Latin America’s Los Turcos: Geographic aspects of Levantine and Maghreb diasporas

Abstract

Latin America’s los turcos comprise an ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse group of immigrants to the region. Despite the success and visibility of this group and their numbers in many countries throughout Latin America, research on these Middle Eastern-descended peoples has been surprisingly lacking in some areas. This paper, drawn from the much of the available literature, examines similarities-which helped to further differentiate the Middle Easterners not only from the native-born populations but also from other immigrants to Latin America and helped the inaccurate label turco to persist as an ethnic and cultural marker shared by a number of subgroups. This paper also looks at the record of los turcos in several countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Honduras). The paper highlights important aspects of this group’s experiences as part of the Middle Eastern diaspora in Latin America.