Argentina has an overwhelming ethnic
European population. An estimated 97% of
the people are of Continental origin, principally Spanish and Italian
but many can trace their roots to British, French, German, Irish and
Jewish immigrants. While Spaniards were there right from the beginning,
the real drive for this unique
demography is the massive Immigration of late XIX and early XX
Centuries, consequence of a personal decision by Argentinean President
Nicolás
Remigio Aurelio
Avellaneda Silva (1837-1885) who signed on
October 19, 1876 the Immigration
and
Colonization
Act (Law N° 817) encouraging immigration
and creating a special Department to facilitate and enforce it,
as well as establishing a network of immigration
agencies in European countries and appointing committees to provide
guidance to the newly arrived. Immigration did not start immediately.
In the four years following
its enactment the Argentinean Government engage in The Conquest of the
Desert - the local version of the North American Expansion to
the Wild West
and Indian Wars - and immense territories came under the rule
of the Republic. At the same time Buenos Aires was appointed Federal
Capital, putting an end to the
political unrest. When Avellaneda's succesor, Julio Argentino Roca,
took office on
October 12, 1880, Argentina was unified, had huge extensions of virgin
territory at
it's disposal and was therefore ripe for an increase in population and
colonization of it's Provinces.
The history of Jews in the Americas dates
back to Christopher Columbus and his first cross-Atlantic voyage on
August 3, 1492, when he left Spain and eventually "discovered" the New
World. The day of his departure was the same day on which the Catholic
Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon decreed that
the Jews of Spain either had to convert to Catholicism, depart from the
country, or face death for defiance of the Monarch. Seven Jews sailed
with Columbus in this first voyage including Rodrigo de Triana, who was
the first to sight land (Columbus later assumed credit for this),
Maestre Bernal, who served as the expedition's physician, and Luis De
Torres, the interpreter, who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, two languages
they believed would be useful in the Orient - their intended
destination. In
the coming years, Jews settled in the new Spanish and Portuguese
colonies in the Caribbean, where they believed that they would be safe
from the Inquisition. Some took part in the conquest of the "New
World," and Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes a number of
executions of soldiers in Hernán Cortés's forces during
the conquest of Mexico because they were Jews. Nevertheless, Jewish
communities in the Caribbean, Central, and South America flourished,
particularly in areas under Dutch and English control. By the sixteenth
century, fully functioning Jewish communities had organized in Brazil,
Suriname, Curaçao, Jamaica, and Barbados. In addition, there
were unorganized communities of Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese
territories, where the Inquisition was active, including Cuba and
Mexico, however, these Jews generally concealed their identity from the
authorities. Evidence
of the presence of Jews in the Southern Parts of America can be found
in
recorded
cases of inquisition prosecution dating from the seventeenth century
from Peru - then the seat of Spanish Rule in the Sub Continent.
In 1736 a Viceroy was
appointed by the Spaniards in the Region of the La Plata River (today
Argentina and Uruguay) and
Buenos Aires became the political, economic,
and cultural center of Argentina. Many European businesses established
representations
there and in many instances the representatives of those
businesses
were Jewish. Those merchants and businessmen, generally natives of
France
or England, constituted the first seed of the Jewish community of
Argentina.
In 1852, they established the Jewish Congregation of Buenos Aires in an
attempt to preserve their religious identity. There is also evidence of
a small Sephardic community in Buenos Aires by the end of the last
century.
An 1887 city census revealed the presence of 336 Jews in Buenos Aires,
and it is estimated that there were about 1,500 Jews in the entire
country.
The Immigration
and
Colonization legislation couldn't have came in
a more convenient moment for European Jews. as 1881 was the year
major pogroms started all over Eastern Europe and especially Imperial
Russia. Most of the Jews dreamt to emigrate to the USA, were "gold
could
be
found in the streets". An ideological minority hoped to settle in
Zion-Palestine and rebuild the Jewish Homeland. Very few if any
considered Argentina a prime candidate.
South America was far away, with an almost non existent Jewish
Community, nothing was known about its prevailing economic conditions,
was an economically underdeveloped region, and on top of it there was a
natural
aversion countries linked to Spain by history, language, religion and
tradition, which
could - so they thought - maintain restrictive laws
for Jews.
The event that changed all this
happened one
day in 1887 when leaders of Jewish communities in Podolia and
Bessarabia met in Katowice
(Silesia, Poland) to seek a solution to their problems. They decided
emigration to Palestine was the solution and choose a delegate, Eliezer
Hauffmann,
to travel to Paris, meet the Baron de Rotschild and ask for his
support. Two theories exist on
what happened next. Some say the negotiations with the Baron failed
while others
believe Kauffman wasn't able to obtain an audition with the aristocrat
at all. Afraid of
going back empty handed and learning that there was an
official bureau of information of the Argentinean Republic, Kauffman
decided to meet J.
B. Frank, the officer in charge, and learned that a gentleman named
Rafael Hernández was
interested in selling
lands to European
immigrants. The land was in Nueva Plata, Province of Buenos Aires,
near the city of La Plata. A contract was signed there and then and
thus the 820 people represented by
Kauffman, comprising 130 families (a number equivalent to half the
Jewish
population of Argentina at that time!) began their trip to
Argentina on board of the SS WESER.
They arrived to Buenos Aires on August
14, 1889 and learned right away that
the
lands they had acquired were not available. Since their agreement the
price of the land had more
than doubled, making it "inconvenient" for unscrupulous
Hernández
to
fulfill the contract. Rabbi Henry Joseph, the leader of
Argentinean Jewry, tried to save the day and he arranged for the
newcomers to meet Pedro
Palacios, the Jewish Community attorney, who happened to be the owner
of vast lands in
the Province of Santa Fe, right where the new railway line to
Tucumán was
being built. Palacios aggreed to sell the WESER passengers some land he
owned. By late
August contracts were signed and the immigrants were on their way. To
their dismay the travel was bad and the place they arrived to even
worse. The families were lodged in
freight cars parked in a shed along the railway
line. They expected to be transferred to their fields, get farm animals
and agricultural appliances and materials (as established in the
contract) but none of these happened. Railway
workers distributed food among the hungry children but soon enough a
typhus epidemic enhaced by poor hygiene, took the lives of 64 of them.
The national authorities, learning of the immigrants’ deplorable
conditions, ordered an investigation by the General Immigration
Commissioner.
Luckily for the newcomers Dr Wilhelm
Loewenthal, a Rumanian
doctor from the University of Berlin, specializing in bacteriology, who
had been hired
in Paris by the Argentine government for a scientific mission and
paralelly asked by the A.I.U. to keep an eye on the Weser immigrants,
traveled to Palacios Train Station where he was astonished by the
miserable living
conditions of the immigrants. Inspite of their ordeal and diffilcuties
the settlers still hoped to become
farmers. He reported to the Minister of
Foreign Affairs,
Estanislao Zeballos and simultaneously met Palacios requesting him to
comply with his duties. Back in Paris, Loewenthal submitted a written
project to Rabbi Zadoc Kahn for the agricultural colonization of Jewish
families
in Argentina by means of establishing a Colonizing
Association and allocating each family a farm 50-100 hectars in size,
at the cost of US$
2000 per family.
If it wern't because of these travelers abandoned in Palacios Station
it's very probable that Baron Hirsch would neither have thought of
sending
more Jews to Argentina, nor created the JCA. But as a result of
the ordeal the 1891 Baron Hirsch Plan was born. In it's first 5 years
some 10,000 immigrants arrived to Argentina, 68% of them (6,757
residents from983
families) staying in the Colonies and the rest scattered through out
the country or immigrating to the USA, Uruguay and Chile. Baron Hirsch
died in 1896 and the program passed
on to the hands of administrators that didn't have the passion and the
push but continued his work bringing colonists to
Argentina up until the eve of the Second World War. The Jewish colonies became known in distant Europe and Asia
and many Jews decided
to immigrate to Argentina - 200,000 to 250,000
Jews in the 50 years between 1888 and 1938.It is
estimated
that in 1909
there were approximately 70,000 Jews in Argentina, one third living in
Buenos
Aires, 25% in the central provinces (Santa Fe, Entre Rios, Cordoba, and
La Pampa), 15% in the colonies of the JCA, and
30% in the rest of the country. Moises
Ville
had been the first but soon enough 15 other Jewish agricultural
settlements
were established
by the JCA in the various provinces of Argentina. Here is a list of
these
settlements,
including the year of foundation and location:
| Colony |
Year |
Province
|
|
Moises Ville
|
1889
|
Santa Fe
|
|
Mauricio
|
1892
|
Buenos Aires
|
|
Clara
|
1892
|
Entre Rios
|
|
San Antonio
|
1892
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Lucienville
|
1894
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Montefiore
|
1902
|
Santa Fe
|
|
Baron Hirsh
|
1905
|
Bs. As/La Pampa
|
|
Lopez and Berro
|
1907
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Santa Isabel
|
1908
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Curbelo and Moss
|
1908
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Narcisse Leven
|
1909
|
La Pampa
|
|
Dora
|
1911
|
Santiago del
Estero
|
|
Paimar-Yatay
|
1912
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Louis Oungre
|
1925
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Avigdor
|
1936
|
Entre Rios
|
|
Leonard Cohen
|
1937
|
Entre Rios
|
The Jewish Community began organizing itself
very early. A Hevra Kadisha (Holy Society - the Jewish Community
Organized Burial Service) was established in 1900 and the first Jewish
cemetery of Buenos Aires was opened in 1910 in
Liniers,
a suburb of the big city. A Bikur Holim was created in 1900 to assist
the
sick and needy, leading to the establishment of a Jewish Hospital
(Hospital
Israelita)
and simultenously a home for orphans and seniors was founded.
In the pre WWI years and up to the
1930's the majority of the Jews were Ashkenazi from
Poland,
Russia, Rumania and Austria-Hungary but there was also a large Sephardic Jewish influx from Syria, Turkey, and
Morocco. These eventually established their own institutions and
temples and
constituted
about 10% of the total Jewish population. The newcomers escaped War, Pogroms, poverty
and persecution but arrived empty handed and didn't have the support of
the JCA. Being poor and ignorant of
the
language and customs of the new country and having to confront
the situation on their own the majotity of them
prefered to settle in the big cities, particularly
Buenos Aires. These urban Jews
started as
low-wage workers, peddlers, small merchants and artisans, living in
small,
overcrowded apartments. In time they advanced socially and economically
to become merchants, store owners, and professionals, and later
businessmen,
industrialists, and distinguished scholars, leaving their mark in
almost
every aspect of Argentine society. Buenos
Aires and
its surroundings became the principal center of Jewish life in
Argentina. By 1934, more than half of the
estimated
218,000 Jews of Argentina lived there. Within the city, two districts,
Once and Villa Crespo, stood out due to their high concentration of
Jewish
residents. Thirty percent of the Jewish population lived in the
provinces, among
the cities with the largest communities were Santa Fe, Rosario, Parana
and Cordoba.
The
thirties were a dark page in Argentina's Jewish Immigration
History. Inspite of the urgent need for shelter for the Jews fleeing
from Germany, escaping
the Nazi regime, the
Government
of Argentina imposed restrictions and raised obstacles
to the immigration of the German Jews. Many entered the country without
proper documentation, illegaly. A very few were assisted by the JCA and
settled in the
colony
Avigdor in 1936. Others settled in
existing
colonies but the majority prweferred the big cities. Despite the fact
that many of them had professional or
craft
skills, they could not immediately be absorbed by the economy of
Argentina,
and had to earn a living in low-wage, low level positions, much like
their
East European predecessors. Within a few decades they were able to
improve
their socio-economic position to become part of the elite of the Jewish
community. The German Jews
created their
own institutions and, for some time, were isolated from the
mainstream
of the community.
One of the most important institutions of the Jewish
community
of Argentina was established in this period: the DAIA (Delegacion de
Asociaciones
Israelitas Argentinas). created in 1935 to protest the rise
of Nazism in Germany and later becaming the political arm of the
community. In the 1930s and 40s Argentina's manufacturing sector grew
in numbers but maintained its earlier composition of a few large
companies and many smaller firms. Manufacturing was still a foreigners
occupation: in 1939 half the the owners and workers of small
manufacturing plants were foreigners, many of them newly arrived Jewish
refugees from Central Europe.
The immigration of
Jews essentially
stopped after World War II. In the early 50s
Jewish immigration began to wane, while at the same time the country
established ties with the state of Israel. The
Jewish population of Argentina peaked
around
1960, when it reached approximately 310,000, and then started to
decrease,
due to assimilation, emigration to Israel, and emigration to other
countries
because of economic or political reasons. In 1982, 233,000 Jews were
believed
to live in Argentina. n the 1990s, the Jewish
community was the subject of two major terrorist attacks, both of which
remain unsolved: the Israeli Embassy was bombed in March 1992, killing
32 people, and in July 1994 the Jewish community center (AMIA) in
Buenos Aires was bombed as well, killing 85 people and wounding over
200.
During the economic crisis of 1999–2002, more than 10,000 Argentine
Jews made aliyah to Israel.
|