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Sound Minds in Sound Bodies: Nadi Homsi and Patriotic Masculinity in Syrian Brazil, 1920-1932
Abstract
This paper locates Brazil as a major site of Syrian patriotic culture by examining philanthropic and activist networks between the city of Homs and a Syrian club in Sao Paulo, the Nadi Homsi. Established in 1920, Nadi Homsi was a Syrian young men's club linked first to Emir Faysal's Arab Nationalist government, and later to the Syrian National Bloc. During the 1920s, members presided over a distinctly anti-colonial political culture that analogized between the fortitude of Syrian masculinity and the will to sovereignty and independence for Syria. The Nadi prescribed a rigorous program for young men comprising charity, self-improvement, intensive ideological training, and corporeal discipline through sports. Merging Brazilian machismo with Syrian territorial nationalism, the club sponsored new schools, orphanages, and newspapers in Homs, altering Syrian social infrastructure. By the late twenties the Nadi promoted return migration of young Syrian men, with the aim of spreading a politics of patriotism grown in the diaspora. By “making Syrian men” in Brazil, the Nadi Homsi hoped to ultimately usher in a new political renaissance at home. In the process, the club inscribed new political meanings on young men's bodies and minds, making boys objects for nationalist political reform.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Syria
The Levant
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries