Stars Rising for Relatives of Arabs Who Fled to New Lives in Latin America : Immigrants: Their forefathers fled poverty and oppression while their offspring have become figures of consequence in business, the armed forces and politics.

BUENOS AIRES —  Carlos Saul Menem, the president of Argentina, recalls his days growing up. He, his brothers and mother all worked in the general store of his father, a Muslim who arrived penniless from Syria after the turn of the century.

“He was a street vendor” in a hot, backwater province until he saved enough to buy the store, Menem said. After several setbacks, the business prospered and the father, Saul, insisted that his four sons go to college.

“He instilled in us the need . . . to study for a career,” said Menem, who became a lawyer, provincial governor and, last July, was elected president on the Peronist ticket. “He used to say the only safe thing in life was a university degree.”

Menem, 59, typifies the Arab experience not only in Argentina but across Latin America.

The descendants of tens of thousands of Arabs who fled poverty and oppression and settled in cities and towns across Latin America and throughout the Caribbean have become figures of consequence in business, the armed forces and, increasingly, politics.

Some have achieved fame, others notoriety.

In Brazil, three of the 22 candidates for president in the first round of elections Nov. 15 were of Lebanese descent, including Paulo Salim Maluf, former mayor of Sao Paulo.

In Ecuador, the Lebanese-descended Bucaram family has produced two presidents of Congress, Assad and his son, Averroes; and one candidate for president, Assad’s nephew Abdala.

Prominent Chileans of Arab descent include Dr. Elias Neghme, former dean of the medical school at the University of Chile; Rafael Tauro, a former Cabinet minister and president of the Bar association; and Sabino Awad and Juan Carlos Esguep, both of whom have headed Chile’s Olympic Committee.

The Argentine list includes the philosopher-diplomat Victor Massuh, former secretary general of UNESCO, pianist Miguel Angel Estrella, novelist Jorge Asis, the Saadi and Sapag families who have served as provincial governors and national senators, and Menem’s brother Eduardo, president of the Senate.

“We are the third biggest ethnic group in Argentina,” after the Spanish and Italians, said Ramez Chacra, past president of the Federation of Arab American Entities.

“Don’t think that the glory of Arabs in Argentina started with Menem,” Chacra, a clothing wholesaler, said good naturedly between phone calls, sips of black coffee and instructions to employees in his busy store. “He just made us fashionable.”

Arabs began arriving in large numbers at the end of the last century. Waves followed the end of each of the world wars.

“ ‘Arab’ immigration really means Syria, Lebanon, Palestine--the parts of the decaying Ottoman Empire that were subject to religious discrimination, military draft, persecution, massacre,” said Zake Consul, cultural affairs officer at the Syrian Embassy in Buenos Aires.

Today, 15 million people of Arab descent live in Latin America, according to the Arab American federation, which is based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and has branches in 22 countries. Brazil has the most at 8 million, with Argentina next at 2 million, Chacra said.

The first immigrants intended to make money and return home, Consul said. When that proved impossible, they settled in.

By most accounts, they were warmly received.

“Arabs coming to Chile found the generosity of the Chilean people, their warm reception,” said Nelson Hadad, a lawyer and leading member of the Arab community in Santiago. “Our grandparents, our parents always tell us that.”

Monsour Challita, director of the Gibran International Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro, and former ambassador of the League of Arab States, said, “The Lebanese found for the first time a country they could count on to protect them, and a friendly hospitable people.”

Many immigrants were Orthodox Christians, not Muslims; they mostly spoke French, not Arabic. They assimilated easily, learning Portuguese in Brazil and Spanish in the other countries.

Many descendants, including Menem, were baptized as Roman Catholics, the dominant religion in the region, and assimilated so completely they do not speak or write the language of their parents.

Some changed their names to lessen what discrimination there was, or simply to fit in better. Alferez, which means “the horseman” in Arabic, became Alvarez in Argentina. In Brazil, Haddad became Ferreira (both mean “smith” in their languages), Zaituni became Oliveira (both mean “olive” or “olive tree”).

Initially, the new arrivals were called “Turks” because they carried Turkish passports. That sobriquet is inaccurate and is considered pejorative.

In Jorge Amado’s novel “Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon,” set in the Brazilian city of Ilheus, Gabriela is married to cafe owner Nacib, a Syrian who protests violently when townspeople call him “Turk.”

As brothers and cousins joined family members who arrived earlier, the Arabs quickly spread out.

Social and cultural clubs are common, but Arab neighborhoods--such as Rua da Alfandega in Rio de Janeiro, a street lined with Arab shops and restaurants--are rare, as are examples of Arab architecture, like mosques.

“The Arab community never has been a ghetto,” noted Hadad, the Chilean attorney. “It has always been an active, integrated part of Chilean society. . . . We are Chileans. We feel Chilean.”

Arabs have played controversial or highly publicized roles in their adopted societies.

Col. Mohamed Ali Seineldin led a nationalistic sector of Argentina’s army that rebelled against former President Raul Alfonsin in December, 1988. Seineldin recently was ordered into retirement.

Police in Brazil are looking for Naji Nahas, a billionaire investor who vanished in August after being indicted in connection with a stock market scandal.

Nahim Isaias, a banking and press magnate and one of the richest men in Ecuador, was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1985 by the Alvaro Vive and was killed in a shoot-out between that subversive group and police.

In Haiti, landowner Rendall Assad in the 1960s hid dissidents from dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier at his hotel Villa Creole, which still sits halfway up the mountain to the wealthy suburb Petionville from the slums of downtown Port-au-Prince.