ALTERNATE ZIONS IN LATIN AMERICA

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ALTERNATE ZIONS IN LATIN AMERICA

• Sephardic Connections in Colonial Argentina
• Role of Freedom of Religious Toleration after
  Independence
• Early Settlers
• Zion on the Argentine and Brazilian plains

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Jews and Crypto-Jews in Colonial Argentina

• Most arrived during the period of Babylonian
  Captivity (1580-1640)
• By 1588 Spanish officials noted the presence of
  Portuguese-origin immigrants
• Most early physicians were suspected of being
  Crypto-Jewsrelated to paucity of doctors
  arriving from Spain, particularly in hinterlands
• As early as 1614, Hebrew taught Juan
  Cardoso-Pardo, who lost his job on the Buenos
  Aires municipal council for ignoring the
  Christian faith-yet lived as a Jew in the Rio de
  la Plata until 1680.
• The founders of several provinces in the region
  had families with history of Jewish antecedents
  (Salta, Córdoba)
• By 1600 all commerce in Buenos Aires in the hands
  of the Portuguese and led to a revolt between
  1610 and 1617 between Portuguese sympathizers end
  those who opposed not only the Portuguese, but
  also their Judaizing influence.
• Recent genealogical study argues that most of the
  oldest families in modern Argentina had converso
  origins.

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Case Studies Before 1880

• Argentina
• Records of births since 1835
• Henry Hart, British trader, migrated 1844 and
  joined Immigrants Club
• Soon joined by immigrants from France, Germany
  and Alsace
• First Jewish wedding recorded in 1860, but first
  Jewish congregation not founded until 1891 and
  Moroccan Jews founded their own organization
• Mostly merchants

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Post 1880 Immigration

• Push-pull effect
• Encouraged by Jewish Colonization schemes
• Financed by Baron de Hirsch who set up
  agricultural colonies with the hopes that Jews
  would become self sufficient farmers
• Best example of this were the colonies set up in
  Santa Fe, Argentina and in Brazil
• Immigrants, despite help with seeds and
  implements, preferred the towns to the
  countryside
• In the urban environment in the countryside and
  the cities, they began to form their associations

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Argentine Efforts to Promote Land Settlement

• 1876 law permitted sales of 80 hectares of land
• Another, including the Constitution of 1853
  officially encouraged immigration
• Railroad expansion after 1855, along with
  immigration, promoted the development of
  agriculture and by 1876 Argentina began to export
  wheat, and later beef

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Unfunded Jewish Emigration to Argentine
Countryside

• Prompted by 1881 pogroms in Russia
• 1882 Leon Pinsker published tract encouraging
  Jews to flee
• Argentina more attractive than Palestine with
  religious toleration and land for sale
• 1889 group of Russian Jews took a steamship to
  Argentina, but found their contract for Argentine
  land not honored
• With the help of the Alliance Israelite
  Universelle, Baron Maurice de Hirsch learned of
  their plight and rescued them.

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The Significance of Utopian Jewish Dreams in the
Americas

• Directly linked to the political situations in
  Russia and Germany in the 19th century and the
  increased growth and concentration of Jewish
  populations

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Baron Maurice de Hirsch
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Why Argentina and not Palestine

• Judith Elkin argues that Zionism needed Theodore
  Herzl to develop the concept, and as late as 1895
  his ideas still unclear
• Hirsch also had concerns about Palestines
  proximity to Russia and to the Turks
• Initially aided the stranded settlers and then
  began to plan his own settlements

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Problems with Hirschs plans

• Bought inexpensive, often marginal farmland
• Insisted that Jews become farmers when there were
  few farmers among them
• Many wanted to live in the cities
• Yet by WWI more than 20,000 Jewish farmers and
  13,000 Jewish artisans lived in a million and a
  half acres in family based settlements
• Most experienced bitter relations with colony
  administrators who had prejudices against Eastern
  Europeans
• JCA held ¼ land in reserve and refused to give it
  to sons of settlers
• After WWII, people left for the cities
• Is this comparable to the dreams of the Kibbutzim
  in Israel?

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Role of Women in the Colonies

• Evidence mostly anecdotal, but it appears that
  wives resisted farm life even more than the men.
• Family structure religious and urban, and women
  understood little about rural tasks.
• Contemporaries argued that other groups of
  immigrant rural women more helpful than these
  women, but who was to train them.
• Rabbi Halphon of Buenos Aires in 1907 went out
  into the countryside to urge the women to help
  their husbands in farm labor.
• Clearly the farming training was geared only
  toward the men and left women in a difficult and
  unhappy situation
• Furthermore cases of Jewish rural women forced
  into prostitution or raped and murdered, and a
  general attitude evolved that women to be
  protected, not encouraged.
• Also not helped by administrators wives.
• Could not inherit land of their parents, even if
  only children (contrary to Argentine law)

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Jewish Immigration to Brazil
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BessarabiaSource of Early Jewish Immigration to
Brazil
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Case studies of 19th century Jewish Emigration to
Latin America

• Brazil
• Began with North African immigrants who went to
  the interior to participate in the Rubber Boom
  along the Amazon. Also peddled to coffee
  plantation owners in Southern Brazil
• Statistics make it difficult to distinguish
  between Arabs and Jewscounted nationality
• Jewish and Arabic peddlers found in most
  Brazilian cities
• Once they obtained enough capital, they set up
  small workshops or factories.
• One Brazilian diplomat claimed the all Jewish
  immigrants were the relatives of furniture
  salesmen and the in-laws of candy makers.

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BrazilAn Ideal Alternative Zion?

• Generally speaking, Argentina preferred before
  WWI
• After WWI, immigration quotas in Argentina
  contrasted with Brazils need for immigrant
  workers to farm the land
• Pro-Jewish immigration lasted until 1930s when
  nativist and fascist sentiment led to
  restrictions on immigrants