Palestinian Salvadoran
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Palestinian Salvadorans ( ar, فلسطينيو السلفادور) are Salvadoran citizens of
Palestinian Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
descent or Palestine-born people residing in El Salvador. There are approximately 100,000 Salvadorans with Palestinian ancestry. The Palestinian community in El Salvador is the second largest in Latin America. The first Palestinians arrived in the late 19th, but they continued to arrive in the early 20th century, during the Arab/Israeli war in 1948, thousands of Palestinians arrived in El Salvador.


History

Palestinians, mostly from
Bethlehem Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital o ...
, but also from
Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
, came to El Salvador during the early 20th century. These immigrants were looking for economic opportunities, as well as escaping conscription into Ottoman Army during the waning years of the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
. Most of the Palestinians who came were Christians. Initially, these migrants came to the country with the intention of going back to their homelands, but some decided to stay and start their families in El Salvador. Because of their Ottoman passports, Middle Easterners in Central America were labeled as "Turks," and barred from civil society, public organizations and government posts. In the 1930s and 1940s, laws barred them from immigrating into the country, as they were looked down on by the elite.


Discrimination

Discrimination and xenophobia ran deep; legacies of Spain's racially obsessed colonial policies in Latin America divided subjects into more than a dozen different ethnic classifications. As the Palestinians achieved economic success, they were seen as economic rivals by the local elite and were socially and politically isolated by them. In El Salvador,
Maximiliano Hernández Martínez Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (20 October 1882 – 15 May 1966) was a Salvadoran military officer and politician who served as the president of El Salvador from 4 December 1931 to 28 August 1934 in an acting capacity and again in an officia ...
issued laws that ban Palestinians, among other ethnicities and nationalities, from immigrating and/or starting a business in the country. While discrimination against Palestinians died down considerably, as recently as 2000, a conservative Salvadoran political commentator, Rafael Colindres, wrote an essay suggesting, "Perhaps a pogrom would be the solution to the Turk problem."


Salvadoran Civil War

The
Salvadoran Civil War The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front The Farabundo Ma ...
affected the Palestinian community as much as it affected any other community in the country. While the wealthier families of Palestinian descent supported the pro-business, pro-American, and pro-Israeli Salvadoran government and military, there are Salvadorans of Palestinian descent that support the communist guerrillas of the FMLN. Schafik Handal, a Salvadoran of Palestinian descent, is a good example of this as he was one of the five commanders of the FMLN. After the Civil War ended, most of the old Salvadoran elite lost their power and influence on the economic and political advancements of post-war El Salvador. After being shunned from the political process of the country, Palestinians found new life in the country and began to take advantage of the neoliberal direction of the country as championed by the
ARENA An arena is a large enclosed platform, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theatre, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators ...
party during the 1990s. All of this culminated in the Salvadoran presidential election of 2004, where both candidates, Antonio Saca and Schafik Handal, were the first two Salvadoran of Palestinian descent to run for President and would guarantee that the office would be held by a Palestinian.


Culture

The Palestinians in El Salvador display an amalgam of local and imported lifestyles. Palestinian culture has begun to emerge from within private circles into the public domain, most visibly in the creation of the Plaza Palestina, which commemorates the Bethlehem roots of most of El Salvador's Arabs, in San Salvador. The public charity of Middle Easterners in the country has contributed to this effect. The wealthy Simans sponsor a free drug-rehabilitation program in El Salvador and a scholarship fund for Palestinians at the Catholic Bethlehem University.


Notable people

* Francisco Alabi, El Salvador's Minister of Health * Gerardo Awad, politician of El Salvador *
Nayib Bukele Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez (; born 24 July 1981) is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who is the 43rd president of El Salvador, serving since 1 June 2019. He is the first president since José Napoleón Duarte (1984–1989) not to have ...
, current president of El Salvador * Juan José Daboub, former minister of finance of El Salvador * Schafik Handal, politician and presidential candidate of El Salvador * Guillermo Hasbún, president of CIFCO * Hato Hasbun, politician of El Salvador * Jacobo Kattán,
C.D. FAS Club Deportivo Futbolistas Asociados Santanecos, commonly known as FAS (pronounced "fas"), is a professional Salvadoran football club based in Santa Ana. It competes in Primera División de Fútbol de El Salvador, the country's top professiona ...
footballer * Miguel Kattán, politician of El Salvador * Antonio Saca, former President of El Salvador * Óscar Antonio Safie, founder of Megavisión El Salvador * Gerardo Jose Siman-Siri, CEO of
HSBC El Salvador Banco Davivienda El Salvador, established in 1885, is the third largest bank in El Salvador. , it had some 65 branches, 1,800 employees and $1.5 billion in assets. History In 1891 the bank, merged with the branch there of Anglo-South American ...
*
Javier Simán Javier Ernesto Simán Dada (born 14 June 1964) is a Salvadoran businessman and politician. He is the current owner of the SIMÁN department store chain. As a member of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), he was a pre-cand ...
, politician of El Salvador * Jose J. Simán, founder of
SIMAN SIMÁN is a department store from El Salvador, has 100 years of operation and currently has regionalized along Central America. History SIMÁN was founded on December 8, 1921, by Don J. J. Simán, of Palestinian origin, when he decided to open ...
*
Arturo Zablah Arturo Zablah Khuri ( San Salvador, El Salvador, 1954) is an engineer and Salvadoran politician of Palestinian origin. He graduated from the University of Monterrey in Mexico, with a degree in industrial engineering in 1976. Zablah then earned a ...
, politician and vice presidential candidate of El Salvador * Xavi Zablah Bukele, politician of El Salvador *
John H. Sununu John Henry Sununu (born July 2, 1939) is an American politician who was the 75th governor of New Hampshire from 1983 to 1989 and later White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush. Born in Cuba to an American father and a Salva ...
, American politician, whose mother was a Palestinian Salvadoran


See also

* El Salvador–Palestine relations *
Palestinian diaspora The Palestinian diaspora ( ar, الشتات الفلسطيني, ''al-shatat al-filastini''), part of the wider Arab diaspora, are Palestinian people living outside the region of Palestine. History Palestinian individuals have a long history of ...


References

{{Palestinian diaspora El Salvador