Latin America is home to the biggest population of Palestinians outside of the Arab World.
And around one-fifth of them live in the small Central American country of El Salvador.
And many Palestinian Salvadorans come from just one part of Palestine:
Bethlehem is home to around 29,000 inhabitants.
Though exact numbers are unknown, there are claims that almost 100,000 people of Palestinian
descent live in El Salvador.
There are more Palestinians in El Salvador than Bethlehem now, but how did they all get there?
Palestinians came to El Salvador starting starting the late 19th century.
Since they arrived with Turkish-Ottoman passports, Salvadorans called these newcomers “Turcos”
or Turks.
The term “Turco” persists to this day and sometimes carries a negative connotation.
Palestinians in El Salvador faced significant institutional racism and xenophobia, especially
from “criollos” or the elite of European descent.
In 1921, a change to Salvadoran immigration law classified Chinese and Arab people as “pernicious.”
And in 1933, dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez enacted an immigration law that
banned the arrival of Black people, Asian people and “new immigrants from Arabia,
Lebanon, Syria, Palestine or Turkey, generally known as Turcos.”
Three years later, the govt. went even further, banning Chinese and Arab people from opening
new businesses to “protect national interests.”
Palestinian Salvadorans were badly affected by the law because many of them were innovative
businesspeople.
Today, many prominent companies in El Salvador are owned by Palestinian Salvadorans.
Most Palestinian Salvadorans don't speak Arabic and have fully assimilated into Salvadoran society,
but they still celebrate their roots.
For Nilsa Saca, she preserves her Palestinian heritage through food:
She now runs a restaurant in the town of Santa Tecla named Teklebab:
Simán Khoury is a former president of Salvadoran Palestinian Associati on and committee member
of Club Árabe, a social club for Salvadoran Palestinians that began in the 1950s.
Simán isn't your average Salvadoran Palestinian – he was actually born and raised in Palestine.
His wife, like many Palestinian Salvadorans, still maintains ties with the homeland a century later:
But Bethlehem, the ancestral homeland of many Palestinian Salvadorans is threatened by illegal
Israeli settlements.
The Israel-Palestine conflict plays out in public spaces in San Salvador, El Salvador's capital.
Here's a plaza dedicated to the state of Israel.
And here's a plaza dedicated to Palestine just 200 meters away.
And is dedicated to the occupied Palestinian Territories.
And on Jerusalem Avenue in San Salvador, there's a plaza honoring Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat,
which the Israeli embassy has protested.
Despite the large Palestinian population, Israel has historically has exerted a lot
of influence on El Salvador, through the strong relationship it's had with the far-right governments
that have ruled El Salvador for much of its history.
From 1975 to 1979, the years leading up to El Salvador's 12-year-long civil war,
83% of El Salvador's military imports came from Israel.
Israelis also helped train ANSESAL, the secret police that would lay the foundation for
death squads during El Salvador's war.
Palestinian Salvadorans have shaped the country's modern-day politics.
El Salvador's first president of Palestinian origin was the far-right leaning Antonio Saca.
When he won the 2004 election, he beat Schafik Handal, another Salvadoran of Palestinian origins
from the leftist party FMLN.
Handal had been a prominent guerrilla leader who negotiated the 1992 Peace Accords that
concluded El Salvador's civil war.
Upon his death, Handal was buried with the flags of Palestine, El Salvador and the communist party.
Nayib Bukele won El Salvador's 2019 elections to become the country's second leader
of Palestinian descent.
He even played up his Bethlehem roots at Christmas:
But despite his Palestinian identity, he maintains a cozy relationship with Israel.
In 2015, when he was mayor of San Salvador, the Israeli ambassador to El Salvador called
him a “partner for collaboration.”
In 2018, Bukele went on an Israeli govt-sponsored trip to the International Mayor's Conference
in Israel.
El Salvador still struggles with violence, a legacy of its civil war.
People are fleeing in the thousands in caravans.
And so Salvadoran Palestinians represent the human rights struggles of two peoples on opposite
sides of the world:
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Did you you know there’s actually more Palestinians next door in Honduras?
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Also, check out this video about climate refugees from El Salvador.