Although Mexico is not the melting pot that the United States is, the country has seen waves of immigrants over the years. There are sizeable Korean, Chinese and Japanese communities in Mexico City, and Jewish immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More than 25,000 refugees fleeing the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco arrived from Spain between 1939 and 1942. There are also an estimated 400,000 people of Lebanese descent. Lebanese immigration began in the late 1800s when Lebanon was still a part of the Ottoman Empire. Among the famous Mexicans of Lebanese descent are Carlos Slim, the richest man in the country, and the actress Salma Hayek.
On one of my walks along Insurgentes Avenue, I saw a monument that I had not noticed before. It was donated by the Lebanese Center in Mexico City and honors the emigrants who left Lebanon.
On the monument's plaque there is a quotation by Antonio Trabulse Kaim, a writer and the founder of the Lebanese Center. In today's world, in which there is so much demonization of the immigrant, I find the quotation to be a beautiful sentiment...
"The emigrant is not a stranger... but rather a brother who was born in another room of the same house."
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