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Palestinians in Chile

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Palestinians in Chile

Palestinians in Chile (Arabic: فلسطينيو تشيلي) are believed to be the largest Palestinian community outside of the Arab world. There are around 6 million Palestinians living in diaspora, mainly in the Middle East. There are estimated to be around 450,000 and 500,000 people of Palestinian descent in Chile.

The first wave of Palestinian migrants to Chile came in the 1850s during the Crimean War between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. They worked mainly in agriculture and as businessmen. Successive waves of migrants arrived during World War I and the 1948 Palestine war (Nakba) when Palestine was partitioned.

By origin, they primarily came from the cities of Beit Jala, Bethlehem, and Beit Sahour. Most of these early migrants were Christians and they typically landed at Argentine ports, and crossed the Andes by mule into Chile. Chilean Palestinians are often erroneously but also intentionally called turcos (Spanish for Turks) after the Ottoman nationality that early Arab immigrants had on their passports. Contrary to the immigration of Germans and other western European nationalities, the immigration of Palestinians was not considered beneficial by Chilean intellectuals, and was even, alongside Eastern European, Chinese, and Japanese immigration, questioned. The arrival of the Palestinian immigrants to Chile in the early 20th century happened at the same time the Chilean state stopped sponsoring immigration to Chile and the country suffered a severe social and economic crisis coupled with a wave of nationalism with xenophobic and racist undertones. Immigrants were also at times treated in highly denigrating terms by the Chilean press; for example, El Mercurio wrote in 1911:

Whether they are Mohammedans or Buddhists, what one can see and smell from far, is that they are more dirty than the dogs of Constantinople...

— El Mercurio, April 13, 1911.

Many of the immigrants were very poor and illiterate and had to take loans to pay their travel costs. Once in Chile, Palestinians settled largely in the marginal areas of cities and worked as small merchants. In the 1950s by the time of the second government of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo many Palestinian-Chileans had acquired substantial economic as well as political power in Chile, some working as deputies, ministers or ambassadors.

Aside from these migrants of previous decades, Chile has also taken in some Palestinian refugees in later years, as in April 2008 when it received 117 from the Al-Waleed refugee camp on the SyriaIraq border near the Al-Tanf crossing. All of those refugees were Sunni Muslims.

People who hold a diplomatic or official Palestinian passport can visit Chile as tourists for up to 90 days, without a visa.

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