ALTERNATE ZIONS IN LATIN AMERICA

1. 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

2. 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-Jews—related 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.

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

7. 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.

8. Directly linked to the political situations in Russia and Germany in the 19th century and the increased growth and concentration of Jewish populations The Significance of Utopian Jewish Dreams in the Americas

9. Baron Maurice de Hirsch

10. 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 Palestine’s proximity to Russia and to the Turks • Initially aided the stranded settlers and then began to plan his own settlements

11. Problems with Hirsch’s 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?

12. 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)

13. Jewish Immigration to Brazil

14. Bessarabia—Source of Early Jewish Immigration to Brazil

15. 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 Jews—counted 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.”

16. Brazil—An Ideal Alternative Zion? • Generally speaking, Argentina preferred before WWI • After WWI, immigration quotas in Argentina contrasted with Brazil’s need for immigrant workers to farm the land • Pro-Jewish immigration lasted until 1930s when nativist and fascist sentiment led to restrictions on immigrants