Muslim Beneficence at a Hemispheric Crossroads of Authoritarian and Counterterrorist Rule

Abstract

This article traces the making of Muslim Middle Eastern-led beneficence at a specific geographical and historical crossroads. Geographically, the setting is the trinational border between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, called the tríplice fronteira in Portuguese, triple frontera in Spanish, and tri-border in English. Mostly Muslim Lebanese and some Muslim Palestinians and Syrians settled in the city of Foz do Iguaçu, on the Brazilian side, and in Ciudad del Este, on the Paraguayan side, while hardly any remained permanently on the Argentine side, in Puerto Iguazú, of this tristate border. Historically, these overwhelmingly self-identified Muslim Arabs established beneficent institutions in relation to shifting regimes of exceptional rule. Roughly between the 1950s and 1980s, they founded charity and community associations under authoritarian governments in Brazil and Paraguay. Subsequently, from the 1990s to today, their beneficence encountered not full democratic enfranchisement but rather increasing counterterrorist surveillance by the US and Mercosur member states (originally founded by Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay). So the larger goal of this article is to explore Muslim Arab beneficence under state surveillance in authoritarian times, roughly from the 1950s to the 1980s, as well as in counterterrorist times, from the 1990s to the 2010s. The point is that contemporary Muslim beneficence became enveloped by state exceptions that twisted and truncated its much longer history across the hemisphere.