Arab Brazilians

Arab Brazilians
BrazilLebanonSyriaState of PalestineEgyptJordanIraqAlgeriaMorocco
Lebanese Brazilians in Nova Friburgo, late 19th century
Total population
11,600,000–20,000,000[1][2][3][4][5]
Regions with significant populations
São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Goiás, Rio Grande do Sul, Ceará, Pernambuco
Languages
Brazilian Portuguese • Arabic
Religion
Predominantly Christian
with Muslim, Druze, and Jewish minorities
Related ethnic groups
Other Arabs, Asian Brazilians, Arab Americans, Arab Canadians, Lebanese Canadians, Lebanese Australians, Arab Argentines,

Arab Brazilians are Brazilian citizens of Arab ethnic, cultural, linguistic heritage and identity. The majority of Arab Brazilians trace their origin to the Levantine region of the Arab World, known in Arabic as Bilad al-Sham, primarily from Lebanon and Syria, as well as Palestine.[6][7][8] Christians are the majority of the Arab Brazillians.[8][9] The first Syrians and Lebanese arrived in São Paulo around 1880. It is not known exactly when, although the Syrians and Lebanese say that in 1885 there was a small core of peddlers working in the market square. By 1920, the census listed 50,246 Syrians and Lebanese in Brazil, 38.4% (2/5) of these in the state of São Paulo. The 1940 census enumerated 48,614 Syrians, Lebanese and other related groups with a decrease of approximately 1647 people. As immigration almost ceased after 1929 and the colony aged, it is surprising that the decline was not even greater. The trend of the period between 1920 and 1940 was the continuous concentration of Syrians and Lebanese in São Paulo. Almost half (49.3%) of Syrians and Lebanese residents in Brazil lived in São Paulo.

Contemporary data on the number of Arab descendants in Brazil is highly inconsistent. The national IBGE census has not questioned the ancestry of the Brazilian people for several decades, considering that immigration to Brazil declined almost to 0 in the second half of the 20th century. In the last census questioning ancestry, in 1940, 107,074 Brazilians said they were the children of a Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi or Arab father. The native Arabs were 46,105 and the naturalized Brazilians, 5,447. Brazil had 41,169,321 inhabitants at the time of the census, so Arabs and children were 0.38% of Brazil's population in 1940. Currently, many sources cite that millions of Brazilians are of Arab descent. Itamaraty claims that there are between 7 and 10 million Lebanese descendants in Brazil. However, independent research, based on the interviewee's self-declaration, found much smaller numbers. According to a 2008 IBGE survey, 0.9% of the white Brazilians interviewed said they had a family background in Western Asia, which would give about one million people. According to another 1999 survey by the sociologist and former president of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) Simon Schwartzman, only 0.48% of the interviewed Brazilians claimed to have Arab ancestry, a percentage that, in a population of about 200 million of Brazilians, would represent around 960 thousand people.

  1. ^ Silvia Ferabolli (25 September 2014). Arab Regionalism: A Post-Structural Perspective. Routledge. p. 151. ISBN 978-1-317-65803-0. According to estimates by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), countersigned by the League of Arab States, Brazil has the largest Arab colony outside their countries of origin. There are estimated 15 million Arabs living in Brazil today, with some researchers suggesting numbers around 20 million.
  2. ^ Paul Amar (15 July 2014). The Middle East and Brazil: Perspectives on the New Global South. Indiana University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-253-01496-2. there are, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, more than sixteen million Arabs and descendants of Arabs in Brazil, constituting the largest community of Arabs descent outside the Middle East.
  3. ^ "Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affaires". Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 22 September 2015.
  4. ^ "Lebanon: Geography". Embassy of Lebanon in Brazil (in Portuguese). 1996. Archived from the original on 29 May 2008.
  5. ^ IBGE. IBGE: Características Étnico-Raciais da População Archived 20 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ^ Carvalho-Silva, Denise R.; Santos, Fabrício R.; Rocha, Jorge; Pena, Sérgio D. J. (2000). "The Phylogeography of Brazilian Y-Chromosome Lineages". American Journal of Human Genetics. 68 (1): 281–286. doi:10.1086/316931. PMC 1234928. PMID 11090340.
  7. ^ Cole, Juan (24 September 2007). "Escobar on Palestinian Refugees in Brazil". Informed Comment. Archived from the original on 7 October 2008.
  8. ^ a b "Arab roots grow deep in Brazil's rich melting pot". The Washington Times. São Paulo. 11 July 2005. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016.
  9. ^ "Origem e destino dos imigrantes" [Origin and destination of the immigrants] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Archived from the original on 31 March 2013. Retrieved 11 April 2016.