This presentation explores the early history of the formation in Chile of a Palestinian diaspora community starting in the late 19th century. In addition to offering narratives of migration and settlement, I locate the nexus of diaspora formation in the interwar legal world order which saw the establishment of European mandates across the Middle East and the promulgation of nationality and citizenship legislation that had transnational consequences for migrant communities. Specifically, I examine how the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council, promulgated by British mandate authorities, was designed to prioritize the naturalization of Jews as Palestinians over any other group, and how this ensured the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of Palestinians residing abroad from the same citizenship. This, in significant ways, is the early story of the formation of this migrant community, or jaaliya, into a distinct diaspora. Chile is today home to the largest number of descendants of Palestinian migrants, approximately 300,000. How did this community come to be? I explore Arabic periodicals from the 1920s, found in the Biblioteca Nacional in Santiago, to offer a portrait of this early community and how it grappled with its new transnational legal status following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the British Mandate over Palestine. That is to say, I pose several questions: how did Palestinian migrants in Chile react to developments taking place back home, and to being told they could not return and stay permanently? How did they relate to one another and how did the loss of Palestine and the right of return impact this identification? The presentation concludes with a shift to the 21st century as I present an ethnography from my own travels in Chile. In addition to the Chileans I met who identified proudly as Palestinians, I explore the different ways in which this jaaliya of Palestinian-Chileans, and Chilean society more broadly, have continued to preserve and celebrate their Palestinian history through a range of organizations and centers, as well as through public activism in support of Palestine. To wit, the history of the formation of this community into a diaspora depicts an undeniably Palestinian story in which geographic Palestine is de-centered within a Latin American context. In other words, it is a Latin American story in which Palestinian sensibilities have been preserved in written records and in social practice as part of a Latin American national narrative.