Photographing the Argentinian Mahjar: (In)visibilities of the Lebanese Diaspora in Argentina (1930-1950)

Abstract

During the Age of Mass Migration (1880s-1920s) around half a million people from the Ottoman provinces of Mount Lebanon and Syria left for the Americas where the US, Brazil and Argentina were the main countries of settlement. Tracing their trajectories to the lands of migration (mahjar) and their stories and experiences require research across “multiple archival regimes and disciplines”, as Stacy Fahrenthold (2019) argued. Besides written sources such as port statistics, police reports or diasporic press, also photographs promise an insight into their lives in the mahjar. Whether printed in newspapers or in private collections, the photographs depict only a part of the Lebanese diaspora everyday life in Argentina – mainly omitting the experiences of the diaspora’s more marginalized members. The photographs are often held in private archives whose access might be more restrictive as in state archives. Furthermore, the photographs in archives often do not mention the names of the photographed ones, nor of the photographers, posing another challenge to trace their trajectories. By using what Lucie Ryzova (2014) called the “esbekkiyya method” after the book flea market in Cairo, she describes the way historians have to “to look what there is” in alternative and shadow archives. At esbekkiyya are many historical books, pamphlets and periodicals on sale, which might be not collected or available in state archives. This presentation seeks to juxtapose and counter these success narratives and visualities shaped by the diasporic elite in Argentina, including photographic sources from different archival regimes in Argentina, Lebanon, and social media.