americans before him.33 Nevertheless, the stories which he
wrote inspired by this trip display a certain ironic awareness of the romantic notions at
play in many European and American encounters with the Orient and the conventions
which arise out of these romanticizations. And yet, this very irony, in conjunction with
Arifs fixation on the grotesque, produces a discourse which is rife with ambiguity. Arit
went to Morocco when he was sent abroad as a correspondent by the Argentine
newspaper El Mundo to cover Spain on the eve of the civil war. In this first trip abroad
Arit spent a little more than a year (March 1935-April 1936) in different cities throughout
Spain as well as in Morocco, parts of which were then under Spanish control. The travel
essays and journalistic articles which he wrote about Spain and Morocco were published
throughout that year in El Mundo. In 1936 some of these, including ten pieces about
Morocco, were published in the collection Aguafuertes espaholas-literally Spanish
Etchings. When Arlt returned to Buenos Aires, inspired by his time in Morocco, he began
to write stories in which many of the people, places, and images he presents in the
aguafuertes reappear. These stories were published in the popular magazines Mundo
Arqentino and El Hoqar from 1936 to 1941. They were first published as a collection in
1941 in a volume whose title refers to one of the stories: El criador de gorilas. Almost all of
the fifteen stories in this collection deal with encounters between the Orient and other
cultures, whether through colonialism, trade, or tourism. Many convey a sardonic
message about tourism, and most are centered around grotesque locales or bodies. Arit
also wrote a play, Africa, which is basically a combination of two of his stories about
Morocco and was first performed in 1938 in Buenos Aires.84 I limit myself here to analyzing
certain images from the pieces on Morocco in Aguafuertes espanolas and three stories
from El criador de gorilas.
Arifs essays on Morocco in Aguafuertes espanolas85 do not leave much room for
interpretation: overwhelmingly they are the expression of a wry orientalism in which the
smugly superior Westerner man/els at the primitiveness of his surroundings, while at the
135
same time enjoying the sense of freedom that he finds there. In his essays on Tangiers
and Tetuan, although he expresses concern about the treatment of women and the harsh
work earned out by women and children,86 he is unable to move away from disparaging
and essentialist notions about the Orient. Instead he returns time and again to the lice,
rancid smells, homosexuality, and laziness of Moroccans, in part exploiting their shock
value, and in part as a form of dry humor.87 In the pieces that Arlt wrote later on in his stay
in Morocco, he relates to North Africa as an escape from modernity, and from his usual self.
As he walks around enjoying the wonderful people-watching he finds liberty and peace--
in short, a break from the terrible enfermedad que se llama civilizacion [terrible sickness
which is called civilization]. (111) By the last essay written from Morocco, Arlt is dressed
as a Muslim, lounging with his head resting on the lap of his Moroccan lover, and feels
such deep sadness upon leaving Tetuan that he must bite his lip to keep himself from
crying.
Although several of the images from these newspaper essays appear again in Arifs
fictional pieces in El criador de gorilas,88 in many of the stories the prototypical orientalist
discourses of the essays take on a deep self-conscious irony, often in the form of an
absurd grotesque, which functions to dismantle fixed notions about the Orient and
constructions of identity in general. For example, in Ven, mi ama Zobeida quiere
hablarte," [Come, my mistress Zobeida wants to speak to you; hereafter Zobeida] a

European traveler finds the opposite of what he goes to North Africa looking for. In this
story Piter, a European doctor staying in Tangiers, causes a death in spite of himself. The
story opens with Piter finding out, through an insistent local tourist guide, that the rumor
that Piter poisoned his w ife-a false accusation which he had gone to Morocco to get
away from--has managed to follow him. In spite of this news Piter decides not to leave
Tangiers because, he muses, in this city of twisted streets lined with fish-fryers, and in
Africa in general, a bad reputation can be an asset.
When an immensely large black woman approaches Piter and tells him to follow her to
her mistress Zobeida who wants to speak with him, he goes with her because he
believes that tras la invitacion de la esclava se ocultaba una aventura de
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consecuencias.a(173) Piter pursues this frigate-like woman through an alleyway in which
en cada portal un desarrapado frefa pescado o vendfa canela. La callejuela, techada con
gruesos troncos de arboles, estaba cargada de una atmosfera de especias, de queso y
cuero en fermentation (173) Then by following the slave through a doorway Piter
moves from this malodorous space to a garden infused with the smell of orange blossoms.
He is then led into a sumptuous sitting room filled with rugs, pillows, and the scents of
incense and flowers, where Piter se sentfa embriagado de una esencia misteriosa y mas
sutil, que parecfa flotar permanentemente bajo el volumen de los olores inmediatos.0
(174) Here Zobeida, who has heard the rumors surrounding Piter, offers him an ivory box
full of precious gems in exchange for a poison with which to kill her husband. When Piter
refuses she asks instead that he bewitch her husband. About to deny the existence of
witchcraft, Piter realizes that she would not understand his explanation, so instead he
plays along. Zobeida tells him that in exchange she will marry him and go to Europe with
him where she will become literate and go out without a veil.
The next day Piter goes to the market where Zobeidas husband, a moneylender,
works. He is just as she described: hunchbacked and wearing a turban larger than a
millstone. Piter begins a game of sticking his tongue out at the moneylender and then
turning away nonchalantly as if he had done nothing. Finally Piter puts his thumb to his
nose and wags his other fingers, at which point the infuriated husband rushes across the
street toward Piter-but to Piters horror the moneylender is run over by a car full of
tourists.
Ironically, the paragon of rationality, a European doctor, finds the notion of bewitching
someone laughable, and also thinks that it would be impossible to convince a Moroccan
woman of this; however, it is this Oriental woman, in fact, who seems to bewitch him with
the mysterious aromas of her sitting room and then shakes his belief in reason. Whether it
a behind the slave's invitation an adventure of consequence was hidden

6in each doorway someone dressed in rags fried fish or sold cinnamon. The alleyway, covered
with a roof of thick tree trunks, was heavy with the smell of fermenting spices, cheese, and leather
[....]
e Piter felt inebriated by a mysterious and most subtle essence, that seemed to permanently float
under the volume of the immediate smells.
137
is through sorcery or pure chance, she implicates Piter in a murder, when it is the specter
of murder which he had gone to Morocco to flee in the first place. In addition, it is
modernity as represented by tourism (of which Piter is a part) that kills the monstrously
ridiculous moneylender. Through this inversion of the expectations of European rationality
and progress Zobeida can be understood to present a powerful critique of notions of the
superiority of European science and rationalism. Furthermore, the moneylender around
whom the events turn is representative of a type of character that appears in almost all of
the stories in Arifs El criador de gorilas: a bizarre, monstrous, or disguised person whose
unsettling appearance or actions disturb set notions of identity. In the stereotypical East-
which is by turns deformed, dirty and fetid, and enticing, sumptuous and fragrant-and
which is expected to be the site of adventure, European science and modernity find
themselves the reluctant purveyors of the occult, and of death.
Nevertheless, many of the stories in this collection also carry with them a certain
ambiguity due to the very workings of irony. In Los bandidos de Uad Djuari," [The
bandits of Uad Djuari]90 which also comments on tourism and the meeting of East and
West, the same elements which seem to deconstruct the category of the Orient could also
be seen as enacting a sardonic Orientalist stance. In this story a seemingly perilous
encounter ends up being a fortuitous one, but because what at first looks like a tragedy is
actually an interpellation as tourist, the position of the tourist is at best a sheepish
recognition of having been duped. The tourists in question are Arsenia and Alberto. They
have met while traveling in Morocco and are exploring Fez with such visible enthusiasm
that the devout Muslims around them, seeing a young man and woman together and
obviously impassioned, assume that they are newlyweds. Alberto narrates the story,
beginning with a description of the Moroccan boy whom he and Arsenia see repeatedly,
and of Nejjarine, the plaza in which they see him. Each time the boy sees them he greets
them saying Peace with his hand on his heart. Here the narrator interrupts his own tale
to qualify his reference to the plaza where the boy sits:
Excuso decir que la plaza de Nejjarine no era tal plaza, sino un
hediondfsimo muladar, pavimentado con pavoroso canto rodado. En los
corrales linderos trajinaban a todas horas campesinas de las kabilas
lejanas, acomodando cargas de leria o cereales en el lomo de sus burros
138
prodigiosamente pequenos. Pero este rincon, a pesar de su extraordinaria
suciedad, con su arco lobulado y un chorrito de agua escapando de la
fuente bajo el farolon morisco, tenia tal fuerza poetica, que muchas veces
Arsenia y yo nos preguntabamos si al otro lado del groseramente tapiado
arco no se encontrarfa el parafso de Mahoma. (161)a
On the one hand, this passage about a space marked by a series of unpalatable
incongruities can be read as an ironic description that pokes fun at travelers ability to find
beauty in the midst of squalor. Tourism is mocked again a few pages later when Alberto
mentions the recuerdos apocrifos" [apocryphal souvenirs] that Arsenia and he are
asked to buy. All the young Moroccan boys who approach them, with the exception of
the boy they see in Nejjarine, are hawking items such as Moorish wallets which are
actually embroidered by machine in Catalonia, daggers engraved with Quranic legends in
the Basque country, and turtle shell guitars made of synthetic turtle shells manufactured in
Germany. (163) Through these fake mementos and crafts, the Orient is transformed from
its construction as the site of authenticity into an object consciously crafted to be Oriental
or folkloric, and to be traded as such. In this way, the manufactured nature of the Orient,
and fact that this assembled product has value and circulates with specific purposes, is
highlighted.
Yet, on the other hand, the extreme filth and crudeness of the plaza/dump makes it
such that the mention of Muhammads paradise can be understood as an ironically critical
statement of another sort. The grotesque description of this space, with its mixture of the
hideous and the sublime, opens up another possible reading: Islamic paradise is marked
by filth and, in short, a laughable idea. In this way, the grotesque irony of the passage
inserts an element of ambiguity in the storys deconstruction of Orientalist processes.
When the central figure of the story, the little boy, is referred to again it is as el maldito
nino musulman que nos saludaba correctamente.6 (162) The narrator also notes time and
a I fail to mention that Nejjarine plaza, was not a plaza as such, but a fetid garbage dump, paved with
awful pebbles. In the surrounding stables at all hours there was a bustle of peasant women from
far away kabilas [tribes], arranging loads of firewood or grain on the backs of their prodigiously
small donkeys. But this comer, in spite of its extraordinary filth, with its scalloped archway and a
little trickle of water escaping from the fountain under the Moorish lantern, had such poetic force,
that many times Arsenia and I would ask ourselves if on the other side of the crudely built archway
the paradise of Muhammad wouldnt be found.
6the damned Muslim boy who greeted us courteously
139
again his feminine demeanor se sento [...] y se puso a mirar, con el gesto pudoroso de
una nifia, sus sandalias amarillas de piel de cabra que le colgaban de la punta de los pies
desnudos" (162); se miraba pudicamente la punta de las amarillas sandalias;" se sonrio
como una timida colegiala; dijo el nirio como una colegiala (164); El mocito musulman,
recatado y vergonzoso como una niria (166). All of these girly gestures are a
symbol of the ultimate duplicitousness and wiliness of the boy. Arsenia, however, is not
annoyed by these gestures like the narrator, but rather is taken in and decides they must
get to know the boy.
The boy tells them that his name is Abbul and that he makes a living by taking tourists
to la Casa de la Gran Serpiente, where they witness the feeding of a live goat to a giant
snake. Arsenia decides that they must see this sight and they follow Abbul to the
serpents pit. Once outside the city walls a group of Arab bandits descends on them and
the boy disappears. As they are being led by these horseback-riding, scimitar-
brandishing men they believe that they have been tricked by Abbul and kidnapped.
When they are thoroughly terrified the chief of the bandits comes to speak to them. To
their surprise he is a very proper-looking Frenchman who informs them that rather than
having kidnapped them he has offered them a tourist service:
entre las numerosas personas acomododadas que visitan Marruecos,
existe un ochenta por ciento que dice: Lastima enorme que la civilizacion,
la gendarmeria, los jefes politicos, el protectorado y el ferrocaml hayan
hecho desaparecer a los bandidos. Lastima enorme no vivir en la epoca en
que uno se encontraba con una terronfica aventura a la vuelta de cada
zoco. Pues bien, yo y estos honrados creyentes que los han
secuestrado a ustedes nos hemos dedicado a explotar la emocion del
secuestro. Detenemos violentamente, como si fueramos bandidos
autenticos, a las personas que por su idiosincrasia nos parecen inclinadas
a las ideas romanticas [...] (168)
aHe sat down [...] and he started looking, with the modest gesture of a girl, at his yellow goat-skin
sandals which dangled from his bare feet; he looked modestly at the tip of the yellow sandals; he
smiled like a timid schoolgirl; the boy said like a schoolgirl; the little Muslim fellow, demure and
embarrassed like a girt [...]
Bamong the many people of means that visit Morocco, there is an eighty percent that says: Its a
tremendous shame that civilization, the gendarmes, the political bosses, the protectorate, and the
railroad have made the bandits disappear. Its a tremendous shame not to be able to live in the
time in which one found oneself with a terrifying adventure turning into every market. Well then,
myself and these honorable believers which have kidnapped you have dedicated ourselves to
making use of the excitement of kidnapping. We violently capture, as if we were authentic
140
The tourists are free to pay for this service or not; either way a limousine will transport
them back to their hotel. Alberto, sullen yet happy, pays the man two-hundred francs and
they leave, only to see Abbul the next day, in the usual place: el maldito y pudoroso
nino [....] al vernos, bajo los ojos como una tfmida colegiala, y como si no hubiera sucedido
nada, dijo, llevandose la mano al corazon: -L a paz...a (169)
While again in this passage the story clearly mocks tourism, romantic visions of a more
barbaric time, and notions of authenticity, it does so through the figure of this Moroccan
boy. In a sense Abbul (along with the supposed bandits)--like the hunchbacked, huge-
turbaned moneylender as well as the immense black slave--is one of Arifs aberrant or
disguised characters that shakes the identity of the protagonist(s). Abbul, with his
indeterminate gender and repeated enigmatic greeting, makes Alberto and Arsenia come
face to face with their position as First-World tourists who, while in search of a romantic
chimera, are actually part of the money-driven production of a Moroccan adventure. But,
on another level, the reiterated descriptions of this eight or nine year-old boys femininity
make him resonate with Orientalist discourses inscrutable, yet ultimately duplicitous, Arab
who operates with feminine guile. He can be seen then as simply embodying the
inauthenticityr-th e unnaturalness-of all of the Europeans experiences in the East.
In another story in El criador de gorilas, Halid Majid el achicharrado, [Halid Majid the
charred]91the grotesque irony of the narrative interacts similarly with its critique of notions
of the Orient and identity formation. In addition, the dangers inherent in cross-cultural
meetings are particularly emphasized. This story starts off with a humorous tone, but b y
the end the message seems to be an ominous warning against any intercultural mixing.
The opening sentences are: Una misma historia puede comenzarse a narrar de
diferentes modos, y la historia de Enriqueta Dogson y de Dais el Bint Abdalla no cabe
bandits, people who because of their particular characteristics seem to us inclined toward romantic
notions [...]
athe loathsome and chaste boy [....] upon seeing us, lowered his eyes like a timid schoolgirl, and
as if nothing had happened, said, taking his hand to his heart: -Peace-
141
sino narrarse de este: Enriqueta Dogson era una chiflada.8 (23) After this highly ironic
opening the narrator then goes on to relate how Enriqueta, a young, eccentric American
millionaire, goes to Morocco and walks around Tangiers dressed as a mora estilizada y
decorativa" [stylized and decorative Moor]. (5) She has a portrait made of her in this
outfit, complete with two caricatured African men in attendance, and sends it to her father in
New York.
When her father sees the portrait he laughs at the absurdity of it, noting that what she
is wearing is a costume of her invention that could never be found in a Muslim country.
Then El viejo Dogson meneo la cabeza estupefacto, al tiempo que risueriamente se
decfa que el disfraz de su hija podia provocar un conflicto intemacional. Luego se encogio
de hombros. Los hijos Servian para eso. Para divertirle a uno con las burradas que
perpetraban.0 (24) In these first pages of Halid the narrative pokes fun at the foreigner
supposedly imitating Arab dress and fancying herself as part of some sort of Oriental
scene, in the market places of Tangiers as well as on canvas. In a sense the passage
highlights the distance between Enriquetas creative interpretation of Arab dress and what
is typically worn in Arab or Muslim countries and in that way critiques essentialist or
exoticist understandings of the Middle East. Yet, in the very next paragraph, we are
presented with Dais fathers anger over his sons love for Enriqueta; that is, the
prototypical opposite of the worldly American father with a laissez-faire attitude--a
disapproving, traditionalist Arab father.

Immediately following this the narrative switches back to the tongue-in-cheek treatment
of Orientalist fantasy: Un amor con una musulmana es el ideal de todo europeo. Una
intriga con un arabe, el mas glorioso recuerdo que puede llevarse una muchacha
aThe same story can begin to be narrated in different ways, and it is only possible to narrate the
story of Enriqueta Dogson and Dais el Bint Abdalla in the following way: Enriqueta Dogson was a
madwoman.
bOld man Dogson shook his head stupefied, while at the same time he said to himself with a smile
that his daughter's costume could provoke an international conflict. Then he shrugged his
shoulders. Thats what children are good for. To entertain one with the stupidities they
perpetrate.
142
occidental. Enriqueta Dogson era consecuente con este punto de vista.8 (24) However,
when the narrative returns to Dais father, we are told that he has reason to be upset-
Dais is even considering leaving Islam and his Moroccan customs for Enriqueta. All that
hinders this is the nagging presence of some verses from the Quran, for el Coran estaba
incrustado en su vida" [the Quran was incrusted in his life]. (25) Dais, similar to his father,
emerges as molded and confined by his cultural milieu, in this case via the Quran, which
elsewhere in the story is made the object of the narratives ironic humor.
Dais father, in order to put an end to his sons relationship with Enriqueta, arranges to
have Dais sent to work with a friend in Java. Before sending Dais away he chastises
him and tells him to go to a certain house and ask that the grandfather of the family, Halid
Majid, show him his naked body.
When Dais sees Halid Majids body he recoils with horror:
El cuerpo del viejo estaba surcado de terribles cicatrices. Semejantes a un
follaje de piel roja y brillante, se extendfan irregularmente por todos sus
miembros. Esas cicatrices y costurones abarcaban su rostra, sus labios,
sus parpados, sus brazos. Era como si el cuerpo de aquel hombre
hubiera pasado a traves de un engranaje terrible que sin hacerle perder su
forma humana le hubiese desgarrado con sus dientes. No habia una
pulgada de epidermis en aquel anciano que no estuviera sehalada por la
misteriosa tortura.6 (27)
The disfigured old man then explains: Estas son las desgracias que les ocurren a los
musulmanes que se acercan a las mujeres que no son de su raza.2 (27) As a young man
he had an affair with a married woman in Java which led to the woman killing her husband
and then dragging Halid Majid along with her into her husbands funeral pyre. Halid Majid
describes his feelings of blame for having caused those two deaths and speaks of his
excruciating physical pain after being charred alive. His story then ends with a moral:
8A love affair with a Muslim woman is the ideal of every European. An intrigue with an Arab, the
most glorious memento that an Occidental girl can take with her. Enriqueta Dogson was in
accordance with this point of view.
8The body of the old man was furrowed by terrible scars. Resembling foliage made of bright red
skin, the scars extended themselves irregularly overall of his limbs. The scars and stitching
covered his face, his lips, his eyelids, his arms. It was as if the body of that man had passed
through a horrible set of gears that without making him lose his human form had tom him with its
teeth. There was not an inch of epidermis on that elderly man that was not marked by the
mysterious torture.
143
No busques amor de mujerfuera de tu raza, de tu ciudad natal y de tu religion. The
narrator then tells us that this was the ingenuous" cause for Enriqueta never seeing Dais
again. (35) Thus, within the mockery of orientalist desire, it is the Moroccan figures in this
story who are naive and unsophisticated enough to believe that love outside of ones
race is sure to result in suffering and peril. In addition, given that Dais is going to a foreign
land, with both the Quran and the warning of someone who had a dangerous romantic
entanglement in the same place encrusted in him, he is doomed to be either forever
deprived of love or always on the brink of cross-cultural disaster.
The scar-covered old man and the costumed American woman, are the monstrous and
masquerading characters in this story--but whose identity do they shake? In a one-sided
deconstruction, the position of the Orientalizing American, and through her the Euro-
American/Euro-Argentine reader, is destabilized. Meanwhile, the stereotypical Muslim
Moroccans emerge as simply all the more entrenched in their ways and doomed by their
beliefs.
Sharp irony, monstrous and disguised characters, and grotesque sights of ludicrous
hideousness abound in most of the stories in El criador de qorilas and in Arlts writings in
general.92 While irony and the grotesque are the elements of these stories which tw ist
stereotype into critique, they entail a certain amount of interpretative ambiguity. Irony as
well as the paradoxical juxtapositions of the grotesque create a double vision; they split
unitary conceptions of truth and reality, such that in these stories-along with spurious
souvenirs-identities are on the market, in circulation and up for grabs. Nonetheless, the
humor and indirect critique produced by irony and its extreme form, the grotesque, and the
fact that in these stories the ironies are based on stereotypes, lead to certain ambiguities.
In some cases the object and/or intention of the critique is unclear, the repeated stress on
certain stereotypical traits make it such that the same notions which are being undone risk
being reinscribed, or the critique seems to only apply to some of the constructs at hand.
cThese are the misfortunes that happen to Muslims who become involved with women who are
not of their race.
4 Dont look for love with a woman outside of your race, your native city, or your religion.
144
In Arifs writings unusual demeanor and physical irregularity function as markers of
immigrant difference-differences in culture and language, as well as perhaps physical
appearance. Not only was Arlt himself marked by a last name which is virtually
unpronounceable in Spanish and the linguistic effects of having been raised in a non-
Spanish-speaking household, but in the period of most concentrated anti-immigrant

sentiment, la Decada Infame, the question of how the immigrant body was marked-how
positivist biology could help in ferreting out the foreign or try to meld it into a homogenous
whole--was a major concern in Argentina. Produced in this climate of intense awareness
of foreigness versus Argentineness, Arifs vast array of hunchbacked, effeminate,
outlandishly disguised, scarred, cross-eyed, and lame characters are an absurdly
grotesque rendering of the immigrant While Ana Maria Zubieta suggests that Arlt makes
his characters strange as way of commenting upon the failed liberal project of
immigration,931would take this further by reading these visibly anomalous characters as a
way of making immigrants difference-an alterity which is in part due to cultural and
physical realities, but which is also due to others investiture or imputation of difference
upon them-outwardly and obviously apparent, to the point of preposterousness.
However, in Arifs works on the Orient, the disruptive power of this play with
conventional images of the Other at times becomes confused with the re-enactment of
these fixed images.
In spite of vast differences in style, the writings of the world-renowned Jorge Luis
Borges also present critiques of the construction of images of the Orient and the self
tinged with ambiguity. Borges works were produced and first received within the avant-
garde, intellectual milieu of the Florida literary group in Buenos Aires. Borges, a librarian
and a voracious reader, read many of the classic scholarly studies and translations
produced by European Orientalists. This can be seen in the details and references of
some of his poems94and particularly in many of his prose works. In terms of Borges non-
fictional works, there is his well-known analogy to the lack of camels in the Quran found in
El escritor argentino y la tradition (Discusion. 1932) and his foray into Arabic philology
as he discusses modes of translation in Los traductores de las 1001 Noches" (1936)95.
145
Many of Borges stories deal with an Eastern character or ethos ranging from the very
notion of the Zahir in El Zahir (1949),36 to the face-off between a German-employed
Chinese spy and a Sinologist in El jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan" (1941),37 to
the mock disquisition relating to mystical Islam in South Asia and Persia in El acercamiento
a Almotasim."98 Beyond their Oriental elements, however, what ties these stories together
is their posing of deep questions about identity formation.
Julia Kushigian devotes a chapter of Orientalism in the Hispanic Literary Tradition to
an analysis of the Orientalist imagery in Borges stories and in spite of significant

problems in the theoretical grounding and argumentation of her study, Kushigian makes
some incisive points about Borges treatment of the Orient.99 She astutely indicates that
The Orient [...] is a metaphor in Borges works for infinite time, fantasy, and utopia" and
considers why infinite time, fantasy, and utopia are linked to the Orient. (19) As she
examines figures such as the tiger, the coin, and the labyrinth in several of Borges stories
with Oriental elements, she presents insightful points about the construction of the Other,
the workings of laughter and language, and the questioning of a fixed reality.100 However,
her readings suffer, not only because of her unclear critical concepts, but because she
does not consider critically the implications of Borges use of the Orient, nor does she
contextualize Borges writings about the Orient socio-historically. That is, how might
Borges treatment of the Orient be related to the place of the Semite in Argentina at the
time at which he wrote.
In the discussion of Borges that follows, though more limited in scope than Kushigians
due to the overall aims of my study, I attempt to consider at least the implications of
Borges use of the Orient and to connect his Orient-themed stories to their socio-historical
context in the period of interventionist Peronist immigration policy and of the effort to
homogenize Argentina. For these reasons, and because of the overarching concerns of
this study, I focus on the ways in which the Arab Orient comes together with Borges
literary inquiry into identity in two stories: Abenjacan el Bojarf, muerto en su laberinto
[Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth] (1951) and La busca de Averroes
[Averroes Search] (1947).101
146
In Abenjacan Borges presents, with a dryly ironic tone and meta-fictional self-
consciousness, the story-telling of two young Englishmen, a poet and a mathematician.
The first of these, Dunraven, presents to his friend, Unwin, a mysterious story centered
around a large, red labyrinth on a promontory in his home region of Cornwall. The two
young men are, as the narrator states with sarcasm, hartos de un mundo sin la dignidad
del peligro [....] Ambos-^sera preciso que lo diga?--eran jovenes, distrafdos y
apasionados.* (125-6) In search of adventure, Dunraven and Unwin enter the once
majestic but now decrepit structure as Dunraven recounts the story as he knows it, or as
he has been telling it for quite some time: --Hara un cuarto de siglo [...] que Abenjacan el
Bojarf, caudillo o rey de no se que tribu nilotica, murio en la camara central de esa casa a
manos de su primo Zaid. Al cabo de los anos, las circunstancias de su muerte siguen
oscuras.6 (126) Although the townspeople were pleased by the news that Abenjacan
would be settling there, the vast size and the form of the house he was building produced
stupefaction and even scandal: Parecfa intolerable que una casa constara de una sola
habitation de leguas y leguas de corredores. Entre los moros se usaran tales casa, pero
no entre cristianos decia la gente.1* (128) Here and further along in Dunravens story that
which is strange is accounted for not by individual idiosyncrasy but by cultural or religious
difference.
Through Dunraven we hear what Abenjacan tells the town rector, Allaby, in order to
keep the rector from repeating his sermon about Gods punishment of a king for having
built a labyrinth.102 Abenjacan threatens Allaby and explains that he had escaped an
uprising against him with his treasure and the cowardly Zaid, his cousin and vizier. He
had killed Zaid in order to have all the treasure to himself, and then, after understanding
Zaids last words of vengeance, he had fled to hide himself en el centra de un laberinto
aweary of a world that lacked the dignity of danger [...] Both men-need it be said?~were young,
dreamy, and passionate." (di Giovanni, trans., 115)
BIt's about a quarter of a century ago now [...] that Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, chief or king of I don't
know what Nilotic tribe, died in the central room of this house at the hands of his cousin Zaid. After
all these years, the facts surrounding his death are still unclear. (di Giovanni, trans., 115-116)
c It seemed intolerable that a house should consist of one single room and miles and miles of
corridors. Among Moors such houses might be common, but not among Christians," people
said.
147
para que su fantasma se pierda.8 (129) At first Allaby, unlike his parishioners, attributes
this to insanity on the part of Abenjacan, but then even he changes his mind:
Allaby trato de pensar que el moro estaba loco y que el absurdo laberinto
era un sfmbolo y un claro testimonio ds su locura. Luego reflexiono que
esa explicacion condecfa con el extravagante edificio y con el
extravagante relato, no con la energica impresion que dejaba el hombre
Abenjacan. Quiza tales historias fueran comunes en los arenales egipcios,
quiza tales rarezas correspondieran (como los dragones de Plinio) menos a
una persona que a una cultura...6 (129)
In trying to understand difference, the people of the town look beyond individual
phenomenon to religion and environment. Yet their interest in looking for a cultural
explanation slips into the (re)production of stereotypes. And it is this seemingly good-
intentioned move toward a cultural explanation that Borges ironizes. By using the familiar
yet derogatory terms el moro and los moros, within the already ironic tone of the
narrator when referring to Unwin, Dunraven, and this lost comer of Cornwall, Borges
pokes fun at the perceptions of these townspeople. This highlighting of set notions about
the Orient which are based on conjecture or imagination becomes even stronger as
Dunraven continues his narrative.
Dunraven tells us that Allaby was able to verify that there had been a successful
rebellion against Abenjacan and his vizier, who was notoriously cowardly. Three years
later this vizier arrives in the town on a ship, the Rose of Sharon, coming from the Orient
and Dunraven describes it in the following way:
No fui de los que vieron ese velero y tal vez en la imagen que tengo de el
influyen olvidadas litograffas de Aboukir o de Trafalgar,103 pero entiendo
que era de esos barcos muy trabajados que no parecen obra de naviero,
sino de carpintero y menos de caipintero que de ebanista. Era (si no en la
realidad, en mis suenos) brunido, oscuro, silencioso y veloz, y lo
tripulaban arabes y malayos.'
8in the heart of a labyrinth so that Zaid's ghost will lose its way (di Giovanni, trans., 119)
6Allaby tried to believe that the Moor was crazy and that the absurd labyrinth was a symbol and a
clear testament to his madness. Later he considered that this explanation agreed with the
extravagant building and the extravagant tale, but not with the powerful impression left by the man
Ibn Hakkan. Perhaps such stories were common in the sandy expanses of Egypt, perhaps such
oddities corresponded (like Pliny's dragons) less to a person than to a culture.
cI was not among those who saw this sailing ship, and perhaps the image of it I hold in my mind is
influenced by forgotten prints of Aboukir or of Trafalgar, but I believe it was among the class of
ships so minutely detailed that they seem less the work of a shipbuilder than of a carpenter, and
less of a carpenter than of a cabinetmaker. It was (if not in reality, at least in my dreams) polished,
dark, fast, and silent, and its crew was made up of Arabs and Malayans." (di Giovanni, trans., 120)
148
In this passage Dunraven makes no pretense and no excuses about describing as fact
that which is a fiction created by images of battles in or near the Orient.
Not long after the arrival of this ship a terrified Abenjacan tells the rector that his slave
and lion have already been killed by Zaid, and he himself is next. A fev days later Allaby
verifies that the slave and the lion have been killed and finds the murdered Abenjacan
with his face destroyed. Here the focus of the story on the construction of identity arises
yet again in the leitmotif of the face as the site of change and of identity.
Earlier, when Abenjacan is telling Allaby his story he says that, while hiding out with
Zaid after the uprising, Le ordene a mi esclavo que vigilara la cara del desierto.(128)
After having his slave watch the surface of the desert for any change which might signal
danger, Abenjacan kills Zaid and gives his slave an order which echoes the first Ie
ordene al esclavo que le deshiciera la cara con una roca."6 (129) With a rock, a piece of
the desert itself, Abenjacan tries to stop the man who he knows is already dead from
rising again. Somehow without a face Zaid is not as much of a threat to Abenjacan. We
then read that later, in a dream, Abenjacan manages to decipher Zaids last words:
Decfa: Como ahora me borras te borrare, dondequiera que estes.nc (129) The face here
is equated with identity. Abenjacan had killed his cousins body, but only by disfiguring
his face beyond recognition could he put an end to his existence. Zaids threat, likewise,
is not simply about murder, but about erasure, the obliteration of his cousin as a
recognizable entity. When Allaby finds the murdered Abenjacan with a destroyed face,
this is part of a series of erasures: both the lion and the slaves faces had been distorted
as well. This detail becomes significant in Unwins reformulation of Dunravens account of
what was behind the construction and abandonment of the labyrinth-house.
Unwin finds his friends narrative lacking in eloquence and effectiveness, and even
calls it all a lie. A few days later, back in London, Unwin tells Dunraven that he qualifies
his earlier statement that the story was a lie, in actuality los hechos eran ciertos, o podfan
aI ordered my slave to watch the face of the desert. (di Giovanni, trans., 118)
BI ordered my slave to obliterate the dead mans face with a heavy rock. (di Giovanni, trans., 118)
c He was saying: As you now erase me I will erase you, wherever you may be.
149
serlo, pero contados como tu los contaste, eran, de un modo manifiesto, mentira."8 (133)
He then presents his explanation of the events which is based on algo sensato
[something sensible]. (133) By thinking about the labyrinth of Crete and the structure and
purpose of a spiders web he arrives at the following more plausible explanation: It was
Zaid who had left Egypt, but not to hide in a labyrinth from a cousin he had killed, rather, to
attract with this labyrinth the cousin that he had not had the courage to kill. It is Abenjacan
who arrives on the Rose of Sharon, and the waiting Zaid kills him, as well as the lion and
the slave, and then destroys the faces of all three. Dunraven accepts some of what
Unwin tells him and modifies some details, such that in the end, they decide that Zaid
Robo el tesoro y luego comprendio que el tesoro no era lo esencial para el. Lo esencial
era que Abenjacan pereciera. Simulo ser Abenjacan, mato a Abenjacan y finalmente fue
Abenjacan.0 (136-7)
This solution to the mystery of Abenjacan and his labyrinth is considered more logical
by Unwin and Dunraven because, among other things, the three faces were destroyed in
order to create a series whose function was to dissimulate the need to hide the identity of
the dead man. Identity is erased by the erasure of the face, which is tantamount to death.
The desire to have someones treasure is simply a symptom of the desire to be that
person, and to be that person, not only his/her life, but his/her physical identity must be
destroyed. Furthermore, ones identity must be obscured in order to take on that of
another. In order to be Abenjacan, Zaid must actually obliterate Abenjacan and must
seemingly obliterate Zaid. Borges Abenjacan is about the desire to be ones Other, the
ability to change identities-to craft and project the identity that one wishes to have, and
the violence, to oneself and to others, involved in the assumption of an identity. One of
the ways in which these notions are elaborated upon is the attention to the crafting of the
story on the part of Dunraven and Unwin. To find the most plausible solution to the
mystery is also to most effectively craft the story. A physical object, the building which
1The facts were true, or could be thought of as true, but told the way you told them they were
obviously lies." (di Giovanni, trans., 122)
150
houses a labyrinth, is used as the point of departure for meditations on narration, the logic
of plot, and what is more important: the mystery and its solution. This focus on the
structuring of mystery stories foregrounds notions of the construction of truth versus
fiction, as well as the construction of cultural and individual identities.
But: why the Orient? Why is the element of mystery introduced into this town and
these young mens lives one of Arab mystery? In this story the Orient and Orientals
provide a space where anything is possible--any solution and therefore the greatest of
mysteries. On the one hand, we could conclude that Borges uses the Orient in this story
to heighten the self-conscious play with fictionality. The construct of the Orient is itself a
fictionalization, and that fiction is associated with, and in part built by, fantastic Oriental
tales. Yet, on the other hand, this designates the Orient as a space of limitless play, and
Orientals as an appropriate object for any and every fantastic vision or flight of fancy.
This is certainly what is suggested in Borges' postscript to the 1952 edition of El Aleph in
which he says that he situated another story about the Muslim world, El hombre en el
umbral," in India para que su inverosimilitud fuera tolerable [so that its inverosimilitude
would be tolerable.] (183)
A different, yet similarly ambiguous, positioning of the Orient is found in Averroes.
This story presents Averroes [Ibn Rushd], the twelfth-century Muslim philosopher and
doctor of Cordoba, as he works on a philosophical treatise and is troubled by an
unresolved question in another work in progress-his Commentaries on Aristotle.
Ironically, as Averroes engages in the first work in a debate about whether divinity
discerns only the general, species-wide laws of the universe or also those which have to
do with the individual, in the second work his individual intellect is restricted by the
principles of his cultural sphere. Averroes is perturbed by a philological problem in his
commentary on Aristotle: the meaning of the words tragedy and comedy. As the
narrator puts it: nadie, en el ambito del Islam, barruntaba lo que querfan decir [....] Esas
6He stole the treasure, and only later found out that he was really after something else. He really
wanted to see Ibn Hakkan dead. He pretended to be Ibn Hakkan, he killed Ibn Hakkan, and in the
end he became Ibn Hakkan.' (di Giovanni, trans., 125)
151
dos palabras arcanas pululaban en el texto de la Poetica; imposible aludirlas. 8 (95)
Averroes has taken upon himself the project of interpreting Aristotle, but this goal
arouses not only admiration, but compassion, and perhaps even scornful pity, in the
narrator. Averroes work is described in the following way: Pocas cosas mas bellas y
mas pateticas registrara la historia que esa consagracion de un medico arabe a los
pensamientos de un hombre de quien le separaban catorce siglos; a las dificultades
intrfnsecas debemos anadir que Averroes, ignorante del sirfaco y del griego, trabajaba
sobre la traduccion de una traduccion.0 (my emphasis, 94-95)
The pathos, and dramatic irony, surrounding Averroes grows when twice he is offered
the key to understanding Aristotles puzzling terms, but he is unable to take hold of it.
First, looking out from his enclosed balcony he sees three children playing: they are acting
out the roles of muezzin, minaret, and congregation. But Averroes does not take note of
the small scale theatrical performance before him. Later, Averroes is part of a conversation
in which a traveler, Abulcasim, recounts having seen a play in a theater in China. At first
Farach, a Quranic scholar, thinks that these peop!e--the actors-that Abulcasim is
describing were insane, and Abulcasim attempts to explain, to no avail, that these people,
through actions and words, were telling a story. Farach then responds: ~En tal caso [...]
no se requerian veinte personas. Un solo hablista puede referir cualquier cosa, por
complejaque sea. Todos aprobaron ese dictamen.' (99-100) Among those who agree
with Farach is Averroes, who does not so much as suspect that what this traveler saw is
the key to those enigmatic terms tragedy and comedy.
The topic of conversation immediately shifts to high praise for the Arabic language and
differing opinions about Arabic poetry. It is only at this point that Averroes takes an
a no one in the whole world of Islam could conjecture what they meant [....] These two arcane
words pullulated throughout the text of the Poetics; it was impossible to elude them. (Irby, trans.,
149)
6Few things more beautiful and more pathetic are recorded in history than this Arab physicians
dedication to the thoughts of a man separated from him by fourteen centuries; to the intrinsic
difficulties we should add that Averroes, ignorant of Syriac and of Greek, was working with a
translation of a translation. (Irby, trans., 149; emphasis added)
c In that case, [...] twenty persons are unnecessary. One single speaker can tell anything, no
matter how complicated it might be. Everyone approved this dictum. (Irby, trans., 153)
152
active interest in the discussion. He defends traditional Arabic poetry against innovation
using the reasoning that El tiempo agranda el ambito de los versos y se de algunos que
a la par de la musica, son todo para todos los hombres. Asi, atormentado hace arios en
Marrakech por memorias de Cordoba, me complacfa en repetir el apostrofe que
Abdurrahman dirigio en los jardines de Ruzat'a a una palma africana (102-103, my
emphasis) In arguing for the universalism of classical texts, he adds that the writings of
the ancients and the Quran contain all poetry and condemns as vain any attempt to
innovate. The others listen with pleasure to this vindication of tradition. Ironically placing
too much faith in the core texts of his religious and cultural tradition, as well as in the notion
of universalism, Averroes erroneously thinks that he has arrived at the meaning of those
two troubling words: Con firme y cuidadosa caligraffa agrego estas Ifneas al manuscrito:
Aristu (Aristoteles) denomina tragedia a los panegmcos y comedias a las satiras y
anatemas. Admirables tragedias y comedias abundan en las paginas del Coran y en las
mohalacasdelsantuario."0 (103)
In the next paragraph, the narrator, inserting himself in the narrative for the first time,
describes Averroes looking into a minor before going to bed. Pointing to the mediated
nature of all of his knowledge about the Cordoban philosopher, the narrator states: No
se lo que vieron sus ojos, porque ningun historiador ha descrito las formas de su cara.ne
(103) This is followed by the final paragraph, separated by a few spaces, in which the
narrator, with great situational irony, reflects on the process of narrating this story about
Averroes:
Recorde a Averroes, que encerrado en el ambito del Islam, nunca pudo
saber el significado de las voces tragedia y comedia. Referf el caso; a
medida que adelantaba [....] Sentf que la obra se burlaba de mf. Sentf que
aTime broadens the scope of verses and I know some which, like music, .are everything for all
men. Thus, when I was tormented years ago in Marrakesh by memories of Cordova, I took
pleasure in repeating the apostrophe Abdurrahman addressed in the gardens of Ruzafa to an
African palm [....]" (Irby, trans., 154; emphasis added)
BWith firm and careful calligraphy he added these lines to the manuscript: Aristu (Aristotle) gives
the name of tragedy to panegyrics and that of comedy to satires and anathemas. Admirable
tragedies and comedies abound in the pages of the Koran and in the mohalacas of the
sanctuary." (Irby, trans., 155)
cI do not know what his eyes saw, because no historian has ever described the forms of his face."
(Irby, trans., 155)
153
Averroes, queriendo imaginar lo que es un drama sin haber sospechado lo
que es un teatro, no era mas absurdo que yo, queriendo imaginar a
Averroes, sin otro material que unos adarmes de Renan, de Lane y de
Asm Palacios. Sentf en la ultima pagina, que mi narracion era un sfmbolo
del hombre que yo fui, mientras la escribfa y que, para redactar esa
narracion, yo tuve que ser aquel hombre y que, para seraquel hombre, yo
tuve que redactar esa narracion, y asf hasta lo infinite). (En el instante en
que yo dejo de creer en el, A v e rro e s desaparece.)4 (104)
In one sense, we have here a poignant realization that one can never really know the
Other, and that in trying to do so one only produces a testament to who one is at that
moment. When the Other is represented what is really re-presented is the self. Meaning
emerges as infinitely contingent and subjective. According to this epistemology,
representation, whether considered stereotypical or objective, is impossible.
However, the narrators acknowledgment of the uncontainability and unknowability of
self and Other posits an infinitely Other Other, different cultures that are mutually
unintelligible. Such a conceptualization makes any cultural translation impossible. While it
is one thing to say that our knowledge of ourselves and of others is built upon mis
translated images and translations of translations, and is circumscribed by our cultural
environments, it is quite another to say that there is absolutely no way in which to craft
even tentative translations and de-centered representations. Indicative of this absolutist
stance is the opening sentence of Averroes: Abulgualid Muhammad Ibn-Ahmad ibn
Muhammad ibn-Rushd (un siglo tardarfa ese largo nombre en llegar a Averroes, pasando
por Benraist y por Avenryz, y aun por Aben-Rassad y Filius Rosadis) redactaba el
undecimo capftulo (93) The narrator tells us that Averroes very name goes through
several (mis)translations only to end up, after 100 years, as the barely recognizable
Averroes.
aI remembered Averroes who, closed within the orb of Islam, could never know the meaning of
the terms tragedy and comedy. I related his case; as I went along [....] I felt that the work was
mocking me. I felt that Averroes, wanting to imagine what a drama is without ever having
suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, wanting to imagine Averroes with no other
sources than a few fragments from Renan, Lane and Asfn Palacios. I felt, on the last page, that my
narration was a symbol of the man I was as I wrote it and that, in order to compose that narration, I
had to be that man and, in order to be that man, I had to compose that narration, and so on to
infinity. (The moment I cease to believe in him, Averroes disappears.) (Irby, trans., 155)
154
When we consider that Borges wrote these two stories during the period of official
Peronist melting pot propaganda, when the possibility of the social and biological
blending of certain ethnic and religious groups was being studied-and certain groups
were being labeled unassimilatable, the stories take on greater meaning. By writing an
Orient that is the site of mystery and infinite play, and in particular one which is mutually
unintelligible with the culture of the (Euro-Argentine) narrator, Borges stories seem to
uphold the notion that certain ethnic or national groups are simply too different to enter into
the Western cultural enclosure of Argentina. Outside of the same cultural paradigms, and
therefore incommensurate with Argentine ways, any type of connection, let alone
homogeneity (whether sought after or not), with Arabs would be impossible to establish.
In this way, both Arlt and Borges stories disrupt conventional notions about identity
construction, but ultimately also recreate some fixed ideas about the Orient and
Otherness.
During a time of backlash against immigrants, and in particular Semitic immigrants, the
Creole Euro-Argentines who write about turcost look with anxiety or disdain upon an Arab
immigrant who they see as Oriental and thus unassimilatable. At the same time, writers
with European immigrant backgrounds push for radical assimilation using the 'turcd as a
sign for that which is most difficult to assimilate. The Euro-Argentines who write about the
Orient also demonstrate different tendencies: some attempt to tame or manage the
foreignness of the Orient as a way to control the foreignness/foreigners within Argentina,
while others look to the Orient as an aesthetic ideal to compensate for changes in the
place of literature in Latin America, and others take that which is marked as different or
other-Middle Eastern cultures-and use it to ironize and destabilize constructions of
identity, although not un-ambiguously. At a time when negative, racialized images of Arab
immigrants were becoming increasingly common in Argentina, the representations
assembled by these literary texts both echo and shape notions of the Orient and the
Oriental immigrant.
BAbulgualid Muhammad Ibn-Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn-Rushd (a century this long name would
take to become Averroes, first becoming Benraist and Avenryz and even Aben-Rassad and Filius
155
* * *
Arab Argentines were not only implicated as objects of these Euro-Argentine

Orientalist discourses, but they also actively participated in refuting existing
representations of the Arab world and creating new ones. The curious, contradictory
relationship to Orientalist images present in Arslan, Guraieb, and Aa'oums historico-literary
works reveals the negotiations involved in the positioning of oneself as an Arab within
mainstream Argentine culture. While many Euro-Argentines wrote texts in which they
defined themselves through or against an essentialized Orient or Oriental immigrant, the
stories of Arlt and Borges dismantle, however ambivalently, the construction of the Orient
and essentialized identities. Thus, among some of the texts within the Arab Argentine and
Euro-Argentine bodies of works there are correspondences in terms of representational
undertakings and their outcomes. These texts by both Arab and Euro-Argentines contain
critiques of orientalism or expressions of resistance to it, but a certain ambiguity remains in
terms of the writers positioning vis-a-vis the construct of the Orient and notions of
difference. In some ways, the field of representations of the Orient forms a Gordian knot--
a problem so intricate that it is unsolvable by its own terms. Yet, it is important to
recognize the role of Arslan, Guraieb, Adoum, Arlt, and Borges texts in opening up
contestatory fissures in the discourses which with they grapple. The juxtaposition of
these two interlocking bodies of work illustrates not only how Euro-Argentines and Arab
Argentines employ representations of Arabs and the Arab world in order to delineate the
contours of individual, ethnic immigrant, and national identities, but also how oppositional
representational practices simultaneously reinscribe established discourses and open up
new discursive arenas and subject formations.
Rosadis) was writing the eleventh chapter [....] (Irby, trans., 148)
156
'Consider this term (as well as Oriental") to be within quotation marks, that is, bracketed in order
to denote that it is a construct, whenever I use it throughout this chapter-keeping in mind, of
course, that most of the authors whose works I study here use it without any such bracketing.
2A telling example of Arab/Argentine missed messages is found in a group of texts all published in
Buenos Aires in 1940 and 1941. Ibrahim Halter's booklet La verdad sobre la literature turca.
aclaraciones sobre sus oriaenes v existencia [The Truth about Turkish/7T/rco Literature,
Clarifications about its Origins and Existence; (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Arabe de Publicidad y
Propaganda, 1941)] is a cutting response to Jorge G. Blanco Villaltas book Literature turca
contemporanea [Contemporary Turkish Literature; (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1940)], in
which Blanco Villalta claims that, while Arabic and Persian literature are in a state of decadence,
Turkish literature is the most accomplished of the Near East. Halter had previously published a
commentary on Blanco Villalta book, but instead of receiving a hoped for response from Blanco
Villalta, the books author had rebuffed Halter by returning Halters calling card. Halter then wrote
his booklet La verdad to point to the political aspects of the Euro-Argentines book as well as to
further emphasize his own counter-argument to the book. (Halter's first response to Blanco Villalta
was a book review entitled En tomo al libro Literature turca contemporanea that appeared in the
December 1940 issue of the magazine Saeta. Cuademillo de Arte v de Letras.) Seemingly
playing off of the misleading doubled meaning of 'turco,' Halter rather than concern himself with
Turkish literature in this booklet, presents a revindication of Arabic literature. This defense of
Arabic letters refers not only to Arab writers in the Arab world, but to those in the Americas,
including Argentina. At about the same time, Adela Silvia Guena de Zimmermann presented La
poesfa de Oriente en la Argentina [The Poetry of the Orient in Argentina] as a lecture and then
published it, with some small changes. (The lecture was given at the Escuela Avellaneda on
September 14,1940, under the auspices of the Asociacidn de Docentes del Consejo Escolar I. It
was then published in Buenos Aires in 1941, s.n. I refer to its contents in more detail later in this
chapter.) Guena de Zimmermann reports on the achievements of Argentine orientalism-that is, of
the study of Oriental poetry and, in particular, the publication of translations of Oriental poetry,
almost all from other European language translations, in Argentina. While she does mention the
work of one Arab Argentine-Jose Guraiebs translations of the famous Gibran Khalil Gibran-she is
oblivious to the several volumes of poetry written in Arabic by Arab Emigres which by that time had
been published in Argentina, and the poetry group al-Rabitah al-Adabiyyah [The Literary Union]
which had functioned in Buenos Aires in the 1920s. Overwhelmingly, Arab Argentine voices
were either blatantly ignored or barely noticed.
3Klich, Arab-Jewish Coexistence in the Rrst Half of 1900s Argentina: Overcoming Self-Imposed
Amnesia" in Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America.
Images and Realities. (London: Frank Cass, 1998) 13.
4Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism: Argentina and Chile. 1890-1914 (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1970), 20.
5Klich, Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina: an Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888-1914 in The
Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration. Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, editors
(London: The Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1992) 266.
6 Klich, Arab-Jewish Coexistence 13-14.
7 Solberg, 88-89.
8See Lilia Ana Bertoni, De Turquia a Buenos Aires. Una colectividad nueva a fines del siglo XIX.
Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 9:26 (April 1994), 69. This situation is ironic considering
that one of the common stereotypes about the Arab World is that all Arab women are confined to
the home.
9 For more detailed information on the rise of affluent immigrants, as reflected in literature, as well
as socio-economically, see Solberg, 33-89.
157
10For more on the negative stereotyping of well to-do Spanish and Italian immigrants see Solberg,
89-90.
Klich, Arab-Jewish Coexistence" 14.
12In the late 1920s one exception was made: the Syro-Lebanese who were going to work in
agriculture were put up in the Hotel de Inmigrantes. Michael Humphrey, Ethnic History,
Nationalism, and Transnationalism in Argentine Arab and Jewish Cultures" in Arab and Jewish
Immigrants in Latin America. Images and Realities. 170. Humphrey takes this information from the
work of Marta H. Saleh de Canuto and Susana Budeguer, El aporte de los sirios v libaneses a
Tucurnan (Tucuman: s.n., 1979) 15, and Hugo L. Ponsati, Sirios y libaneses en el Noroeste
argentino: presencia y aporte, unpublished article (Tucuman, 1978?) 35.
13Klich, Argentine-Ottoman Relations and Their Impact on Immigrants from the Middle East: A
History of Unfulfilled Expectations, 1910-1915. The Americas (Academy of American Franciscan
History) 50:2 (October 1993) 186-193 (in particular 186-187).
14Klich, Argentine-Ottoman Relations," 190.
15 Klich, Argentine-Ottoman Relations, 190, 192-193.
16For instance, Bolivia (1940), Brazil (1930,1937), Columbia (1931,1937), El Salvador (1930,
1933), Guatemala (1931,1936), Haiti (1903-1904,1931), Honduras (1934), Mexico (1926,
1936), Nicaragua (1930), and Panama (1928,1932,1938,1941), Uruguay (1890,1894,1915)
established laws or issued ordinances which restricted the entry of Arabs (as well as other
undesired immigrants, including Jews, Turks, Chinese, Africans, and Poles), forbade the stay of
those already in the country, and/or curtailed the expansion of their commercial activities. See
Klich, Introduction to the Sources for the History of The Middle Easterners in Latin America"
Temas de Africa y Asia 2.1993,209-210 and Klich, Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina"
269, n. 57.
17Republica Argentina, Ministerio de Agriculture, Memoria de la Direccion de Inmiqracion
correspondiente al ario 1899 presentada por el Director Juan A. Alsina in Memoria oresentada al
Honorable Conareso. enero de 1899-octubre de 1900 (Buenos Aires, 1900) 79-82, cited in
Maria Elena Vela Rios and Roberto Caimi, The Arabs in Tucuman, Argentina in Asiatic Migrations
in Latin America [Luz Maria Montiel, ed. (Mexico, D.F.: Colegio de Mexico, 1981)] and Juan
Alsina, La inmioracion en el primer sialo de la indeoendencia (Buenos Aires: F.S. Alsina, 1910)
208.
18Klich, Argentine-Ottoman Relations, 183.
'3See Kiich, Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina 268-269, n. 57. This article as well as
Klichs Arabes, judi'os y arabes judios en la Argentina de la primera mitad del novecientos
fEstudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe 6:2, July-December 1995, 112-113)
provide information on Arab immigrants efforts to counter these directives and help more of their
countrymen join them in Argentina.
20 Humphrey, 170.
21 Pablo Calatayud (Museo Social, 1939: 267), cited in Amd Schneider The Two Faces of
Modernity: Concepts of the Melting Pot in Argentina Critique of Anthropology 16:2 (1996), 180-
181. Schneider notes that other responses to the survey included those which advocated giving
preference to ethnic and racial groups similar to those already in the majority in Argentina, and
those which recommended unrestricted immigration.
22Schneider, 178. See also Monica Quijada, De Peron a Alberdi: selectividad etnica y
construccion nacional en la oolitica inmiaratoria aroentina." Revista de Indias. 52:195/196 (1992),
867-868.
23 See Schneider, 176-183.
24 Schneider, 173.
25Quijada, 870, 880-882, 885.
26Quijada details these distinctions in her article De Perdn a Alberdi: selectividad etnica y
construccion nacional en la politica inmigratoria argentina.
158
27Amid the plethora of historical works written by Arab Argentines, there are a few which directly
address the subject of Arabs immigrants in Argentina and forcefully counter the criticisms and
stereotypes of Arab immigrants which were commonly held during the first half of this century. I
provide here a brief description of these works: Arslans booklet Las mentiras (Buenos Aires:
Edicion del Diario Al-lstikial [La independencia], 1939), which is about Zionism and the skewed
coverage of Arabs in the press, contains an introductory section which defends Arab immigrants
in Argentina (pages 3-4). Habib Estefanos Los pueblos hisoano-americanos. su presente v su
porvenir (Mexico, D.F.: Ediciones Culturales, 1931), a lengthy rumination upon Latin American
cultural history and the future of Latin America, contains a short chapter at the very end of the
book entitled Capitulo complementario. Palabras de justicia y amor. Los Sirios, Libaneses y
Palestinos y las Republicas Hispano-Americanas" (pages 287-295). In it he presents some
general historical information on the Arab peoples, emphasizing the Arab-Spanish connection,
and then counters the usual criticisms about Arab immigrants. (See Margot Scheffold, Doopelte
Heimat?. Zur literarischen Produktion arabischsprachioer Immigranten in Argentinian [Berlin:
Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1993] 19-22, for an analysis of this work as an apologetic.) Juan S. Obeid's
Aoorte: Contribucion a la futura historia de la colectividad siriolibanesa en la Reoublica Argentina
(Buenos Aires: Editorial A. J. Coimil y Compania, 1937) is completely dedicated to providing the
groundwork for a history of Arab immigrants in Argentina and details their cultural and economic
successes. Alejandro Schamuns La Siria nueva: obra histories. estadfstica v comercial de la
colectividad sirio-otomana en las Republicas Argentina v Uruguay (Buenos Aires: Empresa
Assalam, 1917), would be another interesting work to look at in this vein (unfortunately, I am still
in the process of obtaining a copy of this book). Socio-historical works written about and by Arab
Argentines-in Arabic-include: Anonymous, Zavd. maim(Tat maaSISt intiggdiwah fan] al-muhaiirin
(Buenos Aires: al-Matbaah al-Tijariyyah, s.d.) and the Buenos Aires periodical al-HavSts 1943
two-part special issue, entitled Ta'rTkh al-Muhajarah al-Suriyyah al-Lubnaniwah ila*al-Arkhantm. In
addition to the historical works by and about Arab Argentines written in Spanish which I have
already mentioned, there are also works produced by various Arab and Arab Argentine institutions
and associations, as well as works produced by individuals in later periods (the 1960s and on),
some of which are scholarly works written by Argentine historians and sociologists of Arab
descent.
28 It seems that some Arab Argentines were so concerned with improving the commonly held
negative opinions about Arabs that they assisted in the publication of two works written by
Argentines of European descent which present Arab history and culture and also praise Arab
immigrants adaptability and contributions to Argentina. Theresa Alfaro Velcamp notes that
members of the Arab community in Argentina funded Santiago Peraltas Influencia del pueblo
arabe en la Argentina. Aountes sobre inmiqracion (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Impresora
Americana, 1946) (Velcamp, The Historiography of Arab Immigration to Argentina: The
Intersection of the Imaginary and the Real Country in Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin
America: Images and Realities. 229). In Influencia Peralta, Perons Director of Immigration from
1945-1947, who favored Christian Arab immigration to Argentina, presents the history of the Arab
world, mentions a Moorish gaucho genealogy similar to that of Ibrahim Hallar in El gaucho. su
originalidad arabiga. and praises highly the Arab immigrants to Argentina stressing their ability to
assimilate into Argentine culture and their contributions to the nations work force. However, in
the midst of Peraltas words about la madre Esparia [Mother Spain] and la abuela Arabia
[Grandmother Arabia] (12), it becomes obvious that Peralta is elevating Arab immigrants by
vilifying-and in order to vilify-Jewish immigrants.
Similarly, Ciro Torres Lopez wrote another socio-historical study for-hire, El abuelo arabe
(Su influio en las raices y en el destino de la estiroe araentinai. (Rosario. Argentina: s.n., 1955).
In the prefatory pages of El abuelo arabe Torres Lopez acknowledges the support of three Arab
Argentines and two Arab Argentine Associations, though he does not state explicitly what level of
monetary funding or content came from these Arab Argentines, it seems clear that they did in
159
some way sponsor the book. Torres Lopez describes Arab civilization in a celebratory manner,
refers to the Arab geneology of the gaucho, and praises Arab immigrants in Argentina as dignified
people who came to Argentina seeking freedom from tyranny, who assimilate easily, who
contribute to Argentina, among other things, as civilizers of the countryside, and who have cost
the nation nothing. Moreover, Torres Lopez uses the same rhetorical maneuver as Peralta in that
he attempts to place the Arabs in a positive light by contrasting them with the Italian immigrants
who he maligns, making use of the pejorative terms el Tano y el Tanismo." (309) Interestingly, in
El abuelo arabe. Torres Lopez uses Arab Argentines works as his sources (quoting several times
from the works of Emin Arslan and Jose Guraieb, whose writings I will discuss in this chapter).
29The Druze (or Druse) are a close-knit religious sect with an eclectic belief system which is known
in full only by a group of initiates within the sect. The religion started in the 11th century as an
offshoot of the Isma'TIT Shiite branch of Islam and today most Druze live in Lebanon, Syria, and
Israel.
30For more detailed information on Arslan and specifically how the position of Ottoman consul-
general in Buenos Aires was established and how Arslan carried out this post, see Ignacio Klich,
Argentine-Ottoman Relations," 177-205. See also Arslans autobiographical works, his prologue
to his novel Final de un idilio (Buenos Aires: Rodriguez Giles, 1917) and his Misterios de Oriente
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, 1932 [2nd edition, I have been unable to locate a copy of the first
edition in order to determine its publication date]), 22.
31The periodicals Arslan founded are: the Spanish-language La Nota (1915) and Laoiz Azul
(1916?), and the bilingual (Arabic-Spanish) al-lstiolal/La Independencia (1926). Arslan also
published two memoirs-Recuerdos de Oriente (c. 1925) and the Arabic version Mudhakkirat
(1934, under the Arabic form of the authors name: Amir Amin Arslan)~which I do not discuss
here. Although both works are largely political memoirs and present a great deal of information
about the history and customs of Syria, Lebanon, and the Ottoman Empire, and the Spanish-
language memoir is obviously aimed at an Argentine audience, they definitely fall within the genre
of the immigrant autobiography. For this reason, I believe they would be best dealt with as such in
a separate study. Arslan also wrote two novels: Asraral-Qusur [The Secrets of the Palaces], a
historical novel, was first published in 1897 before Arslans arrival in Argentina; Final de un idilio
was published in Argentina in 1917. I discuss Final de un idilio at length in the next chapter.
Arslans two earliest works, written before Asrar al-Qusur. were a history of Napoleon and a treatise
on international law and war, both written in Arabic. In Argentina, Arlsan also wrote at least four
plays in Spanish which were never published and of which I have not found copies.
32Arslans articles in La Nacion include titles such as: En Oriente y Occidente" (April 13,1933,
page 4), Arabia y los arabes" (August 12,1934, section 2, page 2), and Ciencia de los arabes:
La astronomia" (April 14,1934, section 2, page 3).
33Arslan. La verdad sobre el harem (Buenos Aires: Rodriguez Giles, 1916).
34These two pieces of information about the veil are provided via an extended quote (whose end
point is entirely unclear) from Madame Lucie Delarue Mardrus, the wife of one of the French
translators of the 1001 Arabian Niohts. who upon returning from the Middle East published a
piece on her trip in Parisian newspapers. Arslans citation of this European travel account is but
one of many citations of European sources and authorities in his histories-a topic which I shall
return to further along in my discussion of Arslans texts.
35Pierre Loti was the pseudonym of Juiien Viaud, a prolific French novelist. The original title of this
work is: Les Desenchantees (1906).
36Arslan, La verdadera historia de las desencantadas (Buenos Aires: Edition La Facultad,
1935). This edition is labeled as the 2nd, however it is not clear whether the date given (1935) is
the original copyright date or the publication date of this second edition. I have been unable to
locate a copy of the first edition in order to clear this up.
37The original title of this work is: Azivade (1879).
160
38Arslan, Misterios de Oriente (Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, 1932 [2nd edition]). On this same
page (9) Arslan also equates las mujeres en Oriente" with women who are strictly veiled-that is
with middle and upper class Muslim women. At one point in La verdad sobre el harem (9) Arslan
also collapses the categories Oriente and Islam (making it such that all Middle Easterners are
Muslim).
39Arslan, Los arabes (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sopena Argentina, s.d.). The only copy of the text
that I have found is part of the Osvaldo Machado Mouret Donation at the library of the Facultad de
Filosoffa y Letras, la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Handwritten on the front page of the book,
presumably by Machado Mouret or a librarian, is 1940 (?)" which is crossed out and immediately
followed by 1938 (?)". Considering the number of re-editions of his various other works that this
text lists, this date seems likely.
40In the last work Arslan published (Los arabesl La verdad sobre el harem is listed as having gone
through seven editions, and Misterios de Oriente. and La verdadera historia de las
desencantadas three each. In spite of the absence of any indication of how many copies were
printed in each edition, this points to a high number of repeat editions which presumably would
only have been published due to demand. Of course, it would be nearly impossible to determine
who was purchasing these works--Arab Argentines or Euro-Argentines.
41Ibrahim Hallar also wrote a history of the Arabs, in his case more expository than legend-based,
entitled Arabia v los arabes (Buenos Aires: La Biblioteca Arabe de Damasco, Filial de Buenos
Aires, 1939). Hallar prefaces his work by pointing to the ways in which his position as an Arab
Argentine especially qualifies him to present the history and culture of the Arab world, and the
how it is his ethnic and religious heritage which have impelled him to carry out this endeavor; but
he is quick to carefully balance this out with the statement that his ethnic pride is neither egotistical
nor aggressive. In the body of the work he presents the history of the Arabs before Islam, the
history of Muhammad and early Islam, and selected quotes from the Quran. Some other histories
about the Arab world written by Arab Argentines include: Malatios Khouris El Islam (Buenos
Aires: Ediciones Estudio Arabe-Hispano Americano de Difusion Cultural [M. Khouri], 1966), and
Palestina. corazon de los arabes (Mendoza, Argentina: Comite Arabe de Mendoza Pro Ayuda a
Palestina, 1948), Laila Neffas Lfbano. hilvanes para una reseria (Montevideo: Peria y Companfa,
1943), and El Lfbano. produced by America y Oriente (Buenos Aires: America y Oriente, 1954).
See below the references to Jose Guraiebs various works, almost all of which are very much of
the legends and proverbs of the Orient variety.
42Guraieb. Sabiduria arabe (Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1949). i refer to the sixth edition: Buenos
Aires: Editorial Kier, 1978. This text was taken up by the Euro-Argentine Ciro Torres Lopez in a
socio-historical vindication of the Arab and the Arab immigrant which was apparently funded, or at
least greatly influenced, by members of the Arab community of Argentina (see endnote #28).
Much of what Torres Ldpez refers to and cites from Sabiduria arabe is legend or parable, adding to
the complexity of the use of historico-literary material in contestatory representations.
43Aside from the unpublished plays and poems, and several published translations, some of
Guraiebs works include: Hasna1al-basatfn [dramatic novel in Arabic-under the authors original
name: Yusuf Ilyas Ghurayyib] (Tucuman: Sad5 al-Sharo. 19241: La astucia de la muier fSpanish
title of Arabic language novel-1 have only found references to this work, as well as the following
one] (Lebanon: El Sol [al-Shams?], 1924); Ratiba. obra teatral (Tucuman: Casanovas y Cossio,
1932); El mensaje de los suefios. filosoffa oneirocrftica (Buenos Aires: Editorial Kier, 1953 [This
work had its 7th edition in 1992]); Alauimia mental (Buenos Aires: Editorial Kier, 1956); Pepitas
de oro. oroverbios. anecdotas M levendas de la sabiduria arabe (Cordoba, Argentina: s.n.
[Universidad Nacional de Cordoba?], 1962); Kalamsoffa. la sabiduria de la palabra (Cordoba,
Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, 19651: Dunia Zad. vtetico esoiritual (Cordoba.
Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, 1967); El sufismo en el cristianismo v el Islam
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Kier, 1976); and Jovas esmeraldinas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Kier,
1978).
161
44See Scheffold, 81, n. 286, and Torres Lopez, El abuelo arabe. 269-286, for more biographical
and bibliographical information.
45Under in the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modem Written Arabic. (Ithaca, NY: Spoken
Language Services, 1976).
46In 1986 Jorge Asi's, the grandson of Syrian immigrants to Argentina, wrote Don Abdel Zalim. El
burlador de Domfnico (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana) a partly autobiographical novel in
which the protagonist and narrator, Rodolfo, works through his relationships with his Arab
grandmother and first-generation Argentine parents. With a picaresque style this novel in
particular deals with the protagonist's relationship with his scoundrel father as well as the
protagonists relationship with his friends, who are all also the children or grandchildren of
immigrants. For this reason, although turco identity is central to this novel, and surfaces to a
lesser extent in earlier and later works by Asis, Don Abdel Zalim makes more of a statement about
the immigrant melting pot of Argentina in general than about Arabs in Argentina per se. Asfs has
confirmed this by saying that in the neighborhood in which he grew up Todos eramos
inmigrantes [...] en mi formacion tengo mas en comun con polacos, esparioles, italianos que con
guatemaltecos o mexicanos. [We were all immigrants [...] in my background I have more in
common with Poles, Spaniards, Italians, than with Guatemalans or Mexicans."] (Interview
conducted in Buenos Aires, September 23,1996). See Estela Valverdes analysis of Don Abdel
Zalim in The Question of Argentinidad: The Self-Image of Arab and Jewish Ancestry in Recent
Argentine Literature" in Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities. 189-
203. Aside from the category of fiction, there are also several autobiographies written by Arab
immigrants to Argentina and their children, almost all of them published from the 1970s on.
Though they all refer to the Arab World and/or Arab identity in Argentina, in some cases such
references are surprisingly scarce.
47Adoum, Adonav: Novela iniciatica del coleoio de los maoos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Yo Soy,
1948 [2nd ed.]). This novel appears to have enjoyed some success: in addition to having made it
to a second edition, a later edition is currently still in print and for sale on the internet. The author
of Adonay. Jorge E. Adoum (whose middle name is not provided in full in the 2nd edition of the
novel), should not be confused with the acclaimed Ecuadorian poet and novelist Jorge Enrique
Adoum. Juan Khury also published a novel which in part takes place in the Arab world: Cruel
Destino. Jorge Abud, trans. (Parana, Argentina: Talleres Graficos de La Provincia [Juan Khury],
1934). Khury wrote this novel in French soon after immigrating from Syria to Argentina (before he
had learned Spanish) and then had a Spanish translation of it published. The novel mostly takes
place in England and France, however in one section the protagonists travel to Lebanon and
Syria and various passages offer a very glowing description of Greater Syria. Additionally, at the
end of the novel, some of the characters return to Syria and meet the (until then absent) narrator
of the novel, a Syrian, to whom they relate their story. In Chapter 3 ,1analyze a novel which Khury
wrote in Spanish (and which takes place in Uruguay).
48Other Orientalist Argentine works of this early 1900s period include: Angel de Estradas
fantastic and flowery account of his trip to Egypt, La voz del Nilo (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca de La
Nacion, 1915), Carlos Muzzio Saenz Penas collection of stories Las veladas de Ramadan (19161.
Alvaro Melian Lafinuris Las nietas de Cleopatra (1927)-a collection of stories based on his travels
in the Middle East, Arturo Capdevilas book of poetry Simbad (1929), and his novels Arbaces.
maestro de amor (1945), and El amor de Schahrazada. Alberto Candiotis El jardfn del amor, vida
de un ioven emir damasceno del siolo VI de la heiira (Buenos Aires: M. Gleizer, 1933), El cadete
de Oran, and El cofrecillo esmaltado. poemas bizantinos en orosa. as well as Juan Draghi Luceros
Las mil y una noches argentinas (1940). Aside from Domingo Sarmientos writings, the only other
Argentine writings about the Orient written during the 19th-century which I know of are those of
Lucio V. Mansilia. Mansilla, a wealthy, aristocratic military figure of the period, traveled in the Arab
World and produced the travel essays De Aden a Suez and Recuerdos de Egipto (Published
162
416, respectively.) In these two travel essays, Mansilla constructs an Orient which, in sharp
contrast with his narrative about travel to the Argentine frontier (Una excursion a los indios
rangueles. 1870), is nearly devoid of native inhabitants. Rather it is a landscape of sandy
expanses that are by turns sinister, irksome and inspiring.
49Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978), 22.
50Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1991), 8.
51Guena de Zimmermann, 10-11, and 27.
52Guena de Zimmermann, 23 and 27.
53Guena de Zimmermann, 22.
54Toscano, De America a Oriente. (Buenos Aires: Escuela Tipografica del Colegio Pfo IX de Artes
y Oficios, 1909). It would be interesting to do historical and genealogical research on who the
participants in the pilgrimage were, because among the list of participants that Toscano presents
are last names that look very much like transliterations of Arab last names (Srta. Transito Nazar and
the director of the peregrination, Monsenor Orzali), as well as last names that point to a possible
relationship to prominent Argentine families: Sra. Justina Achaval de Peralta and Srta. Josefa
Mansilla. Toscano" itself is probably an Italian last name, such that the author is possibly of an
immigrant background himself.
55Lowe, 31.
56The Maronites, unlike the other Christian sects in the Middle East, are closely affiliated with the
Roman Catholic church. Although Toscano only mentions Lebanese Maronites (i.e. those from
what was then the province of Lebanon), there are also Maronites in Syria and elsewhere.
57Solberg points out that By 1905 the Argentine upper class found itself in a dilemma. Recent
Argentine history as well as the accepted economic canons indicated that continued prosperity
required more immigration. But new immigrants undoubtedly would continue to enter the middle
class and would accelerate the social changes already undermining elite power." (81) In addition,
Nineteen major [labor] strikes in 1895 and sixteen the following year afflicted the city of Buenos
Aires. Not to be outdone, in 1896 twelve thousand socialist-affiliated railroad workers left their
jobs for several weeks, snarling Argentine transportation. These strikes hardly seem threatening
by mid-twentieth-century standards, but they alarmed a paternalistic society that never before had
witnessed widespread labor unrest. Troubled by the emergence of labor problems, some
Argentine intellectuals began to criticize the nations traditional policy of unrestricted immigration."
(108) These conflicts only intensified during the following years.
58In fact, most of the immigrants coming from regions under Ottoman control were Christians.
Lugones Orientalist short stories are more Biblically inspired.
El pavador. xxiv and xxxiv. Yaser, Lo arabigo en la obra de Lugones, [The Arab element in
Lugones work] La Voz del Interior. Cordoba, Argentina, 23 de agosto de 1987 (courtesy of Juan
Yaser). Yaser frames Lugones work as an example of "la influencia rabe en las letras
hispanoamericanas y precisamente argentinas" [the Arab influence on Latin American, and
specifically Argentine, letters] and states that Lugones is the Argentine writer que mas se ha
compenetrado en la Imca, el intelecto y la tradicion eirabe" [that has most identified with the Arab
lyric, intellect, and tradition]. Lugones Orientalist/Orient-inspired works include La lluvia de
fuego. Evocacion de un desencamado de Gomorra and La estatua de sal" in the collection of
short stories Las fuerzas extrarias (1906), the prose pieces El talisman de la dicha and El tesoro
de Scheherezada in Filosoffcula (1942), and Las tres kasidas in Romancero (1924), La
sobremesa in Poemas solarieoos (1927), and Los halcones de Walid-al-Fasik" and Flores" (first
published in La Nacion. Buenos Aires, February 28,1937) in Obras poeticas completas (Madrid:
M. Aguilar, 1948). In addition to publishing some of these poems in La Nacion (one of the main
Argentine newspapers) Lugones published a translation (presumably from another European-
language translation) of an Omar Khayyam poem, El collar de zafiros," in La Nacion on the 28th of
March, 1926.
163
61 Arslans name appears in the title pages of his Spanish-language texts in capital letters and at
the time they were published accent marks were not placed above capital letters. As a result, it is
unclear whether he usually wrote his name in the Roman alphabet with an accent mark or not.
Lugones uses the accent mark, but Klich, in most of his historical works on Arslan, does not. For
this reason, other than in this quote I have spelled the name without an accent mark.
62Yaser, Lo arabigo en la obra de Lugones."
63Curiously, as we have seen in the previous chapter, Lugones also uses the adjective agareno
to refer to the Arab blood that the Spaniards carry with them to South America, and which helps to
give rise to the gaucho. (El pavador. 41)
64 In 1923 Lugones presented a series of four lectures sponsored by the Liga Patriotica Argentina
and Circulo Tradicion Argentina (conservative nationalist groups), in which he expressed his
reactionary xenophobia, and in particular called for military and legislative repression of immigrants
who were active in the labor organizing and strikes of the day. See Gladys Onega, La inmioracion
en la literature araentina. 1880-1910 fBuenos Aires: Galema, 1968), 129-131.
65Yaser, Lo arabigo en la obra de Lugones.
66Published in El Liberal. Santiago del Estero, Argentina, November 3,1923, page 60.
67Tasso, Aventura, trabaio. v ooder-sirios v libaneses en Santiago del Estero 1880-1980
(Santiago del Estero: Ediciones indice, 1988) 244-246. Tassos study, like others mentioned
above, was funded by Arab Argentines. The following is stated on the copyright page: Esta obra
se publica gracias al apoyo economico de la Sociedad Sirio-Libanesa de Santiago del Estero."
[This work is being published thanks to the economic support of the Syro-Lebanese Society of
Santiago del Estero.]
Taboada writes: Los dos hijos presentes [...] y las siete hijas tenfan la fisonomfa empastada de
aquel aflojamiento inesperado e inundante de las energias fundadoras en el nudo mismo de su
fusion. Pero en quienes se notaba mejor ese extrario y subito fenomeno de transmutacion de la
traba muscular, recia, en tejido esponjoso, era en las siete hijas mujeres [....] Modeladas en esos
tipos de una soltura interna de materia, de una infinita pastosidad [....]" [The two sons present [...]
and the seven daughters had physiognomies impasted with that unexpected and inundating
weakening of the founding energies at the very core of their fusion. But in whom this strange and
sudden phenomenon of the transmutation of the strong muscular bond, into a spongy tissue,
was most noticeable was in the seven female daughters [....] Shaped on those types of internal
material pliancy, of infinite pastiness.]
631discuss the use of accented immigrant speech in Argentine literature in the next chapter when I
examine language-both oral registers and proper diction--as one of the axes around which criollo
Argentine and Arab-Argentine identities are formed.
70A literary form which arose in 19th-century Spain (and was then taken up in Spanish America)
which focused on presenting, usually with nostalgia and sentimentalism, the customs of Spain (or
a Latin American country).
71See Silvia Pellarolo, Sainete criollo/Democracia/Representacion. El caso de Nemesio Treio
(Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor, 1997). For more background information see the
introduction in Irene Perez, ed. El orotesco criollo: Discepolo-Cossa (Buenos Aires: Ediciones
Colihue, 1986). For a more descriptive than academic approach (including photos of theater
houses and theater productions) see Eduardo Maria Suarez Daneros El sainete (Buenos Aires:
Centro Editor de America Latina, 1970). Jorge Bestenes article "Reaiidades y estereotipos: Los
turcos en el teatro argentino," Estudios Miqratorios Latinoamericanos. 9:26 (April, 1994) focuses
specifically on the figure of the turco in an effort to use the sainetes as a source for historical
information. I thank Mr. Bestene for helping me locate the texts of these plays.
72Pellarolo, 20.
73 Pellarolo, 17-19, 47-48: 58.
74See David Vinas, Grotesco. inmiaracion v fracaso: Armando Disceoolo (Buenos Aires:
Ediciones Corregidor, 1973), as well as Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir, El grotesco criollo: estilo teatral de
164
una epoca (La Habana: Casa de las Americas, 1977) and Irene Perez, ed. El grotesco criollo:
Discepolo-Cossa (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue, 1986).
75Juan Manuel Pintos, La suerte del turco Alf in La escena. Revista teatral (Buenos Aires) ario V,
n. 227,1922; Samuel Eichelbaum and Pedro E. Pico, Un romance turco in La escena. Revista
teatral (Buenos Aires) ario III, suplemento 9, (1920); Armando Discepolo, Mustafa in El teatro
araentino. Revista teatral (Buenos Aires) ario III, n. 40 (1921); and Antonio de Bassi and Antonio
Botta. El turco Salomon in Bambalinas. Revista teatral. (Buenos Aires) ario VII, n. 323 (1924).
76For this reason I disagree with Pellarolos characterization of Gaetanos words about ethnic
mixture as paradigmatic of the utopic vision of the sainete (Pellarolo, 49). Within the same scene
Gaetanos words become extremely ironic.
77Peppino has four asides in the first scene. There are only three other asides in the play, all in
the second scene, one spoken by Gaetano and the other two by Mustafa. All three of these
consist of insults about the other uttered in one part of their battle for the lottery ticket. (There are
also a few other parts of the dialogue which are labeled aparte" [aside], however they are actually
directed at one character among those on stage.) Similarly, in La suerte del turco Alf the only two
asides in the play are spoken by a criolla character who uses them to express information that is to
be kept from Ah' or to make fun of him. (In El turco Salomon and Un romance turco there are no
asides.)
78Unfortunately, a more exhaustive study of these plays, comparing them to the broader corpus of
sainetes, does not fall within the scope of my study.
79Rita Gnutzmann, Introduccion in Roberto Arlt, El iuauete rabioso. Rita Gnutzmann, ed.
(Madrid: Catedra, 1995) 19, 22-24.
80See Borre, Arit y la critica fl 926-19901 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones America Libre, 1996) in
particular pages 11-12,17.
81 Gnutzmann, Introduccion, 12, 24.
82Gnutzmann notes that in one of his works Arlt parodies the speech of Arab immigrants in
Argentina, but she does not name the specific work (Gnutzmann, Roberto Arit o el arte del
calidoscopio [Bilbao: Servicio Editorial Universidad del Pais Vasco, 1984] 196).
83This photograph of Arit in Moroccan dress is reproduced in a recent critical edition of Arits first
novel: El iuguete rabioso. Rita Gnutzmann, ed., 10. There is no indication why this photograph
was chosen to be one of only two photos of Arlt, and the first one presented, in this edition of El
iuauete rabioso--a novel which was originally published in 1926 and has no connection to Arits
visit to Morocco nearly ten years later. Perhaps it is because at a certain point in time the photo
became familiar enough as to be emblematic of Arlt. Borre notes that each of the pieces that Arlt
wrote during his time in Spain and Morocco were published in El Mundo accompanied by a
photograph taken by Arlt at the site referred to in the piece and that some of these photos
pictured Arlt. Borre mentions in particular that the photograph of Arlt dressed as an Arab was
published in 1935 in El Mundo and became well-known. (Borre, 143, 223).
84The two stories the play is based on are: La aventura de Baba en Dimisch esh Sham and
Rahutia la bailarina." Both were first published in the magazine El Hoaar. the former on the 23rd
of January, 1937, the latter on the 20th of May, 1937. Then both were included in the collection
El criador de gorilas. The only published scholarly work on Arits Orientalist writings is a short
article on the play Africa: Victoria Cox, Viajes reales y ficticios: Roberto Arlt y su descripcion del
Oriente." Monographic Review/Revista Monoorafica. 12:1996, 368-378.
851refer here to the following edition: Aquafuertes esoariolas (Buenos Aires: Compariia General
Fabril Editora, 1971).
86See El trabajo de los nirios y las mujeres, Casamiento morisco, Noviazgo moro en
Marruecos en el ario 1935," and La vida campesina en la ficcion y en la realidad in Aquafuertes
espariolas.
165
87The following passage is paradigmatic of Arits treatment of Morocco in his travel essays:
Descaradamente me instalo en el cajon de un mercader, entre un cfrculo de moras, y desde allf,
semejante a un rey mago, me dedico a observar el trajfn del mercado. [...] A pesar de su fealdad,
[las campesinas] se cubren el rostra sobre la frente y la nariz, de modo que apenas son visibles de
ellas, los ojos, o un solo ojo. [...] Me entrego en flirtear con las moritas, por exception bonitas.
Cuando reparan que uno las mira, vuelven la cara fingiendo enojo, dejan pasar un minuto, luego
lentamente giran la cabeza y espian, y si nuevamente encuentran la mirada del extranjero, simulan
irritarse, tapandose el rostra con el embozo. Asf otro minuto, luego se descubren lentamente y
se echan a refr mostrando hileras de dientes brillantes. Son pequerios animalitos.
[Shamelessly, I situate myself in the stall of a merchant, in a circle of Moorish women, and from
there, similar to a Magi, I devote myself to observing the hustle and bustle of the market. [...] In
spite of their ugliness, [the peasant women] cover their faces up to their foreheads and noses,
such that their eyes, or one single eye, are barely visible. [...] I give myself over to flirting with the
little Moorish women, who are by exception beautiful. When they notice that one is watching
them, they turn away their faces feigning anger, they let a minute pass, then slowly they turn their
heads and they steal a glance, and if once again they find the foreigners glance, they pretend to
get irritated, covering their faces with their shawls. In this fashion another minute, then they slowly
uncover themselves and start laughing, displaying rows of bright teeth. They are small little
animals.] (70-71) This association of Moroccan women with animals continues in another of the
essays in which Arlt states that it is difficult to understand the psyche of Moroccan women
because it is impossible to converse with them about the inner realm: Serfa, haciendo una
comparacion ajustada, tratar de disertar de metaffsica con una vaca, dotada, por un milagro, del
don de la palabra. [It would be like, to make a fitting comparison, trying to dissertate about
metaphysics with a cow, endowed, by some miracle, with the gift of speech.] (97)
881refer here to the following edition: El criador de oorilas (Buenos Aires: Compafiia General
Fabril Editora, 1969).
89Ven, mi ama Zobeida quiere hablarte was first published in the magazine El Hogar on April 12,
1941.
90Los bandidos de Uad Djuari was first published in the magazine Mundo Araentino on
December 14, 1938.
91Halid Majid el achicharrado was first published in the magazine Mundo Araentino on August
25, 1937.
92For a detailed discussion of the grotesque as a structuring element in Arits novels see Ana
Maria Zubieta, El discurso narrativo arltiano: Intertextualidad. grotesco v utopia (Buenos Aires:
Hachette, 1987) 99-120. Rita Gnutzmann also discusses physical deformity in Arifs novels in
Roberto Arlt o el arte del calidoscopio. 67-71.
93Zubieta, 113.
94e.g. Ajedrez and Golem.
96 Published in the collection Historia de la etemidad (Buenos Aires: Viau y Zona, 1936). Two
sections of the essay were published earlier in 1934 issues of Crftica. Other Orientalist works by
Borges, aside from the short stories, include: a translation of poetry by Omar Khayam (Proa 2:6,
January 1925) and the article Omar Khayam y Fitzgerald," as well as Cuentos del Turquestan
(La Prensa Aug./29/1926), and La camara de las estatuas (traduccion de un texto arabe del siglo
Xlinr (Critica. Ario 1, no 17, Dec72/1933, p.5).
96First published in Los anales de Buenos Aires. 2:17, July, 1947, and later in the collection 1
Alefih (1949).
97Published in the collection El jardfn de los senderos que se bifurcan (1941).
98First published in the collection Historia de la Etemidad (1936).
99Kushigian, Orientalism in the Hispanic Literary Tradition: In Dialogue with Boraes. Paz. and
Sarduy (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991). See the introductory chapter for
discussion of the underlying theoretical problems I find in Kushigians study.
166
,C0See in particular Kushigian, 23,32, and 19, respectively.

101Averroes" was first published in Sur. no. 152, June, 1947 and then in the first edition of El
Aleph (1949). Abenjacan was first published in Sur. no. 202, August, 1951, and then in the
1952 edition of El Aleph. I refer here to both stories in the following edition: El Aleph (Madrid and
Buenos Aires: Alianza/Emece Editores, 1990). I include in the footnotes James E. Irbys
translation of Averroes," Averroes1Search" [Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths. Selected Stories
and Other Writings. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, trans. (New York: New Directions, 1962)].
For the most part I provide Norman Thomas di Giovannis English translation of Abenjacan"-"Ibn
Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth" [Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories.
1933-1969. Norman Thomas di Giovanni, trans. and ed. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970)]. In cases
where di Giovanni strays from the original text (for instance replacing moros and "cristianos" with
foreigners" and in England) I have used my own translation.
102This sermon is presented in the separate story or addendum to Abenjacan" which is entitled
Los dos reyes y los dos laberintos."
103Aboukir or Abukir in Egypt was the site of three different battles in which the British were
victorious over the French (1798), the French were victorious over the Turks (1799), and the
British again won against the French (1801). The naval battle of Trafalgar took place near the
Spanish cape of Trafalgar, just north of Morocco, in 1805. In this battle the British navy made a
decisive victory against the Franco-Spanish fleet, ending French aspirations of conquering Britain
and nearly wiping out the Spanish navys entire armada.
167
Chapter 3
PERFORMING MOTHER TONGUES:

Purity of Language, Morals, and National Affiliation
in the Formation of Arab Argentine Identities
A semiotic chain is like a tuber agglomerating very

diverse acts, not only linguistic, but also perceptive,
mimetic, gestural, and cognitive: there is no
language in itself, nor are there any linguistic
universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs,
and specialized languages. There is no ideal
speaker-listener, any more than there is a
homogeneous linguistic community. Language is, in
Weinreichs words, an essentially heterogeneous
reality." There is no mother tongue, only a power
takeover by a dominant language within a political
multiplicity.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
A Thousand Plateaus. 1987
In addition to the figure of the gaucho-moro, and the broader field of representations
of the Orient and Arab immigrants, there is another node in the discursive dialogue
between Euro-Argentine and Arab Argentine writers. This discursive interchange
centers around the intersection between concern for proper* or authentic language--
that is, the definition and control of a mother tongue-concern for morality, and the
formation of group identities and national or cultural affiliations. In order to investigate
the role of different linguistic registers, and the literary discourses linked to them, in the
formation of national and immigrant identities, I examine the preoccupation with
language, morality, and nationality in Argentina from the end of the 19th century into the
1930s. Attentive to this cultural backdrop, as well as to the issues of linguistic purity and
the shifting boundaries of group identity in the Arab world, I analyze four novels written
by Arab Argentines. Three of them were written in Spanish and are versions of popular
Argentine sentimental fiction that are nonetheless riddled with difference, while the fourth
is an iconoclastic two-part novel written in Arabic that, while claiming a central role for
168
language in identity formation, departs from the linguistic norms of Arabic literature.
The 1880s through 1930s were years of swift and significant change in Argentina.
Along with the economic expansion of the last decades of the 19th century, millions of
foreigners entered the country between those years and the eve of World War 1.
Around 2,400,000 foreigners settled permanently in Argentina between 1889 and 1914,
making foreign born individuals 29.9% of the population by 1914. Between 1914 and
1936, in less than a quarter of a century, the population of Buenos Aires itself almost
doubled and it is estimated that 75 percent of that growth was made up of immigrants
and children of immigrants.2 Intertwined with this surge in foreign and urban population
was rapid modernization: a rise in imports, manufacturing, and per capita income, the
expansion of means of transportation and communication, and higher literacy rates and
the attainment of higher levels of education, mostly centered in the province of Buenos
Aires, but also to a certain extent in some of the provinces of the interior.3 These
changes brought with them concerns about the dissolution of distinct separations
between the public and the private realms, which, in particular, was linked to the entry of
women into the public space of the workplace. Additionally, increased foreign trade and
the emergence of a newly affluent, and largely immigrant, middle class created fears
about the loss of traditional values to mercantilism and foreign influences.4

Moreover, in the wake of the centennial of independence from Spain, due to both the
cosmopolitanism of economic and intellectual exchange with Europe and the influx of
immigrants (with its ensuing conflicts between criollo versus immigrant origin) one of the
main questions of the era was, as Beatriz Sarlo puts it, iquien es verdaderamente un
argentino?"a 5 This inquiry, which led to the cultural nationalist movement described in
the previous chapters, by the 1930s turned into a consideration of the problem of
Argentina--a line of questioning that generally met with pessimistic answers about
Argentinas future prospects.6 The rapid shifts in socio-economic conditions created,
among many writers and intellectuals, an idealization of the past and the pure, virtuous
a who is truly an Argentine?
169
criollo countryside, and/or a concern with representing the seediness and materialism of
the cosmopolitan city.7 Whether in essays on Argentine culture or literary works about
rural or urban spaces, purity of language and national morals emerged as an
overarching preoccupation.
In Elie Kedouries classic work on the history of the notion of nationalism, he points
to the central place of language in nationalist European thought. The theories of
intellectual figures of the Enlightenment and Romanticism proclaimed the intimate and
fateful link between language and politics."8 Herder, Schleiermacher, and Fichte all
pointed to the one-to-one correspondence between individual, language, and nation.9 In
France, in the wake of the Revolution, and elsewhere as nationalism spread, natural
frontiers came to mean the frontiers of a nation as determined by a linguistic map and
thinkers such as Fichte contended that a common language was the most natural bond
between people.10 Additionally, Fichte developed the idea that original languages are
superior to composite or derived languages. The corollary to this, as Kedourie explains,
is that the language of a nation must be cleansed of foreign accretions and borrowing,
since the purer the language, the more natural it is, and the easier it becomes for the
nation to realize itself, and to increase its freedom. [...] All the more, therefore, is it
incumbent on a nation worthy of the name, to revive, develop, and extend what is taken
to be its original speech [....] " The desire to cultivate purity of language in order to
bolster nationhood led to linguistic inquiries and philological classifications to determine
borders,12 as well as to educational and institutional initiatives, such as the founding of
national language academies, to maintain linguistic purity. Fichte, building on Herders
ideas, further emphasized the dangers of foreign words entering a pure language by
arguing that foreign vocabulary items corrupt the bases of political morality. The
intrusion of a foreign language, Fichte asserted, produces a mixture that brings
confusion and the violent disturbance of the national culture.13 Before turning to the
links between morality and pure language, and their connection, in turn, to cultural
nationalism, I would like to consider the notion of national language in the Latin
American context.
170
The European conceptions of language and nation discussed above, as well as the
example of the enactment of these ideas in revolutionary France, inspired Latin
American intellectuals--most noticeably after the wars of independence from Spain and
into the 20th century.14 Benedict Anderson downplays the influence of European thought
on Latin American nationalism, saying that it alone cannot explain the American
independence movements; he points, instead, to the desire on the part of the creole elite
to maintain and broaden their privileged positions as the crucial factor in American
nationalisms.15 While certainly more than one factor was at play, and the issues of
economic and political power were of great significance, I believe that Andersons
statement that Spanish and English were never issues in the revolutionary Americas16
is extremely short-sighted.
Although during the independence struggles themselves language may not have
been a point of distinction from Spain, or from neighboring countries, it certainly became
an issue immediately afterwards, when the existing differences between American and
Peninsular Spanish, as well as those between the different regions of America were
used in the establishment of national identities.17 In a nation of relatively homogenous
and unique language and/or ethnicity, or a nation that can claim such homogeneity and
singularity, linguistic or ethnic origin can be used as the marker of eligibility for nationality
(for cultural and sentimental belonging) and concomitantly for the rights and duties of
citizenship. In Argentina, those who were in power directly after independence from
Spain favored defining the subject of the political entity in formation, not according to
essentialist cultural notions of national unity, but according to w ill-the desire to bind
oneself legally to the state and participate in it. Soon after, the statesmen and
intellectuals of the generation of 1837 modified this approach by promoting national
cultural unity; however, at the same time they firmly believed that immigrants were
needed not only to improve the racial stock, but to provide the work force necessary for
modernization.16
Some Argentine intellectuals of the mid to late 1800s sought to establish, mainly
through literatura gauchesca [gauchesque literature], an original language for
171
Argentina--that of Peninsular Spanish creolized with gaucho inflections. The
phenomenon of gauchesque literature, including works such as Martin Fierro and to a
certain degree Sarmientos Facundo, became an established genre in Argentine letters,
which surfaced again in the next century in regionalist or criollista [creolist] writings.
The works of the gauchesque genre mainly consist of learned writers romanticizations
of the rapidly disappearing gaucho culture in which they go so far as to appropriate the
oral narrative stylistics and particular speech patterns of the gaucho. While tensions
between including and/or appropriating the folk forms of the gaucho versus gravitating
toward a purer, albeit European, register continued, a new linguistic and cultural
element arrived on the scene: non-Spanish speaking (not to mention non-criollo
speaking) immigrants.
The impact of massive immigration and fluctuations in the economy led to nationality
being increasingly defined according to language and ethnicity.19 Before a national
culture had been consolidated, indeed several years before the final unification of the
provinces of the Rio de la Plata as the political entity of Argentina--/a Republica
Argentina, large numbers of immigrants, many from countries other than the former
mother country, began to arrive.20 This further compounded the concern over
maintaining a stable national language. As early as 1894 there were congressional
efforts to bar the use of foreign languages in the classrooms of private immigrant
schools because, it was argued, language is the foundation of national cohesion.21 But it
was not only an issue of the classroom and separate co-existing languages; the
immigrants languages were having a strong effect on the pronunciation, intonation,
vocabulary, and usage of Argentine Spanish. Solberg explains the weight of the impact
of immigrant speech by pointing out that the rapid transformation that the Spanish
language spoken in Argentina was undergoing during the era of massive immigration
symbolized the decay of the national character to many intellectuals [....]b22
Language, and the impact of immigration upon it, first became the center of heated
intellectual debate when a Frenchman residing in Buenos Aires, Luciano Abeille,
published Idioma nacional de los arqentinos (1900), in which he praised greatly the
172
linguistic changes which had taken place in Argentina. Abeille maintained that the fusion
of languages would eventually produce a richer and more beautiful new language.
Solberg points out that Abeilles book riled many Argentine writers, and none more so
than the influential sociologist Ernesto Quesada."23 Quesada soon published E[
problema del idioma nacional (1900) and El criollismo en la literatura argentina (1902)
in order to oppose Abeilles claims. In the first of these works, Quesada promoted,
rather than regional or national dialects of Spanish, the unification of Hispanoamerica via
a common language. Horrified with the insertion of foreign words into Argentine
Spanish, he feared that the use of such a linguistic blend would spread and be accepted
as if it were correct. He advises that Argentines should safeguard their true language
(Spanish), as well as their national character, by maintaining the purity of their language
in the face of the contaminating immigrant elements. In this way, in reacting against the
immigrant influences Quesada turns to Castillian Spanish as the standard of purity, as
the purest form of Spanish and thus that which must be maintained.
In El criollismo Quesada criticizes fake criollismo and gauchesque literature--that
produced by immigrants-because of its fusion of gaucho speech with immigrant pidgins
and urban slang.24 He closes the work by calling upon writers to save the national
language of Argentina:
es deber de los cultores de las letras tratar de salvar el lenguaje literario-
e! cual, precisamente, es e! depositario del espfritu de la raza, de su
genio mismo--, de la contamination y corruptela de aquel entrevero de
gentes y de idiomas; de ahf que sea menester que, por sobre nuestro
cosmopolitismo, se mantenga incolumne la tradition nacional, el alma de
los que nos dieron patria, el sello genuinamente argentino, la pureza y
gailardfa de nuestra lenguaa2S
Here, brushing aside the non-exclusiveness of Argentinas national language, Quesada
expresses, in true Romantic European fashion, the notion that language is the seat of
national culture and that it must be defended against foreign impurities.
a it is the duty of the cultivators of belles-lettres to try to save the literary language-which is,
precisely, the depository of the spirit of the race, or its very genius-from the contamination and
corruption of that mish-mash of peoples and languages; for this reason it is necessary that, above
our cosmopolitanism, we maintain unmarred the national tradition, the soul of those who gave us
a homeland, the genuinely Argentine seal, the purity and grace of our language
173
The prominent Argentine politician and intellectual Miguel Cane also entered the
discussion about immigrants and the national language, and like Quesada he fiercely
countered Abeille. Cane feared that the corruption of Argentine Spanish by immigrants
would make it impossible for a national literature to develop, and that this in turn would
hamper Argentinas progress in general.26 In addition, the leading positivist criminologist,
Eusebio Gomez, in La mala vida en Buenos Aires (1908), saw incorrect language as
part of the deviant, delinquent sectors of society, pointing to the underworld slang or
dialect known as lunfardo, as the most corrupt form of Argentine Spanish.27
Foremost among the intellectuals who viewed the immigrant presence as a threat to
national identity was Ricardo Rojas, who was the figure of greatest influence among the
cultural nationalists of the beginning of this century and, as Solberg puts it, was steeped
in the philosophy of the German historian J. G. Herder."28 In works published a decade
after the Abeille controversy, Rojas demonstrated the general influence of Herders work
as he championed the notion of a unique national spirit which springs from the Hispanic
and the indigenous traditions.29 In La restauracion nacionalista, Rojas is concerned with
the cultivation of la conciencia nacional [national consciousness] through the national
education system.30 The program of study that he proposes for state schools is one
which centers on Argentine history (the national tradition) and geography (the national
territory) as well as the humanities; within the humanities, the primary foci are national
language and morality--!a base intelectual de [la] educacion [de la escuela primaria]
debe fincar en estas cuatro disciplinas: el idioma patrio, el territorio argentino, la
tradicion nacional, la moral cfvica.* 31 Rojas begins describing his recommended

course of study for Spanish by stating that El profesor debera hacer comprender a sus
disci'pulos que en el idioma patrio, estan los elementos espirituales mas duraderos de la
tradicion nacional [....]b 32 In a similar fashion, throughout La restauracion nacionalista

Rojas refers to language as one of the key components of national sentiment. In
a the intellectual base of [primary school] education should be built upon these four disciplines:
the national language [the language of the homeland], the Argentine territory, the national
tradition, [and] civic morals
174
addition, he also often speaks of immigrants influence upon Argentine Spanish as a
deformation or corruption,33 sometimes referring to the impact of the immigrant wave
euphemistically as cosmopolitanism and at other points unabashedly calling it la
barbarie dialectal de las inmigraciones.3 34
Furthermore, in addition to considering language one of the key components of

national sentiment, Rojas views awareness and observance of this very principle as a
part of civic morality. He conceives of the current social conditions in Argentina as a
moral crisis35and for this reason, morals--and particularly civic morals, that is societal or
national morals-are a main feature of his proposed national education program. In
describing the program of study in Moral Cfvica [Civic Morals] Rojas presents as one of
the primary topics students should learn: Que elementos constituyen la nacionalidad
argentina: La comunion de los espfritus en una lengua, un ideal y un territorio. b 36 This

implies that to diverge from pure Spanish is to have a lack of civic morals. This
understanding of the relationship between language and moral/national character is
seen clearly when Rojas points to the importance of encouraging students in their study
of Spanish by making them aware of the direct correlation between language and
morals.37 He states that educators should vitalizar la ensenanza con las sugestiones
morales y cfvicas de hacer ver al alumno que cuanto el habla es manifestacion de su
personalidad y temperamento.0 38
Similarly, Quesada, in La evolucion del idioma nacional (1922), praises Casimiro
Prieto Valdes, a writer for La Nacion, for promoting his belief that
la pureza del idioma es una de las leyes fundamentales del codigo del
buen gusto: la conservacion de esta pureza, una de sus mas asiduas
atenciones; la relacion entre el lenguaje y el pensamiento no consiste
solamente en que el uno expresa lo que el otro concibe: consiste
tambien en que el uno comunica al otro sus perfecciones y sus vicios; en
que es imposible que un lenguaje desordenado, inculto [...] no proceda
bThe teacher should make his pupils understand that in the national language [the language of
the homeland], are the most lasting spiritual elements of the national tradition [....]
^he dialectal barbarism of the migrations
bThe elements that constitute Argentine nationhood: The communion of spirits in one tongue,
one ideal, and one territory.
c vitalize teaching with the moral and civic suggestion of impressing upon the student that
everything he says is a manifestation of his personality and temperament
175
de un entendimiento confuso, de un gusto depravado, de una instruction
mutilada, incompleta y erronea.39
Additionally, the opinions of Cane, and especially of Gomez and Quesada (in E[
problema and El criollismo), with their emphasis on bad language as contamination or
corruption of the nation, corroborate that purity of language was seen as corresponding
to purity of virtue. Particularly within the nostalgia of the times, purity was linked to
origins, to tradition; linguistic traditionalism was then seen as an outward sign of
traditional moral values. Therefore, it was not simply that, during the first decades of the
20th century in Argentina, purity of language and national character were a concern, but
that language was seen as a manifestation of a particular aspect of national character-
moral fiber. In this way, the immigrant and/or working class sectors of society were seen
as undesireable not only for economic reasons but also because of their supposed
immorality-their lack of traditional Argentine values as well as the moral rectitude
needed to become Argentine.
The concern with both pure language and morality played a visible role in the literary
scene of the period as well. In the late 1800s language became an important part of
literary discourses, as witnessed in gauchesque literature discussed above as well as in
representations of immigrants. The first works to focus on representing the post
immigration, modernized city are also careful to represent immigrant speech. Realist
and naturalist novels about city life, which are often given the misleading name novela
del inmigrante [novel of the immigrant/immigrants novel], depict immigrant characters
and represent the halting, accented speech of immigrants and the Italian-Spanish pidgin
known as cocoliche. The vast majority of the novelists were upperclass criollos, and
while some of their works welcome the new arrivals, in most cases they reject them.40
One of the ways in which works such as Antonio Argerichs Inocentes o culpables
(1884), Eugenio Cambaceres En la sang re (1887), Julian Martels La Bolsa (1891), and
a purity of language is one of the fundamental laws of the code of good taste: the conservation of
this purity, is one of its most assiduous concerns; the relationship between language and thought
does not solely consist of the one expressing what the other conceives of: it also consists of the
one communicating to the other its perfections and its vices; in that it is impossible that a
176
Carlos Marfa Ocantos Misia Jeromita (1898), reject immigrants is by employing
immigrant speech as a way of passing linguistic, as well as moral, judgment on the
immigrant masses. The novels present a hierarchization of speech which positions
standard Spanish above immigrant versions of Spanish, and they correlate the vulgarity
of the immigrant characters with the vulgarity of their speech. Therefore, with immigrant
speech acting as the foil of correct language, the novels suggest that pure language
and pure morals go hand in hand.
In the 1920s and 30s the centrality of language becomes even more pronounced as
criollismo grows out of the gauchesque genre and new expressions of concern with
language emerge. While some negative representations of immigrant speech are still to
be found in realist narratives and popular theater,41 there is in general a shift toward a
new type of linguistic preoccupation: the production of pure Argentine language and
authentic Argentine literature, whether it be in the form of gaucho speech or polished
Spanish. Sarlo points out that during the 20s and 30s [los] conflictos sociales
extienden su fantasma sobre los debates culturales y esteticos and first among these is
la cuestion de la lengua (quienes hablan y escriben un castellano aceptable) [ ....p142

The other cultural and aesthetic debates which absorbed writers during those years
included questions of criollo tradition, cosmopolitanism, political engagement, and what
constituted Argentine writing.
One of the bodies of writing of the period which expressed nostalgia for a past
imagined as purer and more Argentine, in part through linguistic means, is regionalist or
criollista literature. The most famous of these gauchesque narratives is Ricardo
Guiraldes Don Sequndo Sombra (1926). By focusing on the gaucho as the figure of the
Argentine national ethos, and featuring characteristic gaucho forms of speech, Don
Sequndo Sombra established, in the midst of cultural instability, an Argentine folk
tradition, and thus, native Argentine roots. At the same time, the few references to
disordered, uncultured language [...] not proceed from a confused understanding, from a
depraved sense of judgment, from a mutilated, incomplete, and erroneous edification.
a [the] social conflicts extend their specter over the cultural and aesthetic debates [...] the
question of language (who speaks and writes acceptable Spanish) [....]
177
immigrants within the novel establish them as immoral and money-hungry.43 The
romanticization of the nearly extinct gaucho culture of the past against the backdrop of
negative images of the immigrants of the present make it such that Don Segundo
Sombra. as well as other works of the criollista genre, can in part be understood as a
reaction against the deluge of immigrants into Argentina^-and one which defends
Argentine culture through recourse to authentic language.
Alongside the interest in gaucho speech, some writers turned to foreign literatures
and considered how they might contribute to the formation of Argentine literature; yet
they were careful to distinguish between good and bad foreigness. In the eyes of elite
or established writers, there were two types of foreign languages and, by extention, of
cosmopolitanism: the desirable and the undesirable. That is, while vanguard writers
sought to read and translate high European literature for the sake of bettering Argentine
literature, they also rejected the languages of the immigrant masses and their print
manifestations in newspapers and popular literature.45 In addition, established writers
also made a distinction between the use of Spanish by criollo and immigrant writers.
Avant-garde authors were interested in writing in such a way as to distinguish
themselves from not simply the social realist writers and their political messages, but
also from immigrant writers. This, as Sarlo notes, consistfa en diferenciarse de los
humanitaristas, practicantes de una literatura de mal gusto, referencial y proclive a las
intervenciones ideologicas mas directas; diferenciarse tambien de esos autores [...],
recien llegados a la cultura, con orfgenes no tradicionales y una lengua insegura.3 46

Moreover, the vanguardistas put forth the idea that only criollos were capable of
expressing the Argentine ethos in writing-only criollos were capable of writing true
Argentine literature. This is seen in Borges El idioma de los argentinos (1928) in which
Borges discusses criollista literature and suggests that immigrant versions of it amount
to bad imitations or exaggerations of Argentine character. As Sarlo explains, Borges
a It consisted of differentiating themselves from the humanitarianists, practicioners of a literature

of bad taste, referencial and predisposed to more direct ideological interventions; differentiating
themselves as well from those authors [...], recently arrived in the culture, with untraditional
origins and insecure language.
178
understands immigrant writing as an unconscious parody and conceives of
Argentineness as resting upon elusive subtleties of language accrued over time:
los recien llegados o sus hijos no operan dentro de una tradicion
verdaderamente propia y, en consecuencia, subrayan aquellos
elementos culturales o lingufsticos que creen nacionales, pasando por
alto el hecho de que la nacionalidad reside en los matices del tono, el
sistema de las connotaciones, los desplazamientos del humor y la ironfa,
todos esos rasgos que no son sustanciales ni pueden adquirirse por una
accion completamente voluntaria y consciente que, a menudo, esta
destinada a resultar la parodia del propio objeto buscado. [...] Lo
argentino surge como efecto del detalle percibido por quienes conocen
una lengua desde adentro y desde muy cerca, estableciendo relaciones
de interioridad espontanea y de propiedad no adquirida sino trasmitida
como herencia a traves del tiempo.3 47
This belief that an intimate knowledge of Spanish, and particularly Argentine Spanish,
which could only be developed over an extended period of time, was a requirement for
writing true Argentine literature, excluded all first and second-generation immigrants
from acceptance as part of the literary establishment.
Nevertheless, the realist authors of the time-many of whom were from working-class
immigrant backgrounds, wrote Catholic versions of the Soviet model of social realism,
and were linked to the Boedo literary group-were clearly interested in trying to display
their command of Argentine Spanish, whether or not the result was (or was considered)
parodic.48 These writers intertwined attention to proper language with the attempt to
inculcate readers with morality by exposing the sordidness of urban poverty. Omar
Borre signals that the linguistic and moral concerns of social realism dominated literary
criticism in the later years of this period: La crftica literaria de los anos treinta es una
crftica de tipo impresionista preocupada por las formas lingufsticas del texto y por los
contenidos tematicos.b 49 What this means becomes clearer as Borre discusses the
^he recently arrived or their children do not operate within a tradition which is truly their own and,
as a result, they highlight those cultural or linguistic elements that they believe are national,
ignoring the fact that nationality resides in the shades of tone, the system of connotations, the
shifts of humor and irony, all of those features that are not substantial nor can they be acquired
through a completely voluntary or conscious action that, oftentimes, is destined to result in a
parody of the very object which is sought. [...] The Argentine arises as an effect of detail
perceived by those who know the language from the inside and from up close, establishing
relationships of spontaneous interiority and ones-own-ness not acquired but rather transmitted
as an inheritance over time.
bThe literary criticism of the thirties is a criticism of an impressionistic sort preoccupied with the
linguistic forms of the text and with thematic content.
179
literary career of El fas Castelnuovo. Borre characterizes Castelnuovo as el
representante ideologico de un grupo literario, podrfamos decir el de Boedo, y como tal
asume esa representatividad a traves de un riguroso naturalismo, de una moral del
discurso que se traduce en la reiterada censura ortografica, sintactica y formal de los
principios de la narrativa."3 50 In terms of moralizing thematic content, these narratives

centered on the squalor and luridness of the urban poor and the underworld. Thus, their
authors, through shocking material presented in carefully correct Spanish, attempted to
promote their own version of Argentine moral consciousness--a socialist, politicized
morality.
The mass-market sentimental novels of the day, while promoting a backward-looking

type of morality-rather than a progressive and revolutionary one, also did so through
purity of linguistic form. These popular tear-jerkers, like the criollista works discussed
above, idealized the countryside and expressed a desire to return to traditional rural
values--a vision of life untouched by modernity and the great immigration. The
melodramatic novels in particular catered to the larger reading public which developed in
Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century as a result of higher literacy rates as well
as a larger middle class with the leisure time for reading.31 While many of the works
circulated through informal publishing or newspaper serialization,52others, such as those
of Hugo Wast, became bestselling books.53 The works were usually tales about star-
crossed lovers or fallen women in which the immorality of the city is the culprit of the
evil which is wrought, and, more specifically, corrupt cosmopolitan men victimize young
rural women. By presenting women as vulnerable beings in need of moral education,
and then providing moral lessons within the narrative itself, these pulp novels attempt to
recreate or craft virtue in the present. This interest in educating women morally reflects
the desire to maintain the honorable past, or to enforce the image of the past as
refracted through women, for the progress and stability of the nation. Here what Doreen
3 the ideological representative of a literary group, we could say that of Boedo, and as such he
takes on that representativeness through a rigurous naturalism, a morality of discourse that
translates into reiterated orthographic, syntactic, and formalist censure of the principles of
narrative.
180
Massey describes as the association between place," which is in turn connected to
home or a stable location, and a culturally constructed version of Woman54 is put in
service of the state.55
In these works, in addition to moral content in the shape of tear-filled didactic
messages centered on women, there is a concern with clear, stream-lined linguistic and
literary expression. For example, Wast considered his best-selling Flor de durazno un
buen exponente de lo que [...] ha llamado el arte de la composition"3 56 Furthermore,

some of the advertisements for Wasts novels illustrate well the intertwined qualities of
linguistic and moral purity that these works sought to embody as well as to inculcate in
the reading public. The advertisements praise the novels using the following terms:
fuerte y saludable novela, novela valiente y noble, Libro de Ifneas purfsimas,
Limpio, claro, preciso, sin contorsiones metaforicas, sin retorcimientos estilfsticos,
Esta novela es de las que [...] se terminan con el corazon templado en buenos
propositos y los ojos llenos de lagrimas," Es una narration sencilla, que puede ponerse
en todas las manos.b 57

While the clear, straightforward language of works such as these may in part have
been a result of the writers immigrant or working class backgrounds, and therefore
inferior command of Spanish, as the avant-garde Florida writers contended, the
conscious marketing of the works as clear, easy to read, and morally edifying certainly
goes beyond this. These sentimental dime-store novels were expressly meant to be
accessible to Argentinas newly educated novel-readers-readers with a shaky command
of Spanish, and/or of high literary discourses. Moreover, they were meant not only to
reach these readers through straightforward language, but also to instill in them clean,
healthy language and morals. Additionally, by producing these works, by writing with
linguistic and moral correctness, the authors of these works-professional writers who
were either immigrants themselves or middle or lower class criollos~cou\6 prove their
a a good example of what [...] he has called the art of composition

b strong and wholesome novel; valiant and noble novel; A book of the purest lines; Clean, clear,
precise, free of metaphorical contorsions, free of stylistic twists and turns; This novel is one of
181
own purity of language and morals. In this way, they demonstrated their own adherence
to the cultural ideals of the nation--to the traditional language and values longed for.
Thus, pure language was seen as a sign of pure, traditional virtues, and the desire for
both--as well as the performance of both--was produced in popular literary texts through
nostalgia, didactic moral messages, and clear, standard language.
The naturalist representations of immigrants, the regionalist gaucho-centered novels,
the elite formulations of Argentine literary expression, the social realist depictions of
urban squalor, and the popular melodramas, were all concerned with shaping particular
types of Argentine moral character based on the notion of a single correct or authentic
national language. The linguistic dimensions of how to write like an Argentine--with

Argentine language and Argentine character--are part of the cultural facet of nationalism.
That is, these different discourses (with the exception of the contestatory social realist
works) are attempts to assimilate the various elements found in Argentina to the
dominant language and a particular notion of pre-existing traditions, in order to maintain
and craft a cultural unity--a national language and character.
These defining elements of nationality-language and moral character-were brought
to bear upon citizenship, the political and legal rights and duties of the national subject.
On the one hand, Rojas went so far as to propose, in a 1911 article in La Nacion, that
the Argentine government should limit suffrage to people who were literate and
knowledgeable about the Constitution--a/7d who used the national language. (In
addition, if they were naturalized citizens, they should have to wait two years to obtain
the right to vote.) 58 On the other hand, starting in the teens, members of the ruling elite
maligned immigrants with prominent political roles and obstructed the naturalization of
immigrants in a variety of ways. They then sought to justify the exclusion of immigrants
from politics by claiming that they were culturally inferior and not capable of being
responsible voters.
If one is considered part of a nation by origin-by language, culture, or ethnicity, then
one is generally also deemed a citizen of that nation with the attending political and civic
those which [...] are finished with the heart tempered by good intentions and with the eyes full of
182
role. What occurs, however, in a case such as Argentinas in which immigrant
assimilation is the means of forming the bulk of the national community--when the
national subject is not necessarily born an Argentine, but becomes one? Provided that
an immigrant is considered to have attained the required linguistic and moral purity to
be deemed part of the Argentine nation, when and how does such a subject become a
citizen of Argentina?
Lilia Ana Bertoni explains that in Argentina in the late 1880s and early 1890s the
definition of citizenship itself, together with the naturalization of immigrants, arose as a
thorny issue. There was a degree of uncertainty among policy-makers and immigrants
alike, about what exactly naturalization and Argentine citizenship should and did entail.
Although various different formulas were proposed for naturalization requirements (one
of which included the immigrants ability to express him/herself in the national language),
naturalization itself was clearly seen as a necessity for immigrants integration into the
nation. Moreover, the prevailing opinion among public officials in regard to what
citizenship itself required was reflected in responses to a case of double national loyalty,
the case of Dr. Urdapilleta, which came before the Argentine Congress in 1890.
Representative Centeno stated: la esencia fntima [...] la nacionalidad es un sentimiento
[...] una santa y religiosa preocupacion. Por la nacionalidad se vive. [Dr. Urdapilleta] ha
desdehado, ha profanado los sagrados vfnculos [....] La patria quiere, con egofsmo
legitimo, que sus hijos le pertenzcan exclusivamente.3 Similarly, Representative

Balestra declared: no digo que no vengan los extranjeros, pero que respetando el
espiritu nacional, que deje fuera las pasiones que tenia alia en la patria y que no venga
a hacer doble politica [...] no hemos de acceder a que el hombre tenga dos patrias [...]
que aprendan, cuando opten al noble titulo de argentino, que se debe querer esta patria
con exclusivismo.b 61 Bertoni points out that Centenos statement reflects a shift from a
tears; it is a simple narration, accessible to all.

a an intimate essence [...] nationality is a sentiment [...] a holy and religious concern. One lives
for nationality. [Dr. Urdapilleta] has disdained, has profaned the sacred ties [....] The mother
country wants, with legitimate egoism, that her children belong to her exclusively.
b I do not mean to say that foreigners should not come, but that respecting the national spirit, he
should leave out the passions that he had there in the home country and that he should not come
183
simply juridical notion of national affiliation to a notion based on sentiment,
sacredness, and the world of essences. Additionally, these statements are indicative
of a conceptualization of national affiliation as exclusive" ana total. 62 Nationalist
ideology, because it purports that there is a one-to-one correspondence between
individual, language, and nation, also defines citizenship in exclusionary terms. In the
same way that purity of language and morals are sought, purity of civic allegiance and
patriotism are sought.
* * *
Among the writers who produced the sentimental, dime-store novels of the day, were
three Arab Argentines--Emin Arslan, Pablo Achem, and Juan Khury. While their works,
written in Spanish and very much a part of the current Argentine discourses, present one
type of immigrant identity construction, a very different textual self-construction--yet one
also tied to the issue of language--is to be found in the narrative written in Arabic by the
Syro-Lebanese immigrants NajTb Ba'qITnT and Sam'an al-HamatT. The cultural
backgrounds of all five of these writers were rooted in the region of the Arab world
known as the M ashriq-vjhat was then Greater Syria (today Syria, Lebanon,
Palestine/Israel, and part of Jordan), as well as Iraq and Egypt. These immigrant
writers home culture, like their new Argentine milieu, was steeped in issues of linguistic
purity and traditional values.
As early as 632, after the death of Muhammad, concern over linguistic issues,
namely the preservation of the language of the Quran, led to the linguistic codification of
Arabic. The dialect of Muhammads tribe, the Quraysh, and the language of the Quran
were taken as the standards of clarity and purity, and the language of the Quran
continues to this day be considered the purest Arabic. A distinction between the
everyday spoken language and the literary register goes further back than the time of
Muhammad and for this reason not only foreign words and grammatical errors but also
here to carry out double politics (...] we shall not consent to a man having two homelands [...] may
they learn, when they choose the noble appellation of Argentine, that this homeland should be
184
colloquialisms are seen as detrimental to the purity of Arabic. Indeed the various
regional colloquial dialects are perceived as the corruption of a pre-existing purity, of the
purity and correctness, or fasahah, of classical literary Arabic.63
In the mid-nineteenth century, as part of the Arab cultural revival known as the
nahdah which was taking place in the Mashriq, the viability of the classical language, as
handed down in Medieval texts, came into question. On the one hand, there was a
surge of activity in Arabic literary production, and there was a growing sense of Arab
identity centered around the language, in response to both contact with Europe and the
centralization and Turkification policies of the Ottoman empire. On the other hand, there
was the need to meet the demands of modernity and contact with Europe by
establishing Arabic terms for new concepts, in particular in the sciences, and the desire
to make the complex classical language more accessible to the vast numbers of
illiterates who operated solely within a spoken colloquial dialect. Out of these various
factors, two parallel tensions developed: the traditions of the Arabo-lslamic world versus
secular European modernity, and the revival and maintenance of classical Arabic versus
the reform of the classical language for the new era.64
These tensions between the autochtonous and the foreign, between the old and the
new, are reflected in tum-of-the-century Arabic literature on the level of language as well
as of theme. Although there is a long tradition of oral verse forms, epic narratives, and
tales in colloquial Arabic, until the 19th century simply being written or performed in the
colloquial disqualified any text from being considered literature, or at least literature
worthy or note.65 In the late 1800s, as part of the cultural reawakening and the interest
in_ renovating the language, which were both linked to breaking away from the ornate
stylized rhetoric of classical Arabic, writers in Egypt experimented with the colloquial in
newspapers and prose translations from European texts. In both Egypt and Greater
Syria colloquial dialects were used in theater productions.66 However, aside from drama,
the use of colloquial dialects in literature was not accepted.67 Rather than the colloquial
becoming an admissible mode of literary expression, a different form of Arabic became
loved with exclusivism.
185
the dominant written and literary register. This form of Arabic was an adaptation of the
classical language, carried out by major intellectual figures, which consisted of a
simplification of the grammar of classical Arabic, a modernization of its vocabulary, and
a movement away from the stylization of rhymed prose. These modifications produced
the register of written Arabic known, in the English-speaking world, as Modern Standard
Arabic, but referred to in the Arab world with the same term, which denotes purity, that
is used for classical Arabic: fushS.

The belief that texts performed or written in a colloquial dialect are not literature has
continued to be held, with some concessions, to this day in the Arab world. From the
early years of the 20th century to the present there have been many poets who write
exclusively in the dialect, yet their work is completely outside of the literary canon-not
recognized by publishers, critics, or official cultural or educational institutions. At best,
and more recently, they are placed in the separate category, and lesser genre, of
popular literature. During the 1960's a small number of prose works written either
completely or partially in the dialect were published by established writers, but these
works, far from starting a trend, have remained very marginal in the literary world.68 The
one way in which colloquial dialects have been employed within the modern literary
canon, aside from their use in drama, is in the dialogue of short stories and novels. For
this reason Sasson Somekh states that Attempts to write literary prose of high-brow
pretensions in [a colloquial dialect] are few and far between, and they are treated by
Arab critics as aberrations.70
Amid the cultural and linguistic transformations of the turn of the century, a new
literary genre emerged in the Arab world: the novel. Although there was a strong
tradition in Arabic literature of picaresque episodic narratives (the maqamaf) and
collections of stories within a frame tale (The 1001 Arabian Nights), the novel developed
in large part out of the translation and emulation of European novels beginning in the
mid-1800s. The earliest works were mostly loose translations of popular European
adventure, romance, and historical novels that were produced by Syro-Lebanese
residing in Egypt. At the same time, some writers from the Mashriq began creating their
186
own prose works--mostly autobiographical or philosophical works or travel narratives.
The works that were fictional generally had insubstantial plots and meager
characterization; as a result, they are considered by most critics as at best proto-novels
or forerunners to the Arabic novel.71 Nonetheless, some of these works, as well as many
of the translations and adaptations of European adventure-romances, became very
popular for their entertainment value, and for this reason were looked down upon by
Arab intellectuals of the era (in spite of the fact that many of the writers among them
were partly formed by these texts). Perhaps because of the intelligentsias limited
acceptance of these translations and precursors to the novel, although the short story
was thriving, few novels were written by Arab authors before 1930.
The tensions between tradition and progress are seen clearly in the themes of the
early Arabic novel. In addition to fictionalized histories of early Islam, the novels dealt
with the education of women and the ensuing conflict with traditional values, societal
customs that lead to thwarted love, and the differences between the city and the
countryside, or between Europe and the Arab world. The works often carried didactic
messages about womens rights and critiques of marriage customs. In addition, many of
them featured idealized visions of rural villages as the object of governmental corruption
and oppression, and/or as the source of authentic values-albeit perhaps in need of
reform. 72
During the challenges and changes experienced in the Mashriq of the mid-19th to
early 20th centuries, the bases of group identification also went through a series of shifts
as different types of nationalist identities emerged. Communities went from being
primarily constituted on the basis of religion, to geographic and cultural territory, culture
and ethnicity, and then language. Into the late 1800s, in the Ottoman empire communal
identities were determined by religion, and the dominant religious group of the empire
was referred to as a nation'-al-ummah al-islamiyyah, the people or nation of Islam.73 In
this way, Turks and Muslim Arabs formed a single community, separate from Arab
Christians and Arab Jews. Around 1875 a consciousness of the territory of Greater
Syria as a patria chica-to use a Latin American term meaning small homeland-also
187
began to emerge.74
Although a sense of difference from Turks had begun to grow among Arabs during
first half of the 19th century, it did not take on political nationalist dimensions until early
in the 20th century. In part in response to Ottoman policies of Turkification and
administrative centralization, this consciousness of being Arabs--of ethnic and cultural
unity regardless of religion, and of ethnic and cultural difference from the Turks-began
to emerge in the form of Arab cultural nationalism. This movement, which came to be
known as al-qawmiyyah al-arabiyyah, promoted the concept of a single Arab people
with a common ethnicity and language who form al-ummah al-'arabiyyah.7* In the late
19th century this Arab cultural movement included calls for making Arabic (rather than
Turkish) the language of instruction in Syrian schools. Then in the early 1900s Arab
cultural nationalists struggled unsuccessfully to make Arabic the official language of the
Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire.76 Up until that time, the Syrians who were
promoting Arab cultural nationalism continued to prefer Ottoman rule because they saw
it as a guarantee against European colonialism. They were interested in a system of
various nations within one Ottoman state, a federation, rather than assimilation into
Turkish culture. The term ummah" was used then in a variety of different ways: for the
Ottoman nation, as well as for the Arab, Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian nations within
that, and the territorially defined Syrian nation within that.77
It was not until 1908, after the uprising spearheaded by the Young Turks, that
political organizing for the independence of Greater Syria and the formation of a nation
state, or watan, (or of separate Syrian and Lebanese nation-states) began.70 But in
1916, before the end of World War I and the official parceling out of the former Ottoman
empire to European nations, the Sykes-Picot agreement put Syria under French control.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a nationalist movement that was even more strongly Arab than
religious, that saw Islam more as a culture than a religion, appeared. At this point,
language-classical and modern standard Arabic-took on even greater importance in the
delineation of a Syrian national identity, because it was seen as the core of Arabo-
Islamic culture.79 In this way, language was not so much a unique national
188
characteristic, as an element of a broader pan-Arab identity, within which Syrian national
identity fit.
In spite of widely differing circumstances, the turn-of-the-century cultures of
Argentina and the Syro-Lebanese homeland of Arslan, Achem, Khury, Ba'qlmT, and al-
HamatT, do have certain cultural concerns and forms of cultural production in common.
In both Argentina and Greater Syria there was interest in maintaining linguistic purity, in
publishing morally didactic novels written in a linguistic register that could reach a
broader audience, and in presenting an idealized countryside as a figure for
traditionalism. However, while Argentine national identity was increasingly defined--at
least by the oligarchy--in exclusionary terms, when the writers discussed here left West
Asia, group identities were (still) formulated according to a variety of interlocking political,
religious, territorial, ethnic, and linguistic spheres.
Discursive Copies, Discursive Differences:

The Disruption of the Performance of Argentine National Language and Identity
One of the striking characteristics of Arab Argentine literary production taken as a
whole is the importance of speech and the linguistic choices that the authors made.
While a few wrote in both Spanish and Arabic, there is very little use of both of these
languages in one work, that is, there is very little bilingualism in their texts. Moreover,
with only a few exceptions, there are sharp differences between the prose works written
in Spanish and those in Arabic. While almost all of the plays, short stories, and novels
or proto-novels in Arabic, mostly written in the teens and 1920s, narrate events that take
place in an Arab country among Arab protagonists, the novels written in Spanish in the
teens through the thirties take place either in Europe or the Southern Cone of Latin
America among non-Arab characters and present a set of shared concerns. These
differences lead one to wonder what was at stake for Arab Argentine writers-what was
implicitin the choice to write in their first language or the language of their new
189
surroundings. The curious works produced by Antonio Eleas from the 1920s to 1940s
certainly suggest that language and the shift from Arabic to Spanish were a source of
anxiety among Arab immigrants. Eleas, a journalist who worked for a bilingual (Arabic*
Spanish) newspaper in Argentina (Sada al-Sharq/EI Eco de Oriente), wrote four book-
length works in which he presents his linguistic theories based on Arabic examples.81
The main thesis of his works is that Arabic is the universal language from which all other
languages developed. The fact that Eleas chose to express this idea in Spanish makes
it clear that he was using language, like Hallar and Yaser used the notion of the Arab-
Gaucho, in an attempt to negotiate a position for himself in a xenophobic nationalist
culture.
The Syro-Lebanese who wrote novels in Spanish, rather than try to champion the
place of Arabic in Argentina, sought to reproduce, or participate in the production of,
popular Argentine literary discourses. By writing texts which bear very few markers of
the authors immigrant, Arabic-speaking backgrounds, on the one hand, they seem to
distance themselves from Arab culture, Arabic, and the question of language in general.
On the other hand, by participating in literary discourses which are linked to the
production and maintenance of correct Argentine speech and morals, they too partake in
the configuration of the relationship between language and identity.82 In each of the
three novels examined here the Arab-Argentine authors partake in the discursive trends
of that time in Argentina, writing sentimental romances that consider the possibility of
educating women morally.83 Like most of the other authors of sentimental narratives,
whether immigrants or not, these Arab Argentine writers did not have immigrants as the
protagonists of their narratives.84 In fact, none of the fictional texts by Arslan, Achem, or
Khury feature Arab characters or settings, or present the perspectives of immigrants to
Latin America. Instead, their writings all partake in the melodramatic discourses about
women and morality, and the nostalgia for rural life, that was current in Argentina at the
time.
A central part of this nostalgia for the countryside is a longing for the days before the
arrival of huge numbers of immigrants who mostly settled in Buenos Aires. In this way,
190
on the level of theme the works display a silence about the authors own positions within
Argentina, and more generally, about the position of the immigrant, Arab or European, at
a time of anti-immigrant cultural nationalism. On the level of rhetoric, for the most part
the works enact a silence about the current issue (immigration) which underlies and is
interwoven with the nostalgia for the country and the concern about womens behavior.
Much of the focus on women had to do with the moral education of women as good
Mothers of the Republic. This question arose out of the fear that immigrant mothers
were not cultivating patriotism and national culture, not to mention the national language,
in their children. While not wishing to insinuate that authors should necessarily write
from the perspective of their ethnic identity or immigrant position, that is, with the
purpose of voicing this position, the near absence of ethnic traces in these texts
becomes striking when we consider the types of works the writers produced.
It is important to note, however, that the issue of womens place in society was also a
main concern at that time in the Arab world and its literature. Rather than center on
morality and the production of national subjects though, the main thrusts of the
discussion in the Arab world surrounded the modern (European) education of women
and the evils of arranged marriages. Thus, while these writers were attempting to
participate in Argentine culture through their choice of language (Spanish versus Arabic
or French), of rhetoric, and of themes, the rhetoric and themes that they employed
resonate with discourses found in Arabic literature at that time. By writing about women
in society and questions of morality, but doing so more in the way Argentines were, they
can be understood as translating themselves into Argentines. While they suppressed
differences that would point to the nature of their texts as cultural translations, they used
discourses that were familiar to them to insert themselves into the cultural life of the
nation to which they had immigrated. In addition, by taking up the nostalgic Argentine
mode of writing they translated or shifted from one form of nostalgia to another.
Nostalgia is a feeling of longing which arises in response to a real or imagined spatial,
temporal, and/or cultural disjuncture. Instead of focusing on the rupture and loss
inherent in immigration, these Arab Argentines focused on the rupture and loss
191
perceived by Argentines; in their texts nostalgia for the Arab world seems to be
converted into the current nationalist nostalgia for lost1values. Perhaps Arslan, Achem,
and Khury transform immigrant nostalgia into nationalist nostalgia in order to participate
in mainstream Argentine culture.
In this way, one question that arises is: how do outsiders attempt to insert
themselves into the national community in a dominant position? A second question that
presents itself, however, is how do they fail to do so? Or, rather, how does alterity
emerge in these texts and how does it affect the Argentine discourses within which it is
embedded? Despite the fact that the authors positions as immigrants or members of an
ethnic community is not thematized, it still comes out in subtleties or subtexts of the
narratives. The narratives take place in marginal locations and center on marginalized
characters. Moreover, all three authors refer to their cultural backgrounds in the
prefaces or dedications of their novels and various differences-outcroppings of
Arabness or of dissension from the Argentine cultural and political sphere-appear in
the terrain of the novels. These manifestations of difference constitute breaks in the
silence of the texts. They are moments of contestation that crack the silence upon which
these immigrant writers performances of anti-immigrant mainstream discourses are
built.
* * *
Emin Arslan, a Lebanese Druze who had served as Ottoman Consul to Buenos
Aires for five years until his falling out with the Ottoman government, wrote Final de un
idilio (1917) after his residence in Argentina had become that of an exile.85 Final de un
idilio is organized as a group of interlocking tales, with the outer frame being presented
by a first person narrator who-like Arslan--is a diplomat.86 This unnamed diplomat-
narrator is introduced to an artist named Walter who in turn introduces the narrator to
Lieutenant Julio van Doren. The narrator later asks his artist friend to tell him about van
Doren and his beloved, Riette, and Walter se puso a describirme el idilio: una
192
verdadera novela de amor.3 (60) The bulk of Arslans novel then presents this love
story, which begins in Brussels before the start of World War I and ends in the middle of
the war, through an omniscient narrator and an exchange of letters between van Doren
and Riette.
Arslans novel echoes many of the concerns with modernity and the control and
moral education of women that were at play at that time in Argentina. This is seen in his
first narrators fear of newspapers as transgressors of the public/private divide:
*-Lo que me inquieta es el escandalo. Todo Bruselas va a saberlo
rnahana [....]
Me representaba yo la llegada del comisario de policia, la
investigacion, los sueltos de los diarios. Ofa a los vendedores de
periodicos pregonar los commentaries del robo. Un sudor frio me inundo;
los oidos me zumbaban; sentfa angustia, como si yo mismo fuera el
ladron [....]b (36)
The narrators friend Walter echoes this by going into a tirade against journalism:
esa maldita prensa que ha adoptado el sistema vergonzoso de
entrometerse en la vida del hogar para convertirla en tema de escandalo,
sin preocuparse de los trastomos y de las desgracias que ocasionan. [...]
c(43-44)
Argentine concern over the distinction between public versus private realms was
focused on women who, with the onset of modernity, were beginning to move between
both spaces more and more. Likewise, the issue of women entering the work force and
public urban spaces, is a recurrent theme in Final de un idilio. Van Doren and Riette
meet because of his concern for this poor, virtuous girl from the countryside who is
looking for work in the city. And as he tries to help her find employment his constant
concern is how propriety can be maintained, how a single womans honor can be safe
while working.87
a started to describe to me the idyll: a true love story [novel].

b -What troubles me is the scandal. All of Brussels will know about it tomorrow [....]
I imagined the arrival of the police commissioner, the investigation, the newspaper
sheets. I heard the newspaper sellers calling out the commentaries on the burglary. I was
drenched by a cold sweat; my ears were buzzing; I felt anguished, as if I myself were the thief
[....]
c that damned press that has adopted the shameful system of intruding in home life in order to
convert it into the topic of scandal, without concerning itself with the problems and the
misfortunes that they cause. [...]
193
Furthermore, Final de un idilio participates in the nostalgic response to womens
entry into public spaces by emphasizing, like other novels of the time, the moral
education of women as a way of maintaining the virtuous past that is longed for.
Throughout most of Arslans novel it remains clear that men are meant to protect and
educate women, while women are meant to be silent and chaste, yet beautiful, self-
sacrificing, and patriotic. Among the qualities for which Riette is praised is that she had
el instinto de saber callar cuando era necesario, y de hablar cuando su palabra era
deseada. Mostraba por otra parte singular deseo de aprender.3 (91) And, of course, it
is up to van Doren to educate this chaste young woman: [Riette era] una criatura
admirable, que reuni'a a la belleza ffsica, el encanto de un alma sana y pura. A el le
quedaba la tarea de educar su corazon y de guiar su inteligencia.b (113) In addition,

Riettes refusal to marry van Doren (given her lower class status) is a sacrifice of her
own honor and security for his respectability and happiness.88 Furthermore, Riette is a
fervent nationalist: when the couple makes plans to travel, the one place Riette refuses
to visit is Germany because she is from the province of Lorraine. In response, van
Doren refers to her as a jdeliciosa chauvinista! who demonstrates un patriotismo tan
ardoroso, tan vehemente, tan sincero.0 (189, 196) Thus, Arslan creates the model
woman for a culture concerned with moral values, honor, and patriotic sentiment.
Arslan not only attempts to harmonize the content of his novel with the dominant
discourses of the time, but also tries to present himself in a dominant position through
the framing of the novel. The preface, or extended dedication, of Final de un idilio
represents an obvious desire and frank effort to establish a connection between Arslan
and some of the most venerable figures of the time. The title of the preface reads: A
LA MEMORIA DE JULIO A. ROCA and the text begins: Dedico esta novela, que es mi
primer ensayo en el genero, a la memoria del ilustre Teniente General Julio A. Roca.
3the instinct of knowing to be quiet when it was necessary, and of speaking when her words
were wanted. She demonstrated, as well, a singular desire to learn.
b [Riette was] an admirable creature, who brought together with physical beauty, the charm of a
pure and wholesome soul. To him remained the task of educating her heart and of guiding her
intelligence.
c delicious chauvinist!
194
Fue bajo la presion de sus amistosas instancias que me anime a escribirla [...]a (5).
From the first words of the text Arslan places it under the auspices of the general in
charge of the conquista del desierto89who later served as president of Argentina-one
of the foremost political figures of the turn of the century.90 Arslan goes on to bring in
more links between himself, his novel, and the highest echelons of Argentina by
describing his close friendship with Joaquin V. Gonzalez, a prominent politician of the
time, mentioning their regular outings to El Parque de Palermo, and referring to the
Buenos Aires Jockey Club. (6)
However, in this same preface Arslan describes being overcome by bittersweet
memories of his life in Greater Syria and his family there~as a result of the resemblance
between Buenos Aires and his home. Arslan speaks of the outings in the park bringing
up old memories: Esas tardes me recordaban siempre el bello cielo azul de mi pais
oriental, y aquel dia el cielo era, en efecto, el mismo de Oriente, el mismo sol, el mismo
aire puro, la misma calma."6 (8, emphasis added) The insistence upon e/ mismcf
makes Buenos Aires into an exact copy of Oriente in all of its beauty. The idea that
Buenos Aires could remind him of his home in Lebanon, the emphasis on sameness in
the midst of difference, creates an uncanny relationship between Greater Syria and
Argentina. By making Oriente and Buenos Aires identical, Arslan disturbs Argentine
conceptualizations of Buenos Aires, and especially the elegant upper-class area of
Palermo, as well as of the Orient. The assertion of a self-sameness between these two
locations, whose identities are predicated upon radical difference from each other,
collapses the distinction between self and other, and thus calls into question the ability to
discern distinct identities. As I will demonstrate, what emerges in Arslans novel as a
whole is Argentina as at once the same and different--as an estranged version of its
such an ardorous, vehement, and sincere patriotism

aTO THE MEMORY OF JULIO A. ROCA
I dedicate this novel, which is my first attempt at the genre, to the memory of the illustrious
Lieutenant General Julio A. Roca. It was under the pressure of his friendly encouragement that I
was motivated to write it [...]
bThose afternoons always reminded me of the beautiful blue sky of my Oriental country, and that
day the sky was, in effect, the same as the Oriental one, the same sun, the same pure air, the
same calm.
195
former conceptualization, an experience of the Unheimlich in which repressed fears of
unclear boundaries, of indistinct identity, arise.97
Longing, in this case for a person, comes up in the novel itself when Riette must
return to her home town for a time and she and van Doren begin to exchange letters.
Here writing is able to fill the void left by the absent beloved, because, as Riette explains
in her first letter to van Doren: escribir es evocar, es ver un poco a la persona para
quien se escribe, como lo afirma un adagio oriental."3 (123) In addition to writing

evoking the addressee of the letter, the very notion of writing as assuaging longing
draws in the Orient. Riettes attribution of this statement about writing to the wisdom of
Arslans past world brings his Middle Eastern origins into the present as well. What we
begin to see then is the uncannyness of the identification between Buenos Aires and
Oriente played out on the level of Argentine sentimental discourses. In the midst of the
enactment of these discourses the reader is reminded that they are actually Argentine
literature produced by a non-Argentine. They are a copy of these discourses which
throws into question the Argentineness--the Heimlich, or home-like-ness--of such
language and themes.
Elsewhere in the novel another moment of uncanny disruption occurs. In a
conversation between the first-person narrator, his artist friend Walter, and other artists
about a monument in Buenos Aires, one of the artists thinks that Buenos Aires is the
capital of Brazil. When the narrator corrects him, Walter says: --iBahL.es lo mism<fb
(48, emphasis added). Then the narrator goes on to tell us Tampoco nadie supo decir
con exactitud que idioma se hablaba en Buenos Aires. Prevalecio la opinion de que se
usaba el idioma argentine.2 (48) Here Arslan creates an opportunity to poke fun at
Argentinas marginality, the insignificance of the country and its language to Europeans.
Of particular note is Arslans use of the phrase es lo mismo in reference to Brazil and
Argentina. In the same way that sameness between the Orient and Argentina was
3 to write is to evoke, it is to somewhat see the person for whom one writes, as an Oriental adage
affirms.
b -Aah!...its the same thing
196
highlighted earlier, here Brazil and Argentina are said to be indistinguishable. In this
way, the differences which are the basis for separate national and cultural identities are
undone, and what is left is a melange of categories in which difference and similarity are
superimposed.
The dialogue among the characters about Argentina immediately segues into an
invocation of women as a subject about which they are all knowledgeable: Luego se
hablo de mujeres, tema que todo el mundo dominaba mejor...en cierto modo, porque
conclufmos por reconocer que la mujer era y serfa siempre el eterno enigma [...]"a (49)
Yet even this apparent common denominator slips away in the end because it is
enigmatic and uncontrollable. What remains is the separation between the diplomat-
narrator and Argentina, as well as between the reader and Argentina. The passage
provides the reader with a view of Argentina from a distance--a distance which reveals
that elsewhere Argentina is not only of little importance, but is undifferentiated from its
neighboring nation.
Hazy geographic, cultural, and linguistic borders are a source of dislocation in
another passage as well. When van Doren and Riette visit Metz, a town that had been
under French control since the 16th century and was taken over by the Germans in
1870, van Doren worries about how he will communicate with the locals. Riette assures
him that he will encounter no troubles because, despite thirty years of German
occupation, everyone still speaks French. What emerges, though, instead of the
maintenance of the correlation between language and national character is the pairing of
the language of one national group with the culture of another. When van Doren speaks
to a passerby in French though the man answers with frances correcto, the man, upon
taking his leave, saludo con tiesura teutonica y continuo su camino. b (190-1) The
uncanny pairing of French words with German ways shakes the notion that language
0 Nor was anyone able to say with accuracy what language was spoken in Buenos Aires. The
opinion prevailed that the Argentine language was used.
^Then we talked about women, a topic that everyone had more mastery over... to a certain
extent, because we concluded by acknowledging that women were and always would be the
eternal enigma [...]
b correct French; he took his leave with Teutonic stiffness and continued on his way
197
and national customs and attitudes are necessarily linked. The correlation between the
French language and French character is replaced by an incongruous melding of
language and culture: Gallic language together with Teutonic manner. This non
identification between correct national language and national cultural norms
destabilizes the very foundations of Argentine efforts to consolidate a national culture
through purity of language.
The positioning of this novel in dominant Argentine circles and its participation in the
prevailing discourses of the nation is called into question even further by the repeated
presence of suicide in the novel. The first reference to suicide appears early on in the
novel when van Doren and Riette first meet. As she tells him of her struggle to find
work, in the face of la estupidez de las gentes, que no conciben que una mujer como yo
pueda trabajar honradamente, she says: Yo creo que lo mejor sera concluir de una
vez... acabar con las penas... jtirarme al no!1 (66) Later van Doren fears la
possibilidad de un suicidio.b (72) This theme is developed further in the lovers

exchange of letters.
In van Dorens first letter he tells Riette that he has just received the news that a
childhood friend has committed suicide because of a love affair with a married woman.
(128) Later, they see the tomb of another suicide and Riette wonders whether suicide is
not in fact an act of great courage. Van Doren worries that her reading material is
influencing her negatively and does not know how appropriate it is for a woman to be
thinking about the topic of suicide. When she presses him for his opinion so that he may
guide her, he discusses the subject at length. After noting, among other things, that the
state opposes suicide, he concludes by saying that in extreme situations suicide can
seem like the only recourse: De tal suerte, no se ha encontrado otro remedio contra el
dolor que el olvido del suefio, y la muerte es el sueno etemo..."c (186)
a the stupidity of people, that cannot imagine that a woman like me can work honorably:
I think it would be best to end it once and for all... put an end to the suffering... throw myself in
the river!
bthe possibility of a suicide
c In this way, no other remedy has been found against pain than the oblivion of sleep, and death
is the eternal sleep...
198
Then at the end of the novel, Riette in effect commits suicide. Fifteen years have
gone by, Germany has invaded Belgium and Riette has married van Doren in order to be
able to go with him, as a nurse, to the front lines. (Here war and national defense create
a larger need that compels the couple to marry--to sacrifice van Dorens honor in order
to live out their loyalty to the state.) Van Doren returns to the field hospital wounded,
and before he can be moved to a hospital in the nearest city, the Germans attack. Van
Doren tries to make Riette run for cover and save herself, but she refuses.
--iSalvarme sola?, Sin tf? jAh, no querido mfo, no me conoces!
iO te salvo a tf, o muero contigo!--y cubriendo son su cuerpo el de van
Doren, hacfa como si quisiera escudarle de las balas enemigas.
Una vez mas el coronel quiso separarla de su lado, pero ella
como una leona enfurecida se estrecho mas a el repitiendole:
--jNo! jno! jNada ha de separarme de tf, nunca! jSeguir
viviendo despues de tu muerte!... jQue horror! jPrefiero morir aqufl,
jahora mismo, pero contigo! jcontigo!2 (224)
After attempting in vain to drag him out of the building the roof caves in and Riette
cubriendo con su cuerpo el de van Doren, silenciosa, tragica, aguardaba estoicamente
la muerte.b (224) Instead of putting her duty to nation, as a war-time nurse, first, she
loses her life to stay with her husband. This suicide marks a rejection of the role of loyal
national subject.
In many ways Final de un idilio takes up the concerns of the time and thus not only
converts nostalgia for Syria into nostalgia for the values and place of women before
modernity, but shows that an Arab Argentine can also participate in the nation's
production of cultural forms--and of linguistic and moral rectitude in literature. However,
the forms of alterity present in the text--the cultural difference of the Orient, the
dissonance created by ambiguous national and linguistic identities, and the dissention of
suicide-undercut the novels assimilative thrust. This copy or re-enactment of
Argentine discourses contains unsettling departures which destabilize the foundations of
2 --Save myself alone?, without you? Oh, no my dear, you dont know me! Either I save
you, or I die!-and covering van Dorens body with hers, she acted as if she wanted to shield him
from the enemy bullets.
Once more the Coronel tried to move her from his side, but like an enfuriated lioness she
held even more closely to him, saying:
-No! no! Nothing will separate me from you, never! To go on living after your death!...
How horrible! I prefer to die here!, right now, but with you! with you!
199
Argentine identity. Rather than project nationalist nostagia for purity, it embodies and
gives rise to the Unheimlich, the sense of estrangement from home experienced, in
Ricardo Rojass words, after [mjedio siglo de cosmopolitismo by criollos who a fuerza
de ser argentinos, empiezan a sentirse extranjeros en su propia patria.3 92
* * *
Fourteen years after Arslan published his novel a writer with a very different position
in Argentine society wrote Bengala. fugaz en noche neqra (hereafter: Bengala).33
Rather than a well-traveled, former career diplomat residing in Buenos Aires and rubbing
elbows with the creme de la creme of Argentina, Pablo Achem was eighteen years old
and living in Santiago del Estero when he wrote his novel. Despite these differences in
dates of publication and the authors backgrounds, there are many similarities between
the two texts.
Achem, like Arslan, employs the preface of his novel to negotiate his position as an
Arab in Argentina94, however his approach does differ in certain ways from Arslans. The
most obvious difference is that instead of invoking his insertion into the Argentine
political establishment, he speaks of the insertion of the Christian Syro-Lebanese
community as a whole into Argentina. He does not dedicate the novel to a famous
Argentine, but rather to the Syro-Lebanese immigrants themselves. Moreover, in his
preface, Achem articulates a particular type of Arab Argentine identity-both in terms of
nationality and ethnicity:
Tomome por primera vez la responsabilidad de firmar un tan

humilde libro, y al hacerlo asi, sea todo en honor de la Colonia Sirio-
Libanesa de la Republica.
Esa numerosa colonia que diariamente abarca mas y mas este
suelo de una noble como grandiosa bandera, trae, ademas de la
corriente arrolladora que bulle en sus venas pletoricas de fuerzas, un
manantial oculto en el alma henchida de grandezas sublimes.
Sus aguas llevan la bendicion de Cristo. En elias refleja
b covering van Dorens body with hers, silent, tragic, she awaited death stoically
3 half a century of cosmopolitanism [by criollos who] by dint of being Argentines, begin to feel like
foreigners in their own homeland
200
eternamente la primavera de /a patria, con los paisajes de sus cerros, la
nieve perpetua de sus montanas, las cascadas de sus rfos caprichosos
[]
Aquellos hijos de la Tierra Prometida erguidos con la altivez de
sus pinos legendarios, traen an sus almas purificadas por las brisas de
sus verdeantes y hermosas llanuras impregnadas de religion cristiana,
las caricias de la Novia del Mundo."
Traen algo mas aun: en la sangre el perfume del Zhambak.
A vosotros, sirio-libaneses, dedico este humilde libro escrito con
todos mis esfuerzos.a (5, emphasis added)
In the midst of asserting the pure, Christian roots of these immigrants, that is, the
upstanding and religious qualities that these immigrants offer Argentina, there are
statements which contradict the positiveness of their contribution to Argentina--at least
according to the needs of Argentina as they were understood by the criollo oligarchy of
the time. First, there is the reference to Greater Syria as the immigrants patria without
any indication of that being their former home country. While Achem does mention
Argentina as the Republic with a grand flag," he does not give it the status of a second
patria. Going beyond Arslans acknowledgment of his home country (referred to as
Oriente), Achem presents his home country (Greater Syria) as his only patria, his only
place of national affiliation. Furthermore, this patria will be carried by the Syro-Lebanese
immigrants forever as it is reflected eternally in the blessed water which flows from the
spring in each ones soul. Thus, while speaking of the Syro-Lebanese in Argentina,
Achem has no vision of their complete assimilation into Argentine culture-of their loss of
non-Argentine ethnic and patriotic ties. Rather, his understanding of the position of the
Syro-Lebanese in Argentina is one in which the immigrants maintain their home culture
and patriotic affiliation forever--and, in effect, by the divine will of Christ--while
a I take upon myself for the first time the responsibility of signing a book, so humble as this,
and upon doing so, may it all be in honor of the Syro-Lebanese community of the Republic.
That numerous community that daily embraces more and more this soil of a noble and
grand flag, brings, in addition to the rushing current that gushes in their veins, plethoric with
strength, a hidden spring in the soul replete with sublime greatness.
Its waters carry the benediction of Christ. In them the spring season of the homeland is
reflected eternally, with the peaks of its landscape, the perpetual snow if its mountains, the
cascades of its capricious rivers [...]
Those children of the Promised Land standing upright with the pride of their legendary
pines, bring in their souls, purified by the breezes of its verdant and beautiful plains impregnated
with Christianity, the caresses of the Bride of the World [the Virgin Mary].
They bring something else too: the perfume of Zhambak in their blood.
To you, Syro-Lebanese, I dedicate this humble book written with all of my efforts.
201
participating in the life of la Republica.
In addition to the hidden, spiritual spring which will forever connect the Syro-
Lebanese to another place, they carry another form of difference in their very
corporeality--in their blood. The forceful blood which rushes through them, and is at first
considered of lesser importance than the blessed water of their souls, is brought back to
our attention toward the end of the preface as the carrier of the additional, even more
significant quality that the Syro-Lebanese bring with them: the perfume of Zhambak.3
The presence of this untranslated Arabic word, and the fact that it permanently marks
the Syro-Lebanese with difference, is at odds with the formulation of Argentine national
identity as linked to a single, unadulterated language and the desire for immigrants to
assimilate readily into Argentine culture. In fact, it does much to undo the praise of
Argentina as the new home of these immigrants and the possibility of the Syro-Lebanese
assimilating and contributing to the consolidation of national unity by furthering fears of
unassimilatable immigrant difference.
The beginning of Bengala itself also includes a disjunctive awareness of difference.
The novel starts with movement and travel into inhospitable foreignness announced by
the opening lines: El tren devoraba la distancia a traves de la noche; por la ventanilla
solo se vefa un manto oscuro.b (7) We are then presented with a young woman who is
perturbed by the strange name of the town she is traveling to--Olasgoaga--and hopes
the townspeople are nicer. When she arrives she stands out as a newcomer. We then
find out that she is looking for the town midwife who will help her give birth to her
illegitimate child and then adopt the little girl. (8-9) Thus, within the novel it is immorality-
-premarital sex and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy--that is the agent of instability, the
cause of movement and difference.
The next chapter provides the framework into which this unwe'd mother, Marfa Lelia
Ramos, fits: the opposition between campo and ciudad-country and city--as
represented by her parents. Her father is connected to campo-a s the source of purity
a j - ; j [zanbaqj: iris or lily.
202
and values, while her cruel, tippler mother is linked to ciudad--as the source of
corruption, the site of which is women. With this clear dichotomy between ciudad and
campo, and their symbolic value as corruption and Virtue Achem plugs into one of the
dominant themes of the time: the virtue of rural life which has been lost in modern cities
and must somehow be recuperated. The site of struggle between these corrupting and
pure forces is, of course, women.
Through Marfa Lelia we are presented with the negative and disruptive effects of
modern, urban profligacy. Marfa Lelia soon involves herself and her boyfriend in a world
of debauchery which includes illicit sex and cocaine. While contemplating suicide, her
debauchery leads her to accidentally kill her own daughter and then lose her sanity.95 In
her corruptive nature, Marfa Lelia is linked to another issue within the stance against
modernity which Achem, as Arslan before him, takes up: the danger of public spaces.
In Achems case, the perils of public space are more specifically connected to urban
areas than to the public-izing of the press. Achem presents El Parque de Palermo--
which for Arslan is the site of refined Argentine gentility--as a dangerous public space in
a passage which directly addresses the park itself:
Eres hermoso, a ti acuden las almas sedientas de amor, a tus
bosques, tus lagos y jardines.
Tus luces de bengala atraen y alegran almas juveniles, y
entristecen corazones cansados y decepcionados del mundo cuyos
primeros pasos hacia el abismo guiaste con tus encantos [....] y desde el
fondo de sus almas manchadas, repudian tus mentiras, te odian.3 (20)
The park is personified as a seductress, who is later hated by her victims. In the same
way that the greenery of the park attracts people in the midst of the city, at night the
bengala lanterns are points of light which beckon to people, but go out quickly. The only
concession made in the novel to the urban space of Buenos Aires is that it is the site of
progress. The message that emerges is that, while Buenos Aires is needed for
b The train devoured the distance through the night; through the window only a dark mantle could
be seen.
a You are beautiful, souls thirsty for love turn to you, to your woods, your lakes and
gardens.
Your bengala lanterns attract and fill with happiness young souls, and sadden hearts
weaned and disillusioned by the world whose first steps toward the abyss you guided with your
charms [....] and from the depths of their tainted hearts, they repudiate your lies, they hate you.
203
progress, we must not forget the values of the campo. Keeping in mind the preface to
this novel, a parallel can be drawn with the situation of the immigrant: the Syro-
Lebanese need Argentina for progress, but must not forget the values of Syro-Lebanese
identity.
It is Julia Amanda, Maria Lelias cousin, who, with her country upbringing and
marginal position in society, manages to maintain the values of the campo, and even
return to it. After going to school in Buenos Aires, she wants to return to the estancia or
ranch house with her uncle, Maria Lelias father, and he encourages this saying alii te
haras una buena mujer; aqui en Buenos Aires tus diez y ocho ahos pueden ser tentados
por las luces de la corrupcion.3 (11) After her uncles death she is rejected by her only
surviving relatives and exposed to corruption on the city streets, but she always remains
virtuous, even the symbol of virtue for those around her. When she is beginning to
waste away from hunger and despair she receives a letter from the old servants of the
estancia who are living on a small piece of the estancia that was left to them. They
invite her to come and live with them where she will continue to be the mistress of the
house. Here the past-which judges people according to virtue and not money--is
successfully maintained into the future. The picture is completed when the cosmopolitan
Virgilio returns to his familys estancia, bordering on that of Julia Amanda, and finds her,
his beloved, tending to the sheep-dressed in clothes that make her look like una
pastora de lejanas epocasb (79)-and the two live happily ever after.
In keeping with the discourses of the time, Achem dramatizes the corruption of the
modern city and rich mothers who are unable to raise good citizens. He emphasizes the
dangers of the modern city that must be controlled, and the need to return to the campo.
It would seem then that a return to a Syrian past is directed into a more generalized
nostalgia. This broader nostalgia is one that promotes the stability of the immigrants
new homeland, rather than dividing its peoples loyalties. However, when we consider
a there you will become a good woman; here in Buenos Aires your eighteen years of age can be
tempted by the lights of corruption.
b a sheperdess of distant ages
204
the insistence upon difference present in the preface to the novel, this substitution of
return to Syria with return to the campo appears somewhat precarious. Perhaps more
than a substitution there is a parallel: a need to maintain other roots as well, the virtuous
rural roots alongside Syro-Lebanese roots.
Another rhetorical strategy employed by Achem in Bengala which I believe clarifies

the novels ambiguous positioning is the use of different linguistic registers within the
text. In addition to being able to control the current discourses, he is able to control
speech--a marker of valid or authentic citizenship. Throughout the novel regional and
immigrant accents are presented. There are the servants and ranch hands in Santiago
del Estero: --Nai gueno... Como se vacordar cuando entuavfa era chiquitita (23); the
gallega servant whose accent Maria Lelia makes fun of: --He vistu el avisu en el diariu y
venju a ofrezerme" (59); and the Italian gardener: --Lo terrene esta bene trabacate
(75). Achem, as a turco poking fun at the incorrect Spanish of others, in contrast with
the standard Spanish of the narrative voice, shows that he too knows how to speak
correctly--he too is in a position to control the national register. Thus, in this work, while
upholding a certain amount of Syro-Lebanese difference, Achem asserts that he too can
speak with moral authority and with correct Argentine Spanish. Even with zhambak in
his veins he too can be a model citizen. Paying no heed to the exclusionary models of
citizenship already in place, Achem makes a case for the inclusion of the Syro-Lebanese
in the nation, differences and all.
* * *
The young Achems optimistic assertiveness is not to be found in Juan Khurys

Ramsay. Khury, a Christian from Horns, Syria who later studied in Beirut, arrived in
Argentina at some point before 1934 and settled in the city of Parana. He wrote
Ramsay, his first novel in Spanish, in 1938 and later left Argentina to live in Uruguay.96
205
Khury prefaces his novel with a dedication to mis amadas patrias: Siria y Argentina1*
and to two Argentine friends. (3) While, in a sense, this represents an adoption of
Argentina as his new homeland, like Achems reference to Syria as the Syro-Lebaneses
patria, any insertion into the Argentine community is undercut by the fact that it is not his
only patria. Considering the desire for exclusivity and unity in the cultural nationalist
movement of the time, such a doubly-loyal subject could not make for a good citizen of
the nation.
In addition, curiously, though Khury dedicates the novel to his two homelands, he
sets the narrative in neighboring Uruguay. Instead of looking to the Old World of
Europe as Arslan does, or looking at the divisions between urban and provincial settings
within Argentina like Achem, Khury places his story just outside of the borders of
Argentina in Montevideo, a place which is so close, and yet so far. Considering that the
first chapter is entitled En Montevideo frente al mar b (13) the narrative actually seems
to take place while looking at Argentina from across the water. The notion of
Montevideo as a refuge in contrast with Buenos Aires, the bigger city across the water,
is underscored by the fact that in the narrative Argentina is soon linked to the
disturbance of happiness. It is Roberto who arrives from Buenos Aires and creates a
moral dilemma for the heroine, Judith Brunet, who is in love with her childhood friend,
Ramsay.
Despite this (dis-)placement of the story just outside of Argentina, the novel does
take up some of the concerns and tropes found in Argentine writings of the time. The
generalized notion that modernity is a problem is expressed primarily by the words and
e_xperiences of Roberto. Roberto was forced to give up his first love because of his
authoritarian fathers prioritization of wealth over values, an attitude which is connected
to modernity. It is when Roberto decides to spend the summer with old family friends in
Montevideo that he creates a similar situation for Judith, whose father wants her to
marry Roberto and not the poor, unestablished Ramsay.97 In addition, the gender roles
a my beloved homelands: Syria and Argentina

b in Montevideo Before the Sea
206
in this novel also participate in the concern with the moral education of women that was
the focus of so many pulp writings of the time. First there is Judiths recurring idea of
sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of Robertos by marrying him. Along with that
there is the notion that it is a man who will instruct Judith in morality.
Nevertheless, the same unresolved duality found in the dedication of the novel~the
split between two distinct objects of patriotic affection-runs throughout Ramsay.
Although, similar to what we saw in Final de un idilio, there is an attempt in the novel to
process nostalgia through writing, it is thwarted by the inability to join words and
emotions. Ramsay ends his first letter, at the beginning of the narrative, by speaking of
how his writing conjures up his addressee: Y ahora que, aunque frente a mi mesa,
estoy tambien frente a ti; que siento esa tranquilidad que tu sonrisa de profundo cariho y
tu mirada de sincera amistad me brindan, aprovecho este instante para saludarte.
Ramsay.3 (18) However, writing as a way of overcoming nostalgia is hampered by

problems with the referentiality of language and the ineffability of lived experience; that
is, the inability to join experience and language which is referred to repeatedly in the
novel. In the next chapter, which presents another letter, this time from Judith to her
former schoolteacher in the town where she grew up, Judith starts her letter by
addressing nostalgia and the incommensurability of words and emotions:
En vano he buscado una expresion que pueda bien definir mi estado
moral cuando le escribo; no se si es encantamiento o nostalgia, tristeza o
felicidad; lo cierto es que tu imagen me transporta a aquella epoca de mi
vida que paso al lado suyo [....] nuestro divino pueblo natal, [...] y las mil
charlas benignas que he tenido con mi carinosa maestra, y que recuerdo
con tanta ternura, se encargan de llenar mi corazon de amor y mi alma
de nostalgia.13(19)
Here nostalgia is uncapturable, uncontainable in words. Several other moments in the

text echo this split between events or emotions, and the words used to refer to them.
3 And now that, although in front of my table, I am also in front of you; that! feel that tranquility
that your smile of deep affection and your look of sincere friendship offer me, I take advantage of
the moment to greet you. Ramsay.
b In vain I have searched for an expression that could well define my moral state as I write to you;
I do not know if it is enchantment or nostalgia, sadness of happiness; what is certain is that your
image transports me to that time in my life that occurred at your side [....] our wonderful
207
Much like events and feelings which are incommensurable with verbal expression, in
Ramsay feelings and reason are impossible to join. Though the novel centers around
the effort to bring together corazon and razon-heart and reasonthis desire for
synthesis is never fulfilled. The narrator wonders: Ahora bien: ^como evitar esa
dualidad entre el corazon y la razon? [...] He ahf donde reside lo problematico de una
constitution moral perfecta.3 (66) But Judith, who vacillates between logic and emotion,
cannot bring about a synthesis of the duality.
The idea that separate realms-like experience and language, and corazon and
razon-cannot be connected, is also manifested in the text in the repeated images of
borders between land and water. These images carry the added resonance that
unresolvable disjunctures are tantamount to death. We are given the details that La
playa es el Ifmite del parque Rodo (102), and Judith y Ramsay llegaron al borde del
charcob (111). Moreover, elsewhere the border between the land and the sea is an
exhilarating challenge which turns into a dangerous frontier that cannot be traversed.
When swimming at the beach Judith parecfa tener los animos mas exaltados que
nunca; alejose varias veces mas alia de lo permitido; hundiase desesperadamente en el
agua y, cuando sus fuerzas la traicionaban, volvfa a la costa [...] para luego arrojarse al
agua con un entusiasmo sorprendente.1* (39) The last time she swims out she gets a
muscle cramp and almost drowns. While testing the limits of her own strength and the
limits of the safe shoreline, Judith finds herself in danger of dying. The crossing of
borders is explicitly linked with death in another passage in which Ramsay cryptically
says to Judith: - Estoy a tiempo de salvarme grito el nadador al sentir la fuerza de la
hometown [...] and the thousand kind talks that I have had with my affectionate teacher, and that I
remember with such tenderness, take care of filling my heart with love and my soul with nostalgia.
a Now then: How does one avoid that duality between heart and reason? [...] It is there that the
problematic part of a perfect moral constitution resides.
The beach is the boundary of Rod6 park.
Judith and Ramsay arrived at the edge of the pond.
c She seemed to be in higher spirits than ever; several times she went out beyond the permitted
[the permitted area]; she would plunge desperately into the water and, when her strength was
about to give out, she would return to the shore [...] to throw herself in the water again with
suprising enthusiasm.
208
corriente. Antes de llegar a la otra costa, parece estar la muerte. [...p (75). Indeed
death, rather than a harmonious balance, is where the narrative leads. Suicide is
mentioned several times by Ramsay who equates Judith ignoring her love for him and
marrying Roberto with suicide. (76, 78, 184) After Judith tells Roberto that she only
loves him as a brother she feels that she has destroyed not only Roberto and his
parents, but her fathers love for her and thus any chance at marrying Ramsay. The
next day she commits suicide and the novels attempts at synthesis end up in a final
displacement.
Another type of displacement occurs on the level of narrative. Ramsays first letter,
and a second one further along in the novel are addressed to Samir" (11, 159), yet
Samir is not only never presented as a character, but, unlike the schoolteacher who is at
least spoken about, he is never even mentioned by any of the characters. Additionally
Samir, as an Arab name is the only reference within the novel to Khurys background.
In a perhaps telling parallel, the parts of the narrative which are not presented in
epistolary form seem to be narrated by a third person, omniscient narrator-except that in
a few different places an I surfaces in the text. For instance, in one descriptive
passage we read: Las dos trenzas de su cabello negro, que rodeaban a su cabeza un
poco mas alto que la frente, y el cuello bianco de su traje negro, daban no se por que la
idea de su accesibilidad a las grandes pasiones y su disposicion al sacrificio."b (31,

emphasis added) This unnamed narrator refers to Ramsay speaking to him (150-1) and
then ends the novel by saying: Yo he visto con mis propios ojos al lugar donde reposan
los restos de Judith y para siempre recordare aquel delicioso rostra fotografiado y allf
expuesto de mi querida herofna.c (214) Thus, there is both an unknown addressee,

Samir, and a mysterious narratorial yo," who could possibly be one and the same
person. In this way, the only overt marker of the authors Syrian-ness is possibly central
still have time to same myself screamed the swimmer upon feeling the strength of the
a - I
current. Before arriving at the other shore, death looms. [...]
bThe two braids of her black hair, that encircled her head just above her forehead, and her white
neck from the black outfit, suggested, I do not know why her openness to great passions and her
predisposition to sacrifice.
209
to the transmission of the story, but more than anything else a marginal and mysterious
figure.
The dissonance created by the inclusion and yet exclusion of Samir, alongside the
various unresolvable dualities in the text (the doubled patrias, the experiences which
cannot be expressed by language, the psyche split between corazon and razon, the
borders between solid and fluid terrain, and the impossibility of deciding between two
suitors), make for a novel that is more of a tragedy than a melodrama. One way of
explaining the more despairing tone in this novel as compared to Final de un idilio and
Bengala is the political and social climate of the mid to late thirties in Argentina-the
height of nationalist xenophobia-versus that of the teens to early thirties. Khurys novel
bears the mark of this era of military repression and cultural nationalism. In the same
way that the authoritarian fathers of the novel can be read as a metaphor for the state,
the suicide of the protagonist can be seen as the rejection of participation in such a
regime--as the rejection of the role of citizen within such an oppressive state apparatus.
Furthermore, Judiths suicide in the face of a decision between two different futures can
be understood as a refusal to pick one over the other-one suitor or one homeland.
* * *
These three works all transfer immigrant nostalgia for the homeland, as well as Arab
discourses on women, to the gendered, nationalist nostalgia of early 1900s Argentina.
By shifting into the Argentine discourses, they attempt to create a more legitimate
position for themselves as national subjects within an increasingly xenophobic and
nationalistic social and political arena. Therefore, to varying degrees the three novels
enter into the discussion surrounding the possibility that immigrant mothers uphold the
national language and culture. By participating in such discourses the immigrant or child
of immigrants can also speak with moral authority and can position himself as a loyal
and upstanding citizen. As Pierre Bourdieu explains in his work on the power of
c I have seen with my very own eyes the place where Judiths remains lie and I will always
210
language in society, symbolic profit can be attained through linguistic communication.
In this way, writing in Spanish and within the nostalgic discourses of the time is a way for
Arslan, Achem, and Khury to gain both linguistic and cultural capital in Argentina.
Notwithstanding the authors potential reaping of symbolic profit by positioning their

texts within the mainstream, the texts contain markers of difference and/or gestures of
rejection of the national order--disjunctures that on some level maintain a sense of
alterity vis-a-vis Argentine notions of national identity. These are the murmurings or
undertones which break through the silent hush of the texts in regards to their genres
antagonistic relationship to immigration. These murmurings destabilize the discourses
which underlie the Argentine sentimental novel-nostalgia for a pre-immigration and pre
modernization Argentina and the concomitant concern with correct Spanish and correct
morals.
The three novels demonstrate that Argentine discourses are reproducible by writers
who do not consider themselves exclusively Argentine nationals (Arslan and Khury), or
do not consider themselves Argentine nationals at all (Achem). The appropriation of
Argentine language and discourses, and yet how little this means in terms of national
identity, serves to undo the correlation between language and national culture upon
which the popular, sentimental Argentine literary texts base their didactic moral
messages. In the process it points to the performativity of correct speech and morals,
the way in which national language and culture are not only taught but enacted,
established, in these sentimental novels. The Arab Argentine versions of sentimental
discourses, through their unsettling uncanniness and their rejection of Argentine norms
of national affiliation, point to what Bhabha has explained as the tension between the
pedagogical, an a priori historical presence, and the performative, the people
constructed in the performance of narrative.100 Rather than a pre-existing purity which is
passed along in the texts, the very contours of pure national language and character are
constructed and enacted textually.101
remember the delightful face of my beloved heroine photographed and displayed there.
211
Performing An Other Tongue:
The Displacement of Pure Arabic and Language-Based Arab Identity
Different types of silence-and different responses to the rupture of migration--are

exhibited by the Arab Argentines who wrote in Arabic. Most of the Arabic-language
literature produced in Argentina fits within what can be termed exile literature; that is, it is
focused on the home culture rather than Argentina, it is retrospective rather than
concerned with the immigrants present surroundings. The Arabic-language novels treat
issues linked to the Arab world through Syro-Lebanese settings and characters, often
from a previous historical period.102 The works that do not completely avoid the topic of
migration are two novels written in the early part of this century and one written in the
1970s. One of these novels, ImTliwa by Jurj Assaf, mostly takes place in Argentina and
is about Arab immigrants there.103 However, it does not focus on the Arab immigrants as
immigrants perse, but rather, uses them to express a message about the social problem
of young women being married to older, rich men which is directed to Syrians, both at
home and abroad.
Another of these three novels, FT mahabb al-rTh [Exposed to the winds] by Ilyas
Qunsul, stands out because it was published in 1972, at a time when the number of
Arabic readers in Argentina was dwindling. More remarkable still is the novels apparent
disavowal, in terms of not only language but also setting and theme, of Qunsuls more
than 40 years of residence in Argentina.104 FT mahabb al-rTh takes place in Syria in the
1870s and recounts a young mans movement between his village and Damascus.
Rather than mentioning the wave of emigration from Greater Syria to the Americas
which had begun in the 1860s, Qunsul focuses on internal migration from village to city,
complete with the confusion, ridicule, and alienation of the stranger in a new
environment--the big city. The novel ends up being a fairy tale of return in which the
village is proven to be not only better than the city, but the source of all happiness. In
this way, in FT mahabb al-rTh Qunsul uses the tension between village and city, or
tradition and modernity, that runs through Arabic letters to express his nostalgia for his
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homeland obliquely--so obliquely that he never even refers to his distance from his
homeland.
Paradoxically, although Qunsul persists in using Arabic while writing in Argentina
decades after his emigration, the structure of the text he produces is not typical of written
Arabic literature. Although FT mahabb al-rTh is, strictly speaking, written in fusha Arabic
(albeit of simple syntax), its narrative structure has much in common with folk tales and
oral narratives. Qunsuls text follows the archetypal narrative pattern of the hero tale in
which the protagonist is pushed to leave home because of a crisis, faces a series of
trials and tribulations, and returns home a hero.105 Though Qunsul is trying to maintain a
connection with his homeland by writing in Arabic, the oral tale structure creates static
in the connection with the Arab world because it places the novel between the
established categories of Arabic literature (the realm of the literary canon) and popular
storytelling (the realm of folk culture).
Among the three novels which touch upon migration, the only one that focuses on
the experience of the Syro-Lebanese immigrant to Argentina-including the voyage from
the Arab world and the search for a livelihood upon arrival-is Da5s wa-Fad0s [Da'Ss
and Fad'us].106 This two-part novel by Najib Ba'qlTnT and Sam'an al-HamatT shares in the
oral quality of FT mahabb al-rTh, but takes the orality even further in that the episodic
narrative parallels folk tales not only in its structure, but also in its extensive use of the
Syro-Lebanese spoken dialect.107 This work--which, given its episodic plot and limited
characterization, also bears some structural similarity to the picaresque tales of the
maqamat and is thus positioned at the transition to the novel-narrates the misfortunes,
escapades, and accomplishments of Fad'us. Fad'us is a Lebanese Maronite who
emigrates from his village to Buenos Aires in 1911. Fad'uss best friend Da'as, as well
as most of their fellow villagers, join him in Argentina later and Fad'us completes his
journey from ignorant ne'er-do-well to obliging, knowledgeable leader of other Arab

immigrants and successful entrepreneur.
In the prefaces to the two volumes of the work and within the novel itself, Ba'qlTnT
and al-HamatT present the message that the Syro-Lebanese immigrants should
213
assimilate Western customs for the betterment of the Arab world. At various different
points in the text the idea that the emigres from Greater Syria plan to return to their
homes after accumulating not only financial wealth, but also cultural riches, is
repeated.106 Moreover, the authors defend the immigrants right to return to their home
country and participate in politics there by stating that immigrants contribute a great deal
because their experiences abroad have educated them in democratic life both
theoretically and practically. (I: ^ ) 109 Since a return voyage is always expected, Ba'qlTnT
and al-HamatFs conception of the Syro-Lebanese in Argentina is that they are migrants
rather than immigrants. In keeping with this notion, their interest in assimilation
ostensibly has less to do with Argentina itself, than with an interest in acquiring Western
attitudes and practices, which is connected to the questioning of Arab tradition that
began in the 1800s as a result of greater contact with Europe and European
imperialism.
Although interest in assimilation into Argentine life is for the most part subsumed into
interest in acquiring the Western cultural wealth which will allow the Syro-Lebanese to
change the despotic Ottoman regime under which they live, the passage in the novel
which most explicitly advises assimilation does so without any mention of bringing more
enlightened ways back to Greater Syria. Fad'us, having already experienced being
insulted as a turco in Argentina, explains this hostility to his fellow villagers, upon their
arrival in Argentina, by saying that the Syro-Lebanese stand out in the eyes of
Westerners because of their intelligence and industriousness. For this reason, at the
slightest incident they call them turcos-a term that they use for the Syro-Lebanese as
well as for any person, or even animal, whose behavior they do not like. Fad'us then
advises the recently arrived villagers to distance themselves from their own ways and
values and take on the ways of the people they are living among. (II: 131) Here,
assimilation is clearly promoted as a means to survive and thrive in a new environment
where difference meets with hostility. The disparity between this moment in the text and
the interest in assimilation for the good of the homeland presented elsewhere reveals
the tension between the more immediate issue of day-to-day survival in a new and
214
unfriendly environment, and interest in maintaining strong ties with their home culture.
As a result of this tension, while the (im)migrants connection to Syria is defended, at the
same time the (im)migrant is encouraged and instructed in the acquisition of Argentine
cultural norms.
Indeed, Daas wa-Fadus is a highly didactic work that attempts, through the example
of Faduss transformation from bumpkin to savvy businessman, to prepare the migrants
to carry out their professed contribution to Greater Syria while concomitantly teaching
the immigrants how to get ahead in Argentina. The novels subtitle,
O ^ LZ.T-, I , I t ^ I i < .,1 I < C j .il o Ij j
proclaims from the start the pedagogical nature of the text. In certain ways the novel is
far from providing moral training; it has a strong anti-clerical bent, seen most prominently
in the fact that it is the village priests on-going affair with Da'Ss wife, and Faduss
discovery of this, that leads to the priest sending Fadus to the Americas.110 Yet, Das
wa-Fadus does provide lessons in secular morals, that is, it presents a code of ethics
as well as practical advice for immigrants through Faduss metamorphosis into a
generous friend and leader and a successful businessman.
The didactic purpose of the novel, directed toward largely uneducated immigrants, is
certainly one reason why al-HamatT and BaqlTnT, both journalists capable of writing in
standard literary Arabic, chose to express their narrative in a mixture of the Syro-
Lebanese dialect and fusha Arabic--as well as, to a much lesser extent, Spanish.111
Almost all of the extensive dialogue in the novel is partly or even mostly in the Levantine
dialect. Moreover, even the narrative passages in Daas wa-Fadus are written in a
literary Arabic that is close to the colloquial due to the choice of vocabulary and
expressions, as well as the very situations they represent. In the fusha narrative
passages some of the vocabulary used is either found only in the dialect, or found in
both the dialect and fusha but used more frequently in the dialect, while certain
expressions are standardized versions of colloquial idioms.112 Additionally, the
a a literary, morai, social, reformist, critical novel
215
everyday concerns and slapstick humor which are presented in the novel are much more
the realm of the colloquial than of fusha."3 This together with the dialect-inflected
vocabulary and idioms even infuses many of the narrative passages in fusha with the
timbre of the dialect. Given the fact that most of the Syro-Lebanese immigrants were
either illiterate or only marginally literate, writing the novel in this strongly colloquial
language would make it possible for the novel, and its lessons, to actually reach all of its
target audience. It is very likely that the work, which was first published serially in a
newspaper, circulated in part via group readings in which the most literate person in a
household, cafe, or social club read the novel out loud to others (a common practice in
the Arab world which is alluded to and portrayed in the novel itself). The colloquial
language would make the text accessible to both the marginally literate group reader
and the illiterate, non-fusha proficient listeners.
Another practical reason for al-HamatT and Ba'qlTnT to write their text mostly in
Levantine dialect was their desire to write a work with a humorous tone. As Cachia
points out, in reference to the colloquial dialects and the standard literary register, It is
easier to be flippant in the one, to be articulately lofty in the other. 114 Da'as wa-Fadus
is an irreverent, anti-nostalgic take on migration with a largely humorous, slapstick tone.
The colloquial language is necessary in order for the novel to depart from the
sentimental mode. However, the decision to write in a regional dialect rather than the
correct Arabic language is also linked to a particular notion of identity expressed in the
novel.
As Fad'us travels farther and farther from his village, spending time in Beirut and
Marseilles, as well as various other port cities, before arriving in Argentina, he becomes
aware of his identity according to different determining factors. His first awareness of a
new defining difference occurs when he leaves his village for the first time to go with the
village priest. Buna-Fram [the colloquial version of Abuna Afram: (our) Father Afram], to
Beirut to arrange Fad'uss passage to the Americas. In Beirut, Fad'us notices that for
the first time someone is insulting him on the basis of his religion. (I: 55) After this
awareness of the difference that arises the first time that he meets anyone from outside
216
of his Maronite village, in Marseilles he hears someone curse for the first time, along
with his religion, his village itself. (I: 133) Earlier, on the ship from Beirut to Marseilles,
Fad'us becomes aware of himself not only as a Maronite Christian but as an Arab.
When the Italians on board make fun of Fad'us and the other Arabs on the ship because
they are cn "--dressed Arab or wearing Arab [clothes]--a fight breaks out
between the Italians and the Arabs. (I: 93) This fight and the punishment of the Arabs
by the captain leads to one of the few sentimental moments in the novel: the group of
Arab immigrants begins to sing atabah and m/7ana--traditional songs full of lament and
nostalgia for home. (I: 95) These events are a central part of the constitution of the
Arabs on board as a group, regardless of village of origin or of religion.
In the second part of Da'as wa-Fad'us, the Syro-Lebanese immigrants
consciousness of themselves as Arabs continues while religious difference among them
is dissolved and the main indicator of Arabness is revealed to be language. Similar to
the way in which the Arab immigrants are defined as a group through their conflict with
the Italian immigrants traveling on the same ship, upon arrival in Argentina, Arabness is
a difference which defines the Syro-Lebanese as a group in opposition to those around
them. At the same time, religious differences among Arabs are downplayed. In a
significant scene at the beginning of part two, on the ship from Marseilles to Latin
America Fad'us meets Tannus, an Arab immigrant who is going to Argentina for the
second time. In the course of their conversation it comes out that TannQs is a Greek
Orthodox Christian and Fad'us says that, based on what he had heard in his Maronite
village, he had thought that the Rum, the Greek Orthodox, looked different than other
people and had been created by God to be used as firewood in hell. Tannus then
laments the religious superstition and disunity of the East and educates Fad'us in the
greater importance of ones occupation and good deeds. Through this lesson in
secularism, the notion of religion as constitutive of identity is invalidated.
Identity is shown to be constituted, on the one hand, by ones own actions, and, on
the other hand, according to the category of Arab. How exactly is this cultural-ethnic
category defined as intrinsically different (aside from the superficial and easily altered
217
marker of clothing)? Earlier in the same encounter between Fad'us and Tannus we see
the way in which the Arab immigrant reader is taught to recognize fellow Arabs and
conceive of him/herself as Arab. Tannus, the experienced migrant, and Fad'us, the
yokel, first meet, soon after the ship they are on sets sail to Argentina, because Tannus
laughs when he overhears Fad'us complain out loud in Arabic. Fad'us greets TannQs in
Arabic, Tannus

responds in Arabic, and then, in his naivete, Fad'us asks Tannus

if he is
an Arab. Tannus, making fun of the question, says no, and Fad'us responds with
another question: S.d 0 lJ a (II: 2) When Tannus answers that he is English
and Fad'us says that this is not true because he speaks Arabic and looks Arab, Tannus
replies: (II: 2)
^ lill fiS l HU. JSJj - j * o i'j Wr m
In this sentence which is completely in standard literary Arabic, in contrast with the
colloquial language of what Fad'us has just said and of most of the rest of their
conversation, Tannus speaks with the voice of the narrator, the voice of wisdom and
knowledge. In this way, the passage establishes language as a direct and infallible
indicator of cultural identity. The voice of wisdom affirms that it is culture, not nationality
in the modern sense of the nation-state, that structures Syro-Lebanese identity, and that
the defining characteristic of Arab culture is the Arabic language. Yet, ironically, the
language of Da'as wa-Fadus, taken as a whole, has no official status, no nation-state to
back it up, and no literary establishment that would accept it.
Before discussing further the relationship between language and identity that
emerges in Da'as wa-Fad'us. I would like to consider two other issues-translation and
mimicry-which are linked, respectively, to language and to identity. This text, in addition
to being replete with moments in which translation-between Arabic and French or
Arabic and Spanish--is the key to survival, points to the need for translation between
standard written Arabic and colloquial Arabic. From Beirut to Marseilles to Argentina,
a Well then what are you? [literally: Well then what is your nationality or race?]
218
and at all points in between, Fad'us and his fellow Syro-Lebanese immigrants constantly
find themselves either in trouble because they cannot communicate with those around
them or saved from the language barrier by someone who is able to act as translator.
Language, or more specifically the ability to communicate, is demonstrated to be the key
to survival, and the ability to function in the dominant language is the prerequisite for the
immigrants success. Fad'us, by learning Spanish can not only communicate with
customers as a peddler but can also read about properties for rent and thus become a
real estate broker.
Furthermore, those who can translate--both between languages and in a broader
sense between cultures--are clearly in a position of power. In addition to those who
carry out linguistic translation in the novel, there are many other sorts of middlemen-
hotel owners, job brokers, or real estate subleasers (such as Fadus)--who cater to (and
sometimes take advantage of) immigrant customers transitioning into a new world.
Through these figures of linguistic and cultural translation Da'as wa-Fadus highlights the
power inherent in the position of translator or middleman. One central figure who is both
a middleman and a linguistic translator is Buna-Fram, the village priest. In addition to
being the person who first takes Fad'us out of the village (to Beirut), acts as his cultural
guide there, and makes the arrangements for his voyage to the Americas (taking
advantage of Fad'us financially in the process), it is Buna-Fram who transmits Fad'uss
letters from abroad. Fad'us writes two letters after leaving his village (one from
Marseilles and the other from Buenos Aires) and though both are ostensibly addressed
to Buna-Fram, they are in effect meant for his friend Da'as, as well as for Fad'Ciss wife
and the other villagers. Da'as and most of the other villagers are illiterate and thereby
not proficient in written fusha Arabic. For this reason, Fad'us addresses his letters to
Buna-Fram but in each letter he not only asks Buna-Fram to send his greetings to Da'as,
Fad'uss wife, and the villagers, and to send him news about them, but he also asks
Buna-Fram to pass on what he has written, as well as additional specific messages, to
Da'as. BGna-Fram is needed as a go-between in order for Fad'us to communicate with
b Yes, I am an Arab, and the son of Arabs, but since you heard me speaking Arabic why did you
219
Da'as. This results, on a very practical level, in miscommunications: Buna-Fram, by
mistranslating or incorrectly passing on Fad'uss news, drives almost the whole village
to emigrate and makes Fad'us responsible for settling them all into Argentine life.115
More importantly, although Arabic is the basis of Fad'uss cultural identity, he needs a
midd!eman--a translator between registers--in order to communicate across distance
with fellow Arabs, in order to form a single linguistic community. The very source of
cultural unity is split by not only the issue of literacy, but the issue of distinct linguistic
registers one of which (fusha Arabic) can be unintelligible to native speakers of the other
(colloquial Arabic).
Moreover, at different points in Da'as wa-FadGs, Fad'us impersonates Buna-Fram
and thus both enjoys the power of his middleman position and destabilizes it. Early in
part one of the novel Fad'us, who has been hired as Buna-Frams servant, looks in the
mirror after a prolonged sickness and realizes that his hair and beard have grown so
long that they look just like those of a Maronite priest--all that is missing is the cassock
and cap. As soon as Father Afram leaves to visit another village Fad'us takes the
opportunity to dress up as him and, wearing the priests spare vestments and skullcap
and carrying a book, he imitates his gestures in front of a mirror.116 He is engrossed in
his imitation and amazed and impressed with himself--with his own dignified demeanor
and skill,117when someone knocks at the door of the rectory. Fad'us, hoping that it will
be a customer" so that he can perform a baptism or marriage and keep the honorarium
for himself, opens the door and finds Da'as. The two have a good laugh, drink Buna-
FrSms wine, and then, after Da'as leaves, Fad'us falls asleep, still wearing the cassock,
in Buna-Frams bed.
When Buna-Fram returns he wonders who this other priest-^J-iiJl UL-aJI l i * 3 -
might be. (I: 42) A second priest in the village would threaten Buna-Frams singular
power as the sole representative (or middleman) of the only authority with a presence
ask me about my nationality?

a this burdensome or unwelcome guest
220
there-the church, and even its highest power, the Almighty himself. When Buna-Fram
realizes that it is actually Fad'us who is in his bed, in the midst of his anger he laughs,
but then he wakes Fad'us and starts to beat him. Even Fad'us dressed up as a priest
poses a threat to Buna-Frams authority. Fad'us begs for forgiveness and Buna-Fram
finally grants it on the condition that Fad'us will cut his hair and shave his beard. Fad'us
keeps promising to do so from one day to the next, in an effort to hold onto this new
found power.
Before long Father Afram leaves the village again and Fad'us dresses up as him
again. This time an old woman from another village comes to make an offering to a
saints icon in the church and Fad'us carries out the proper priestly gestures by
extending his hand for her to kiss it. As soon as she leaves Fad'us takes the money that
she has left before the icon for himself. Then Da'as comes along, looking for his friend,
and Fad'Qs is able to fool him by speaking the way Buna-Fram does-in both form and
content. Fad'Os, addressing Da'as in fushS Arabic, reproaches him for his disbelief and
sinful ways and asks when he will repent and become a believer. Da'as stops in his
tracks, bewildered, because the voice is that of Fad'us but he seems to be a proper
priest"8 (I: 44). When Da'as gets closer he realizes that it is Fad'us and, jokingly
referring to him as Buna Fad'us [Father Fad'us], says that the religious vestments suit
him and he should become the village priest. But, over Buna-Frams wine, a more
serious plan for Fad'uss alternate identity emerges: the two friends decide to use this
performance of Buna-Fram to figure out what is going on between the priest and Da'ass
wife who spends most of her time at the church and manages to feed and clothe their
family without either she or Da'as working. Da'as tells his wife that Buna-Fram told him
to tell her to come to confession. Fad'us waits for her in the church and his appearance
fools her long enough for him to be sure that Da'ass wife and BunS-Fram are carrying
on an illicit relationship. Da'ass wife, however, realizes what is going on and tells Buna-
Fram upon his return. Fad'us responds to Buna-Frams anger by threatening to tell the
entire village what he knows and the fear of Fad'us disclosing the affair drives the priest
to convince Fad'us to emigrate and to help him do so.
221
Fadus, in his performance of priestliness not only amazes himself with his
commanding demeanor, but astounds, indeed disturbs and displaces, Father Afram.
Faduss imitation of Buna-Fram makes evident the performativity of the village priests
power. That is, his mimicry highlights the way in which the priests power is based on a
series of physical signs (long hair, full beard, cassock, skullcap, and book), gestures (the
extension of the hand to be kissed), and discourses (reprimand and talk of repentance in
fusha Arabic) which can be reproduced by another who does not have the official
sanction to possess and enact these signs, gestures, and discourses. This occupation
of Buna-Frams position, momentary though it is, is enough to give Fadus certain
powers: the increase in self-assurance of seeing oneself as dignified and worthy of
respect, the opportunity to make money through believers offerings, the capacity to find
out what sort of relationship exists between Daass wife and Buna-Fram, and finally the
ability to use this information to threaten Buna-Fram with exposure.
Echoes of this sort of dress-up performance are found later in the novel as well. In
the same way that parts of Faduss performance of Father Afram are directly parodic-
the drinking of wine and the duplication of the priests pious reprimand-when Fadus is
in Marseilles he parodies himself as the village priests helper. Using the organ meat
that he has just purchased to act out the scene of blessing his friends with incense,
FadQs parodies his own former role as Buna-Frams acolyte carrying the censer in front
of the priest. Later, on the boat leaving France, Tannus informs Fadus that the suit that
Fadus bought in France--his first European outfit--is the type of suit worn by doctors.
Tannus advises that Fadus keep wearing the suit and allow people to think that he is a
doctor because of the greater respect that he will garner. In Buenos Aires, after learning
Spanish and finding out about the classified advertisements Fadus begins renting
property in order to sublease it to others at a higher price. With this new enterprise
Faduss daily routine becomes that of peddling his wares on the streets of Buenos Aires
in the morning, and then, after shaving and brushing his hair and changing into a new
suit, going to rent properties and lease them out to others. These repeated
performances-the enactment of the roles of village priest, lackey to the village priest,
222
man of learned distinction, and member of the moneyed-classes-establish Fad'uss
identity as one that emerges through role-play.
This type of performative identity may seem to be at odds with language as the
defining element of Fad'uss cultural identity, in that language ostensibly creates a
stable, fixed identity formation. Yet language itself is a form of role play. As we have
seen, part of Fad'Oss performance of BunS-Fram consists of carrying a book and
duplicating the priests speech. In addition, Buna-Frams role as linguistic middleman
highlights the non-unitary nature of language. Given the number of different registers of
Arabic--from the classical-based literary standard to the various regional colloquial
dialects, as well as all the levels of variation in between--we cannot maintain that
translation only takes place between distinct languages, that single languages are
unified fields of sameness. In his preface to Difference in Translation, Joseph Graham
points out that, according to established conceptions of translation, difference is seen as
a defeat; however, difference is already present in the original, as it is necessary for
signification at the level of the phoneme and beyond. Thus, the operation of language
already includes translation, just as it requires difference.119 Since difference is already
present in the original, the notion of the term original changes: it is no longer an origin
or an undivided wholeness to be transferred, essential meaning as intact as possible,
into another language. Once the ideal of a whole language and the possibility of
totalizing signification are undone, neither the original nor the finished product (the
translation) are expected to be free of difference, complete. This shift in the
conceptualization of translations original alters the related notion of mother tongue as
a stable origin, a wholeness or totality.
The place of fushS Arabic as the pure, original mother tongue of the Arab world is
disrupted in a variety of ways in Da'as wa-Fad0s. As seen in fhe dialogue between
Tannus and Fad'us, different linguistic registers are used in the text to represent either
ignorance or wisdom; however, in the novel fusha Arabic is not always reflective of
wisdom, nor is wisdom exclusively the domain of fushS. When Fad'us impersonates
Buna-Fram, the piety and prestige which the village priests language is supposed to
223
represent is shown to be a sham. Therefore the correlation between purity of speech
and purity of morals becomes untenable. Additionally, given the fact that Fad'us
continues to speak in the dialect when he has already become a relatively worldly,
successful immigrant who shows others the ropes, colloquial language is also linked to
wisdom-albeit a wisdom of a different sort. The wisdom which Fad'us represents, in
part through his very use of colloquial language, is one which combines simpleton
affability and goodwill with worldly practical knowledge and survival skills.
The orality of Da'as wa-Fadus makes it such that the text is not connected to the
supposedly unifying language of the Arab peoples-- fushS or pure Arabic-but rather to
the reality associated with, and structured by, the register of the quotidian realm. The
language of the novel is associated with the best of home-country village values and
with the best lessons of migration. On the one hand, this language reflects the Syro-
Lebanese immigrants distance from both the new language which surrounds them and
the high, pure language of their homeland. On the other hand, the novels colloquial
language articulates a specific identity, that of the Arab immigrant who is far more
connected to the world of colloquial language and everyday survival than the world of
high literary language and its more conceptual concerns. In Da'as wa-Fadus, language
is part of a performance of identity which serves to disrupt the notion of a whole mother
tongue connected to a unitary cultural identity.
* * *
The concept of a homogeneous language community of native speakers of a single

mother tongue is central to nation-building projects, considering that the project of
maintaining or formulating a national language is an effort to establish a national mother
tongue. Language and particular notions of mother tongue are also crucial in attempts
at forging immigrant identities. While the writers examined here who wrote in Spanish
are able to perform correct speech and, by extension, the legitimacy it offers, some of
those writing in Arabic chose to forgo official linguistic legitimacy in order to enact,
224
through everyday spoken Arabic, another type of Arab cultural identity, that of the
marginally literate village and migrant world. In different ways the novels written by Arab
Argentines destabilize the original language or discourse with which they engage. The
texts by Arslan, Achem, and Khury can be seen as a copy, a performance of Argentine
discourses--a translation which jars the place of the original by making the performativity
of both manifest. The novel by B a'qlM and al-HamatT, in taking recourse in a particular
linguistic register and using it as part of the performance of identity, disrupts the notion of
a single Arabic language which can be tied to a single Arab cultural identity.
Although dominant Argentine discourses define the national community (against
immigrant communities) through the concept of a mother tongue, that mother tongue is a
self-effacing construction, a naturalized category. The performance of discourses based
on notions of linguistic and moral purity, the presence of intra-lingual translation, and the
performative use of language point to the untenability of a single, organic mother tongue.
What I am proposing through this examination of the role of language in the structuring
of national and migrant identities is that in the same way that there is no single national
mother tongue, there is no single, undivided whole identity. Rather, a series of
enactments of discourses and linguistic registers both constitutes, and highlights the
contructedness of, identity.
225
' See Carl Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism: Argentina and Chile. 1890-1914 (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1970), 33-36. See also David Rock, Argentina 1516-1987. From
Spanish Colonization to Alfonsfn (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1987) 141.
2 S ee Zulma Recchini de Lattes, La poblacion de Buenos Aires: componentes demooraficos del
crecimiento entre 1855 y 1960. (Buenos Aires: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales Torcuato Di
Telia, Centro Latinoamericano de Demograffa, 1971) 30 and 134, cited in Sarlo, 18.
3 See Rock, 172-199, 214-238.
4See Solberg, particularly chapters two and three.
5 Beatriz Sarlo, Una modernidad periferica: Buenos Aires 1920 v 1930 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones
Nueva Vision, 1988) 43 (emphasis in the original), see also 41-44.
6 See Sarlo 206-246, and especially 242.
7See Sarlo 28, 31-34.
8 Elie Kedourie, Nationalism, fourth expanded edition (first edition 1960) (Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 55.
9 See Kedourie, 56-58 and Johann Gottfried Herder, Treatise Upon the Origin of Language. 1772;
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Soliloguies. 1800; and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the
German Nation. 1807-1808.
10 Kedourie, 117.
11 Kedourie, 60-61.
12Kedourie, 117.
13Kedourie, on political morality, 58; on disturbance of national culture, 64.
14See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, 1991) 50, 51.
,5The historical presence of this European influence remains, regardless of whether or not one
espouses Andersons controversial views about the Americas being the first place in which
political entities [...] self-consciously defined themselves as nations. (Anderson, 46)
18 Anderson, 67.
17One need only consider the works of major figures such as Sarmiento and Andres Bello to
understand the importance of language during the period of Spanish American nation formation.
See Julio Ramos analyses of Sarmiento and Bello in Desencuentros de la modernidad en
America Latina, literature v oolitica en el sialo XIX (Mexico, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Economica,
1989). The importance of language is further corroborated by the fact that out of the eighteen
Spanish American nations (excluding Puerto Rico due to its free associated status) sixteen
countries founded official national language academies (with names such as Academia Chilena
da la Langua) between 1871 and 1931-periods of national consolidation and cultural nationalist
movements. In Argentina, after the closure of the Argentine branch of the Real Academfa
Espahola [the Spanish Academy of Language], an Argentine academy was founded in 1931-a t
the height of Argentinas xenophobic, cultural nationalist era.
,a On the shifts in Argentine notions of nationalism, see Gabriela Nouzeilles, Pathological
Romances and National Dystopias in Argentine Nationalism Latin American Literary Review
24:47 (January-June 1996) 29.
19See Nouzeilles, 29.
See Rock, 118-131, and Onega, 6.
21Solberg, 149-150.
Solberg, 139.
Solberg, 139.
24 See Adolfo Prieto, El discurso criollista en la formacion de la Argentina modema (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1988) 172-177.
25 El criollismo en la literature araentina in En tomo al criollismo Alfredo Rubione, ed. (Buenos
Aires: Centro Editor de America Latina, 1983) 228-230.
26See Miguel Can6, La cuestion del idioma," La Nacion. October 5,1900, p. 3.
27See Eusebio Gomez, La mala vida en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: J. Roldan, 1908) 108-110.
Solberg, 142.
29Ricardo Rojas, La restauracion nacionalista. Informe sobre educacion. 1909, and Blason del
Plata. 1910.
226
30 Rojas sums up the mission of the text, and what it responds to, when he writes: El momento
aconseja con urgencia imprimir a nuestra educacion un caracter nacionalista por medio de la
Historia y las humanidades. El cosmopolitismo en los hombres y las ideas, la disolucion de
viejos nucleos morales, la indiferencia para con los negocios publicos, el olvido creciente de las
tradiciones, la corrupcion popular del idioma, el desconocimiento de nuestro propio territorio, la
falta de solidahdad nacional, el ansia de la riqueza sin escrupulos, el culto de las jerarquias mas
innobles, el desden por las altas empresas, la falta de pasion en las luchas, la venalidad del
sufragio, la supersticion por los nombres exoticos, el individualismo demoledor, el desprecio por
los ideales ajenos, la constante simulacion y la ironfa canalla,--cuanto define la epoca actual,-
comprueban la necesidad de una reaccion poderosa en favor de la conciencia nacional y de las
disciplinas civiles. ILa restauracion nacionalista. Informe sobre educacion (Buenos Aires:
Ministerio de Justicia e Instruccion Publica, 1909) 87.] [The times advise us with urgency to
imbue our educational system with a national character through History and the humanities. The
cosmopolitanism in men and their ideas, the dissolution of old moral nuclei, the indifference
toward public affairs, the growing loss of traditions, the popular corruption of the language, the
ignorance about our own territory, the lack of national solidarity, the desire for riches without
scruples, the belief in the most ignoble hierarchies, the disdain for lofty enterprises, the lack of
passion in struggles, the veniality of suffrage, superstitious belief in exotic names, destructive
individualism, contempt for the ideals of others, constant simulation and vile irony,-all that
defines the present moment,-proove the necessity for a powerful reaction in favor of the national
conscience and civil subject matters.]
31 Rojas, 398.
32 Rojas, 385.
33 For instance, Rojas writes: Tiene un alto valor politico el idioma, no sdlo como signo de la
nacionalidad, sino como instrumento de sus tradiciones. La corrupcion babelica de una lengua,
es cosa muy distinta de los cambios inherentes a su propia evolucion vital [....] Mas lo que pasa
entre nosotros, por influjo de la horda cosmopolita en su mayoria analfabeta, es la deformacion
de las palabras castizas, el abuso del extranjerisimo, estridente, el empleo absurdo de las
preposiciones, la introduction de sonidos extrahos a la musica de nuestra lengua. (Rojas, 367-
368.) [Language has a high political value, not only as a sign of nationality, but also as the
medium of its traditions. The Babelian corruption of a language is something very different from
the changes inherent in its-own vital evolution [...] But what is going on among us, because of the
influence of the cosmopolitan horde, the majority of which is illiterate, is the deformation of pure
words, the excessive, strident, use of foreign words, the absurd usage of prepositions, the
introduction of sounds that are foreign to the music of our language.]
34Rojas, 89.
35See in particular Rojas, 358.
36 Rojas, 392. Although in Rojas' multivolume La literatura araentina. Ensayo filosdftco sobre la
evolucion de la cultura el La Plata (first published 1917-1923), he recognizes the incongruence,
according to classical notions of nationhood, between Argentinas exclusive territory and shared
language, he still affirms that La argentinidad esta constituida por un territorio, por un pueblo, por
un estado, por un idioma, por un ideal que tiende cada dfa a definirse mejor [....]" [Obras de
Ricardo Roias (Buenos Aires: Librerfa La Facultad-J. Roldan y Companfa, 1924), volume 8:
La literatura arqentina. part 1: 28, 30, and 34.] [Argentineness is constituted by a territory, by a
people, by a state, by a language, by an ideal that tends every day to define itself better.]
37One of the main elements of national character, according to 18th-century European thought
by which Rojas and others in Argentina at that time were influenced, was morals--in the sense of
both the good qualities and the manners or customs which were considered typical in a particular
nation. See Aira Kemilainen, Nationalism. Problems Concerning the Word, the Concept and
Classification (Jwaskyla: Jyvaskyla Kasvatusopillinen Korkeakoulu, 1964)69-71. For Rojas,
morals included not only Argentine virtues and customs, but also an awareness of the virtues and
customs which are necessary for nationhood in general and for Argentine nationhood in
particular, that is, what he refers to as civic morals.
38 Rojas, La restauracion nacionalista. 399.
39Quesada, La evolucion del idioma nacional (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercatali, 1922) 58.
227
40Two novels of this genre written by immigrant writers are Francisco Grandmontagnes Teodoro
Foronda (1896) and Godofredo Daireauxs Las dos patrias (1906). These two authors as well as
the criollo writers Adulfo Saldfas (Bianchetto: La patria del trabaio [1894]) and Francisco Sicardi
(Libro extrario H 894-19021) offer more positive images of the immigrant. Tum-of-the-century
short stories and plays also represented immigrants and their particular forms of speech; see the
short stories of Fray Mocho (Jose S. Alvarez), Eduardo Gutierrezs plav Juan Moreira (18841. and
Fiorencio Sanchezs play La qringa (1904). The most significant study of representations of the
immigrant is Gladys Onegas La inmioracion en la literatura aroentina. 1880-1910 (Buenos Aires:
Galema, 1968), other critical works include: Luciano Rusich, B inmiorante italiano en la literatura
del 80 (Madrid: Playor, 1973); Hemilce Carrega, Aspectos del inmiorante en la narrativa
Argentina (Buenos Aires: El Francotirador, 1997); and Evelyn Fishbum, The Portrayal of
Immigration in Nineteenth Century Argentine Fiction (1845-19021 (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag,
1981).
41The lowbrow sainete theater of the teens and twenties, written by middle and working class
criollos and immigrants, also reproduced fractured immigrant speech. In contrast with the so-
called immigrant novels, the sainetes, tend to caricature immigrant speech as a source of
(perhaps denigrating) humor. See my discussion of the sainete in Chapter 2.
42Sarlo, 27. See also Amalia Sanchez Sivori, La inmigracion y la literatura argentina" in
Inmioracion v nacionalidad. Dardo Ciineo, Julio Mafud, Amalia Sanchez Sfvori, and L&zaro
Schallman, (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1967), 109-110.
43At one point, the narrator, a young man who learns how to be a gaucho under the tutelage of
Don Segundo, recounts to his friends la desverguenza del gringo Culasso que habfa vendido por
veinte pesos su hija de doce anos al viejo Salomovich, duerio del prostibulo. [the
shamelessness of the foreigner Culasso who had sold his twelve year old daughter for twenty
pesos to old man Salomovich, owner of the house of prostitution], (125) Later one of the gaucho
characters describes Don Segundos excellent story-telling skills with a very telling metaphor
una relacion de esas que [Don Segundo] sabe: con brujas, aparecidos y mas embrollos que
negocio'e turco [one of those stories that [Don Segundo] knows: with witches, apparitions, and
more twists and turns than the business dealings of a turco]. (224, emphasis added) Guiraldes,
Don Segundo Sombra (Madrid: Castalia, 1990).
44Adolfo Prieto notes that Para los grupos dirigentes de la poblacion nativa [el] criollismo pudo
ser el modo de afirmacion de su propia legitimidad y el modo de rechazo de la presencia
inquietante del extranjero (Argentina. La primera literatura de masas in Auousto Roa Bastos v
la produccion cultural americana [Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1986] 220).
45See Sarlo, Una modernidad periferica. 43-44 and 48, and Sarlo, Oralidad y lenguas
extranjeras. El conflicto en la literatura argentina durante el primer tercio del siglo XX, Oralidad
v aroentinidad. estudios sobre la funcion del lenauaie hablado en la literatura aroentina. Walter
Bruno Berg and Markus Klaus Schaffauer, eds. (Tubingen, Germany: Narr, 1997) 32-33.
46Sarlo, Una modernidad periferica. 47-48. See also Sanchez Sivori, 110.
47Sarlo, Oralidad, 37, emphasis in original; see also 33-36.
48On the intricacies of parody in the work of Elfas Castelnuovo, Roberto Mariani, and Roberto
Arlt, all associated with the Boedo circle, see Francine Masiello, Lenouaie e ideoloafa. Las
escuelas araentinas de vanguardia (Buenos Aires: Hachette, 1986) 196-201 and 210-215.
49 Borre, Arlt v la critica (1926-19901 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones America Libre, 1996) 18.
50 Borre, 25.
51 See Sarlo 18-19 and Adolfo Prieto Argentina. La primera literatura de masas."
52See Adolfo Prieto, Argentina. La primera literatura de masas," 219.
53See, for instance, Hugo Wasts Novia de vacaciones (1907), Valle Neoro (1918), Flor de
durazno (1911), and Ciudad turbulenta. ciudad aleore (19191. Hugo Wast is the pseudonym of
Gustavo Martinez Zuvirfa. On one of Wasf s novels of the adventurous, rather than nostalgic,
variety (Lucia Miranda), see Francine Masiello, Between Civilization and Barbarism. Women.
Nation, and Literary Culture in Modem Argentina (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press, 1992) 144-145. Interestingly, Wasfs work even made it to readers of Arabic in Argentina:
a translation of a novella by Wast was published in 32 installments, starting on April 14,1923
(1:11, p. 5), in the Tucuman Arabic newspaper al-Shabibah al-Muttahidah.
228
^Doreen Massey, Space. Place, and Gender (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis,
1994), 10.
55 In the realist fiction of the same period women are also ascribed a central role in the conflicts
and changes of the era; however, rather than be portrayed as innocents prey to corruption,
women themselves are presented as the source of depravity. In this way, women are
scapegoated as the source of corruption--as the agents of the changes brought on by modernity
which must be controlled. See Masiello, Between Civilization and Barbarism, in particular 140-
143.
56Mabel Agresti, Lo argentino y lo cristiano en algunas novelas realistas de Hugo Wast, Revista
de literaturas modemas 17 (1984) 65 and 72.
57The advertisements are found in the last several pages of one of Wasts novels: Wast, El amor
vencido (Buenos Aires: Libertad, s.d.) [283]-[288].
58 La Nacion. September 10 and 1 1, 1 9 1 1, cited in Carlos Paya and Eduardo Cardenas, El primer
nacionalismo argentino en Manuel Galvez v Ricardo Rojas (Buenos Aires: Peria Lillo, 1978) 92-
93.
59In the early 1900s, there were very low naturalization rates among immigrants in Argentina.
Solberg states that this was due to, on the one hand, a closed political system which did not allow
any real participation on the part of the average citizen, and, on the other hand, interest among
the immigrants in earning money and then returning to their home countries. Starting in 1912, the
oligarchic political arena in which most citizens votes had no impact was gradually challenged.
When electoral reform made fair elections possible, the numbers of naturalizations went up. By
1914 more and more foreigners were becoming politically active-voting, establishing new political
parties, and running for public office. In response to the possiblity of immigrants controlling
Argentine politics, the groups in power took strong action; they maligned immigrant politicians and
obstructed the naturalization of more immigrants. It was then that members of the ruling elite
tried to justify the exclusion of immigrants from politics by pointing to cultural inferiority. Calls to
streamline the complex naturalization process were ignored and instead new restrictions were
proposed. More stringent naturalization requirements were not necessary, however, because of
the informal and extralegal" means that had been used by officials for years. (Solberg, 42-43,
117-128) Klich and Lesser note that it was particularly difficult for Arabs, Jews, and other groups
considered undesirable, to attain citizenship, this is at least one reason why into the mid-1940s
the Syro-Lebanese were among the groups with the lowest naturalization rates. (Klich and
Lesser, Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities. (London: Frank
Cass, 1998) 28, n. 28 and Klich Arabes, judfos y arabes judfos... iEstudios Interdisciplinarios de
America Latina v el Caribe 6:2, July-December 1995,115, and 133-134, n. 26) This, it would
seem, is indicative of the weight given to race or ethnicity in the constitution of the Argentine
national body. Even naturalization, however, was not a guarantee of equal treatment between
foreign-born and (Catholic) Argentine-bom nationals: Klich points out that judiciary and
diplomatic careers were basically closed to non-Christians and naturalized citizens. [Klich,
Argentine-Ottoman Relations, The Americas (Academy of American Franciscan Historvl 50:2
(October 1993) 184; see also Solberg, 60, 62.]
60Language and morality are also connected to another category for defining the nation-ethnicity
understood as a biological reality. Although it is not part of the focus of this chapter (see my
discussion of Argentine positivism in chapter two), ethnicity and the physical characteristics
attributed to it were also a concern in Argentina from the late 19th into the mid-20th century.
Language and, and especially morality, are linked to ethnicity in that they were often seen as
biologically inherited.
61 Lilia Ana Bertoni, La naturalizacion de los extranjeros, 1887-1893: ^Derechos politicos o
nacionalidad? Desarrollo Economico 32:125 (April-June 1992), especially 58, 64. Centeno and
Balestra in response to the Urdapilleta case, quoted in Bertoni, 67-68, from Congreso de la
Nacion, Camara de Diputados, Diario de sesiones. 23 de mayo de 1890.
62Bertoni, 67.
63 See Anwar G. Chejne, The Arabic Language. Its Role in History (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1969) 4 0 ,1 5 0 ,1 6 1 -1 6 8 ,1 7 3 ; Pierre Cachia, The Use of the Colloquial in
Modem Arabic Literature. Journal of the American Oriental Society 87:1 (January-February,
229
1967) 20; and Sasson Somekh, Genre and Language in Modem Arabic Literature (Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz, 1991) 66-71.
64See Cachia, The Use of the Colloquial and An Overview of Modem Arabic Literature
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), and Somekh and Chejne, as well as Albert
Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. 1798-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983), Mahmoud Haddad, The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered." International
Journal of Middle East Studies. 26:2 (1994) and Gioria Eliraz, Tradition and Change: Egyptian
Intellectuals and Linguistic Reform, 1919-1939. Asian and African Studies fHaifa] 20 (1986).
65 See Cachia, The Use of the Colloquial," 13.
66 See Cachia, T h e Use of the Colloquial," 14-16, Somekh, 71, and Matti Moosa, The Origins of
Modern Arabic Fiction. 2nd ed. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1997) 17, 28-37, 53-54.
67Arabic theater is the only genre in which works in the colloquial are accepted as literary. See
Cachia, 13,17-19. For more on Arabic drama see Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, Earlv Arabic
Drama (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Modem Arabic Drama
in Egypt (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and Adil Abu Shanab,
BawakTr al-TaUf al-MasrahT fTSuriwah (Damascus: ManshurSt Ittihad al-Kuttab al-Arab, 1978).
68 See Somekh, 68-72. Works in a colloquial dialect are not recognized by the Egyptian Academy
and do not qualify for state prizes; likewise, many cultural institutions in the Arab world do not
bestow any recognition, prizes or membership upon writers who write in the dialect. (Cachia, 20
and Somekh, 26) Also, colloquial works are usually not included in school anthologies or
educational institutions recommended reading lists. (Somekh, 26) For reference to popular
literature, or adab sha'bT, see Cachia, 17. On poetry in colloquial Arabic see Marilyn Booth,
Colloquial Arabic Poetry, Politics and the Press in Modem Egypt," International Journal of Middle
East Studies 24:3 (August 1992) 419-40.
89This practice, which has become fairly common, is linked to the issue of the representation of
people from uneducated classes, or of everyday conversation and experiences.
70Somekh, 71.
71 Decisions about what counts as only a form of narrative prose, versus a proto-novel, versus a
full-fledged novel are, of course, rather subjective, and have resulted in many disagreements
among critics over which is the first" Arabic novel. On the development of the Arabic novel see
Roger Allen, The Arabic Novel. 2nd ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995) 11-48;
Cachia, An Overview of Modem Arabic Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990),
109-117; Moosa, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction: and Saad Elkhadem, The Popular Arabic
Novel of the Nineteenth Century: A Survey," Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 9:3
(September 1982) 449-460. On modem Syrian literature in particular, including the novel, see
Sami' al-Kayyair, al-Adab al-'ArabF al-MuasirfTSurivyah. 1850-1950 (Cairo: Dar al-Ma5rif bi-
Mir, 1968).
72Some examples of early novels with these themes are: Muhammad t-Jusayn Haykal, Zavnab
(1913), fsa Ubayd, Thurayya (1923), Ibrahirn al-Mazinf, IbrShTm al-KStib (1931 Hbrahim the
Writer)). Yahya yaqqt, QindTI Umm Hashim fThe Saints Lampl. Tawffq al-HakTm, Awdat al-Ruh
(1933 [Return of the Spirit]), U|fur min al-Sharq (1938 IBird from the East)), and YawmiwSt Naib
fTl-Arvgf (1937 [The Maze of Justice)). Mahmud Tahir LSshTn, HawwS bi-la Adam (1934 [Eve
Without Adam]), Taha Husayn, AdTb (1935), ShakTb al-Jabirf (Naham. 1937). JurjTZaydan (1861 -
1914) wrote over twenty historical novels about the Islamic empire (though he himself was a
Christian). (I have referred here only to works which are generally considered to fall within the
category of the novel, though perhaps not of the highest aesthetic quality. See the preceding
note.)
73 The term ummah, which dates to the prophet Muhammads time, was used in the Quran with
the meaning of people, community, or nation and then, as al-ummah al-islamiyyah, it came to
designate specifically the community of believers in Islam regardless of ethnic or political
affiliation. For more on the valences of the term ummah" as well as its role in the formation of
the Islamic state, see Fred McGraw Donner, The Earlv Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981) 55-61, 70-72, and 74-76.
74 Hourani, 33 and 342. See also Rashid Khaiidi, et. al., eds. The Origins of Arab Nationalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
230
75Qawmiyyah comes from the word qawm," which means tribe or people.
76Haddad, 202, 208-210, and 212-213.
77Haddad, 217.
78Hourani, 274, 285-287, and 342.
79Hourani, 307-308, and 342. Although interest and concern over the Arabic language had
begun much earlier, it was not until Arab nationalism grew stronger that language academies
were formed: In 1919 The Arab Scientific Academy [al-Majma al-llmTal-ArabT]-the first of its
kind in the Arab world--was founded in Damascus, and one of its two main committees was
devoted to language and literature-primarily to maintaining the purity of the language. In 1922 a
similar academy was started in Baghdad, and in 1932 the first academy in the Arab world focused
entirely on language was founded: the Egyptian Royal Academy of the Arabic Language [Majma*
al-Lughah al-Arabiyya al-Malaki]. (Chejne, 105,112,116-117) In 1920 the Syrian King Faisal
was ousted by the French who then took on their mandate powers. In response to armed Syrian
resistance, France declared Syria independent in 1941 and all foreign troops finally left in 1946.
Among the later group of Arab-Argentine novelists writing in Spanish in the 1980's and 90's
there are those who-not suprisingly considering they are 2nd and 3rd generation Argentines-
make no direct or indirect reference to their backgrounds. One of these writers, though, in many
ways thematizes his Arab identity much more than those of the 20's and 30's. This novelist,
Jorge Asis, became a bestseller in the 80s when he wrote the first of a series of novels in which
the protagonist--like the author--is the grandson of Arab immigrants. But the focus of the work is
not so much the characterization of the protagonist and his family as ethnically Arab, as it is the
representation of various persons of different immigrant backgrounds coming together to create
the Buenos Aires community. See note 47 in Chapter 2.
81Antonio Eleas, El alfabeto. analisis del proceso genealogico del lenouaie universal (Buenos
Aires: Linari y Compariia, 1925), Divagaciones lingufsticas. en el dominio del castellano
(Tucuman: Miauel Murad. 19401. Conceptos y valores. a travs del lenguaje (Tucuman: Editorial
La Raza, 1943), and Logometrfa (Tucuman: Miguel Murad, 1947).
82An analysis of the Spanish-language discourse (in the stricter linguistic sense of syntax,
semantics, etc.) produced by these writers might bring forth interesting findings related to their
actual command and deployment of their new tongue; however, such an analysis falls outside of
the purview of my study.
83There is also an Arab Argentine short story written in this vein: Abdala Auatts Alla en el
Remanso" which was published serially in La Aurora/al-Falaa [a bilingual newspaper] on March
10,17, and 31,1934 in Santiago del Estero.
On immigrants as part of the ambience, but never the protagonists, in early 20th century
Argentine literature, see Sanchez Sivori, 118.
83Arslan, Final de un idilio (Buenos Aires: Rodriguez Giles, 1917). This novel, like Arslans other
works, seems to have enjoyed some success in the marketplace: in Arlsan's last published book
(Los arabes). Final de un idilio is listed as having gone through four editions. See chapter two for
fuller biographical information, a list of Arslans publications, and an analysis of several of his
other works.
86In Arslans preface to the novel there is the suggestion that the novel is based on some of
Arslans memories--on an actual experience from his days living in Europe.
87It seems, in fact, that Riette's honor is only safe with van Doren since her own step-father
makes advances toward her and, in the first job that she finds, her employer does the same.
88There is a passage which seems to critique traditional practices and societal norms, and which
in a sense runs counter to the nation-state's desire for stability through the institution of marriage.
Riette is referred to as la seriora [de la casa]" [the lady of the house] (126) and reference is
made to her and van Doren sharing the same pillow (147), but they are not married because
Riette refuses to do so. Her refusal is based on the idea that a marriage to her, a poor foreigner
already living with him, will ruin his family life, social position, and military career. To this she
adds that Todo el mundo esta de acuerdo en que las condiciones del matrimonio actual son
malas [....] La sociedad ha sido, porotra parte, injusta y cruel con la mujer. (159-60) [Everyone
is in agreement that the conditions of marriage today are bad [....] from another angle, society has
been injust and cruel with women.] But she does not feel that it is their place to challenge
society. What might appear to be a critique of the institution of marriage and society's treatment
231
of women is undone by Riettes unwillingness to go against society's demands, and moreover, by

the many ways in which traditional male and female roles are upheld.
89Conquista del desierto" [conquest of the desert] was the euphemistic name given to the
military campaign which decimated the indigenous inhabitants and established Argentine control
in the frontier regions.
90Arslan describes how, after first meeting Roca, Arslan begins visiting Roca in his Buenos Aires
home weekly and each time Roca inquires about what progress Arslan has made with the novel
and each time he answers --No mucho, General [Not much, General]. Until one day Roca
invites him to return to his estancia with him so that he can write in peace. But the very week in
which they are going to leave Roca suddenly dies. (15-18) This final detail adds a note of
ambivalence to Arslan and his novel's connection to the great general. While the novel's writing
is encouraged by Roca, it is also only after his death that the project is brought to fruition. The
novel can only be produced 'on the body' of Roca, an act which resonates with Sarmiento's
writing at Rosas' desk upon his arch enemy the caudillo's death.
91See Freuds discussion of the Unheimlich [the uncanny, or literally: the un-home-like] as an
ambiguity between the familiar and the unfamiliar--the known and comfortable, and the unknown
and frightening-which stems from the repression of either a psychic complex or a belief in the
supernatural as material reality. Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny" in Psvcholooical Writings and
Letters. Sander L. Gilman, ed., Alix Strachey, trans. (New York: Continuum, 1995), in particular
pages 126-127 and 148-150.
92 Rojas, La restauracion nacionalista. 467.
93Achem, Benaala. fuaaz en noche neora (Imprenta La Oriental: Santiago del Estero, 1931).
^There is no indication in this novel-the only text by Achem that I have found--of whether Achem
himself immigrated to Argentina or whether he was bom in Argentina of immigrant parents.
95 Marfa Lelias boyfriend, Ricardo, is ready to commit suicide, but with the pistol to his temple he
reconsiders and decides instead to take his vengeance on Marfa Lelia, whom he blames for his
ruin. (55) Later, after Ricardo has sexually assaulted and degraded Marfa Lelia, in a fit of cocaine
withdrawal she also thinks of committing suicide-but does not do it soon enough and ends up
accidentally killing her own daughter. Interestingly, in this novel a man who is at the point of
suicide reconsiders and is able to avenge himself against a corrupting woman, but this woman
could not manage to end her life soon enough to avoid killing her own child. Here a suicide would
have saved her from becoming the ultimate bad mother. But such is the decadence of the city
and the woman of the times that she turns on her own child.
96 Khury, Ramsay (Parana: Juan Khury, 1938). Other texts by Khury include: Cruel destino
(Parana, 1934), /.Que es el hombre? (Cardal, Uruguay, 1954), and El cerebro en el cosmos:
ensayo de una idea unitaria de la cultura (Canelones, Uruguay, 1982). For more on Cruel
destino see endnote 48 in chapter 2.
97The storyline of this novel bears some similarities with that of one of the foundational novels of
Arabic literature, Muhammad Husayn Haykals Zavnab (Cairo, 1913). In Zaynab, the two main
characters are not able to marry their respective beloveds because of parental intervention and
monetary issues. In particular, the title character, Zaynab, is forced by her parents to marry a
wealthier man than the one she loves and she later dies of consumption brought on by her
broken-heartedness.
98For example: se did cuenta, de que las facciones del rostra, mas elocuentes que las palabras,
hablan directamente a la subconciencia, y que su efecto se guarda en eila mas que el de estas
en la memoria (34); Hay ciertos estados del alma imposibles de poder sentir a traves de la
imaginacibn, como no sea simbolicamente, y he ahf donde reside la dificultad de poderlos
describir fielmente (38); tan diffcil de describir en el lenguaje humano (107); me resulta
imposible hacerte comprender" (151); una mano inexperta como la mfa se siente francamente
incapaz de describirlo todo, con la fidelidad deseada (189) [he realized that the features of the
face, more eloquent than words, speak directly to the subconscious, and that their effect is
preserved longer than words in memory; There are certain states of the soul that are impossible
to feel through imagination, other than symbolically, and there is where the difficulty in being able
to describe them faithfully lies; so difficult to describe in human language; I find it impossible to
make you understand; an inexpert hand such as mine frankly feels incapable of describing it all
with the desired fidelity].
232
99 See Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson,
trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991) particularly 18 and 66.
,co See Homi Bhabha, DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modem Nation,"
The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994) 147.
10' Judith Butler opened up the theoretical understanding of identity as performance in her work
on the construction of gender identities. See in particular Gender Trouble. Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990) viii, 33,136-141. Butler asserts
that the acts and gestures which constitute identity point to the contingency of identity formations.
Karen Christian, in Show and Tell: Identity as Performance in U. S. Latina/o Fiction
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), takes this notion of performative identity
into the study of immigrant/ethnic literatures.
102For instance, the play by Yusuf Ghurayyib (Jose Guraieb], Hasna al-basatih fTucuman. 1924),
takes place in Greater Syria and revolves around the issue of romantic love versus marriage
arranged because of monetary interests; that is, humanistic or artistic values versus commercial
or mercantilistic ones. Nasib Istifans melodramatic novella Dahiyvat al-Ghuram (in the collection
Dhuhur wa-ashwak. Tucuman, 1925) similarly deals with theissue of love across class lines in a
village in Greater Syria. Likewise, Nuzh (anonymous, Buenos Aires, c. 1925) and RiwSyat
tahgrat al-hubb ind al-arab. by Muhammad Shihgb al-DTh HamgdT, (Buenos Aires, c. 1925) are
historical novels about Greater Syria.
103Jurj Assgf, Imiliyya (Buenos Aires: Matba'at al-Sal5m, c. 1925 [first published serially in
Jar'dat al-Salam. then in book form.])
104Ilyas Qunsul, FTmahabb al-rTh (Buenos Aires: Ilyas Qunsul, 1972). Qunsul was bom in 1914
in Yabrud, Syria where he attended primary school. In 1925 he emigrated to Brazil with his
father, then four years later he moved to Argentina. In 1955 he traveled to Syria and other Arab
countries, returning to Argentina three years later. For ten years he was the editor of al-JarTdah
al-Surivyah al-Lubnamwah/EI Diario Sirio-Libanes in Buenos Aires. Qunsuls other works
include several volumes of poetry: al-Aslak al-shaikah (Buenos Aires, 1931), Ala madhbah al-
wa|anivyah (Buenos Aires, 1931), Maialat al-manahil: Ba^amSt al-fajr (Buenos Aires, 1940),
Rubaiyygt Qunsul (Damascus. 19561. al-Nabf al-arabi al-kaffm (Buenos Aires, c.1967), Alhin al-
Ghurub: Shir (Damascus, 1978); the story SadTqT Abu Hasan, fugul tahliliyyah li-hayat rajul min
amat al-ngs (Buenos Aires, 1937); the essays and stories in Maialat al-manahil: al-Baova
(Buenos Aires, 1940); the histories Peoueha historia arabe (Buenos Aires, 1979) and Ma'asat al-
Harf al-Arab~fT al-Mahaiir al-Amrikiyyah (Damascus, 1980); as well as articles about Arab society
published in Asuntos Arabes in the 1970s and 80's.
105For more about the hero tale formula, see Alan Dundes, The Study of Folklore (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 142-4. The narrative pattern of the hero tale was probably
absorbed by Qunsul (whose formal education in Arabic ended at the age of eleven after primary
school) through storytellers in Syria and in the Arab coffehouses and clubs in Argentina.
106 Da'as wa-Fadus was first published serially in the newspaper ada al-Sharg/EI Eco de
Qriente [Echo of the East] in Tucuman in 1923, and then was published by the newspaper in
book form that same year.
107Ba'aqlmT was bom in Zahlah, Lebanon in 1882 and studied at the Universite St. Joseph in
Beirut. He emigrated and arrived in Argentina in 1899. In 1917 he founded Sad~al-Sharg/EI Eco
de Qriente. the first bilingual (Spanish-Arabic) newspaper in South America. *AI-Ham5tfvvas a
writer for ada al-Sharg/EI Eco de Qriente.
108Ba'qITnTand al-^amatT state in the preface to part 2 that they have decided to also write a part
3, and possibly 4th and 5th parts, which will ultimately narrate the immigrants return to Greater
Syria with riches and a modem, democratic sprit. This projected return resonates with the
archetypal structure of the oral hero tale. Unfortunately, it seems that the authors never did go
beyond part 2, since, in addition to not having found other parts in my research, an advertisement
for the novel in the Arabic newspaper al-Nisr (of which al-HamStf was owner and editor) that
appeared two years after the publication of the first two parts (8:1, Kanun al-ThanT, 1925,
[Tucuman]) only mentions these two parts.
1091use roman numerals to distinguish between the two separately published parts of the novel.
233
110A clear anti-clerical message is also found in many of the works of Jibran KhaUI Jibran, the
most famous writer of the tum-of-the-century community of Lebanese immigrants in the United
States.
111An important didactic element of the novel, and another way in which it is impossible to
categorize its language as Standard Arabic, is the frequent use of words from Spanish and, to a
lesser extent, French. The words in French, as well as some of those in Spanish, are presented
in Arabic transliteration with no translation, for example: (I: 110) "y. . " and (I: 102)
_jL=JI " for oui, monsieur and elsaco [the suit jacket]. (Occasionally these words are set apart
with quotation marks or parentheses, for instance [II: 49] for zapato [shoe]). Inmost
cases, though, the Spanish words are presented in transliteration with a translation or explanation
in Arabic, and thus serve as language instruction for the immigrant. For instance, (II: 35)
(^ 5 L ^ " presents the important phrase si, sehor [yes, sir]. In another
passage severalArgentine foods are listed and explained. For example, the last two items in the
series, tallarines [spaghetti] and sopa [soup], are presented in the following manner:
(II: 5) j - ; j LkiJI
(For this last food item in the list the colloquial rather than the fushS word for soup is used in the
translation.) In another case, a transliterated Spanish word (elpatron [the landlord]) is introduced
after the Arabic and then the transliterated Spanish term is subsequently used throuout the text
without any translation: (II: 57) _>IjJI " In one case, the Spanish word is
also even presented in the Roman alphabet:
(II: 58) (Buenos Dias) j- iJ I <L^ o-K,n
112In the dialogue,certain words that are present in both registers but are used so extensively in
the dialect that they give a sense of the colloquial are usually used instead of the solely fushS
synonym, for example, (II: 21) uy~ a* instead of --=> I . Moreover, whole phrases and
sentences, particularly when spoken by Da'as, Fad'us, and their fellow villagers, are completely in
the dialect. For example, Fad'us starts a sentence saying (I: 4) jy L * y t *: y i,
then moves into standard written Arabic, and then once again expresses himself using the
vocabulary and grammatical structures of the dialect: (I: 4) L *I . *b
Other examples of this are Da'Sss statement (I: 5) ' f jV j s - ,n and the sentence a
few lines down in which, not only the personal pronoun is provided as the subject of the sentence
(which is only done in fushS for emphasis on the agent), but the main verb is even conjugated
according to the rules of the colloquial (^*-iJi rather than od); (1:5) L *d;l o - d i U
In another example, spoken by Fad'Qs, one dialect word is set off with quotation marks, though
the phrase of which it is a part is entirely colloquial: (II: 48) _,.u ^ y ^ i. I j*JI bl
A more subtle incorporation of the colloquial is seen in the following example, in which the word
order, in an otherwise standard sentence, is that of the colloquial. Fad'us asks:
(II: 7[8])" : J_ *y i L* LL-Li _,L 0 I LI "
Rather than: LL-JLi _,L L* J j JLj 0 I *-slaJ LI
In other passages, together with colloquial vocabulary and structures, colloquial expressions are
presented in fusha language, for instance, when Fad'us says:
jLaJI j j i - y fj+ y ^ b j-jLJI J L L lik jJ L "Jj .5
(II: 51) .J U --id L^JI ' i j i j jjJLdl
Even the words of characters such as BOna-Fram, who generally speak completely in fusha,
include colloquial vocabulary in the midst of their standard speech:
(I: 77)dL~3JI ^ jJ L L S p I
or, alongside this type of colloquialism, they present very colloquial sayings expressed in fushS:
234
(I: 29) L. l*_ i .ju l * JJL <c(_JI UI ra

The dialect sometimes enters the narrative passages very directly via vocabulary items
that are only found in the dialect or that express a meaning only denoted by the word in the
dialect. Occassionally these words are set off with quotation marks or parentheses, as in this
example of the use of a dialect word:
(I: 28) S jL iJ I J c lea, Wj* "
Yet in most cases the colloquial word is not bracketed in any way. This is the case with the word
^ IjV I which is employed frequently in the text-not according to the fusha meaning (container,
receptacle), but in accordance with the distinct Syro-Lebanese dialect meaning (clothing) to refer
to the European suits that the immigrants purchase to replace their Arab dress (e.g. I: 106 and
110). In other cases, vocabulary is employed which is present-with the same meaning-in both
fusha and the dialect, but which is used so frequently in the dialect that it is associated more with
that register. For example: (II: 20) >i=JI In another example, this type of word
( j r a b o v e and here _,L=) is used together with an idiomatic expression that is technically
fushS but is used frequently in the dialect: (II: 34) ^ L s IL j -l, _,La "
This same effect, that produced by an idiomatic expression which carries the timbre of the dialect,
is seen throughout the novel. Another example of this is:
^ j c -' j * - ch z
(II: 101) - l ^ i
I would like to express my gratitude to Mazin RabTa for generously helping me with the finer
points of distinction~or rather, of overlap-between the colloquial and fusha, particularly in terms
of the idiomatic expressions in the text.
1,3Cachia notes, in regards to the use of colloquial in plays and in the dialogue of narrative prose,
It is not realism that has determined the writer's choice of idiom, but his association of the
colloquial with the familiar and the everyday and the pedestrian, and of the classical with the lofty
and the noble and the intense. (Cachia, The Use of the Colloquial," 19)
114Cachia, 14.
115Translation is also presented as dangerous in the novel with regard to the issue of translating
Arab names into Spanish (Argentine) names. Although Fad'us and later all of the villagers
change their Arab names to Spanish-language names that are either the equivalent of the Arab
name or that sound similar to it, the narrator warns against this practice pointing to the legal and
economic problems it has been known to cause among immigrants upon their return to Greater
Syria. (II: 61,120,126)
d1j I.aj a^w JlLlI I j ^ ^ -1* *- Ij 4jL
*C < ^3 ^ Is
(I: 41) . UJijJJ *kl < ii jJJL, ioaj I L

"7 (I: 42) [ . . . ] o U j o l i La J - liU L "
< ji Cl w
JJirtII U taiLJ^hll a.lA Iam lip jaUi j
(I: 44) . 'SJS*

119Joseph Graham, Preface in Difference in Translation. Joseph Graham, ed. (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1985) 9.
235
IN CLOSING: THE IMMIGRANT AND THE ORIENT

IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
Not long after Argentine intellectuals first began looking to the figure of the Arab-the
first European image of the barbaric Other--in formulating an Argentine identity, Arab
immigrants began grappling with the formation of a cultural identity in the midst of Argentine
cultural forms. Arab Argentines were not only implicated as objects of the discourses on
civilization and barbarism, the Orient, and a national mother tongue, but, in constructing
their own identity, they also actively participated in these discussions. In examining the
resulting Arab/Argentine textual dialogue, we are struck by the presence of European
discourses-about the Orient and language--in what can be understood as an inter
subaltern dialogue, for within a global panorama all of these writers are subalterns. Far
from the metropolitan center European discourses still function, sometimes impacting texts
and ideas, and sometimes being manipulated for the formulation of Argentine, Arab, and/or
Arab Argentine subject positions and sites of knowledge.
Moreover, the presence of Orientalist essentialization in both bodies of writings-that
is, in texts written not only by Latin Americans but also by Orientals themselves-makes
it clear that essentialism is not only a discursive act earned out on an objectified Other,
not simply a confining epistemology used to create the abject Other. Rather, as
corroborated by the broader geographic and biological essentialization seen in both
bodies of works, there is a phenomenon of self-essentialization which must be taken into
account as both a discursive violence and a part of strategies of resistance. In the
preceding chapters we have witnessed this phenomenon of self-essentialization
alongside and even woven into efforts at counter representation. Likewise the
performance of discursive stances and linguistic identities can create contradictory or
double-edged positions. Recall, for instance, the European and Arab roles taken up b y
Sarmiento, Toscano, Lugones, and Arslan, the nostalgic, anti-immigrant discourse taken up
236
by Arslan, Achem, and Khury, and the local, vernacular language used by Ba'qlTnT and al-
HamatT.
This last example points to another form of tension particular to the performance of
linguistic identities. We are faced with the limits of performative identities when we
consider that not only are immigrants potentially limited in the identities which they can
inhabit by knowledge of only one particular linguistic register (a lesser5 register such as
colloquial Arabic), but also by non-standard grammar and accent (incorrect1 Spanish). For
this reason, we must take care not to celebrate loreignness and minor tongues and
literatures without heeding material realities. Gilles Deleuze, as he discusses the notion of
minor languages and literatures, falls into this trap of forgetting that there are those for
whom foreigness (or minor-ity) is not a position to be taken up, but rather an inescapable
daily reality:
We must be bilingual even in a single language. We must have a minor
language inside our own language. We must create a minor use of our
language. Multilingualism is not merely the property of several systems,
each of which would be homogeneous in itself: it is primarily the line of
flight or variation which affects each system by stopping it from being
homogeneous. Not speaking [...] in a language other than ones own, but
on the contrary speaking in ones own language like a foreigner.1
There is a need then for historical and material contextualization, rather than simply an
embracing of foreigness and the position of minority as purely liberatory.
This is not to say, however, that the subaltern cannot speak-harkening back to the
issue raised by Gayatri Spivaks important essay^-cannot represent and cannot perform
different subject positions. Rather, the contradictory, double-edged, and/or limited
discursive elaborations of both the Euro-Argentine and Arab Argentine writers serve to
remind us that even in the midst of manipulating a figure (the Arab gaucho), or defending
and re-presenting an object of discourse (the Orient), or asserting a non-standard
linguistic identity (immigrants using correct1Argentine language and'nostalgia or colloquial
Arabic), there are re-inscriptions of controlling discourses and/or barriers which cannot be
transcended. In the same way that there is no pure or whole essential self, and no pure
or whole mother tongue, there is no unequivocal, unbounded discursive resistance. The
many voices of the Arab/Argentine textual dialogue point to the multiple facets of identity
237
formation-the ways in which discourses are used to control others (to speak for them),
and in which controlling discourses are reinscribed in the midst of efforts to formulate
alternate narratives, counter representations, and new configurations of identity--on the
level of the subject and on the level of national and immigrant groups. That is, they call
our attention to the various manifestations of the subject as both speaker or agent and
object of speech or subordinate to a power--what the subject says, what structures of
thought are relied upon by the subject for the authority to speak, and to what networks of
power he/she is subject.
Awareness of the discursive presence of Arab Argentines as well as of the
complexities which inhere to the construction of the subject has repercussions that impact
Latin American studies, Arab studies, and the study of national, immigrant, and ethnic
literatures and cultures in general. The historical and cultural presence of Arab Argentines
points to the difficulties inherent in establishing the borders of literatures according to
national territory or linguistic boundaries. Is a work written in Arabic in Argentina part of
Argentine literature? Is it part of Arabic literature? If the text is written in a colloquial Arabic
dialect is it part of Arabic literature? What about a text written in Spanish by an Arab
residing in Argentina--can there be such a thing as Arab literature (a category not based
on language), can there be an Argentine literature which is not concerned with ethnic
origins? While in a sense these questions point to the absurdity of linguistic and national
classifications of literature, on a more pragmatic level they also point to the need for more
fluid and inclusive definitions of linguistic and national literary canons. The study of
national literatures must also attend to literatures written in other languages within the
national territorial borders.3 The inverse is true as well: consideration should be given to
texts written in other dialects or other languages but which are linked to a particular culture
not simply by virtue of the authors origins, but on the basis of common cultural and
conceptual debates and rhetorical strategies.
Although Arabic literary studies has included to a certain extent the writings of Arab
immigrants in North America,4 and more serious interest in work produced in the colloquial
dialects is emerging, there is still a great deal that can be done in terms of gaining both
238
greater breadth and depth. Additionally, examination of discursive representation, with an
eye to analyzing notions of authority, authenticity, essence, and identity is in order. While
Modem Arabic literature is still arguably in a period of canon formation which has not yet
given way to attempts at restructuring the canon-let alone reconceptualizing the field as
one of Arab studies, during the last two decades Latin American literary studies has seen
a movement toward reconceptualizing Latin American culture and literature as plural,
heterogeneous, or multi-faceted.5 Ironically, however, within this call for plurality which
has concerned itself primarily with the cultural production of popular classes, indigenous
peoples, Afro-Hispanics, and women, very little attention has been paid to, on the one
hand, questions of how European discourses such as Orientalism have come into play in
Latin America, and, on the other hand, how immigrants have participated in the cultural
debates of Latin American letters. In the specific case of Argentine letters, both the Orient
and the immigrant have generally been reduced to circulating images and stereotypes and
there is a need to heed these images and uncover the ways that they function in
Argentine culture, as well as a need to attend to the voices of the objects of these
discourses.
For this reason, the corollary to the question can the subaltern speak? is: can the
subaltern speak in a language that will be listened to and/or to an interlocutor who will
listen? Listening to the many languages and discourses which come together in the
textual enunciations of the Arab/Argentine dialogue, and more broadly speaking in Arab
and Latin American studies, includes being attentive to contestation, re-presentation,
reworkings of European essentialisms (Latin American orientalism), self-essentialization
(auto-orientalism), the reproduction of exclusionary discourses, alternative narratives,

texts that are between literary genres, and narratives that are outside of what is typically
understood as literary. While the question of whether minority literatures must always be
framed as writing back or responding to the discourses of the center (be it understood as
Europe in regards to Argentines and Arabs, or as Argentina in regards to Arab immigrants),
is an important one, it is equally important to investigate how we can move toward reading
all literatures in relation to each ones major and minor* literatures.
239
Gilles Deleuze and Claire Pamet, Dialogues. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, trans.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) 4-5. See also Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand
Plateaus. Brian Massumi, trans. (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1987)
100-106.
2 Spivak questions whether a non-essentialized subaltern speaking subject can exist and
emphasizes that the voice of the subaltern is never unproblematic, but rather rife with
contradictions. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Marxism and the
Interpretation of Culture. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds. (London: Macmillan, 1988).
See also, Edward Said, Permission to Narrate Journal of Palestine Studies. 13:3 (1984) 27-48.
3See Werner Sollors, ed. Multilingual America: Transnationalism. Ethnicity, and the
Languages of American Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1998) for an example of
such an attempt at recovery and inclusivity in the United States literary canon.
4See the introductory chapter.
5A main figure in these theorizations has been Antonio Cornejo Polar. For his concept of Latin
American heterogeneity and the conflictive totalities [las totalidades conflictivas] of which it is
comprised, see Cornejo Polar, La cultura nacional. problema y oosibilidad (Lima: Lluvia Editores,
1981), Sobre literatura v crftica latinoamericanas (Caracas: Ediciones de la Facultad de
Humanidades y Educacion, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1982), and Escribir en el aire.
Ensavo sobre la heterooeneidad socio-cultural en las literatures andinas (Lima: Editorial
Horizonte, 1994). For an overview of various critics formulations of Latin American plurality See
Amaryll Chanady, Introduction: Latin American Imagined Communities and the Postmodern
Challenge in Latin American Identity and Constructions of Difference. Chanady, ed. (Minneapolis
and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994) ix-xlvi, as well as Cornejo Polaris Escribir en el
aire. 12-13.
240
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IN FO R M A T IO N TO U SER S

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by

Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced

This reproduction is the best copy available

Christine Elsa Civantos

B.A. (Duke University) 1992

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree of

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Professor Francine Masiello, Chair

All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 9931213

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized

Christine Elsa Civantos

University of California, Berkeley

Between Argentines and Arabs:

Between Argentines and Arabs:

In an important sense, we are dealing with the

By focusing one side of this counterpoint of identity formation on works written b y

The first two generations of Syro-Lebanese, in addition to figuring as the objects of

discourses and open up new discursive arenas and subject formations.

HISTORICAL FICTIONS AND FICTIONAL HISTORIES:

Cristobal Colon lleva al judio arabizado [iberico] Luis

[Christopher Columbus takes the Arabized [Iberian]

Lopez-Baralfs comment upon the arrival in Cuba of the Arabic-speaking Luis de

appropriations, used in formulations of conservative nationalist, as well as Arab immigrant,

The Gaucho-Bedouin Barbarian and the Performance of Barbarism

Sarmiento is widely considered to have inaugurated Argentine literature by writing

discrepancies between his concept of Federalism, and Federalism as it was practiced b y

when writing about Argentina.

savage, desert-dwelling nomadic Orientals. In the passage which I referred to above in

aHere the life of the Arab, the Tartar appears again.

completely negative portrayal Sarmiento describes Facundo as worse than Muhammad

It is quite useful in exploring Sarmientos creation and deployment of the O th er-

However, though I agree that it is a moment of pleasure, I believe that it is important to

3the way our gauchos do

her study of travel writings, she comments on Sarmientos position in Algeria:

process of the demarcation of a specific geographic space to be called Argentina, to

Lugones El Payador and The Legacy of Moorish Blood

Lugones positioned El payador as part of the espiritu del centenario--the spirit of

Other, and a cultured, refined poet.

Sarmiento and Lugones comparisons of Arabs and gauchos do not go unnoticed b y

Throughout the twists and turns in Halters argumentation we see that he is

a In Hispano-America Arabic is spoken daily 25% of the time.

At another point in El gaucho Halter's orientalism echoes that of Sarmiento in Facundo.

realidad historica y que parecen escaparse de leyendas orientates de la fantasia fueron

of identical telluric and environmental formation.

Economica, 1989) 24-31.

WRITING THE ORIENT TO WRITE THE SELF:

To the degree that dissenting positions and

The gaucho-moro textual nexus-seen in the writings of Sarmiento, Lugones, Hallar,

The representations of the Orient by Arab and Euro-Argentines-in historico-literary

The Oriental in Argentine Immigration Policy, Law, and Public Opinion

By considering in greater detail the history of anti-Arab sentiment in Argentina,

later revoked by the Directorate.19 Syro-Lebanese continued to arrive in small numbers

Arab Argentine Re-Presentations of The Orient

Curiously, in La verdadera historia de las desencantadas [The True Story/History of

Misterios de Oriente [Mysteries of the Orient] is in a sense an enactment of this type

counterpoint argumentation in which he proves the falsehood of a negative event

The Orient in Argentine Letters

8the literature of the always enigmatic Orient

In addition to presenting various negative comments about the schismatic Christians,

Interestingly, this romance is dedicated to the prominent Arab Argentine whose