way more about tacos - UPDATED

The whole with Puebla's tacos arabe seemed strange, so I did a little research. It always seemed suspicious to me that the trompe (spit) that the tacos al pastor are carved from lookd identical in use and preparation to the ones used for shwarma or gyro meat. 

Anyway, tacos are apparently a relatively recent  phenomenon, appearing only within the last 200 years in Mexico. Fast forward to the past century when Lebanese immigrants started arriving in Mexico (more questions- why did they come? why did they flee? In the past century of Mexican history there's no time that jumps out me as particuarly inviting.)

Anyway, the Lebanese migrants started subsituting native corn tortillas for thier traditional flatbread and so you have a basically, a Lebanese taco. A generation later of assimiliation and thier kids are substituting roasted pork for the lamb on the spit, someone throws on some pineapple, random idea, but brilliant, and boom, you have tacos al pastor. 

Tacos al pastor, what I took to be the emblematic food of Mexico City, only achieved popularity in the 1960s, and facinatingly, is a cross between Mexican and Lebanaese culinary traditions. 

What I still can't figure out is why tacos al pastor, pork meat in a Lebanese flatbread, is called the tacos arabe. I would think they're really Mexican shwarma. Tacos arabe would be the gyro meat in the tortilla, especially if you think about the envelope as the critical part of defining what is a taco and what is a gyro. Plus, Arab tacos with pork? 

Obviously overthinking this. 

UPDATED

There is, actually, a Wikipedia article exactly on Lebanese Immigration to Mexico (this article is poorly written and in need of revision.)

Apparently, some 100,000 Lebanese arrived in Mexico in the late 1800s, and most of them settled in Mexico City and Puebla (aha!). Also, to answer the whole question about Arab tacos with pork, the majority of ethnic Lebanese are Christian, not Muslism. The whole Lebanese diaspora seems to be related to the historical Arabization of the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and in particular related to the religious violence. Lebanon has violent Jewish neighbors on one side and violent Islamic neighbors on the other.

BONUS: notable Lebanese Mexicans

Carlos Slim- the first or second richest man in the world was the son of a Lebanese street merchant. It suggests (to me anyway) that his ethnicity and culture was the reason he was able to escape the entrenched classism of Mexican society.

Also, Selma Hayek!