During his tour to Latin America in the summer of 2010, the Syrian president Bashar al Assad met with representatives of the Syrian and Lebanese expatriate communities. These meetings, many of which had been arranged in advanced by the Syrian Minister of Expatriates (Joseph Sweideh), were highly publicized in both Syrian and Latin American media outlets, signifying the importance of the occasion. According to the Syrian analyst, Ayman Abdel Nour, the visit had the purpose of “attracting investment” and “Latin America [was] an obvious choice because of [its] wealthy expatriate community.” As this paper will argue, however, the economic wealth of the Syrian expatriate community in Latin America constitutes only one aspect of the Syrian government’s interest in these communities. Based on original archival research and oral interviews conducted in Syria, Brazil, and Argentina, this paper analyzes the changing relationship between the Syrian state and its expatriate communities in South America from its independence until Al Assad’s visit to Latin America. By concentrating on the Syrian case, this paper aims at complementing Laurie Brand’s analysis of Middle Eastern state policies towards their communities abroad, namely, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia (Brand 2008).

This paper traces the genealogy of diplomatic relations between Syria and Venezuela from their early mutual recognition to current alignments in their quest for a ‘multipolar anti-imperialism’. Their initial official contact occurred in the context of thirdworldism, which brought together new states with diverse and eventually divergent histories and resources. Relations between Syria and Venezuela remained distant yet relevant given the common thread of oil as a strategic resource in their development efforts of the 1970’s and 80’s. As an Arab state in the line of fire in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Syria benefitted from subsidies by oil producing countries, while remittances sent home by migrants who flocked to participate in the blossoming Gulf economy were another important channel for the redistribution of oil wealth. Venezuela’s prosperity, just as the economic crisis that resulted with the collapse of oil prices in the mid-eighties, was tied by an umbilical cord to the avatars of Middle East regional politics. In the past decade, Middle Eastern migrants in Venezuela anchor discourses proposing an affective link which naturalizes ties between states with converging agendas. Migrants and their descendants have come to mediate as privileged partners in the new state projects of interregional rapprochement. This occurs in the context of Chavez’ efforts to harness his nation’s oil wealth for his project of a Revolucion Bolivariana which have led him to renew OPEC. His interest in the Middle East fits into a new trend in Latin American politics, which prioritizes south-south cooperation through new international forums that include ASPA and the incorporation of various Latin American countries into the Arab League. Chavez has been hailed by Latin American, Spanish and Middle Eastern media as an Arab hero, earning the title of Chavez of Arabia and establishing in partnership with Bashar Al-Assad during the latter’s 2010 Latin American tour an ‘Axis of the Brave’ as a counterpoint to an American ‘Axis of Evil’.

The presentation will deal with the history of bilateral links between Cuba and Syria, following the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1965. I will argue that during this period bilateral political relations and the frequent exchanges between the Cuban Communist Party and the Syrian Baath party, have contributed to the high level of agreement on many central topics of the international agenda. The paper will provide commentary upon the Cuban decision to sever relations with Israel in 1973 (an exceptional event in the diplomatic history of revolutionary Cuba) and the decision to send Cuban troops to Syria during the Arab-Israeli war in that same year. I will also clarify the actual nature and intensity of the combat that took place (which contrast with prevailing ideas in the popular imaginary of Cuba), and will explain this strategy toward the Middle East region as part of Cuban efforts to take the lead in the Non-Aligned Movement. It will also be argued that, in spite of the high profile of political relations, the economic bilateral transactions that have been carried out thus far are summarily weak, and that the efforts taken in order to improve them have been unsuccessful up to the present, with little possibility for improvement when one considers the hard economic crisis the island has been facing for the past several years. Some data dealing with the bilateral trade relations will be included and analyzed in order to better illustrate this. The visit of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to Havana in 2010 should be seen more as an important gesture undertaken in recognition of the historically high level of bilateral political relations between the two nations, and not as a mission to deepening economic links and strengthen relations with communities of Syrian origin, as was the case in other countries which the president visited on his tour of Latin America.