ARGENTINA: Qatar Forms Links with South America

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 15 1997 (IPS) - For most Argentines, Qatar is a country as distant as it is enigmatic, but the Qatari Culture Week underway here aims to contribute to changing the state of affairs.

Many of those visiting the first exhibition of Qatari art and culture in South America were not even previously aware of the existence of the Emirate, one of the world’s leading gas and petrol producers.

The Argentine visitors curiously walked between displays of crafts, fishing techniques and natural medicines attended by the craftspeople themselves, all dressed in their traditional work clothing.

They tried the food, and ask for change, maps and souvenirs, finding it difficult to be understood if there was no interpreter on hand.

A Qatari couple playing the bride and groom in a simulated marriage, rode off on a camel to a specially decorated marriage room holding a canopied bed, and carpets and cushions covering the floor and walls.

Close by, a reproduction Qatari desert scene complete with tent showed how their more rural cousins live – all only 50 metres from one of the busiest streets in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe Avenue, although background music does much to carry the visitor eastward.

“We are not only a country which produces oil and gas. We have traditions, art and culture, and we want the Argentine people to get to know us, as a first step to broadening out economic and political relations,” Yousof Ahmad, the exhibition organiser, told IPS.

The exhibition opened on Thursday June 12 to a crowd of 500 guests including Argentina’s Vice Minister of the interior, Alberto Airban, and will run until Tuesday 17.

This method of going out and “selling” the image and history of Qatar in the world, is a relatively new idea, although culture weeks have already been held in Spain, France, Germany, the United States and Japan. The delegation is made up of 80 members, more than half of whom are artists.

Musicians, dancers, painters and singers display their talents on each of the six days of the exhibition.

“This is the first show we have done in Latin America,” Sheik Mohamed bin Aid Al Thani, head of the Qatari General Organisation of Sport and Youth and leader of the official delegation, told IPS. “Argentina is one of the biggest countries in South America, and is a friend of Qatar,” he said.

Waves of Arab immigrants arrived in Argentina in the early years following the Spanish conquest. Ahmad calculated this country has between three and four million descendents of Arab ancestors, including President Carlos Menem – son of a Syrian immigrant – and a further 50 legislators.

Qatar, a rich Gulf country, with a population of only half a million, is planning to open an embassy in Argentina in the next two or three months, said Ahmad.

The interpreters, dressed in Qatari clothing, are all descendents of Arabs who have been living in Argentina for some time. They are as well-versed in one culture as the other, and therefore form the nexus between the public, the artists and the craftspeople.

“Have you got anything for rheumatism?” One old lady asked the Qatari doctor surrounded with barrels covered by plants to cure many ills. Unfortunately, the translators, occupied with other requests, cannot always satisfy the demands of all the public, and the old lady had to make do with a puzzled look for an answer.

The Qataris know there were two attacks on Israeli-linked locations in Buenos Aires in recent years which have worsened the image of Arab countries here – a bomb which destroyed the embassy in 1992, and another which killed 100 Jews in a welfare association building in 1994.

However, the perpetrators were never identified, and the Qatari’s are determined to forge links and build bridges wherever possible.

“We are an open people, friendly and pacifistic, and we want to have good relations with the whole world,” said Ahmad.