Rethinking Jewish-Latin Americans (Dialogos)

Rethinking Jewish-Latin Americans

Other titles on Latin America available from the University of New Mexico Press: Independence in Spanish America: Civil Wars, Revolutions, and Underdevelopment (revised edition) —Jay Kinsbruner Heroes on Horseback: A Life and Times of the Last Gaucho Caudillos —John Charles Chasteen The Life and Death of Carolina Maria de Jesus —Robert M. Levine and José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity —Jeffrey M. Pilcher The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America —Edited by Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera The Century of U.S. Capitalism in Latin America —Thomas F. O’Brien Tangled Destinies: Latin America and the United States —Don Coerver and Linda Hall Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War —Mark Wasserman Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Community in Colonial Mexico —Richard Boyer Andean Worlds: Indigenous History, Culture, and Consciousness Under Spanish Rule, 1532–1825 —Kenneth J. Andrien The Mexican Revolution, 1910–1940 —Michael J. Gonzales Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition —Kris Lane Argentina on the Couch: Psychiatry, State, and Society, 1880 to the Present —Edited by Mariano Plotkin A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective —Suzanne Austin Alchon The Silver King: The Remarkable Life of the Count of Regla in Colonial Mexico —Edith Boorstein Couturier National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance —John Charles Chasteen The Great Festivals of Colonial Mexico City: Performing Power and Identity —Linda A. Curcio-Nagy

The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesús —Nancy E. van Deusen Dutra’s World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro —Zephyr L. Frank Death, Dismemberment, and Memory: Body Politics in Latin America —Edited by Lyman L. Johnson Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico —Elaine Carey Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500–1600 —Karen Vieira Powers Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America —Edited by Matthew Restall Mexico OtherWise: Modern Mexico in the Eyes of Foreign Observers —Edited and translated by Jürgen Buchenau Local Religion in Colonial Mexico —Edited by Martin Austin Nesvig Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico —Camilla Townsend From Slavery to Freedom in Brazil: Bahia, 1835–1900 —Dale Torston Graden Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America —Edited by Jane G. Landers and Barry M. Robinson Private Passions and Public Sins: Men and Women in Seventeenth-Century Lima —María Emma Mannarelli Making the Americas: The United States and Latin America from the Age of Revolutions to the Era of Globalization —Thomas F. O’Brien Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador: The Insurrection of 1932, Roque Dalton, and the Politics of Historical Memory —Héctor Lindo-Fuentes, Erik Ching, and Rafael A. Lara-Martínez Raising an Empire: Children in Early Modern Iberia and Colonial Latin America —Ondina E. González and Bianca Premo Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Rituals in the Seventeenth Century —Joan Cameron Bristol Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America, 1521–1821 —Kelly Donahue-Wallace Series advisory editor: Lyman L. Johnson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Rethinking Jewish-Latin Americans Edited by

Jeffrey Lesser & Raanan Rein

University of New Mexico Press

!

Albuquerque

© 2008 by the University of New Mexico Press All rights reserved. Published 2008 Printed in the United States of America 13  12  11  10  09  08   1  2  3  4  5  6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rethinking Jewish-Latin Americans / edited by Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein. p. cm. Includes index. isbn 978-0-8263-4401-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Jews—Latin America.  2. Jews—Identity.  3. National characteristics, Latin American. I. Lesser, Jeff. II. Rein, Raanan, 1960– f1419.j4r48 2008 305.892'408—dc22 2008012336

Book design and type composition by Melissa Tandysh Composed in 10/13.75 ScalaOT Display type is Poetica Std

Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments x

chapter one

Introduction

jeffrey lesser and raanan rein 1 chapter two

New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora in Twentieth-Century Latin America jeffrey lesser and raanan rein 23 chapter three

How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories of Nation and Ethnicity jeffrey lesser 41 chapter four

What’s in a Stereotype? The Case of Jewish Anarchists in Argentina josé c. moya 55 chapter five

Beyond the State and Ideology: Immigration of the Jewish Community to Brazil, 1937–1945 roney cytrynowicz 89 chapter six

The Scene of the Transaction: “Jewishness,” Money, and Prostitution in the Brazilian Imaginary erin graff zivin 106 vii

chapter seven

Protest from Afar: The Jewish and Republican Presence in Victoria Ocampo’s Revista SUR in the 1930s and 1940s rosalie sitman 132 chapter eight

Changing the Landscape: The Study of Argentine-Jewish Women and New Historical Vistas sandra mcgee deutsch 161 chapter nine

Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages in Buenos Aires, 1918–1955 donna j. guy 187 chapter ten

Nation and Holocaust Narration: Uruguay’s Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío edna aizenberg 207 chapter eleven

Singing for Social Change: Nostalgic Memory and the Struggle for Belonging in a Buenos Aires Yiddish Chorus natasha zaretsky 231 chapter twelve

The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry judah m. cohen 266

Editors and Contributors 285

Index 288

viii contents

List of Illustrations

figure 1. Jewish gaucho, wearing a tallit, drinking mate, 1984

2

figure 2. Two residents of the Philipson settlement, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1922

3

figure 3. Wall graffiti, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1984

4

figure 4. View of the Holocaust memorial plaque near the picnickers

209

figure 5. View of the memorial looking out from the boardwalk toward the River Plate

209

figure 6. View of the memorial looking from the River Plate toward the boardwalk

210

figure 7. Tablet with the saying “Seven times shall the just man fall and seven times shall he rise”

211

figure 8. Path up from the Holocaust memorial back to the boardwalk

211

figure 9. Memoria Activa protest in Plaza Lavalle, Buenos Aires

238

figure 10. Coro performance at Obelisk, Buenos Aires, August 2003

243

ix

Acknowledgments

This project has taken many forms since its inception. Over the past few years, the participants have given versions of the chapters at conferences and symposia, and some have published their initial ideas. We would particularly like to thank Jewish History and Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies for allowing us to use revised versions of articles originally presented in those journals. A number of anonymous reviewers were crucial in the formulation of the chapters, and we particularly want to thank Lyman Johnson for his careful comments on the full manuscript. The staff of the University of New Mexico Press has been enthusiastic and patient, and we appreciate it. Much of the final editing of the volume was done at Tel Aviv University with the support of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies. We would particularly like to thank the Fulbright Foundation and the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, which provided the support that allowed Jeffrey Lesser to spend a year at TAU. Special thanks to Atalia Shragai for her invaluable assistance in the final stages of preparing the manuscript, and to Ilan Diner for the index.

x Acknowledgments

chapter one

Introduction !

jeffrey lesser

•

A

raanan rein

s we sat in the archives of the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv looking for photographs of Jewish-Latin American life, we were stunned. In addition to the usual images of synagogues, falafel houses, and Zionist publications, we came upon an image with the caption “Jewish Gaucho, wearing a Tallit, drinking ‘Mate,’ the national drink of Argentina” (figure 1). The photo, taken in 1984, is clearly a staged one, since as the twentieth century came to a close there were no Jewish cowboys riding into the pampas sunset. Indeed, even in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when Jews did live in farming colonies in the interior regions of Argentina and Brazil, there were few, if any, who worked the land with a prayer shawl draped over their shoulders. The falsity of the image of the “Jewish gaucho” speaks many truths. First, it shows a strong historical memory of Jewish immigration to Latin America as agricultural in purpose, although most arriving in the region settled in urban areas. Second, it suggests a negotiation between Judaism as a religion (the ritual shawl), Judaism as a primordial Latin American ethnicity (hence the reference to gauchos, considered as one true representative of the nation in both Argentina and Brazil), and Jews as authentic 1

figure 1. Jewish gaucho, wearing a tallit, drinking mate, the national drink of Argentina, 1984. Photo: Gustavo A. Cohen, Argentina. © Beth Hatefutsoth Photo Archive, courtesy of Gustavo A. Cohen, Argentina.

Latin Americans, in this case represented by mate and the affiliated claim that drinkers of it are engaged in a national, and thus patriotic, act. Yet the photograph should not fool readers into thinking that the slippage between religion, ethnicity, and national identity is a recent phenomenon. A second photo, taken some sixty years before the first (in 1922), might be labeled “Jewish gauchos drinking mate, the regional drink of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil” (figure 2). Yet its pedigree is not that different from the photograph taken in 1984, using mate as a symbol of local, non-Jewish identity. If the Jewish-Brazilian and Jewish-Argentine gauchos of figures 1 and 2 present a positive idealized image of Latin American Jewish life, the next photograph (figure 3) represents a negative idealized image, and one with which U.S.-based readers are familiar: that anti-Semitism in Latin America is an integral and endemic phenomenon. Indeed, it has been fascinating to us that when lecturing in the United States about Jews in Latin America, audiences invariably ask about “Nazis.” While the photograph below is captioned “Wall graffiti, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1984,” closer examination 2 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

figure 2. Two residents of the Philipson settlement, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1922. © Courtesy of Instituto Cultural Judaico Marc Chagall, Jewish Federation of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

3 Introduction

figure 3. Wall graffiti, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1984. Photo: Gerardo Garbulsky, Argentina. © Beth Hatefutsoth Photo Archive, Courtesy of Gerardo Garbulsky, Argentina.

shows that the wall has two layers of discourse, an anti-Semitic stratum that has been overlaid with the language of pluralism and tolerance represented by the Magen David (Star of David). Even that symbol has a double meaning, since many Jews would understand the ritual power of the star while many non-Jews would see it as a representation of the State of Israel and associated ideas of strength. These three photographs provide a visual illustration of one of the main themes of this volume: the gap between the discourse of state and political organizations, on the one hand, and social realities and practices, on the other. The worlds of Jewish-Latin Americans bring these broad issues into particular relief. Thus, most studies tend to overemphasize xenophobic attitudes by the majority population, creating the erroneous impression that daily life for most Jews on the continent has been a constant nightmare. These same studies often vacillate between claims that Jews are highly integrated and at the same time completely ghettoized. The articles in this volume seek to provide a new way of thinking about ethnicity in Latin America through a focus on Jews. Each chapter takes a 4 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

new approach to the study of Jewish Latin America, rejecting the a priori assumptions that have defined most work on the topic, including high levels of anti-Semitism, Zionism as primarily oriented toward Israel, and the myth of all Jews being affiliated with community institutions. Asking new questions provides a corrective to the existent bibliography, which to a large extent has marginalized the Jewish experience in Latin America. As the chapters show, Jewish-Latin American cultures represent both examples of broader Jewish experiences throughout the Americas and wider minority group experiences as well. The scholarship presented here breaks with the community studies produced by those considered the founding parents of Latin American Jewish studies. Those studies often focused on Ashkenazim, those Jews who formed communities in Central and Eastern Europe and who were the majority of Jewish immigrants to the Americas. The authors in the volume, however, often highlight the role of Sephardim in Latin America. This Jewish group originated in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) before late fifteenth-century expulsion, although in modern times many people used the term “Sephardic” to refer to all non-Ashkenazic Jews, especially those of Middle Eastern descent. The inclusion of Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews in the chapters allows the authors to ask broad questions about ethnicity, national identity, and Diaspora. The different chapters suggest that Jews are not unique, but that in their Diasporic condition they are much “like everyone else.” In doing so, the chapters place Jewish-Latin Americans within a national context while respecting the particularities of ethnic, national, and Diasporic experience. The Jewish-Latin Americans, like all other minority groups, are not only Diasporic but are national as well. Indeed, one of the suggestions we made to each author was to consider questions and methodologies that might be applied broadly and thus help to fill the lacunae of scholarship on ethnic populations from Asia and the Middle East, as well as non-Catholics. This volume focuses on Argentina and Brazil, the two countries with the largest Jewish-Latin American populations (table 1). Yet our argument is not that size matters; each chapter presents a series of questions and research approaches that might be applied to any minority group in any country. Since many readers will not be familiar with the histories of immigration in these two countries, the following short essays will provide the background information necessary to better understand the issues discussed in each chapter. 5 Introduction

table 1: Total and Jewish Populations of Latin America, by Country, 1960 and 2005. Total Population

Jewish Population

Total Population

310,000a

37,900,000

1960 Argentina Bahamas

20,248,000

Jewish Population 2005 185,000

—

—

300,000

300

Bolivia

3,311,000

4,000

8,800,000

500

Brazil

62,725,000

86,038a

179,100,000

96,700

Chile

7,298,000

30,000

16,000,000

20,800

Colombia

13,522,000

9,000

45,300,000

3,300

Costa Rica

1,072,000

1,500

4,200,000

2,500

Cuba

6,466,000

11,000

11,300,000

600

148,000

1,000

138,000

300b

Dominican Republic

2,797,000

600

8,800,000

100

Ecuador

4,007,000

2,000

13,400,000

900

El Salvador

2,434,000

250

6,700,000

100

Guatemala

3,546,000

1,000

12,700,000

900

Honduras

1,282,000

150

6,700,000c

200c

Jamaica

1,630,000

2,200

2,600,000

300

Mexico

32,348,000

25,700

106,200,000

39,800

—

—

215,000

200

1,578,000

200

5,570,000

60d

Curaçao

Netherlands Antilles Nicaragua

Argentina In the midst of a wave of anti-Semitism following the abduction of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann by Mossad agents, the Jewish biweekly La luz expressed its deep concern for the future of the Argentine Jewish community: For Argentine Jewry, the stormy year we have just left behind us was the saddest of the hundred years of its existence in this country. This intolerable situation has caused Jews in some circles to think that Jewish life may be impossible in Argentina . . . one thing 6 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

table 1: continued Total Population

Jewish Population

Total Population

995,000

2,500

3,200,000

Paraguay

1,677,000

2,000

6,000,000

900

Peru

10,213,000

3,500

27,500,000

2,300

1960 Panama

Puerto Rico

Jewish Population 2005 5,000

—

—

3,900,000

1,500

Suriname

223,000

1,000

400,000

200

Trinidad

789,000

400

1,305,000

10e

Uruguay

2,700,000

50,000

3,400,000

19,500

Venezuela

6,320,000

8,000

26,200,000

15,500

—

—

115,000

300

Virgin Islands (U.S.) Total

552,038

397,770

Source: American Jewish Year Book, Vol. 61 (New York: American Jewish Committee and Jewish Publication Society, 1960), 352–53; American Jewish Year Book, Vol. 105 (New York: American Jewish Committee and Jewish Publication Society, 2005), 100. a

 evised numbers from U. O. Schmelz and Sergio Del Lapergola, “The Demography of Latin R American Jewry,” American Jewish Year Book, Vol. 85 (New York: American Jewish Committee and Jewish Publication Society, 1985), 51–102. b Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Curacao.html#Curacao. c Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Honduras.html. d United Jewish Committee, www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=122735. e National Library and Information System Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, www.nalis.gov.tt/ Communities/COMMUNITIES_JEWSINTNT.html.

is clear now: the beautiful ideal, enveloped in rosy expectations concerning the future, which the Jewish settlers brought with them . . . began to crumble with each Jewish child slashed with swastikas, each Jewish institution shot at. . . . The painful dilemma is posed: Does the Jewish community have a future here, and is it worthwhile for Jews to continue living in Argentina?1 This was neither the first nor the last time that such an alarm was sounded by Jews in this South American republic. The first time was during the 1919 pogrom in Buenos Aires known as the “Tragic Week”; the most 7 Introduction

recent instance followed the 2001–2002 economic crisis that severely hit the middle classes to which most Argentine Jews belong. Still, during a recent visit to Buenos Aires for the Jewish high holidays, I could not but notice what a rich and varied life Argentine Jews enjoy. Contrary to the image portrayed in too many studies on anti-Semitism in Argentina and Brazil, Jews have integrated very well into Argentine society, economy, and culture, often without rejecting the Jewish component of their individual or collective identity. The Argentine-Jewish community, the biggest in Latin America, is mainly the product of the great wave of immigration from Europe during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. As with any other case of immigration, one has to analyze the factors that pushed a certain group to leave their place of residence and those that drew them toward other places, as well as the patterns of immigration adopted by that particular group. In the late nineteenth century, Jews in Eastern Europe— especially those from the Pale of Settlement, an area with a high proportion of Jews that encompassed part of what is today Poland and Russia—felt a growing pressure to seek a better future outside the European continent. Physical harassment, social pressures, and economic plight all contributed in this direction. While a few sought refuge in Palestine, their real or imagined homeland, others looked for ways to cross the Atlantic and find a new home in the Americas. Various proposals were being considered by Jewish organizations for settling these Jews in new countries. One of them focused on a practically unknown land in South America. Theodor Herzl himself de­­scribed the choice facing the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe as one between “Palestine or the Argentine.” The agricultural settlements established in Argentina, and later in Brazil as well, by the Jewish philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch seemed to offer a partial solution to the Jewish national question at the time. Coincidentally, at the same time as Jews were looking for a safe haven, Argentine authorities adopted a well-conceived policy to encourage Euro­ pean immigration. The desire to increase the relatively small population and to improve—that is, “whiten”—it by bringing European immigrants, hopefully from northern Europe, in order to ensure development and modernization were the main motivations behind the demographic policy of Argentine statesmen. “Gobernar es poblar” was a maxim coined in 1853 by Juan Bautista Alberdi, a prominent liberal intellectual and politician. And, indeed, from the 1870s until the economic recession of the early 1930s, a huge wave of immigrants descended on Argentine shores. In the early 8 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

twentieth century, about half the population of the federal capital, Buenos Aires, was foreign-born. Determined to turn their back on the former colonial power, Spain, elite members looked toward republican France as a secular and progressive model to emulate. This cultural and political orientation, together with growing economic and commercial ties with Great Britain, contributed to the institution of a liberal constitution in 1853 (which guaranteed freedom of worship), the adoption of a liberal immigration law in 1876 (which did not discriminate against non-Catholic immigrants), and the enactment of state education as well as civil registration laws in 1884 (thus limiting the power and influence of the Catholic Church). Rumors about the possibilities offered by immigration to Argentina, where one could live freely and prosper, spread among urban and rural Jews in central and eastern Europe. In reality, for the majority of Jewish immigrants, Argentina did indeed prove to be the promised land, a place where they could secure a living for themselves and an education for their children, and which they could try to make their new home. Within a short time, they established community institutions and Jewish schools that satisfied their social, economic, and cultural needs. Thus they created a rich mosaic of social, cultural, political, and ideological life, which reflected a wide variety of faiths, identities, and social practices: Communists and Zionists, Orthodox and secular, those who emphasized their Jewishness and others who preferred to stress their Argentine identity.2 This does not mean that Jews, or any other ethnic immigrant group for that matter, were always welcomed by everybody. Among the liberal elites, even the staunchest supporters of immigration shared the concept of the melting pot. All newcomers, especially non-Catholics, were expected to abandon the customs and idiosyncrasies they had brought with them from their countries of origin in favor of the new culture that was emerging in the immigrant society of Argentina. This attitude was particularly pronounced among those belonging to Catholic, nationalist, and xenophobic sectors within Argentine society. Albeit a minority, these elements have always existed in Argentine society, and in certain periods they have managed to exert a degree of influence on political, military, and clerical circles, as well as on the contemporary intellectual climate. This phenomenon was a source of permanent unease among Argentine Jews who, due to their mostly European origins and family ties with the Old World, could not but look at local events in Argentina through a European perspective of growing hostility toward Jews. 9 Introduction

There is a continued debate as to the number of Jews living in Argentina during the twentieth century, as well as nowadays.3 Part of the problem lies in the tendency of most studies to focus on those Jews affiliated with formal community institutions, despite the fact that research has indicated that most Jews—as is the case with members of other ethnic communities— have never been affiliated with such institutions. Furthermore, in national population censuses many Jews have preferred not to define themselves as such, either because they feared to appear thus in government databases, especially in times of authoritarian rule, or because the option of a hyphenated identity was not included and they did not wish to give Jewishness priority over their Argentine identity. Moreover, adopting a religious and not a cultural criterion in order to define Jews has created additional problems in a community known for its highly secular character. According to Sergio DellaPergola, one of the leading authorities in the demography of the Jewish people, the number of Jews in Argentina grew from 14,700 to 191,400 in 1930, reaching 273,400 at the end of World War II, and a peak of 310,000 in the early 1960s (see table 1). From then on, numbers began to decline, with Jews emigrating from Argentina to Israel, the United States, or to other countries in Latin America and Europe. There has also been an increase in the number of exogamic marriages. Whereas in the mid-1930s the rate of marriage to non-Jews was 1–5 percent of all marriages involving a Jewish partner, in the early 1960s it rose to 20–25 percent, reaching 35–40 percent in the mid-1980s. Current estimates put the number of Jews now living in Argentina at around 200,000. Jewish immigration to Argentina has been mostly Ashkenazi, although Jews from Morocco were among the first to immigrate there, already in the mid-nineteenth century. Later in the century, they were joined by Jewish immigrants from the declining Ottoman Empire, especially from Aleppo and Damascus, who arrived alongside the wave of Jews from eastern and central Europe. Chronologically, the first Jewish immigrants began to arrive as early as the 1840s (unlike the case of Brazil, evidence of Portuguese conversos during the colonial period is scant), and the first synagogue was established in 1862. However, the first important milestone in Jewish immigration was recorded in 1881 when, following pogroms in Russia, the Argentine government decided to encourage Jews to immigrate and a special emissary was sent to invite Jews from czarist Russia to settle in Argentina. The first organized group of immigrants, consisting of 820 Russian Jews, arrived in August 1889 on board the ship Wesser. They were sent to the Jewish 10 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

agricultural colonies, and some members founded the by now mythological colony of Moisesville. The government’s immigration policy dramatically changed the demographic profile of the country, as became apparent in the 1914 census. Within twenty years, the country’s population had almost doubled (to about 7.9 million). More than a third of the inhabitants were foreign-born. In the capital city of Buenos Aires, this figure was around 50 percent. As for Jews, the rate of growth was much higher—between the years 1895 and 1919, the Jewish population increased from 6,000 to 125,000. At any rate, the original vision of a Jewish agricultural enterprise as the main focus of attraction for Jewish immigration did not last long. While in the late nineteenth century most Argentine Jews were concentrated in the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) colonies, by the end of World War I most of them were urban dwellers, with Buenos Aires housing the largest Jewish population. With the exception of a temporary break in immigration during the Great War, when dwindling commercial ties with Europe contributed to economic recession and unemployment, the flow of immigration to Argentina continued, including many Jews. In contrast to the limitations imposed on immigration by the United States and other countries, Argentina’s liberal immigration policy remained almost unchanged, with minor revisions instituted in the mid-1920s. It was only the world economic recession in the wake of the Wall Street crash that would bring immigration practically to a halt. The ensuing political upheaval provoked the first military coup in the country’s history (September 1930), in turn reinforcing nationalist, Catholic, and xenophobic tendencies in Argentine society. During the 1930s the Jewish population had grown in number to approximately a quarter of a million. Contemporary restrictions on immigration had to do with political as well as economic considerations. The social and political ferment in Europe aroused fears among the Argentine elites concerning the possible entry of “undesirable” elements, people who might constitute a potential danger to the existing social and political order. Thus, Republican exiles and refugees fleeing from the Spanish Civil War and the new dictatorship of General Francisco Franco faced all kinds of obstacles in their efforts to enter Argentina. National authorities feared that they might bring with them a leftist “virus.”4 Moreover, in view of the economic recession, priority was given to those professionals who were needed by the local economy, while xenophobic attitudes constituted further obstacles in the way of non-Catholic immigrants, not just Jews, or those who might supposedly have difficulties in adjusting to Argentine society and culture. 11 Introduction

Those Jews who had pinned their hopes on Argentina’s position at the Évian Conference (France), convened by the League of Nations in July 1938 to discuss possible solutions to the problem of refugees from Germany and Austria, were disappointed. Argentina, like most other countries, was unwilling to open its gates to these refugees. This same restrictive policy was maintained throughout World War II, although between 1933 and 1945 around forty thousand Jews did enter Argentina, whether legally or illegally, almost a fifth of them during the years of the Holocaust. In the mid-1940s, following the defeat of Fascism and the end of hostilities in Europe, immigration to Argentina resumed, albeit not with the same magnitude as in the past. The populist president, Juan Perón, lifted most restrictions to immigration in 1947, and during the next three years over three hundred thousand immigrants, chiefly from Spain and Italy, the two “mother countries” of most Argentines, entered the country. As far as Jews were concerned, only fifteen hundred entered Argentina in the second half of the 1940s. More important, however, was the Peronist regime’s decision to grant amnesty to all illegal residents, a measure that enabled some ten thousand Jews to obtain legal status. At the same time, Nazi war criminals and collaborators who had found shelter in Argentina, mostly under false identities, also benefited from this amnesty. Their presence in the country has greatly contributed to the myth of Argentina being an anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi society. The 1950s witnessed the last wave of Jewish immigration to Argentina and to neighboring Brazil. These immigrants were mainly refugees from the Communist repression in Hungary in 1956 or Jews who had escaped from Egypt because of the hostile policy adopted by the Nasser regime after the joint attack by Israel, Great Britain, and France. From that point onward, the number of Jews in Argentina began to decline. While it is true that anti-Semitic manifestations have always accompanied the Jewish presence in Argentina, nonetheless one has to differentiate between the various types of anti-Semitism, possibly one of the most studied aspects of Jewish life in South America. Haim Avni has pointed to three levels of this phenomenon in Argentina: popular, organized, and government-sponsored anti-Semitism. Popular anti-Semitism is difficult to measure.5 Deeply rooted in Catholic precepts, it has at times been fueled either by Nazi propaganda (during the 1930s and World War II) or by Arab propaganda (from the 1960s onward). Recent polls, however, emphasize that Jews are hated no more than other ethnic or social groups, while many

12 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

people consider multinational corporations, the Catholic Church, banks, politicians, or the army as being “too powerful,” more so than Jews. Organized anti-Semitic groups first appeared in 1910, the year of the centennial celebrations of Argentina’s de facto independence. In 1919 they took advantage of a workers’ strike in order to attack Jewish neighborhoods, which they perceived to be hubs of revolutionary ferment. Such violent incidents did not repeat themselves, although in subsequent decades nationalist organizations often distributed anti-Semitic propaganda and even carried out isolated attacks on Jewish institutions or even physical assaults of individuals. Usually small in number, these groups occasionally curried some influence in military, clerical, or political circles. Since the 1960s, antiSemitic propaganda has sometimes been couched as anti-Israeli or antiZionist discourse. In any case, government-sponsored anti-Semitism has been rare in Argentina. It manifested itself in the limitations imposed on Jewish immigration during the 1930s and the 1940s and was also noticeable during the years of the brutal military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983. According to many testimonies, Jews arrested by the military suffered more than non-Jews; yet, community institutions continued with their normal activities, no anti-Semitic laws were ever instituted, and relations with the State of Israel were excellent. The transition to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the adoption of a more tolerant policy toward ethnic minorities and a growing awareness of the multicultural nature of Argentine society. However, this did not signal the complete disappearance of anti-Semitism or even of its occasional violent manifestations. In fact, the two bomb attacks on the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires—in 1992 and 1994, respectively—represented a different kind of danger for Jews in Argentina: transnational terror with local support. These bombings triggered grassroots mobilization and a continuing polemic among Argentine Jews as to their individual and collective identities, their place in Argentine society, and their relations with their imagined homeland, the State of Israel.

Brazil Jacques Schweidson was a Bessarabian who moved to Brazil in the early twentieth century. He remembered how scary it seemed; he remembered the rumors of “endemic diseases, yellow fever, typhoid, cholera and animal

13 Introduction

attacks.”6 For many Jewish immigrants to Brazil, there was more fear than hope in the lives they were to begin. They were not going to the United States and Canada, where their dreams had been focused. They were not going to the more well-known nation of Argentina, considered the “Europe” of Latin America, a contrast meant to emphasize the large population of African descent in Brazil. While Schweidson and his coreligionists were not the first Jews to settle in Brazil, they are remembered as critical to the construction of the modern Brazilian nation and are falsely believed to represent continuity with those Jews who came to the Portuguese colony of Brazil in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fleeing the Inquisition. Those Jews (called Judaizantes, Marranos, conversos, and Cristãos Novos) came in small numbers to escape the economic, social, and religious persecution of the church and Crown. Their presence, however, never encouraged large-scale Jewish immigration to colonial Brazil, even though New Christians may have made up as much as 20 percent of the white population of the colonial capital of Salvador, Bahia. Until today there is a curious linkage of Inquisition-era and twentiethcentury Jews in Brazil even though the Brazilian census of 1872 recorded no Jewish inhabitants. Also curious is that the first true Jewish community in Brazil, the some three thousand North Africans who migrated to the area around the Amazon to participate in the emerging rubber economy of the mid- to late nineteenth century, are almost forgotten. A story told by descendants of that group tells us much about the ways in which Jewish Latin America was created.

Becoming Brazilian When the Jews arrived they came without women or rabbis. Many began relationships with indigenous women and wanted to marry, yet there was no rabbi among the immigrants to conduct conversion ceremonies. The leader of the immigrants appointed the most learned member of the group to teach all the fiancées about Judaism, emphasizing one principle—that the Jewish G-d was the one and only G-d. The day of the marriage the bride-to-be was brought into a room blindfolded and told that a spoonful of molten gold would be put in her mouth. If she really believed that the Jewish G-d was the one and only G-d, the gold would taste as sweet as honey. And every woman believed and the gold always tasted like honey.7 14 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

Brazil had a negative image among Europeans, including Jews, in the midto late nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, few European Jews went to Brazil since more desirable locations, such as the United States and Canada, constructed no barriers to Jewish entry. As the numbers of Jews leaving Europe increased, the Baron Maurice de Hirsch de Gereuth (Baron Moritz von Hirsch auf Gereuth), a Bavarian-born Jewish philanthropist living in Brussels, founded the Jewish Colonization Association with the specific purpose of aiding poverty-stricken eastern European and Balkan Jewry by establishing Jewish farming colonies in the Americas. In 1893 the JCA set up its first colony in Moisesville, Argentina, to provide for Russian Jews already in the area. In early 1901 the JCA began to investigate expansion into Brazil and Rio Grande do Sul, because of its proximity to the Argentine colonies and the state government’s desire for new colonists. Between 1904 and 1924 the JCA formed two Jewish agricultural colonies on the frontier of Rio Grande do Sul. The eastern European Jewish colonists who settled in Brazil never amounted to more than a few thousand people, yet they played two critical roles. First, the mere existence of the agricultural colonies challenged images of Jews as exclusively and insidiously oriented toward finance and capital in urban areas. Furthermore, residents of the colonies committed themselves to life in Brazil. This challenged notions that Jews were a closed group, uninterested in becoming citizens of countries where they resided. The two farming colonies were the first step in the regular and organized migration of Jews to Brazil. The pattern of immigration to Brazil, both general and Jewish, changed when the violence and dislocation of World War I was unleashed upon the world. Although not militarily involved, Brazil suffered inflation, shortages, and capital market dislocations that scarred its already troubled social and economic face. Yet a quieter, more subtle change also occurred with the coming of global war. Throughout the Americas the streams of immigrants that had poured from Europe to new, promised lands were shut off. In Europe, World War I temporarily strengthened local economies, demanded men to fill its armies, and commandeered shipping and passenger space for military purposes. With the end of the war, immigration restriction became the rule and as nativist movements rose throughout the Western Hemisphere, immigration decreased. Such was almost the case in Brazil. The number of migrants entering Brazil’s ports fell by over 50 percent between 1913 and 1914 and by another 60 percent the year after. In 1918 fewer than twenty thousand immigrants entered Brazil, a low that would not again be approached until 1936. But, 15 Introduction

with the end of World War I, large numbers of people renewed their migration in part because Brazil did not respond to its local nationalist movements with immigration quotas. Between 1918 and 1919 the number of arrivals to Brazil’s ports almost doubled and in 1920 almost doubled again, reaching sixty-nine thousand (see table 1). These postwar immigrants differed in many ways from the prewar group, both in national origin and in their view of success and opportunity. Although Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and German immigrants continued to predominate, two new groups now entered in growing numbers: Japanese and eastern Europeans. Eastern Europeans also began entering Brazil in large numbers after the war. The upheavals created by the establishment of the new state of Poland encouraged this emigration as did restrictive quotas in the United States, Argentina, and Canada. Between 1924 and 1934 eastern European immigration to Brazil increased almost ten times as more than ninety-three thousand entered. Jews made up about 45–50 percent of those immigrants arriving in Brazil from eastern Europe. By the mid-1920s more than 10 percent of the Jews emigrating from Europe chose Brazil as their destination, and by the early 1930s the Jewish population of Brazil approached sixty thousand. The eastern European Jews who arrived in Brazil after World War I and the Russian Revolution settled primarily in the southern states of São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Rio de Janeiro and achieved a level of economic success matched by a few other immigrant groups in Brazil, notably those from Asia and the Middle East. This occurred because Jewish immigrants usually settled in or near urban centers, although they were no more city oriented than any other immigrant group prior to migration. This urban placement was fortuitous since the cities provided, in the 1920s and 1930s, economic opportunities that may never have been available in rural areas. The ability to quickly earn an income combined with the communal and ethnic-based nature of the immigration process to lead Jewish immigrants into establishing burial societies, youth groups, schools, and synagogues. With the establishment of Jewish institutions, Jewish families were more likely to invest their time and capital in a Brazilian future and less likely to leave. By the mid-1920s, Brazil was an attractive nation of relocation for Jews, and as one relief worker exclaimed, “The European Jew has adopted a new slogan: ‘Go South, young man, go South!’”8 The combination of economic success and cultural difference made Jews particular targets of nativists after the Depression. Immigrants had been expected to save Brazil’s agricultural economy and Europeanize the culture at the same time. Jews seemed to do neither. By 1934 immigration 16 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

quotas had been established via a new constitution, and criticism of Jewish immigration was becoming a regular component of political discourse. This clash between elite expectations of immigrants and the reality that Jews did not fit them is what provides the background for the longest part of this study. As popular and political nationalism grew, Jewish and Japa­ nese immigrants found themselves targeted for negative treatment by the Brazilian government. The growing Jewish immigrant population, a worsening economy, and rising nativism made the Jewish Question an important topic among intellectuals, state politicians from urban areas, and federal leaders. Beginning in 1935, Brazil began to deny visas to Jews. The existence of Nazi ideology made anti-Semitism respectable, and this surely played a role in how Brazilian policy makers reacted when confronted with growing pressure to accept Jewish immigrants and refugees. Modern European racial theories encouraged the view of Jews as an undesirable race. Anti-Semitic ideas were rampant among Brazilian intellectuals and federal policy makers in the 1930s. Yet the growing public discourse opposing Jewish entry and the resulting prohibition on Jewish entrances neither stopped Jewish entry nor particularly changed its pattern. One of the most important reasons was that a philo-Semitic vision of “the Jew” began to gain credence within the government. From this perspective, German-, Italian-, and Austrian-Jewish refugees were increasingly seen as bringing skills and capital to Brazil. International pressure to accept refugees was matched by a change in perception among some of Brazil’s most important immigration policy makers. By 1938 new rules regarding Jewish immigration reopened Brazil’s gates to such an extent that more Jews were to enter that year than in any of the ten years previous. In the 1950s Jews again began to immigrate to Brazil in significant numbers, this time from the Middle East, especially following the Suez Crisis of 1956. By 1960 Jewish-Brazilians numbered about 100,000, but, as is the case in Argentina, disputes about population size abound. Information collected for the 2000 Brazilian census showed a Jewish population of 86,825, although Jewish organizations in Brazil dispute this figure and place the number between 120,000 and 140,000. Probably the most reliable estimate comes from Israeli demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who placed the 2002 number at 97,300, a slight decline from his 1980 figure of 100,000. This made Brazilian Jewry the eleventh-largest Jewish community in the world. The largest Jewish community in Brazil is in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. The second-largest Jewish community was in Rio de Janeiro 17 Introduction

(25,000–30,000 Jews out of a population of 5.85 million); the third largest was in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul (10,000–12,000 Jews in a population of about 1.36 million), and there were other significant communities in Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Santos, and Recife (see table 1). Independent of the exact numbers, Jewish-Brazilians live in a multicultural nation that counts the largest populations of African and Japanese descent of any country in the world as well as very large populations of European and Middle Eastern descent. The multi-ethnicity of Brazil does not hide the fact that Brazil is one of the most unequal countries (in terms of income distribution) in the world, and Jews, who as a group sit at the upper end of the pyramid, often find the line between class and ethnic tension hard

table 2: Latin American Immigration to Israel by Countries of Origin and Periods 1948– 1951

1952– 1960

1961– 1964

1965– 1971

1972– 1979

1980– 1989

1990– 2000

2001– 2004

Total

Argentina

904

2,888

5,537

6,164

13,158

10,582

9,911

10,014

59,158

Brazil

304

763

637

1,964

1,763

1,763

2,161

793

10,148

Uruguay

66

425

726

1,118

2,199

2,014

827

1,158

8,533

Chile

48

401

322

1,468

1,180

1,040

604

299

5,362

Mexico

48

168

125

611

861

993

986

218

4,010

Colombia

—

—

126

289

552

475

598

275

2,315

Venezuela

—

—

109

188

245

180

378

201

1,301

Central Americaa

17

43

18

111

104

8

140

341

782

Paraguay

—

42

194

16

73

62

28

47

462

1,387

4,730

7,794

11,929

20,135

17,117

15,633

13,346

92,071

Period

Total

Source: Luis Roniger and Deby Babis, “Latin American Israelis: The Collective Identity of an Invisible Community,” in Jewish Identities in an Era of Globalization and Multiculturalism, ed. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yosef Gorny, Judit Liwerant, and Raanan Rein (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming); Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, “Table 4.2: Immigrants by Periods of Immigration and Last Country of Residence,” Statistical Abstract of Israel 2006 57 (2006): 238–39. a

 entral America includes Costa Rica, Guatemala, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, C and Haiti. 18 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

to define. Jews also find that Brazil’s well-diffused myth of “racial democracy” (the false notion that Brazil is a country uniquely free of racism) is often a complication rather than a comfort. For example, Brazil’s constitution-based antiracism laws often go unenforced, although, in a case that made international headlines, the author of a series of Holocaust denial books had his conviction upheld by the Brazilian Supreme Court. Most indicators would suggest that Jewish-Brazilian life is good (few incidents of anti-Semitism, a middle-of-the-road Middle East policy by con­secutive governments representing very different ends of the political spectrum, relative wealth of Jewish-Brazilians as compared to the overall population). Even so, the anti-Semitic incidents in neighboring Argentina mentioned previously often cast a pall over the different groups that make up the Jewish-Brazilian community. Furthermore, typical of ethnic communities in the Americas, Jewish-Brazilians struggle with questions of formal community affiliations and how to deal with the large numbers of Jews who choose to intermarry, choose not to practice religious Judaism, or are not active Zionists. Indeed, those Jews who would fall into one or more of these categories are the majority in Brazil. Brazilian rates of aliya (immigration to Israel and the taking of Israeli citizenship) are markedly lower than in Argentina, where they have always represented a minority as well (table 2).

Conclusion To make a single characterizing statement about contemporary JewishArgentine or Jewish-Brazilian communities would be an error. The former has shrunk markedly in a country with a relatively slow rate of population growth. The latter has grown slightly in a country whose overall population has exploded (see table 1). Intermarriage rates in both countries are high, but so is the growth of religious worship. In both Argentina and Brazil discourses of anti-Semitism remain critical to identity formation although acts of violence against Jewish-Argentine institutions are more frequent than against Jewish-Brazilian ones. Zionist movements are strong among affiliated Jews in both Argentina and Brazil, although the aliya rates in Brazil are extremely low and in Argentina very high (see table 2). There are currently around one hundred thousand Israeli citizens of Latin American origin. Their integration into Israeli society is considered a success story, since many have attained prominent positions in various fields. However, as Roniger and Babis have shown, Latin American Israelis have been an “invisible community,” preferring individual mobility to communal 19 Introduction

assertiveness.9 Two major factors help to explain this: First, there has never been a “wave” of immigration from Latin America to Israel, although there were peaks in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of military dictatorships in the Southern Cone (see table 2). Second, the wide demographic distribution of Latin Americans throughout Israel has made community building particularly difficult. The motivation for Latin Americans to immigrate to Israel has changed over the years. During the fifties, sixties, and seventies most immigrants moved for ideological reasons revolving around Zionism and Jewish identity, and their prime concern was for their children’s future as Jews. During the brutal military dictatorships of the 1970s many Jews moved to Israel in order to live under a democratic regime or fled in order to save their lives. In recent years, conversely, economic upheavals constituted the main motives for immigration to Israel. This has been particularly noticeable among Argentines whose entry skyrocketed after the December 2001 economic crisis and who continue to be the largest single group of Israelis of Latin American descent. The integration of Latin Americans into Israeli society was facilitated by similar social behaviors of informality and improvisation. In addition, Latin American music, novels, and films have enjoyed popularity in Israel for decades. Interest in Latin American culture grew dramatically in recent years as a result of the increase in the number of Israeli youngsters traveling to South America and the rise in the popularity of the telenovelas (which are shown daily on numerous stations) among the Israeli public. Compared to many other newcomers to Israel, Latin Americans had a strong knowledge of Israel, Zionism, Judaism, and the Hebrew language prior to their immigration. Finally, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Latin-Israeli Internet sites that provide a space where Latin American identity is asserted most noticeably. These sites serve simultaneously as an instrument of cohesion among Latin American Israelis and as a means for their integration in Israel. The essays in this volume argue that Jews are normative Latin Americans and that categories like “Argentine” and “Brazilian” are widely constructed and include members of numerous “minority” groups. Each author has looked critically at some of the traditional ideas about Jewish-Latin American life and has asked if new approaches may generate new data and new conclusions. Taken together, they suggest that Jews are not in Latin America but of Latin America.

20 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

Suggested Reading in English general titles Cohen, Jacob X. Jewish Life in South America: A Survey Study for the American Jewish Congress. New York: Bloch Publishing, 1941. Elkin, Judith Laikin. The Jews of Latin America. New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1998. Elkin, Judith Laikin, and Gilbert W. Merkx, eds. The Jewish Presence in Latin America. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. Herman, Donald L. The Latin American Jewish Community of Israel. New York: Praeger, 1984. Lesser, Jeffrey, and Ignacio Klich, eds. Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities. London: Frank Cass, 1998. Ruggiero, Kristin, ed. The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005. Sheinin, David, and Lois Baer Barr, eds. The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.

argentina Avni, Haim. Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration. Translated by Gila Brand. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991. Rein, Raanan. Argentina, Israel, and the Jews: Perón, the Eichmann Capture and After. Translated by Martha Grezenback. Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2003. Sofer, Eugene F. From Pale to Pampa: A Social History of the Jews of Buenos Aires. New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1982. Weisbrot, Robert. The Jews of Argentina: From the Inquisition to Perón. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979.

brazil Lesser, Jeffrey. Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Liebman, Seymour B. New World Jewry, 1493–1825: Requiem for the Forgotten. New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1982. Spitzer, Leo. Lives in Between: Assimilation and Marginality in Austria, Brazil, West Africa, 1780–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Wiznitzer, Arnold. Jews in Colonial Brazil. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.

21 Introduction

Notes 1. La luz, October 5, 1962. 2. Haim Avni, Argentine Jewry; Social Status and Organizational Profile [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1972); Efraim Zadoff, A Century of Argentinean Jewry: In Search of a New Model of National Identity (Jerusalem: Institute of the World Jewish Congress, 2000). 3. For recent studies, see Adrián Jmelnizky and Ezequiel Erdei, La población judía de Buenos Aires: Estudio sociodemográfico (Buenos Aires: AMIA, 2005); Yaacov Rubel, La población judía de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Perfil sociodemográfico (Buenos Aires: Joint, 2005). 4. Leonardo Senkman, Argentina, la segunda guerra mundial y los refugiados indeseables, 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires: GEL, 1991). 5. Haim Avni, “Antisemitism in Argentina: The Dimensions of Danger,” in Approaches to Antisemitism, Context and Curriculum, ed. Michael Brown (New York: AJC, 1994), 57–77. 6. Jacques Schweidson, Judeus de bombachas e chimarrão (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio Editora, 1985), 7. 7. Interview by Jeffrey Lesser with Sr. J. Belém do Pará, April 13, 1994. 8. Cecilia Razovsky, “The Jew Re-Discovers America (Jewish Immigration to Latin American Countries),” Jewish Social Service Quarterly 5, nos. 2–3 (December 1928–March 1929): 127. 9. Luis Roniger and Deby Babis, “Latin American Israelis: The Collective Identity of an Invisible Community,” in Jewish Identities in an Era of Globalization and Multiculturalism, ed. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yosef Gorny, Judit Liwerant, and Raanan Rein (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

22 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

chapter two

New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora in Twentieth-Century Latin America !

jeffrey lesser

•

E

raanan rein

thnicity is a topic that has become canonized in the study of nineteenthand twentieth-century Latin America. Among the most frequent themes are the black/white continuum in places such as Brazil, the Caribbean, and Venezuela; the indigenous/white continuum in Mexico, Central America, and the Andes; and the hegemony of white Catholic Europeans over a number of subaltern groups in the Southern Cone.1 The expansion of academic production on ethnicity, however, rarely focuses on Latin Americans who trace their ancestry to the Middle East, Asia, or Eastern Europe, or those whose ancestors were characterized religiously as non-Catholics. Today, these groups comprise at least ten million Latin Americans. Jews are one group in which there has been a notable increase in scholarly interest. For decades, the study of the group was relegated to “Jewish studies,” an academic decision that suggested Jews were not legitimate members of the nations in which they lived. This position continues in much of the scholarship and teaching outside of the United States where students learn about Latin America without hearing about the Jewish (or Middle Eastern or Asian) presence. By contrast, in the United States the study of Jews has begun to be integrated into Latin American studies, even 23

though, ironically, Jewish-Latin Americans continue to be marginalized in Jewish studies.

A New Language Critical to scholarship on ethnicity, which is defined most broadly as “a self conscious collection of people united, or closely related, by shared experiences,” is descriptive language.2 In many cases scholars use definitional language that is quite different from that used either by the group they study or by majority national populations. This is certainly the case not just for the concept of Latin America itself but also for “Latin American Jewry.” The term, frequently used in the academic literature, suggests a broad hemispheric identity, but the subjects define themselves in three competing ways: as Jews, without reference to nation; as nationals, without reference to Jewish ethnicity; and as Jewish–(fill in the nation here). The notion of “Latin American Jewry” derives from two different sources. One is transnational Jewish social and political organizations, usually based in the United States and Israel, which categorize Jews in regional rather than national ways.3 The second emerges from scholars, mainly based outside of Latin America, whose Diasporic perspectives lead them to presume similarity based on language (i.e., Spanish) and minority status (i.e., being Jews in predominantly Catholic societies).4 The term “Latin American Jewry,” however, is neither neutral nor de­­­­scriptive, since it imposes an answer to what should be an important research question: what is the relationship of minority group members to the national state and the Diasporic homeland? This question is critical for understanding the multilayered and fluid identities of individual and collectives of Jews, Asians, Middle Easterners, and those of European descent as well as populations that preceded the European arrival. The term “Latin American Jewry” may be accurate for those who consider themselves first and foremost Jews (and even question their Latin Americanness), but the research does not bear out that this is the case for all Jews. We propose scholars consider using the term “Jewish-Latin American” rather than “Latin American Jewry.” This formulation emphasizes national identity without denying the possibility of a Diasporic identity. In addition, the hyphen recalls the early days of ethnic studies in the sixties when so many U.S. citizens fought to be called Japanese-American rather than Japanese or Mexican-American rather than Mexican. Our use of the term “Jewish-Latin American” thus shifts the dominant paradigm about ethnicity 24 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

in Latin America by returning the “nation” to a prominent position just at a moment when the “trans-nation,” or perhaps no nation at all, is often an unquestioned assumption. Another way of presenting our argument would be to offer a continuum, with an ideal type of Latin American Jew at one end and an ideal type of Jewish-Latin American on the other. Individuals and groups make their own choices, and we would certainly not want to impose a formula on or dictate a pattern to any of them. Therefore Jews in Latin America would be found somewhere along this continuum. The “continuum” replaces the false binaries and dichotomies that have been imposed on the history of Jews since antiquity. Diaspora, after all, dominates the history and imagination of the Jewish people. And the historiography has tended to present the dilemma allegedly facing Diasporic Jews as between two options: either to assimilate to the surrounding culture by diluting their own traditions or to separate themselves from the world at large in order to preserve the purity of their faith and heritage. Erich S. Gruen has shown that already in the ancient period, “for most Jews, retention of a Jewish identity and accommodation to the circumstances of diaspora were joint goals and often successfully achieved.”5 Jews, of course, have no monopoly on diaspora, and the relationship between national- and immigrant-originated ethnic identity is not unique to Jews. On the contrary, Jewish experiences enable us to better understand the experiences of other ethnic groups in Latin America whose lives are often portrayed only within closed community circles. Our approach is twopronged. First, the study of ethnicity must include people other than those affiliated with community institutions. Indeed, contemporary research suggests that most ethnic group members in Latin America are not affiliated with local ethnic associations and frameworks. Notions of “ethnic community” are misleading when they include only those affiliated with organizations, places of worship, social clubs, youth movements, etc. Second, we see ethnicity as a piece within a broader identity mosaic. Identity is a coin in a pocket filled with coins of different values. Sometimes we need twenty-five cents, and we pull out one ethnicity quarter. Other times we need one hundred cents, and the ethnicity coin is just a penny of the total. Two notes of caution are needed before we elaborate on these issues. First, it is critical that scholars shun essentialism. Most Jews in Latin America are “Jewish” in the cultural sense—not on genetic, religious, ideological, or communal grounds—and define themselves as such. Furthermore, our comments do not focus on the first generation of immigrants. We are well aware that in detailed studies more attention should be given to the specific 25 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

time and particular stage in the history of each minority group. Clearly for the first generation of immigrants, the nationality of the “sending country” carried more weight than that of the “receiving country.” For this first generation the fact that they represented a multiethnic national group was of extreme importance; in that sense, the Jewish case represents a complicated “multinational ethnic group.”

Scholarship on the Jewish Past Jews are one of the smallest of Latin American ethnic groups in demographic terms and are not more prominent socially or economically than those of Asian and Middle Eastern descent. Yet the volume of scholarly work on Jewish-Latin Americans exceeds that on the other groups. The literature falls into two broad categories. First, most ethnic communities in Latin America have significant internal production that is often divorced from the national historiography. These publications are produced by community organizations or individuals linked to them and include institutional histories, oral histories, novels, short stories, and hagiographies.6 Much of the literature emphasizes uniqueness, or even cultural superiority, and is aimed at fostering communal cohesion, maintaining an ethnonational identity, and helping to mobilize resources. Self-referential production, we must remember, is common among all Latin American ethnic groups. The tendency toward internal production is reinforced by the fact that many intellectuals in most of Latin America reject ethnicity as an important analytical category, even if they themselves are of ethnic backgrounds. This ambivalence also helps to explain why there is relatively little academic scholarship on Latin American ethnicity. One way in which the scholarship on Jewish Latin America stands out is the recent boom in research published outside of the region, notably in the United States. A brief glance at the holdings of any college or university library reveals more books on Jewish-Latin Americans than on those Latin Americans of Asian or Middle Eastern descent combined.7 This quantity stems from a particular set of historical circumstances that have transformed studies of Jewish Latin America into an accepted “field” of inquiry in disciplines like history, literature, and cultural studies.8 The history of the “field” known most commonly as Latin American Jewish studies began with the centering of Israeli university education within a broader international context in the mid-sixties. In 1966 the Hebrew University of Jerusalem created the Latin American section of the Institute 26 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

of Contemporary Jewry, a unit itself formed in 1960. The Israeli-based scholars conducting research on Latin American produced two contradictory trends. One placed Israeli academics comfortably within a worldwide community of scholars of Latin American studies, as Haim Avni and Yoram Shapira insisted in a 1974 article on Latin American studies in Israel in the Latin American Research Review.9 Yet a new line of research that developed in Israel was the study of Jews in Latin America. Scholars working on these topics emphasized the growth of Zionism in Latin America, anti-Semitism, the movement of Jews to Israel, and Israeli–Latin American relations.10 The ethnic studies approach that emerged from the early Institute of Contemporary Jewry provoked a reaction among some Latin Americanists, for whom the “nation” was preeminent. David Rock’s review of the En­­ glish edition of Avni’s classic Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration (first published in Hebrew in 1982 and soon thereafter published in Spanish by the AMIA, an organization representing the formal Jewish community of Argentina) made this clear: “If the author may be well versed in the modern history of the Jewish people, his knowledge of Argentina is at best rudimentary.”11 Rock’s critique revealed what has continued to be a tension among scholars of ethnicity in Latin America. The first generation of scholars studying Jewish-Latin Americans at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry made a foundational contribution, but one that was barely noticed outside of Israel. Indeed, one of the first non-Israeli academic publications on Latin American Jewry was by Martin H. Sable, a “Latin Americanist of the Jewish faith specializing in bibliography” at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who recounts that the need for a bibliography on Latin American Jewish topics occurred to him while returning home from Sabbath prayers. While this classic ethnic memory recollection was no doubt correct, Sable claims his deeper inspiration came not from the academy but from reading about Latin American Jewry in Boston’s The Jewish Advocate.12 Indeed, Sable’s massive collection of over five thousand citations does not mention Avni and Shapira’s 1974 article in the Latin American Research Review. The great leap forward in recentering the study of Latin American Jewry out of Israel came in 1982 when a group met at the Latin American Studies Association conference to discuss “the intersection of Latin American studies and Jewish studies.”13 Later that year the first conference on Latin American Jewish studies was held at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati). At that meeting, which linked studies of Jewry in the United States and Latin America via the wide holding of the 27 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

American Jewish Archives, the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA) was established, with Judith Laikin Elkin, perhaps the first U.S. scholar to write on Jews from a Latin Americanist background and to publish her work with a press known for its Latin American series, as its president.14 The following year a second conference was held at the University of New Mexico, not coincidentally then the home of the Latin American Research Review and one of the most active Latin American studies programs in the United States.15 Together these meetings suggested the wide-ranging interests of LAJSA as both an ethnic studies and area studies organization. The establishment of LAJSA changed the study of Latin American ethnicity. Today, to take a broad, modern Latin American studies course in the United States without hearing something about Jews is virtually impossible (although Middle Easterners and Asians still go unmentioned). Academic conferences devoted to Latin America frequently have papers relating to Jews, often on panels whose themes are not Jewish-Latin Americans. Since LAJSA emerged out of Latin American (not Jewish) studies, it might have been expected to take the position that Jews were one of many components of a pluralistic Latin American society. The research produced since 1982, however, is much like the earlier studies that emerged from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, often embedded with the idea of Diasporic primacy rather than nation-based identity. What in 1982 appeared to be an intellectual shift now seems more like a repositioning from Israel to the United States and away from a seemingly Zionist outlook toward a seemingly ethnic perspective. Examining the post-1982 publications on Jewish Latin America, we see two main intellectual positions. The first is the notion that Jewishness is the primary (and at times exclusive) basis of identity. Jewish life in any one Latin American country is often presented as similar to Jewish life in any other specific country. Research frequently focuses on commonality, with data being mined from formal community institutions. The classic example is Judith Elkin’s foundational The Jews of the Latin American Republics (1980), which compared Jewish life across the region. The production that followed her groundbreaking book was often similar in focus. Edited collections have titles like The Jewish Presence in Latin America, The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America, or The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean.16 Surprisingly, nationally based volumes (i.e., Jews of Argentina or Jews of Brazil) have taken the same approach, rarely making national comparisons of Jews with other national ethnic minorities.17 Monographs about Jews in Latin America, although about specific countries and often 28 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

focusing on specific topics, are similar to edited volumes in that comparative references are almost always to Jews.18 A second dominant presumption is that Jews live in closed communities. This has emerged in part because much primary documentation about Jewish-Latin Americans was written in Yiddish or Hebrew, languages not considered normative in Latin American studies. Indeed, the issue of language led to decades of scholarly invisibility for Jewish-Latin Americans, a point Judith Elkin made more than twenty-five years ago in the preface to her Jews of the Latin American Republics.19 These sources often create the impression that Jews lived unconnected to general society, a phenomenon we see in research on other ethnic groups as well. The closed community approach also led to a lack of methodological debate, and we have never seen a publication or heard a lecture that proposes that studying Jews, or any other ethnic group in Latin America, demands a specific approach. In this sense the establishment of the Latin American and Iberian section of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry and the Latin American Jewish Studies Association never achieved the implicit goal of creating a “field” in the classic academic sense of the word. The study of Jewish Latin America, while not without debate, has ad­­ vanced in terms of quality and quantity of production in the last two decades. Jews have been normalized into broader patterns of Latin American society, particularly in the fields of Latin American literature, cultural studies, and history. Scholarly work on Jews is often placed within a broader societal perspective and major academic publishers and journals regularly publish on these topics. Much innovative research on Jews is found in second or third books written by those trained as scholars of Latin America.20 They see Latin Americans of Jewish origins as part of the ethnic and cultural mosaics that constitute Latin American societies, with their hybrid and complex identities. For these authors, Jews do not just live in Latin America, and they focus on the dynamic relations between Jews and non-Jews in economic, social, cultural, and political life. Furthermore, a growing number of scholars are asking what the experiences of Jews in Latin America reveal about other immigrant and ethnic groups and about the overall character of Latin American societies.

Rethinking Latin American Jewry The tension of balancing the analysis of ethnic minorities as either diasporic or national, and its concomitant rejection of the “or” in favor of the “and,” 29 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

is relevant to the study of ethnicity in Latin America in the broadest sense. Thus the study of Jewish-Latin Americans can help to articulate new approaches to the field of ethnic studies. Each of the interrelated comments below begins with a reference to a commonly held assumption that we challenge by bringing forth new research propositions: (1) Most studies of ethnicity emphasize exceptionalism. The assumption of uniqueness as an a priori category of analysis manifests itself in scholarship where historiographical points of reference only indicate the experiences of members of the same group in different countries. This suggests that Jews, for example, are a minority unlike others, and therefore when studying Argentine Jews or Brazilian Jews, one should only be familiar with the experiences of Jews in South Africa or Australia.21 Exceptionalism suggests that ethnicity is a nonnational phenomenon and that ethnic group members are either separate from, or victims of, national culture. This tendency is not exclusive to scholarship on Jews. Research on Latin Americans of Japanese, Chinese, and Lebanese descent, for example, usually presents the group first and foremost in their diasporic condition.22 We propose that transnational ethnicity is not necessarily a more dominant identity component than national identity. Research on Jewish-Latin Americans might focus on engagement in the national context in order to create comparison, and perhaps contact zones, with other ethnic minorities such as those of Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Syrian, and Lebanese descent.23 We know of no research project that has ever tested the interrelated and fluid relationship between national identity and the presumed primacy of Diasporic solidarity among Jews. As Jorge Luis Borges once wrote about a Jewish-Argentine author, one might say that Argentine Jews have always struggled to be “unmistakably Argentine,” and we wonder if the tension between ethnicity and nation that his comment reveals might be a starting point for research.24 Anthropologists rather than historians seem to be beginning to adopt this path.25 (2) Research on ethnicity in Latin America often presumes that the children and grandchildren of immigrants express a special relationship to their ancestors’ place of birth or imagined homeland. Implicit in this assumption is the idea that ethnic minorities do not play a significant role in a national identity formation. Studies of Jewish-Latin Americans, for example, often assume that rank-and-file support of Zionist organizations has been first and foremost about the state of Israel. We propose that researchers ask whether participation in Zionist activity is necessarily about the presumed homeland of Israel. Put differently, to what 30 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

homeland does Zionist activity in Latin America actually relate? Furthermore, does support for Israel constitute a main ingredient of the identity of Latin American Jews? A position often advanced but hardly tested.26 Some recent research suggests that “Zionist activity” in Argentina, for example, is a strategy that allows Jewish-Argentines to have a madre patria similar to that of Italo-Argentines (Italy) and Spanish-Argentines (Spain). In this formulation, supporting Zionism is the Jewish way of being typically Argentine.27 Arnd Schneider’s recent sociological work on Argentine citizens who have gained Italian passports suggests that holding a foreign passport is critical to contemporary middle-class Argentine identity.28 (3) Many scholars suggest that the ethnic “homeland” has a commitment to its diasporic communities. This results from the often untested assumption that the center of ethnic collective identity must be outside the nation of residence. It also reflects a relative lack of debate about the location of the diasporic center and periphery. Scholars often presume that Israel has an exceptionally deep commitment to Jewish-Latin Americans and that its interests are similar or complementary to theirs. Recent scholarship challenges this assumption and suggests that the bond between the Jewish Diaspora and the State of Israel is similar to other diasporic/national links.29 In fact, many Israelis regard the Jewish Diaspora with a certain disdain, and Israeli policy makers often show little sensitivity toward the needs and sensibilities of individual Jewish communities in Latin America. This attitude was reflected, for example, in the Israeli government’s decision to limit the help extended to Jewish-Argentine victims of the Argentine dictatorship (1976–1982) in order to maintain good relations with the ruling junta.30 This realpolitik attitude combines foundational Zionism’s “negation of the Diaspora” attitude with a contemporary belief in Israel that Diasporic Jews should maintain a one-way connection that includes loyalty, political and moral support, and financial assistance. (4) Many scholars studying ethnicity in Latin America presume that heritage makes one a member of an ethnic community. The scholarship thus mirrors the position of many Latin Americans who believe the same thing. Yet when one examines exogamy, the rates are often above 50 percent, and many individuals do not see themselves (or wish to be seen as) members of a formally constituted ethnic community. There are many studies of ethnic community leaders and institutions but few about what might be termed “unaffiliated ethnics.”31 This broad tendency is repeated in studies of Jewish-Latin Americans. Research has ignored the 50 percent (or more in many places) of Jews who 31 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

were or are not affiliated with Jewish institutions.32 The frequently used term “Jewish community” is misleading if it refers only to those affiliated with Jewish organizations, synagogues, social clubs, or youth movements. Documenting life stories and reclaiming the memories of unaffiliated Jews will provide important lessons on the nature of national and ethnic identity. Studies might be conducted of Jews married to non-Jews, individuals who express Jewish identity based on culture rather than on religion or ethnicity, and authors who do not explicitly express their Jewishness (the JewishBrazilian novelist Clarice Lispector comes to mind). Traditional studies, for example, would ignore people like the Oscar-winning songwriter Jorge Drexler (The Motorcycle Diaries). Drexler, born in Uruguay to a GermanJewish refugee from Nazism, does not speak German yet holds a German passport. He lived for a year in Israel but moved to Spain for professional reasons. While his first songs were written in Hebrew, he is known for his works in Spanish, including a few with Jewish themes like “Milonga del moro judío” or “El pianista del gueto de Varsovia.” Recently, Drexler was interviewed in the New York Times, and he characterized himself as a Jew and “a lot of other things too,” since he is not affiliated with religious institutions and is married to a Catholic.33 People like Drexler, with strong but nonexclusive Jewish identities, should not be ignored. (5) Much scholarship on Latin American ethnicity correctly notes that dominant majority discourses are frequently racist. Yet there is often a gap between rhetoric and social practice. Indeed, racist expressions have not prevented many Latin American ethnic groups from entering into the dominant political, cultural, economic, and social sectors. Yet scholars focusing on discourse tend to find victims, often suggesting that racism represents an absolutely hegemonic structure.34 Thus, ethnic identity formation appears based primarily on the struggle against discrimination and exclusion. Scholars examining social status, on the other hand, come to a different conclusion. They suggest that success among Asian, Middle Eastern, and Jewish-Latin Americans places them in the “white” category.35 The scholarship on Jewish-Latin Americans is a case in point. The literature is almost uniform in suggesting that anti-Semitism in Latin America is stronger than in other regions of the world. One might get the impression that life for Jews on the continent is unbearable, a continued nightmare.36 Yet even Haim Avni, whose own work often focuses on anti-Semitism, has correctly noted the “overdeveloped focus of research energy [on] anti-Semitism.”37 (6) Much of the literature gives the mistaken impression of homogenous and unstratified immigrant-descended ethnic communities. Latin 32 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

Americans of Asian and Middle Eastern descent seem uniformly in the middle class or higher, a position emphasized by a scholarly focus on ethnic success stories like Alberto Fujimori (Peru), Celso Lafer (Brazil), or Carlos Saúl Menem (Argentina). This image is even more accentuated with regard to Jewish-Latin Americans, who are presented in the scholarship as having rapidly and exclusively moved into middle- to upper-middle-class status. This erroneous assumption leads many scholars to not even consider research on the Jewish working class.38 There are, however, other approaches. First, we might learn a lesson from scholars of Hollywood film who have correctly noted that a person with a “non-Jewish” name is not necessarily a non-Jew. Who knows what the biography of the Argentine political leader Emilio Perina, born Moisés Konstantinovsky, would teach us about ethnicity? Second, discourses of anti-Semitism, even when emerging from powerful centers of political power, do not always translate into absolute oppression. Discussing racist discourses together with individual and group mobility may well change our understanding of the nature of both oppression and success. Third, we question whether minority group identity is primarily a reaction to societal bigotry. Stereotypes often function because of their positive presumptions, and there is a distinction between Judeophobes (those who hate all Jews) and anti-Semites (those who hold some or many negative stereotypical notions about Jews as a group). Furthermore, those who express negative stereotypes about Jews (or any other ethnic group) may hold positive stereotypes as well. (7) There are a number of other areas that have been underresearched in Latin American ethnic studies generally and Jewish Latin American studies specifically. Notable among them is gender.39 Studies of Jewish women in Latin America too often focus on prostitutes or novelists, although Jewish women have played fundamental roles in all aspects of society.40 As Sandra McGee Deutsch emphasizes in chapter 8, “Jewish women are virtually absent from the secondary historical sources. Studying them is vital for its own sake, to recover the voices and tell the untold stories of the unheard half of the Jewish population.” The same holds true for children and sexual minorities. Another issue relates to the presentation of homogenous ethnic communities (i.e., “Jewish” community, “Arab” community, “Asian” community). While the distinctions are occasionally more refined (Japanese and Chinese and Indians; Syrians and Lebanese and Palestinians), the literature is primarily monolithic and community focused. Examining ethnic 33 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

groups grosso modo ignores intraethnic divisions that are often replicated over many generations. The number of Okinawans among Latin American Nikkei is very large, as is the number of Muslims among Middle Easterners who are often presented in the scholarship only as Christians. Among Jewish-Latin Americans there is a lack of research on Sephardic Jews (those Jews from Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origins), themselves divided (like Ashkenazim from Central and Eastern Europe) by nation and by city of origin.41 Yet smaller numerical communities and subcommunities can teach us much about ethnic relations, just as Leo Spitzer’s study of Jews in the virtually ignored nation of Bolivia has become a model for the study of ethnicity, Diaspora, and memory.42

! This essay has proposed a “new ethnic studies” for Latin America and suggests that the study of Jewish-Latin Americans is an example of how that might be implemented. Yet our eagerness for change is put forward with the understanding that our own trajectory is based deeply in that which we have criticized. Indeed, we have contributed to many of the volumes mentioned, and our own scholarship might at times represent an example of the limitations of the “old ethnic studies.” Ethnic studies is not only about single ethnic communities (although such research is critical) but also about comparing multiple ethnic groups in a national context. From this comparative standpoint, many issues that might appear unique to Jews are in fact of general applicability. Perhaps in Latin America the commutative property holds true: if Jews are like Asians, and Asians are like Arabs, then Arabs and Jews, in some respects, are indeed one.

34 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

Notes 1. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, eds., Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Michael Hanchard, ed., Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Samuel L. Baily and Eduardo José Míguez, eds., Mass Migration to Modern Latin America (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003). 2. Ellis Cashmore, Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations, 3rd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 102. 3. See, for example, the annual volumes of David Singer and Lawrence Grossman, eds., American Jewish Year Book 2004: The Annual Record of Jewish Civilization (New York: American Jewish Committee, various years). The American Jewish Committee has also produced Comunidades Judías de Latinoamérica. See also the studies produced by the B’nai Brith International Latin American Affairs Division: www.bnaibrith.org/ ppolicy/lamerica/index.cfm?region=0. 4. Isaiah Raffalovich, “The Condition of Jewry and Judaism in South America,” Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook XI (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1930); Jacob X. Cohen, Jewish Life in South America: A Survey Study for the American Jewish Congress (New York: Bloch Publishing, 1941); Jacob Beller, Jews in Latin America (New York: Jonathan David Publishers, 1969); Martin A. Cohen, ed., The Jewish Experience in Latin America, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: American Jewish Historical Society, 1971); U. O. Schmelz and Sergio DellaPergola, The Demography of the Jews in Argentina and in Other Countries of Latin America [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1974); Judith Laikin Elkin, Jews of the Latin American Republics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Judith Laikin Elkin and Gilbert W. Merkx, eds., The Jewish Presence in Latin America (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987); AMILAT, Judaica latinoamericana: Estudios históricosociales (Jerusalem: Editorial Universitaria Magnes, Universidad Hebrea, published every four years beginning in 1988). 5. Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), vii. 6. Organización Sionista en el Uruguay, El Sionismo en el Uruguay: Editado con motivo del 25 aniversario de la organización sionista en el Uruguay (Montevideo: Editorial e Imprenta “ANCLA” de Bernardo Margulies, 1943); Tsentral farband fun Galitsyaner Yidn in Argentine, Galitsyaner yidn: Yoyvel-bukh (Buenos Aires: Tsentral farband fun Galitsyaner Yidn in Argentine, 1966); Mario Nassí, La comunidad ashkenazi de Caracas: Breve historia institucional (Caracas: Unión Israelita de Caracas, 1981); Egon e Frieda Wolff, Natal, uma comunidade singular (Rio de Janeiro: Cemitério Comunal Israelita, 1984); Medio siglo de vida judía en La Paz (La Paz: Circulo Israelita, 1987); S. Leon Trachtemberg, Los Judíos de Lima y las provicias del Perú (Lima: Unión Israelita del Perú, 1989); Alicia Gojman de Backal, coordinadora, Generaciones judías en México: La kehilá ashkenazí (1922–1992), 7 vols. (México, DF: Comunidad Ashkenazí de México, 1993). 35 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

7. Some recent works on other ethnic communities include Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Akemi Kikumura, and James A. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); John Taufik Karam, “Distinguishing Arabesques: The Politics and Pleasures of Being Arab in Neoliberal Brazil” (PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University, 2003); Lok C. D. Siu, Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). For earlier works see Robert M. Levine, Race and Ethnic Relations in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Historical Dictionary and Bibliography (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980). 8. For a listing of pre-1990 works on Jewish-Latin Americans, see Judith Laikin Elkin and Ana Lya Sater, Latin American Jewish Studies: An Annotated Guide to the Literature (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990). Dr. David Hirsch at the UCLA library has compiled an updated list that can be found at www.library. ucla.edu/libraries/url/colls/judaica/lajs.htm. 9. Haim Avni and Yoram Shapira, “Teaching and Research on Latin America in Israel,” Latin American Research Review 9, no. 3 (Fall 1974): 39–51. 10. For Avni’s early publications, see the appendix to AMILAT, Latin American Jewry: Essays in Honor of Haim Avni [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 2001). 11. David Rock, “Ideas, Immigrants et Alia in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Argentina,” Latin American Research Review 29, no. 1 (1994): 172–83. 12. Martin H. Sable, Latin American Jewry: A Research Guide (New York: Ktav, 1978), xi. 13. Judith Laikin Elkin, ed., Resources for Latin American Jewish Studies: Proceedings of the First Research Conference of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, Held on the Cincinnati Campus of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion on October 30–November 1, 1982 (Cincinnati, OH: Latin American Jewish Studies Association, 1982), ix. 14. Elkin, Jews of the Latin American Republics. The proceedings of the first LAJSA conference can be found in Judith Laikin Elkin, ed., Resources for Latin American Jewish Studies: Proceedings of the First Research Conference of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, Held on the Cincinnati Campus of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion on October 30–November 1, 1982 (Ann Arbor, MI: Latin American Jewish Studies Association, 1984). 15. A selection of the papers from that first conference was published in Elkin and Merkx, eds., The Jewish Presence in Latin America. 16. Ibid.; David Sheinin and Lois Baer Barr, eds., The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America: New Studies on History and Literature (New York: Garland, 1996), or Kristin Ruggiero, ed., The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005); Marjorie Agosín, ed., Memory, Oblivion, and Jewish Culture in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005); Judit Bokser Liwerant and Alicia Gojman de Backal, eds., Encuentro y alteridad, vida y cultura judía en América Latina (Mexico City: UNAM, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999). 36 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

17. Monica Grin and Nelson H. Vieira, eds., Experiência cultural judaica no Brasil / Recepção, inclusão e ambivalência (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2004); Ricardo Feierstein and Stephen A. Sadow, eds., Recreando la cultura judeoargentina: 1894–2001: En el umbral del segundo siglo: Encuentro 2001 (Buenos Aires: Mila, 2002); Judit Bokser de Liwerant et al., Imagenes de un encuentro: La presencia judía en México durante la primera mitad del siglo XX (Mexico City: UNAM/ Tribuna Israelita, 1992). 18. Jeffrey Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Adina Cimet, Ashkenazi Jews in Mexico: Ideologies in the Structuring of a Community (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); Katherine Morris, Odyssey of Exile: Jewish Women Flee the Nazis for Brazil (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1996); Robert Levine, Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1993). 19. Elkin, Jews of the Latin American Republics; Eliahu Toker, El idish es tabién latinoamerica (Buenos Aires: Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos, 2003). 20. See the authors in Jewish History 18, no. 1 (2004), special issue on “Gender, Ethnicity, and Politics: Latin American Jewry Revisited,” guest edited by Raanan Rein, or Shofar 19, no. 3 (Spring 2001), special issue on “The Jewish Diaspora of Latin America,” guest edited by Nelson H. Vieira. For the hybrid and complex identities of Jewish-Latin American writers, see Edna Aizenberg, Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires: Borges, Gerchunoff, and Argentine-Jewish Writing (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2002). 21. Daniel Elazar and Peter Medding, Jewish Communities in Frontier Societies: Argentina, Australia and South Africa (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983). 22. Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, eds., The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration (London and New York: I. B. Tauris and St. Martin’s Press, 1992); The Americas 53, no. 1 (July 1996), special issue on “Turco Immigrants in Latin America,” guest edited by Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser; Jeffrey Lesser, ed., Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Wanni W. Anderson and Robert G. Lee, eds., Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005). 23. Two early attempts at such an approach are Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, eds., Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities (London: Frank Cass, 1998), and Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). Portuguese version: Negociando a identidade nacional: Imigrantes, minorias e a luta pela etnicidade no Brasil (São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2001). 24. Jorge Luis Borges in his 1940 prologue to Carlos M Grünberg, Mester de judería; Prólogo de Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires: Editorial Argirópolis, 1940). 25. For early examples of this effort to explore the relations between Jews, other European immigrants, and local populations, see Shari Jacobson, “Looking Forward to the Past: The Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Community of Buenos Aires” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1999); Misha Klein, “Braided Lives: 37 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

On Being Jewish and Brazilian in São Paulo” (PhD diss., University of Cali­ fornia, Berkeley, 2002); Judith Noemí Freidenberg, Memorias de Villa Clara (Buenos Aires: Antropofagia, 2005); Teresa Porzecanski, La vida empezo aca: Inmigrantes judíos al Uruguay: Historias de vida y perspectiva antropológica de la conformacion de la comunidad judía uruguaya, contrastes culturales y procesos de enculturacion (Montevideo: Lindari y Russo, 2005). 26. Haim Avni, “El sionismo en la Argentina: El aspecto ideológico,” in Judaica latinoamericana: Estudios histórico-sociales 5, ed. AMILAT (Jerusalem: Editorial Universitaria Magnes, Universidad Hebrea, 2005), 145–68; Silvia Schenkolewsky-Kroll, The Zionist Movement and the Zionist Parties in Argentina, 1935–1948 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996); Judit Liwerant de Bokser, “El movimiento nacional judío: El sionismo en México, 1922–1947,” (PhD diss., UNAM, Mexico, 1991); Sigue Friesel, Bror Chail: História do movimento e do kibutz brasileiro (Jerusalem: Departamento da Juventude e do Chalutz da Organização Sionista Mundial, 1956). 27. Raanan Rein, “Together yet Apart: Israel and Argentine Jews” (keynote address at the conference of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, Dartmouth College, 2004); Mollie Lewis, “Becoming ‘Israelitas-Argentinos’: Looking for Argentine Sephardic Identity in the Weekly Israel, 1925–1935” (paper presented at the conference of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, Dartmouth College, 2004). 28. Arnd Schneider, Futures Lost: Nostalgia and Identity among Italian Immigrants in Argentina (Oxford and New York: P. Lang, 2000). 29. A recent essay that questions the assumption of Jewish exceptionalism is Gabriel Sheffer, “Is the Jewish Diaspora Unique? Reflections on the Diaspora’s Current Situation,” Israel Studies 10, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 1–35. See also Raanan Rein, Argentina, Israel and the Jews: Perón, the Eichmann Capture and After (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2003), in Spanish Argentina, Israel y los Judíos: Encuentros e desencuentros, mitos e realidades (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Lumiere, 2001). 30. For the polemic surrounding this debate, see Marcel Zohar, Let My People Go to Perdition: Betrayal in Blue and White [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tsitrin, 1990); Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder “From Argentina to Israel: Escape, Evacuation and Exile,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37, no. 2 (2005): 351–77; Joel Barromi, “Israel frente a la dictadura military argentina. El episodio de Córdoba y el caso Timerman,” in El legado del autoritarismo: Derechos humanos y antisemitismo en la Argentina contemporánea, ed. Leonardo Senkman and Mario Szanjder (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1995). 31. In Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Akemi Kikumura, and James A. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Comissão de Elaboração da História dos 80 Anos da Imigração Japonesa no Brasil, Uma epopéia moderna: 80 anos da imigração japonesa no Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 1992); María Bjerg and Hernán Otero, eds., Inmigracíon y redes sociales en la Argentina moderna (Tandil: CEMLA, IEHS, 1995); Hourani and Shehadi, eds., The Lebanese in the World; Jose C. 38 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 32. Among the few studies that include unaffiliated Jews are Henrique Rattner, Tradição e mudança: A comunidade judaica em São Paulo (São Paulo: Editora Atica, 1977), and Eugene Sofer, From Pale to Pampa: A Social History of the Jews of Buenos Aires (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982). 33. “Latin American Singer’s Rainbow Coalition of Identities,” New York Times, July 12, 2005. 34. Ignacio Klich and Mario Rapoport, eds., Discriminacíon y racismo en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1997); Martin N. Dreher, Arthur Blásio Rambo, and Marcos Justo Tramontini, eds., Imigração e imprensa: XV simpósio de históriada imigração e colonização (Porto Alegre: Instituto Histórico de São Leopoldo, 2004). 35. George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1988 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 56; Robert Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 76; Ruben E. Reina, Parana—Social Boundaries in an Argentine City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). 36. Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, O anti-semitismo na era Vargas: Fantasmas de uma geração (1930–1945) (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988); Graciela Ben-Dror, Católicos, Nazis y Judíos: La iglesia argentina en los tiempos del Tercer Reich (Buenos Aires: Lumiere, 2003); Laura Pérez Rosales, “Anticardenismo and Anti-Semitism in Mexico, 1940,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America: New Studies on History and Literature, ed. David Sheinin and Lois Baer Barr (New York: Garland, 1996), 183–97; Margalit Bejarano, “Antisemitism in Cuba under Democratic, Military and Revolutionary Regimes, 1944–1963,” Patterns of Prejudice 24, no. 1 (1990): 32–46; Clara Adrighi et al., Antisemitismo en Uruguay: Raices, discursos, imágenes (Montevideo: Trilce, 2000). 37. Haim Avni, “Post War Latin American Jewry: An Agenda for the Study of the Last Five Decades,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America: New Studies on History and Literature, ed. David Sheinin and Lois Baer Barr (New York: Garland, 1996), 3–19. In a recent paper Bernardo Sorj characterized most studies on anti-Semitism in Brazil as a gross inflation and exaggeration. See his “La sociabilidad brasilera y la identidad judía” in the international colloquium “Las identidades judías en una era de globalización y multiculturalismo,” Mexico City, September 2005. 38. Rafael Kogan and David Diskin, both of whom became supporters of Perón, were key figures in Argentine trade unions in the 1940s but have received little scholarly attention so far. 39. One recent volume that represents an important step forward is Florencia E. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche of Nicolás Aliaño and the Chilean State, 1906–2001 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 40. Gerardo Bra, La organización negra: La increible historia de la Zvi Migdal (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1982); Victor A. Mirelman, En busqueda de una identidad: Los inmigrantes judíos en Buenos Aires, 1890–1939 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Milá, 1988), chap. 9; Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: 39 New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora

Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), passim; Nora Glickman, The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Libernan (New York: Garland, 2000); Isabel Vincent, Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas (New York: William Morrow, 2005); Beatriz Kushnir, Baile de máscaras: Mulheres judias e prostituição: As polacas e suas associações de ajuda mutual (Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora, 1996). 41. Margalit Bejarano examines the modest production on Sephardic Jewry in Latin America in her recent article “Sephardic Communities in Latin America—Past and Present,” in Judaica latinoamericana: Estudios históricosociales 5, ed. AMILAT (Jerusalem: Editorial Universitaria Magnes, Universidad Hebrea, 2005), 9–26. See also Liz Hamui de Halabe, Identidad colectiva. Rasgos culturales de los inmigrantes judeo alepinos en México (Mexico City: JGH Editores, 1977), and Adriana M. Brodsky, “The Contours of Identity: Sephardic Jews and the Construction of Jewish Communities in Argentina, 1880 to the Present” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2004). 42. Leo Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998).

40 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein

chapter three

How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories of Nation and Ethnicity !

jeffrey lesser

I

n the field of Jewish studies many scholars portray Jews as divorced from the nations that they call home. Jews, when viewed as unintegrated into majority society, are often presented as victims. When integrated, they are often represented as not fully Jewish. Such notions have been taken a step further in the study of Latin American Jewry. In this area of research, where nations often have nonwhite majorities, Jews are often placed unquestioningly in the “white” category along with others of European descent (only recently have studies of Sephardic Jews been seriously undertaken by those conducting research on modern Latin America).1 Indeed the studies of Jewish “whiteness” (or lack thereof) that have become so central to the study of Jews (and other ethnic groups) in the United States have been generally ignored in the Latin American case.2 Such attitudes had a deep effect on my early research on Jewish life in Latin America. My aforementioned Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question is a prime example of a study that began with the assumption that Jews were “white,” just like all other immigrants of European descent. Yet the documentation told a different story. Jews were neither white nor black: they were located in a category that the traditional scholarship never 41

examined. My assumption was that this placement was related to the very specific history of Jewish-Gentile relations in the Americas, and thus I tried to understand the question of Jewish “race” in Brazil via a comparison with Jewish life in other countries in the hemisphere. This approach was put to the test when Albert Hourani, a leading scholar of the Arab experience, asked me to contribute to a volume he was writing on the Lebanese diaspora.3 “Professor Hourani,” I implored in a classic expression of traditional ethnic studies, “I study Jews, not Arabs.” The professor was not interested in my excuses. “Go back to the documents,” he told me, and of course I did. What I found led me to reevaluate my assumptions regarding Jews and other ethnic groups. Virtually every public discussion of Jews in Brazil included Arabs and Japanese as well. Typical was a 1934 Jornal do comercio editorial from the Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres whose membership was filled with nativist intellectuals, diplomats, and powerful federal and state politicians. The threat which hovers over Brazil of an invasion of the inhabitants of Iraq, which England wished to place in Paraná, was a signal of alarm which awakened our people and warned them against certain currents of immigration which have been coming our way. We refer in particular to the Japanese and the Jews who for good reasons are undesirable immigrants rejected today by all nations that are in need of foreign labor.4 What could it mean that these three groups, who arrived in Brazil at different times, inserted themselves into the economy in different ways, and had little to do with each other, were linked in the discourses of the Brazilian elite? And why did the traditional scholarship ignore these groups by functionally lumping them into a kind of honorary “white” category? As I researched these questions, I began to realize the logic in these linkages. My goal with this essay, then, is to use the broad framework of comparative minority statuses to expand the academic dialogue about Jewish and nonJewish ethnicity in Latin America and elsewhere.5 My goal is not to provide set answers but rather to ask new questions. Comparing different ethnic groups within a national context suggests my approach to the study of Jews is primarily as a student of Brazil, a country whose national identity has been characterized from at least the nineteenth century onward by a public discourse of racial mixture that is often rejected in the private sphere. Put more bluntly, there is a widely proffered 42 Jeffrey Lesser

public notion that Brazil is a nation with an unusually low level of racism (or with none at all!) and that distinctions between what appear to be racial groups are actually based on class. The belief that race is subsumed by class, and is thus inconsequential, often makes Brazil a racial showcase. A postwar UNESCO study suggested that Brazil was a location of positive race relations and an example of the permanence of racial inequality without legal segregation.6 This research suggested that socially ascendant individuals and groups could not be victims of racism. With class as the critical marker, many “ethnic” Brazilians (such as those of Jewish, Japanese, and Middle Eastern descent) became part of a vague whiteness. Yet these notions are contradicted by a social, political, and economic structure that leads to extremely high correlations between race and indicators such as income and education, with “blackness” representing the lower ends of the scale. In addition, racialist language is a regular part of Brazilian life. Any study of ethnicity in Brazil—centering on Jews or any other ethnic group—must, therefore, ask what it means to have a normative discourse about race and ethnicity that few people accept in practice. The structural and discursive ways in which race is constructed lead many Brazilians to have multiple stable identities that are brought forth in situational ways. A person of Japanese descent may, in some situations, complain bitterly about the assumption by the majority that he is “Japanese” and not “Brazilian” but in others may assert exactly his “Japaneseness” to suggest he is unusually hardworking and honest. In Brazil (like elsewhere) ethnicity is not “natural” but constructed. As individuals move in and out of different cultural, economic, and social spaces (like the home, the workplace, and relationships with relatives, friends, and lovers), the ways in which ethnicity is expressed is ever changing. While such constructions are often implicit, that is not always the case. At times ethnicity/identity/home seem to be a resource that is deployed in response to specific circumstances. While one may assert ethnicity in the workplace to reinforce an idea of hard work, the same person may reject ethnicity in a dance club where they want to be viewed as “fun” rather than as “uptight.”7 Those who study the United States will perhaps be surprised to think of ethnicity as currency in the marketplace of jobs, marriage partners, or cultural action, yet this seems to be the case in Brazil. Ethnicity, however, is not simply strategic. Indeed, it is sometimes “real” in that it provides an emotional way for people to be at ease about themselves in both comfortable and awkward circumstances. Brazilian ethnicity seems to be less of 43 How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories

an é (from the verb “to be” [ser] in its nontransitional usage) and more of an está (from the verb “to be” [estar] in its transitional usage). Since comparing different groups in the same national context is the key to my argument, let me begin with a joke that I recently received through the Internet: Walking through San Francisco’s Chinatown, a tourist is fascinated with all the Chinese restaurants, shops, signs and banners. He turns a corner and sees a building with the sign, Saul Dumbrowski’s Chinese Laundry. “Saul Dumbrowski?” he muses. “How the heck does that fit in here?” So he walks into the shop and sees an old Chinese gentleman behind the counter. The tourist asks, “How did this place get a name like ‘Saul Dumbrowski’s Chinese Laundry’?” The old man answers, “Is name of owner.” The tourist asks, “Well, who and where is the owner?” “Me, is right here,” replies the old man. “You? How did you ever get a name like ‘Saul Dumbrowski’?” “Is simple,” says the old man. “Many, many year ago when come to this country, was stand in line at Documentation Center. Man in front is Jewish gentleman from Poland. Lady look at him and go, ‘What your name?’ He say, ‘Saul Dumbrowski.’ Then she look at me and go, ‘What your name?’ I say, ‘Sem Ting’” (drum roll). This joke is funny (I have retold it to great success at both academic conferences and dinner parties and laughed heartily when I read it) for a number of reasons. By mixing ideas of nation, race, and religion, it assumes, incorrectly, that Chinese Jews cannot exist.8 Yet the formulation of both “Jews” and “Chinese” as static and pure categories presumes that listeners will find it absurd that the two groups might be confused. Such assumptions, however, are problematic from a scholarly perspective. To find cultural similarities among “different” ethnic groups is far from absurd, and nation can become ethnicity (and vice versa) quite easily. While Saul Dumbrowski lives in San Francisco, the joke could easily be reformulated to include those Brazilians who define themselves as Jewish, Arab (often called Siro-Lebanese), Japanese (often called Nikkei), or Korean. But what are the implications, following the logic of the joke, of saying that Jews, Arabs, Japanese, and Koreans are the “same thing.” Certainly this logic implies a need to expand the traditional approach of making ethnic–ethnic 44 Jeffrey Lesser

comparisons (how “Jews” or “Japanese” in the United States are like, or not, “Jews” and “Japanese” in Brazil). At the same time it suggests that the comparative examination of minority groups may add to our understanding of both the groups and broader national cultures in which they live. Such an approach exposes the ways that ethnic and racial identity in Brazil is constantly up for grabs. It is a place where a federal deputy (in 1935) could state before the Brazilian House of Deputies that “the Japanese colonists . . . are even whiter than the Portuguese [ones]” and find most of his colleagues in complete agreement.9 It is a place where the famous painter Santa Rosa can tell a young Afro-Brazilian complaining about racial barriers to his ascent in the diplomatic service that “I understand your case perfectly, my dear boy, I was black once too.”10 It is a place where everyone understood the advertisement for the very popular 1980s soap opera The Immigrants: “Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, Italians, Arabs—Don’t Miss the Most Brazilian Soap Opera on Television.”11 Each of these cases shows a fluidity that is not common in the United States where race and ethnicity are highly essentialized (for example, it is rare to find a person in the United States who claims to be African-American during the week but is Euro-American on weekends). Yet embedded in the fluidity is an equally strong sense of the unchangeable, especially in the language that Brazilians use to describe ethnicity. A third-generation Brazilian of Japanese or Jewish descent remains “Japanese” or “Jewish” and not “Japanese-Brazilian” or “Jewish-Brazilian.” Being a Brazilian citizen thus does not end the condition of foreignness whether eating Brazilianized sushi in São Paulo’s “Japanese” neighborhood of Liberdade or Brazilianized matzo ball soup in the formerly “Jewish” and now “Korean” bairro of Bom Retiro. In Rio Grande do Sul, local tourists visit the “German” town of Gramado or the “Italian” one of Caxias do Sul. In all these places the message is the same, that this is alien territory, that normative “Brazil” cannot include ethnicity that differs from nationality. My second goal in this article is to examine public ethnic identity in order to find the places where it is constructed on the back of majority notions of otherness. Public definitions of group identity and otherness—what may be called a negotiation between in-group and popular discourses—allow members of both minority and majority groups to create identity by holding deep stereotypes even as tolerance is asserted. For example, Jewish-, Arab-, Japanese-, and Korean-Brazilians frequently complain in public about stereotypes regarding their supposed hard work and intelligence while pointing 45 How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories

out in “ethnic” settings (schools, neighborhoods, places of worship, restaurants, and other spaces where members of the majority are not present) that such stereotypes are accurate and thus make them “better Brazilians” than those in the majority who have been tainted by a combination of “latinidade” and “Africanness.” The integration of such seemingly contradictory notions allows minority groups that are in the upper echelons of Brazilian society to both fit in and remain separate at the same time. My points, and the cultural flexibility that they imply, are illustrated in some of the ethnicized origin myths that are often heard in Brazil.

Story One Brazil’s Jewish community has about 120,000 people or less than onetenth of 1 percent of the Brazilian population. The overwhelming majority of this community descends from immigrants who arrived between 1920 and 1940. The myth, however, suggests that during the Inquisition, Jews in colonial Portugal chose non-Jewish names based on biblical animals and trees. The claim is that anyone with a name like Coelho (rabbit) or Pinheiro (pine tree) descends from Jews. I did a quick search for both names just on the basis of people registered with e-mail accounts, clearly a tiny percentage of Brazil’s generally poor population: for both names there were thousands of entries, demonstrating that these names are extremely common among non-Jews. Still, Gerações, the newsletter of the São Paulo–based Sociedade Genealogica Judaica do Brasil, published a genealogical tree in 1995 suggesting that Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president of Brazil between 1994 and 2002, is descended from Jews because his last name was one of those found on Inquisition lists of crypto-Jews.12

Story Two This is a myth that started circulating around Brazil in the 1870s and was picked up by intellectuals of Arab descent. There are about a quarter of a million Brazilians of Arab descent in Brazil. Beginning in the nineteenth century, a number of well-respected French crackpot theorists suggested that King Solomon sailed the Amazon River and that the Quechua language of the Andean region was an offshoot of ancient Hebrew. This theory was Brazilianized in the 1930s by Salomão Jorge, a renowned Brazilian poet, author, and radio commentator. Jorge modified the myth to suggest that Brazil’s indigenous tribes were actually descendants of Solomon who, he 46 Jeffrey Lesser

claimed, was an ancestor of Jesus.13 The Jewish version of the same myth simply dismisses the Jesus connection.

Story Three: The “Legend of the Town of Marataize” There once was a group of peddlers who sold their wares in the interior of Espírito Santo, going from place to place by mule. One of the peddlers was named Aziz, and his wife (marat in colloquial Arabic) was considered the leader of the women who stayed behind as the men went out to sell their goods. These women washed their clothes in a place called the “Turkish bath” (bacia das turcas), and over time, the town that grew up around the place came to be called Marataize in honor of the wife (marat) of Aziz.14

Story Four Between 1908 and 1941 about 190,000 Japanese entered Brazil, and today more than one million Brazilians claim Japanese descent. Rokuro Koyama came to Brazil in 1908 on the first ship bringing Japanese immigrants. He was one of the interpreters on the ship since he spoke some Spanish. He settled in Bauru, a small city in the interior of the state of São Paulo, and was known as the “father of Nikkei journalism” after establishing the Seishu shinpo (São Paulo Weekly) in 1921. Koyama became fascinated with Brazil’s indigenous population after having a vision of a naked Indian who “looked like a Japanese” crouching naked on a huge rock alongside a railroad line. This fascination led to a study of the Tupi language, and he asked in the introduction to his Tupi-Japanese-Portuguese dictionary: “Did we Japanese and Tupi-Guarani originally come from and share the same Polynesian seed? Do we meet again now, after four thousand years? Was the language of the Tupi-Guarani natives the same as that of the very ancient Japanese?”15 Such ideas were picked up in the 1920s by Hachiro Fukuhara, a wealthy businessperson from Japan who decided to set up a farming colony in the Amazon that would be populated by Japanese immigrants. He returned from an exploratory trip to the area north of Bélem do Pára, at the mouth of the river, claiming that Brazil was “founded by Asiatics” since “the natives who live along the River Amazon look exactly like the Japanese. There is also a close resemblance between them in manners and customs . . . [and] a certain Chinese secretary in the German Embassy at Rio [has] made a careful study [of language] and concluded that these Indians descended from Mongols.” Fukuhara even stated that he knew of a Buddhist ceremony 47 How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories

performed in the Himalayas where a woman holds a tree as she is bearing a child and her husband walks around her, and he exclaimed excitedly, “I saw the same thing in the Amazon.”16

Story Five Brazil today has a Korean immigrant and descent community of between 120,000 and 150,000 people, many of whom live in the São Paulo neighborhood of Bom Retiro, a space associated throughout much of the twentieth century with Jews. In oral histories with Korean residents of that neighborhood, a frequent comment is that Jews, who are often constructed as primordial Brazilians (i.e., they were there long before the Koreans arrived), received Koreans “like family” because of the great similarities between the groups: a respect for family, hard work, and education.17 These “origins myths” have much in common. Each includes an imagined indigenous culture that maintains its solidarity and melds with others to create the Brazilian nation in its early moments. In seeing themselves this way, immigrants and their descendants become more “original” or “authentic” Brazilians than other members of Brazilian society, whether they be of European or African descent. The strategies behind these myths are simple to fathom. Each allows minority groups to reject the notion of a uniform, white, Catholic society while fully accepting the claim that Brazil’s major social and economic problem was the “blackness” of the nonelite majority. They suggest a simultaneous insider/outsider status in which ethnic groups, or at least those who express “ethnic” positions publicly, want to be fully accepted as “typical” Brazilians as well as be recognized for their difference from the Brazilian norm. Myths, however, are not only consumed within ethnic culture. Indeed, those in the Brazilian majority elite, generally Catholic and of European descent, also had contradictory ideas about Jews and Japanese. Thus images of Jews and Japanese in twentieth-century Brazil were simultaneously positive and negative, and both groups were seen as part of a category that would both ruin Brazil from afar and save Brazil from itself.18 In other words, those imagined to be ethnically visible and socially ascendant were symbols of the elite’s own anxiety about Brazil and its people since supposed groupinherent qualities positioned them as both nonblacks and nonwhites. This anxiety was not confined to Brazil. As Eric Goldstein has shown, North American commentators sometimes grouped Jews and Japanese 48 Jeffrey Lesser

together as problematic peoples who defied easy categorization within the dominant black/white system. No less an institution than the New York Times asserted in 1906 that a number of Japanese statesmen were “Russian Jews, bearing without a doubt more of the marks of Asia than their brethren in Western Europe, but still the posterity of Jacob.”19 More recently, although with perhaps less of a eugenics twist, those in the United States have seen the wide dissemination of the stereotype of Jews as “JAPS” (Jewish American Princesses/Princes).20 The Jewish role in this majority search for identity stems from a notion that was well diffused among elite members of the Christian faith: that despite seemingly negative characteristics, Jews were also carriers of an ethnic culture whose relation to capital expansion was central to the future of Brazilian society. What is important to note, however, is that the Christian conclusion was not exclusive to Jews. Rather, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and Korean immigrants and their descendants were also seen in much the same way: as carriers of both degenerate and positive characteristics. An illustration of this broadening of images across ethnic lines can be seen when one examines paid sexual relations. Early twentieth-century sex workers who defined themselves as polacas (a code word for Jews) were seen as excitingly sexual and consequently dangerous to the nation. This situation has been matched in the last quarter century by the phenomenal growth of japonesinhas (little Jap girls) as a category of paid sexual laborers. One must note that the ethnic categories asserted may—or may not—be related to actual individual genealogies; “polacas” were as infrequently Jewish as “japonesinhas” are Japanese. In the last decade, as Korean migration to Brazil has increased markedly, there has even been a suggestion that most female participants in this migratory stream are paid sex workers masquerading as “japonesinhas.” The same phenomenon can be found in the contemporary discovery of the “converso” background of famous Brazilians by Jews and non-Jews alike. Here again we see a search for authenticity but with a twist. For nonelite, non-Jewish Brazilians, discovering a “converso” in the family allows them to both be “Jews” (the rich and powerful kind), while not being actual “Jews” (the sneaky and problematic kind). Jews who participate in converso mythmaking seem to be searching for authenticity, pure and simple.21 By attributing converso backgrounds to everyone from Andre Reboucas (a leading nineteenth-century mulatto abolitionist) to Fernando Henrique Cardoso (the former president), Jews become the exclusively authentic Brazilians.22 Among Brazilian Jews, the frequent assertion (without real linguistic evidence) that many Portuguese words are Hebrew in origin 49 How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories

reminds me of the father figure in the recent U.S. film My Big Fat Greek Wedding who was able to “prove” to his daughter that the Japanese word “kimono” had Greek roots. The varieties of cultural discourses are important because members of Brazil’s ethnic elite have always sought to incorporate ambivalence into their own expressions of national identity. Most ethnic Brazilians, for example, stress that they are not of African descent. The myths retold previously thus make Arabs, Japanese, or Jews into Indians, placing these nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigrant groups in Brazil prior to the arrival of Africans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet the alleged Jewish connection to indigenous populations does much more than assert non-Africanness, since assertions that the indigenous populations were “the lost tribes” were common among Spanish and Portuguese clergy and explorers.23 Such claims have correlates among Brazil’s Japanese-Brazilian community (the largest Japanese-descent population in the world) and among those millions of Brazilians who are of Middle Eastern descent. One myth commonly heard among Japanese-Brazilians is that the Americas were peopled by Japanese sailors who had been blown to the region by a divine wind in the thirteenth century, while Syrian-Lebanese (the term for Brazilians of Middle Eastern descent) celebrated the 1922 centennial by placing a huge statue in Sao Paulo’s main park that included figures of “Syrian,” “Indigenous,” and “Brazilian” brothers, which suggested a consanguinity between these ostensibly different ethnic groups.24 If the Jews were Amerindians and Amerindians were Japanese, we need no more than the commutative property to see how we might generate scientific proof that Jews are Japanese.

Conclusion This article aims to examine the intellectual paths scholars walk when they assume that ethnic specificity is a dominant social or cultural phenomenon that overshadows commonality. Thus I have proposed that cross-ethnic comparison allows us to introduce new questions into our research on Jews, or members of any other ethnic group. In the examples above I have focused on the question of national culture and how it creates similarities in some areas of ethnic life—other conclusions might appear in cross-ethnic studies that I have not broached. I am not, of course, suggesting that Jews and Japanese and Koreans and Arabs are “exactly the same.” Yet the assumption of “difference” seems to 50 Jeffrey Lesser

be as theoretically problematic as the assumption of “sameness.” Put differently, the comparative analysis of Jews and Japanese within one national context highlights the moments and spaces where Jews are, and are not, the “same thing” as Japanese. For those studying Jewish ethnicity, asking questions about the intersections of “whiteness,” “blackness,” and “Indianness” seems critical and will enrich our understanding of Jews and ethnicity in the Americas.

51 How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories

Notes 1. Traditionally, “Sephardic” referred to Jews from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), including the descendants of those subject to the 1492 expulsion order of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. More recently the term “Sephardi” has come to include Jews of Arabic and Persian backgrounds who have no historical connection to Spain except their use of the Sephardic liturgy. 2. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991). 3. Albert Habib Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991); Albert Habib Hourani, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). 4. “Disrespecting the Constitution with Regard to Immigration—An Appeal by the Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres to the President of the Republic,” Jornal do Comércio, November 1, 1934, 1. For more on the McDonald Mission, see my Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 68–77. 5. For some examples of comparisons of Jewish life in different countries, see Todd M. Endleman, ed., Comparing Jewish Societies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), and Sander L. Gilman and Milton Shain, eds., Jewries at the Frontier: Accommodation, Identity, Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). For a comparison of Jews and Arabs in specific countries, see Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, eds., Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities (London: Frank Cass, 1998). 6. W. D. Borrie, ed., The Cultural Integration of Immigrants: A Survey Based upon the Papers and Proceeding of the UNESCO Conference Held in Havana, April 1956 (New York: UNESCO, 1957); Marcos Chor Maio, “O Brasil no ‘concerto’ das nações: A luta contra o racismo nos primórdios da UNESCO,” História, Ciências e Saúde—Manguinhos (Rio de Janeiro) 5, no. 2 (1998): 375–413. Marcos Chor Maio, “UNESCO and the Study of Race Relations in Brazil: Regional or National Issue?” Latin American Research Review 36, no. 2 (2001): 118–36. 7. Angelo Ishi, “Searching for Home, Wealth, Pride and ‘Class’: JapaneseBrazilians in the Land of ‘Yen,’” in Searching for Home Abroad: JapaneseBrazilians and Transnationalism, ed. Jeffrey Lesser (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 75–102. 8. For images of Jews in China, see Zhou Xun, Chinese Perceptions of the “Jews” and Judaism: A History of the Youtai (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001). For broader examinations of minority communities, including Jews, see Frank Dikötter, ed., The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i 52 Jeffrey Lesser

Press, 1997), and Marcia R. Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). More traditional studies of Jews in China are Jonathan Goldstein, The Jews of China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), and Michael Pollak, Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese Empire (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980). 9. Speech of Acylino de Leão, September 18, 1935, in “Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brasil,” Annaes da camara dos deputados: Sessões de 16 a 24 de Setembro de 1935 (Rio de Janeiro: Off. Graphica D’ “A Noite,” 1935), 17:432. 10. Darcy Ribeiro, The Brazilian People: The Formation and Meaning of Brazil, trans. Gregory Rabassa (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 156–57. O povo brasileiro: A formação e o sentido do Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995). 11. Advertisement for the Bandeirantes Television Network telenovela Os imigrantes (1981), Jornal do Imigrante 4, no. 422 (September 1981): 2. 12. Gerações (newsletter of the Sociedade Genealogica Judaica do Brasil, São Paulo) 1, no. 2 (May 1995): 13. 13. Vicomte Enrique Onffroy de Thoron, Voyages des flottes de Salomon et d’Hiram en Amerique: Position geographique de Parvaim, Ophir & Tarschisch (Paris: Imp. G. Towne, 1868); “O Rei Salomão no Rio Amazonas,” in As vantagens da immigracao syria no Brasil: Em torno de uma polemica entre os Snrs. Herbert V. Levy e Salomão Jorge, no “Diario de São Paulo,” ed. Júnior Amarilio (Rio de Janeiro: Off. Gr. da S. A. A Noite, 1925), 87–103; Viriato Correia, “O Rei Salomão no Rio Amazonas,” in Album da colonia sírio libanesa no Brasil, ed. Salomão Jorge (São Paulo: Sociedade Impressora Brasileira, 1948), 471–79. 14. This story has been told to me in various forms of which I repeat only one. A slightly different version can be found in Claude Fahd Hajjar, Imigração árabe: 100 anos de reflexão (São Paulo: Icone Editora, 1985), 145. 15. Rojuro Koyama, Tupi tango shu (The Tupi Lexicon) (São Paulo: Teikoku Shoin, 1951), 1. See also Shuhei Hosokawa, “Speaking in the Tongue of the Antipode: Japanese-Brazilian Fantasy on the Origin of Language,” in Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese-Brazilians and the Transnational Moment, ed. Jeffrey Lesser (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). 16. Article by Hachiro Fukuhara, “Brazil Founded by Asiatics?” Japan Times and Mail, June 26, 1927. 17. Interview by Jeffrey Lesser with Y. B. in his home, June 12, 1999. 18. Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables, Hebrew version: Brazil ve-hashela hayehudit: Hagira, diplomatia ve-deot kdumot (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University/ University Publishing Projects, 1997). 19. Eric L. Goldstein, “Race and the Construction of Jewish Identity in America, 1875–1945” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2000), 101. 20. Other popular culture references that link Japanese and Jews outside of Brazil can be seen in the recording made by musician Costes entitled “Jap Jew” (see costes.org/cd11.htm). 53 How the Jews Became Japanese and Other Stories

21. Arthur Benveniste, “Finding Our Lost Brothers and Sisters: The Crypto Jews of Brazil,” Western States Jewish History 29, no. 3 (April 1997): 103–9. A critique of the U.S. version of this phenomenon can be found in Barbara Ferry and Debbie Nathan, “Mistaken Identity: The Case of New Mexico’s ‘Hidden Jews,’” Atlantic Monthly (December 2000): 85–96. 22. Leo Spitzer, Lives in Between: The Experience of Marginality in a Century of Emancipation (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999), 108. 23. Richard H. Popkin, “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory,” in Hebrew and the Bible in America: The First Two Centuries, ed. Shalom Goldman (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1993), 70–90; Jacques Lafaye, Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531–1815, trans. Benjamin Keen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). 24. Lesser, Negotiating National Identity, 55–59.

54 Jeffrey Lesser

chapter four

What’s in a Stereotype? The Case of Jewish Anarchists in Argentina !

josé c. moya

D

uring the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jews were often imaged through the paradoxical stereotypes of greedy capitalists and anticapitalist radicals. The contradiction lay mainly at the conceptual level. Functionally, both images served, literally, to decenter, that is, to exclude Jews from the mainstream and locate them on the margins.1 Thus the capitalist stereotype rarely included notions or figures that connoted normality or respectability (production, ownership, investment, the middle class, the “business community,” industrialists, entrepreneurs). Instead, Jews were usually assigned the extreme roles of petty peddlers or big-time financiers, which, again despite the apparent gap, share implications of unproductivity, profiteering, chicanery, and alterity. Similarly, the anticapitalist image rarely included forms—like populism, nativism, economic nationalism, and anticolonial struggles—perceived as homegrown and autochthonous. It stressed instead otherness and subversion, and few movements fitted the bill as suitably as anarchism.2 Stereotypes, of course, are more than mere instruments of exclusion. They can also function as cognitive mechanisms that handle bewildering diversity by organizing knowledge into formulas that, although simplified, 55

reflect real traits.3 Yet finding out the degree to which the Jewish anarchist stereotype represented this type of generalization is not an easy task. There is little information about Jewish participation in anarchist activities in regions (such as North Africa and the Middle East) where they were numerous and the movement small or, conversely, in places (such as Spain, Italy, and Switzerland) where the movement was widespread and the Jewish population small. Given the fact that most of the evidence on the topic comes from impressionistic observations by contemporaries rather than from quantitative comparisons of the participation of different ethnic groups, it would be precisely in these two situations that any exceptional Jewish predisposition toward anarchism would be apparent. That is, a few remarks by contemporary observers about Jewish involvement in the anarchist movement would be much more significant if made about, say, Cairo or Rome rather than Warsaw or New York. We have more information for places where both the Jewish populations and the anarchist movements were important. As stated above, these studies rarely include data that actually show Jewish under- or overrepresentation. But using qualitative sources they have shown what seems to be a remarkably high level of participation among the Ashkenazim. Various historians have asserted that in Russia the anarchist movement was born and attained its highest intensity in the Jewish towns of the western and southwestern borderlands.4 From the towns and shtetls of the Pale, emigrants took this militancy to the ghettos of European and American cities. In London’s East End they founded in 1885 the Arbeter fraynd, apparently the first Yiddish anarchist newspaper, which by 1905 reached a circulation of five thousand, and a federation of Jewish anarchist associations in 1902. Scholars have offered diverging assessments of the relative importance of these institutions.5 But they were active and visible enough to convince the well-known German Gentile anarchist Rudolf Rocker to learn Yiddish and become the editor of the Arbeter fraynd and the community’s principal leader.6 A similar, although apparently smaller, community existed in Paris.7 Rocker himself first learned about the existence of Jewish anarchists while living there.8 The community of Jewish anarchists in New York’s Lower East Side developed a few years later than London’s but eventually surpassed it in importance. Another German goy, the fiery Johann Most, became an early apostle for immigrant anarchists.9 But Russian Jews soon developed a leadership that came to transcend the immigrant milieu.10 By the early decades of the twentieth century, Jews, along with Italians, had replaced Germans and 56 José C. Moya

Bohemians as the mainstay of the anarchist movement in the urban centers of the East Coast and the Midwest.11 Buenos Aires offers an appropriate case to study this international phenomenon. By the outbreak of World War I, the city had become the secondlargest metropolis in the Atlantic world, after New York, and probably the second-most important center of anarchist activism, after Barcelona,12 and it boasted a large and expanding Jewish population (16,500 in 1909 and 120,177 by 1936).13 Temporally, the most salient feature of Jewish radicalism in Argentina is its belated appearance one or two decades later than in London or New York. Although one can find isolated pioneers, like the German socialist Augusto Kuhn, one of the organizers of the first May Day celebration in 1890, and his better-known comrade Enrique Dickman, Jews were noticeably absent from the local radical scene until the middle years of the first decade of the twentieth century. A 1902 police registry of 661 anarchists included 389 Italians, 149 Spaniards, and 21 Frenchmen, but only 1 Russian, and he does not appear to be Jewish.14 None appears either before 1904 in a database of some ten thousand anarchists and labor militants that I have constructed from various sources. The Israeli historian Iaacov Oved does not mention any in his thorough book that goes up to the same year, and neither do other studies.15 The principal reason for such a belated appearance is the timing of Jewish arrival in Argentina. Jewish transatlantic migration in general, with the exception of sporadic crossings of Sephardim during the colonial period and of German streams from the middle of the nineteenth century, forms part of the “new” migrations out of eastern and southern Europe that began around 1880, some decades after the “old” waves from the western and northern regions of the continent. But unlike Italian migration, which acquired massive dimensions in Argentina before it did in the United States, the Jewish movement to South America takes off even later than to the north. By 1890 only 5,160 immigrants had arrived in Argentina from the Russian empire, the principal source of the Jewish exodus at the time, compared to a quarter of a million to the United States. In the next decade 17,466 headed for Argentina and half a million for the United States. The yearly flow to Argentina first surpassed 10,000 in 1905, and the bulk of the immigrants from Russia (141,000) arrived between the beginning of the century and the outbreak of World War I.16 Moreover, much of the early Jewish settlement in Argentina took place in organized agricultural colonies so that as late as 1887 there were only 289 Jews in Buenos Aires.17 57 What’s in a Stereotype?

This relatively late arrival did not stop Jews from a precocious, and dominant, participation in a different sort of “antisocial” activity. Of 164 pimps in a police file of 1893–1894, no less than 121 (74 percent) and as many as 150 (92 percent) were Jewish.18 The relationship of this group, and others like them, to common immigration is not clear. Unlike most immigrants, who tended to come from specific localities through chain migration mechanisms, they formed a motley crew originating in nineteen different countries.19 The linkages that made possible such an extensive international network differed from those of common immigrants in that they clearly could not have been based primarily on hometown and kinship relations. But some local clusters existed. Sixteen were born in Constantinople, fifteen in Warsaw, ten in Odessa, nine in Vienna, eight in London. Intriguingly, all those born in Turkey had Ashkenazic, rather than Sephardic, surnames, which suggests family ties with Eastern Europe (since the Jewish community in Turkey was Sephardic). Nine pairs shared surnames. More than half were married, and half of these had been in Argentina for more than five years, suggesting the existence of family connections. About a dozen had arrived in the 1870s, making them veritable pioneers of Jewish immigration in Argentina. It is indeed likely that many of them played that role, providing through letters, remittances, and visits to their hometowns and families the information and assistance that made later immigration, and thus the growth of Argentine-Jewish anarchism, possible. Was this the only possible connection between Jewish prostitution rings and anarchism? Unlike orthodox Marxism, which viewed the proletariat as the only revolutionary class, anarchism embraced all sorts of marginal groups. The mere titles of newspapers illustrate such a difference. Instead of the usual “Worker” or “Proletariat” used by socialist newspapers, anarchists everywhere used a broad array of titles that connoted inclusiveness: Universal (Moscow), Mother Earth (New York), El oprimido (“The Oppressed”—Buenos Aires, New York, and Algeciras, Spain), Il grido del popolo (“The Cry of the People”—Turin), El esclavo (“The Slave”—Tampa, Florida), Espartaco (Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro), Los parias (Lima), A plebe (Sao Paulo). The embrace was ample enough to include the lumpen proletariat, petty delinquents, and ruffians (a term that, coincidentally, retained in Argentina its original French/Italian meaning of pimp). Anarchist rhetoric elevated, instead of disdaining or dismissing, as socialists normally did, the “dregs of society.” An editorial published in Spanish, Italian, and French by one of the earliest anarchist papers in Buenos Aires on its first issue in 1890 and titled “Who Are We and What Will We Do” phrased it this way: “We are 58 José C. Moya

the vagrants, the malefactors, the rabble, the scum of society, the sublimate corrosive of the present social order.”20 This may have reflected the anarchist penchant for shocking rhetoric. But the police consistently maintained that anarchist demonstrations, unlike their socialist counterparts, attracted all sorts of “antisocial elements” that were not part of the movement or were only marginally related to it. Common delinquents often couched their activities in the language of anarchism and hung around anarchist centers. Police raids of anarchists at times rounded up petty criminals and pimps as well. During normal times, they identified the putative offense of those apprehended. But in 1909–1910 the raids became so massive that they stopped doing this, making it difficult at times to differentiate between anarchists and pimps among the hundreds of individuals being arrested in the Jewish quarter. Some pimps were deported along with more than three hundred anarchists who were expelled from Argentina during the first decade of the twentieth century. Why would the authorities pick only these few specific pimps for deportation? Could it be that they had some relationship with anarchism? Some documents suggest this was so. A week after the passage of the Resi­ dency Law, which allowed the deportation of dangerous foreigners, on November 23, 1902, the police contacted a “person from the Jewish community” who confidentially gave information about three characters who had applied for Argentine citizenship. According to him or her, the first individual ran a prostitution house, the second “imported women for prostitution,” and the third had given up pimping and now imported lamps instead of women. The reformed pimp, however, appeared three years later in a police list of anarchists.21 These schemes to avoid deportation by procuring naturalization papers were, according to the British ambassador, quite common among “undesirables, especially pimps and anarchists.”22 A 1905 internal report by the Argentine police connected anarchism and prostitution at a different level. It warned that almost every day new anarchist groups appeared “with thundering names befitting their violent mission.” They were made up by a “foreign, demagogic, and seditious element that fuel the conflagration they have already provoked by making the apotheosis of crime and prostitution as integral parts of human emancipation.”23 A British diplomatic dispatch of 1909 suggested an even closer connection between pimps and anarchists. It stated, His Majesty’s Consul received one [a letter] some days ago purporting to have been issued by an Anarchistical [sic] Society, warning him that 59 What’s in a Stereotype?

he has been condemned to be blown up by means of a bomb within the year, because he has not rendered sufficiently energetic assistance to Russians, bearers of British passports. The letter says that he is to be blown up “by means of one of the bombs now in circulation, one of which is intended for the President of the Republic.” It is possible that the letter is a hoax, but it has been placed in the hands of the police, and the foundation of the charge may exist in the fact that two Russians, bearers of British passports, and believed to be connected with the White Slave traffic have been arrested recently.24 The “Russians” turned out to be English-born Jews, and two weeks later another report informed the Home Office that seven of them, expelled as pimps, were aboard the SSR De Grimonllie on their way to London.25 The matter reached the highest levels of government, involving Secretary of State Sir Edward Grey and Winston Churchill.26 The British authorities worried that the Argentine government would “make a practice of sending to this country anyone whom they wish to expel and who says he was born here.” They observed that the names of those expelled were “foreign” and wanted to know how the Argentine authorities ascertained their birthplace.27 The Argentine foreign minister, Victorino de la Plaza, responded that his government tried to verify the nationality of deportees with documents that certified their birthplace and that when these were not available, it relied on their own declarations, double-checking them, whenever possible, through other investigations.28 Such concern at the highest level of government suggests that, regardless of whether the anarchist letter was a hoax, it was taken seriously. Foreign ministers and heads of state do not usually become involved in cases concerning a few common pimps. About the same time, the French embassy in Argentina also informed its government of the expulsion of a French-Jewish anarchist as a pimp and a thief, and the French minister of the interior called for collaboration between the police forces of the two countries to repress anarchism and white slavery.29 One may wonder whether the Argentine police were simply trying to tarnish the anarchist movement by associating it with prostitution. But the fact that they did so in internal memos never made public indicates that this was not the case. Indeed, they had no incentive to do so. The expulsion law of 1902 specifically targeted anarchists. And, after two assassination attempts on Argentine presidents, a successful one on the chief of police, and a string of bombs that killed several police officers, “anarchist” was 60 José C. Moya

definitely a more insulting tag in their eyes—and in those of the upper and middle classes—than “pimp.” The connection between Jewish prostitution rings and anarchism, however, was neither consequential nor mutual. That is, some pimps may have gravitated toward a movement that was a constant presence in the workingclass neighborhoods of the city, including the Jewish quarter of “Once,” and an ideology that denounced bourgeois morality and self-righteousness. Indeed, anarchism’s contempt for social conventions and decorum must have had a natural appeal for a group that has traditionally represented, more so than prostitutes, quintessential ignominy in conventional propriety. But the reverse was not true. Although anarchists, and other revolutionaries, have at times engaged in criminal activities or established ties with criminal groups to raise funds for the cause, there is no such evidence in this case. Even xenophobic writers, such as Francisco Stach, who denounced Jewish immigration (“the so-called Rusos”) as “the most undesirable element, full of anarchists, pimps, and prostitutes all capable of criminal acts,” did not maintain that formal ties existed between the first and the last two groups.30 Some anarchists, particularly of the individualist or Nietzschean type, did dismiss condemnations of prostitution as straitlaced and pharisaical, as one more example of liberal society’s inability to accept individual freedom and difference when it truly conflicted with accepted mores. But the majority shared the common view—expressed by the entire ideological spectrum from conservative Catholics to socialists—of prostitutes as victims and pimps as exploiters. Anarchist apologies for delinquency embraced crimes directed at the power-elite and property (for example, assassinations of political leaders or theft, defended as expropriation) but not those that victimized the dispossessed. Pimping was usually placed in the latter category. The Dreyfus affair in France provided the background for the first, and a very different, expression of common interest between anarchists and the Jewish community in Buenos Aires. As in France, many anarchists in Argentina originally viewed the affair as a dispute within the bourgeoisie and hesitated to support an army officer. But as it became evident that Dreyfus’s denouncers represented a fusion of just about every group abhorred by internationalist radicals, their support for Dreyfus became unequivocal. In an article of August 15, 1899, titled “Montjuich Dreyfus,” the newspaper El rebelde blamed the same block of forces for the “infamies” committed against anarchists in the infamous Barcelona prison and against Dreyfus: national chauvinism, “military-bourgeois corruption,” and the “Jesuit reaction.” It urged the people of Barcelona and Paris to demand justice with 61 What’s in a Stereotype?

“chemistry.” The allusion to bombs was clear to readers, but the fact that the front-page article appeared next to an eulogy to Sato Caserio (the assassin of French president Sadi Carnot) made it more poignant. In subsequent denunciations, the newspaper began to group the anti-Dreyfus “dark forces” under the generic rubric of “antisemitas.”31 Another anarchist newspaper in Buenos Aires, L’Avvenire, maintained that as a people driven by a sense of justice rather than politics, anarchists had supported Dreyfus long before political opportunists jumped on the Dreyfus bandwagon.32 A subsequent article titled “L’Antisemitismo” argued that this movement, despite its name, could not spring from racial animosity, since Jews had mixed with other Europeans for so long that there was little “Semitic” or racially distinct about them.33 Instead, the article located the source of anti-Semitism in religious obscurantism and its modern reincarnation: patriotism. Capitalists manipulated these superstitions to use a historically persecuted people as scapegoats for popular resentment and to weaken workers’ solidarity. Anarchists thus had the duty to illuminate the people and prevent such stratagems. Three years later, when news of Emile Zola’s death, on October 16, 1902, reached Buenos Aires, labor unions organized a meeting in his memory. Four to five thousand people marched through the city’s streets. The French ambassador noted the irony that while anarchist speakers, who “claimed Zola as one of their own,” stressed the antireligiosity of his oeuvre, a funeral service was held at a synagogue in recognition of his successful intervention in the defense of Dreyfus.34 Jewish anarchist activism in the city became more visible in 1905. In Russia, the outbreak of revolution in January of that year produced an up­­ surge of both anarchist militancy and official repression. More so than the pogroms of 1903, which were generically anti-Semitic and attracted limited attention from the international left, those of 1905 targeted radicals specifically and shocked revolutionaries everywhere.35 Anarchists in particular felt that the Bloody Sunday massacre in Saint Petersburg would be avenged by the dispossessed and lead to their long awaited, and apocalyptic, social revolution. Police spies in Buenos Aires reported a rush of activity in anarchist circles.36 On January 26, the group Caballeros del Ideal organized a meeting that “packed the house.” Orators, according to the informer, outdid each other in threatening that “the dagger and sweet dynamite” would soon avenge their fallen Russian comrades. In the midst of the “pandemonium characteristic of these anarchist gatherings,” they called for a street demonstration two days later for workers to engage in “revolutionary gymnastics.” There, the Uruguayan anarchist Virginia Bolten denounced czarist atrocities 62 José C. Moya

and compared the Argentine government to the Russian autocracy—a rhetorical device that became a leitmotiv of anarchist discourse. That same day, five thousand people marched in Bolten’s hometown, Montevideo, to denounce the Russian massacre.37 On February 2, four hundred leaders (cabecillas) met in Buenos Aires. One of them called for another street demonstration, urging his comrades to go armed, so that they could take target practice on the police—an idea dismissed by the next speaker who questioned the “need for handguns today, when chemistry is readily available to the entire proletariat.”38 Two days later an attempted military revolt, the only one to occur between 1890 and 1930, put a temporary hold on the planned demonstration and on all leftist militancy. The Radical Party, which orchestrated the uprising, was—despite its name, which indicated going back to “roots” rather than extremism—a mainstream organization that would win the presidency eleven years later. But rumors had it that the Radicals planned to arm socialists and anarchists during the revolt. Three days after the outbreak of the revolt, the Argentine president himself told the British ambassador that bombs had been found in anarchist centers and that the anarchists had planned to seize the arsenal, break open the prisons, and capture him and his ministers, describing the situation as “très grave.”39 The leftist press— and most historians—later denied such a connection. But regardless of whether it existed, it would not have been out of character for a group thirsting for “direct action” to take advantage of the situation. Bands of armed anarchists roamed the streets, hoping to turn a bourgeois revolt into a revolutionary upheaval. Authorities clamped down, arresting hundreds and deporting twenty-five.40 Although the revolt was put down in less than a week, the state of siege lasted more than three months, preventing street demonstrations, including those on May Day itself. Under cover of the apparent calm, anarchists continued their activism within the city (indoor meetings were actually not prohibited during the state of siege), from exile in Montevideo, and—as the authorities later discovered—even from within prison. On May 14 alone they held twentyfour meetings at labor union halls and called for a street demonstration on May 21 to protest the abuses committed by the government during the state of siege, a proposal that the socialists joined. The authorities granted the permit under condition that no flags other than the “national emblem that unites us all” might be waved. Not a group likely to be moved by such patriotic appeals, many among the thirty thousand marchers raised their red and black banners. When the police tried to prevent this, the marchers 63 What’s in a Stereotype?

responded with shouts of “down with the Cossacks,” again revealing the impact of the 1905 Russian Revolution, and with something more lethal than words. Who began the shooting was, as usual, disputed.41 But the result provides some evidence of Jews’ participation in the movement during a period when their recent arrival and inability to write in Spanish led to their presence going unrecorded in common historical sources such as newspapers. Three of the fourteen persons wounded (other than four police officers), and one of the two killed, were Jewish.42 Because it is highly unlikely that in the midst of the turmoil, the police would, or could, have aimed their guns at Jews, a group that was not physically distinguishable from other protesters, the numbers must be random. This does not mean that because a fourth of the casualties were Jewish this proportion applies to all the demonstrators. The shooting took place in Plaza Lavalle, a neighborhood where many of the early Jewish arrivals had settled.43 Two of the wounded were merely nine years old, and all claimed they were there by coincidence. On the other hand, neither the definition nor the meaning of childhood was the same a century ago as it is today. Nine-year-old “children” often worked, spent a larger proportion of their time on the streets, and participated in “adult” activities. Contemporary photographs often show young boys and girls in street demonstrations. And all the wounded, Jewish or not, claimed that they were at the site by coincidence. To tell the authorities otherwise would have been odd, thereby incriminating themselves in the shooting of police. Thus the ethnicity of the casualties may indeed indicate a relatively high Jewish presence in local anarchism already by 1905. A newspaper in Montevideo, edited by an anarchist expelled from Argentina, alluded to this connection with the following line: “Exiles, tortured, hanged, victims of San Petersburg and Warsaw: add to the black list the name of Buenos Aires!”44 Police reports provide further evidence of the Jewish presence in the movement in 1905.45 Among those arrested at the May 21 demonstration was Julio Herschenbaum, a twenty-three-year-old Russian-born furniture maker who had arrived in 1903 and—failing to “withdraw from subversive activities,” as he had promised authorities in 1904—became the first Jewish anarchist deported from Argentina. Another of the protesters, David Bernstein, a twenty-four-year-old day laborer who had arrived right after the Russian Bloody Sunday of January 1905 via Hamburg, this time evaded authorities, but five years later he was expelled. On September 29, José Weisman, a thirtythree-year-old stevedore and journalist from Trieste, appeared as an orator with other anarchists at a conference in the Centro Escuela Moderna, a school 64 José C. Moya

organized on the principles of the famous Catalan anarchist-pedagogue Francisco Ferrer, and later that same day, at a reunion of the store clerks’ union. On October 6, Bernardo Sernaguer, a twenty-one-year-old Russianborn immigrant described by the police as a particularly exalted and eloquent anarchist, addressed a group of rent strikers. Twenty days later, anarchists turned a funeral march for a comrade shot during the rent strike into an occasion to “vituperate the Russian government for the massacre of Jews.” In December, detectives reported on meetings of the Sociedad Rusa de Desarrollo Intellectual y de Socorros Mutuos, described as nonsubversive, which must be the Yiddisher Arbeter-Farband, a mutual aid society founded in 1896, and of the Agrupación Rusa Amigo de los Obreros, described as anarchist. The latter must be the Arbeter Fend, a group founded in 1905 by immigrants who had been in London and influenced there by Peter Kropotkin and Rudolf Rocker.46 The cover for the December 2, 1905, issue of Caras y caretas, the magazine with the largest circulation in Buenos Aires, offers a different sort of evidence about the impact of the Russian Revolution of that year and the increased arrival of Jewish anarchists. Under the caption “Los Inmigrantes,” the illustration shows a line of long-haired and bearded immigrants disembarking from a ship. On the dock, a police officer watches with surprise while a figure with a top hat representing Argentina or its president exclaims, “Onward, Russian gentlemen. Come in, you will find yourselves right at home.” The first Russian on the line holds a suitcase stamped “Odesa–Buenos Aires” with one hand and a bomb in the other. The arrest on March 2, 1906, of twenty-two Jewish anarchists for carrying weapons provides a rare, though incomplete, demographic portrait of activists during this period.47 All were listed as being born in Russia (although one appears in a different document with “Israel” as his birthplace). Their ages reflected the youthful character of the movement. The youngest was sixteen, the oldest thirty-four, and the median age twentythree. Their place of residence, however, diverged from the norm. While most anarchists resided in the southern districts of the city, particularly in the heavily Italian and Spanish neighborhoods of La Boca and Barracas, all but two of the Jewish anarchists arrested lived in the older Jewish neighborhood of Plaza Lavalle or in the Jewish quarter then forming to the north of Plaza Once. This suggests their recent arrival in the country and reflects the fact that Jews, with a segregation index of 47.5, were at the time the most segregated group in the city after the Sirio-Lebanese (Is 49.0). Although these indices were high, we must note that they were lower 65 What’s in a Stereotype?

than those of the Jewish population in North American cities, London, and Paris, and that they declined faster.48 In 1906 a Zionist-Socialist organization, the Poale Sion, was founded in Buenos Aires. Its two leaders, Zalman Sorkin and Leon Jazanovich, were denounced as anarchists and expelled in 1910. But neither had been active in the anarchist movement, and Jazanovich, who had been a member of the Socialist Party in Russia, felt that the denunciation had come from the Jewish Colonization Association, which he had battled in his efforts to radicalize Jewish agricultural settlers.49 The relationship of Jewish anarchists with this association is difficult to determine. The Italian historian Furio Biagini claims that some of the anarchists “developed a sincere sympathy for the socialist Zionism of the Poale Sion.”50 Anarchists considered themselves the true socialists, often describing themselves as revolutionary or libertarian-socialists as opposed to the “legalitarian” or “authoritarian” socialists of the party. They constantly denounced the Socialist Party’s reformism and participation in parliamentary politics and competed with socialists for the allegiance of the working class. But they also cooperated with them, and with other progressive groups, in the struggle against common enemies. On April 15, 1906, for example, the Liberal Party organized an anticlerical demonstration attended by about three thousand persons. The police noted the presence of socialists and particularly of anarchist agitators who sang revolutionary songs and shouted “viva la anarquía . . . down with the police . . . let’s burn the convents” (which they attempted to do).51 Interestingly, the protest took place in the Jewish neighborhood of Once, and it included the participation of the Jewish anarchist group Ruso Compañero de los Obreros (Arbeter Friend) led by Boris London or Gelman, one of those arrested in the raid of the previous month. Another of the individuals arrested for arms possession in the March 1906 raid, Abraham Hartenstein, a nineteen-year-old boilermaker, used his craft to move on quickly to bigger “things.” On September 17 of the following year, the Spanish embassy in Buenos Aires telegraphed Madrid that this “dangerous anarchist” had departed for Barcelona to join his comrades in their bombing campaign.52 We do not know if he accomplished his putative goal in Barcelona—the Spanish authorities were not able to find him. But he soon returned to Buenos Aires. On January 18, 1908, Caras y caretas printed his photograph and an article describing him as the founder of the group Banda Negra and as the introducer of anarchist terrorism to Argentina. The police had arrested him, together with five other Spanish, Italian, and Argentine anarchists (which, as much as his trip to Barcelona, shows how 66 José C. Moya

cosmopolitan the movement was), at the headquarters of the boilermakers’ union. The magazine included pictures of the chemical laboratory and the cache of weapons and bombs that the police had found. The Black Gang had planned to use their “chemistry” to blow up the public water building and the main electrical power plant in the city. Spanish authorities were searching again for another Jewish anarchist from Argentina later on in 1908. On March 16, they received a telegram from Buenos Aires reporting a conversation overheard in a café about a “ruso-polaco” by the name of Hago or Jacobo Hantover traveling with an Argentine passport to Vigo and Madrid to assassinate King Alfonso XIII. Two days later, they boarded the steamer as it stopped in Lisbon, but they could not find him among the six hundred or so returning immigrants. The captain, however, did remember a tall man with a short, dark mustache registered under the name of Aye Antever, whom he thought was Spanish because he spoke that language well and who retrieved the money he had kept in the safe-deposit box that day. He later telegraphed Spanish police: “man not on board.” How Hantover reached Vigo thus is unknown. But police arrested him there two days later. He turned out to be a twenty-fouryear-old electrician born in Warsaw, who claimed he was going to Madrid to visit a Candida Mendez de Samper, whom he had met in Buenos Aires. The Spanish detectives did not find any anarchist documents on him and soon received a telegram from Buenos Aires saying that Hantover did not have a previous record and that the denunciation may have been born of a personal vendetta.53 Apparently, the Spanish diplomats’ research was less than thorough. Argentine court records do include an entry for Hantover, although the actual documents have been destroyed.54 Whatever the case, this and various other examples like it show that some of the Jewish anarchists in Argentina during this early period were transnational radicals whose range of action transcended the boundaries of the River Plate. The printed page provided a vehicle for both transnational and local connections. In 1907, the Arbeter Friend group founded Das arbeter lebn, the first Yiddish-language anarchist periodical in Argentina. This monthly, directed by A. Shapiro, lasted only a few months. In 1908 Pedro Springberg and E. Edelstein published another anarchist periodical, the Lebn und freiheit. This one also had a short life, and on June of the same year the police reported about a meeting of the Grupo Ruso la Protesta.55 The meeting included the presentation of two plays, El cristo moderno and Resurreción de los héroes. The report does not indicate whether these were performed in Yiddish, but the purpose of the meeting was to plan the publication of a 67 What’s in a Stereotype?

section in that language in the anarchist daily La protesta, which began to appear the next year. Around the same time (the first citation I encountered dates from 1908) a Jewish library, the Biblioteca Rusa, was founded, which, although usually identified as anarchist, seems to have congregated— extrapolating from the speakers at its functions—leftists of different stripes (socialists, syndicalists, Bundists, and anarchists).56 By 1907 there were also trade unions, or “resistance societies,” as anarchists called them, that were either officially or de facto Jewish. On February 23, a police spy reported on a meeting of about one hundred striking hat makers at a union hall, stating that he could not inform on the substance of the speeches because they were delivered in Russian.57 References to the Russian language also appeared in La prensa, Buenos Aires’ principal daily, which noted during the anarchist May Day demonstrations of 1908 and 1910 that “Jewish agitators [agitadores israelitas] gave speeches for their conationals in Russian.” Some Jewish radicals did prefer to use that language as an indication of their internationalist, or at least nonparticularist, class consciousness.58 But since immigrants also came from regions within and outside the czarist empire where Russian was not widely spoken, the language heard by the police informer and the reporters of La prensa must have been Yiddish. Jewish anarchism became particularly visible during the May Day demonstration of 1909 and the disturbances and repression that followed it. From April 24, the police had reported a high level of activity among “subversives.” Dozens of meetings were taking place daily in union halls and anarchist centers. On the twenty-sixth, a street march against the rising price of bread attracted fifteen hundred participants. Anarchists were reportedly stocking up on bullets, and at 1:00 a.m. on May 1, they were still meeting, planning how to bring public transportation to a halt by bombing the tramways. Still, police arrested less than a dozen militants before May Day, which seems lax compared to preventive measures taken in European cities.59 On May Day, eight thousand people marched in a parade sponsored by the Socialist Party that began at 3:00 p.m. and ended two hours later in “absolute order.” The anarchist march drew as many as thirty thousand people and ended, soon after it had begun, in a shootout that left five dead and forty wounded.60 As usual, the police blamed the anarchists. But this time, according to press reports, they were more specific, maintaining that the first shots had come from a group of Russian anarchists.61 They also found banners abandoned by three groups of demonstrators: the union of waiters, that of masons, and “an association of Russian anarchists called Burevestnik” that met at Calle Lavalle 2196, in the heart of the Jewish quarter.62 The banners of the latter had 68 José C. Moya

inscribed in “Hebrew” (ebreo) “Death to Capital and Long Live the AnarchoCommunists.”63 Referring to these “anarchist trophies left on the asphalt,” the Buenos Aires Herald (May 4, 1909) proposed that “the only way to deal with these gentry is to proclaim a state of siege and rush them off to Russia, where there are policemen carefully trained to deal with wolves and wild beasts.” Most of the rest of the local press, according to foreign diplomats, blamed the police for the events—although the American and British ambassadors observed that this was the opposition press and defended the conduct of the police.64 Anarchists claimed, with little diplomacy but considerable logic, that had they started the shooting, police casualties would have been higher (four police officers and five police horses, including one shot with five bullets, had been wounded).65 Whoever started the gunplay, the civilian casualties—whom the French minister observed were mostly shot in the back as they were fleeing—were principally, if not entirely, protesters, not casual bystanders. All of them resided more than five blocks away from the scene of the shooting, and three-quarters more than ten blocks. The chances that any of them were there on work-related business, on a day that had become a de facto holiday, were low. Three-quarters of them were in their teens and twenties, which also fits the demographic profile of the anarchist movement. Of the five demonstrators killed, one was Jewish, as were six of the thirty-six wounded, which again suggests that the participation of Jews in the anarchist movement was disproportionately high, as had also been the case during the events of 1905. The May Day mayhem was followed by a week of protests, riots, and repression that came to be known in Argentine history as the Semana Roja.66 The anarchist and socialist labor federations called a general strike that paralyzed the city and much of the country. On May 4, sixty to eighty thousand people marched during the funerals for those killed on May 1. On May 10, the American chargé d’affaires informed the State Department that “for the last nine days the city of Buenos Aires has been under the dominion of mob Law.”67 La prensa (May 3–8, 1909) called attention to the omnipresence of “anarquistas rusos” during the protests and riots and to the zeal of their militancy. Close to a thousand people were arrested. Humidity has rendered illegible much of the relevant documentation, and so the ethnicity of those arrested is difficult to determine. But the police archives contain an intriguing report dated May 8, 1909. It states, Through confidential sources I have learned that the carter Caurro told the anarchist Ramón Martínez that he had met with Mr. Benito 69 What’s in a Stereotype?

Villanueva [the interim president of the Argentine Senate], who manifested his desire to solve the present labor conflict and to that effect promised to procure the reopening of all workers’ halls recently closed, the repeal of the Municipal Code of penalties [on cart drivers], and the release of all those detained, with the exception of the Russians.68 That the president of the Argentine Senate would hold a secret meeting with a humble carter may seem implausible. But transportation workers, incensed by the municipal ordinance mentioned in the report, had been the backbone of the strike, and the fact that Benito Villanueva was trying to negotiate a solution to the conflict became public knowledge soon after this. Less apparent is whether Villanueva actually mentioned excluding “Russians” from the proposed release of detainees, and if so, why. Possibly, the carter or the confidential informant made up the alleged statement about Russians. But what incentive could they have had to invent such a specific detail? If the incident indeed took place, does this indicate that the government, or sectors within it, considered Jewish anarchists more dangerous than their Gentile “coreligionists”?69 Up to this point there was little ground for such an interpretation, but then, prejudice is rarely grounded on rational analysis. A more calculating motive could have been the desire to promote splits within the working class. The police had admitted, in internal documents, to using this tactic during previous commotions when they selectively repressed anarchists rather than socialists, hoping to exploit in this case ideological rather than ethnocultural differences.70 If this was the intent, it did not work. Subsequent police reports describe the formation of a negotiating commission of anarchist and socialist groups, which demanded and obtained the release of all those detained after May 1. During this period a new anarchist Jewish group had emerged: the Grupo Ruso Pro-Victimas del Primero de Mayo. On May 23, about 150 of them, “of both sexes,” met to watch a Yiddish version of the French anarchist writer Octave Mirbeau’s play The Bad Shepherds.71 A workers’ demand during the Semana Roja that had not been met was the removal of the chief of police Ramón Falcón. One of the Yiddish banners confiscated by police during the May Day protest recommended the assassination of “Cossacks.” On November 14, 1909, a Yiddish-speaking teenager who had taken part in the May Day protests fulfilled the unmet demand of the Semana Roja. Before dying, the “Big Cossack” supposedly exclaimed, “The anarchists finally got me.” Enrique Müller, the officer who 70 José C. Moya

subdued the bomber, declared that he tried to commit suicide rather than surrender—a detail that added to the aura that soon encircled him.72 The detainee refused to give his name, saying only that he had avenged the workers fallen on May Day and that he still had plenty of bombs left to throw at the police. Subsequent interrogations of both the detainee and others revealed that his name was Simon Radowisky, and he was eighteen years old and had been born in a shtetl in the province of Kiev. In Russia, he had worked as a smith and mechanic since the age of ten. During the 1905 revolution, at the age of fourteen, he was shot, wounded, and arrested as an anarchist, spending six months in jail. He migrated to Argentina in April 1908, and, like most other arrivals, he at first stayed within the confines of the immigrant community. He had come to join a brother, worked in a Jewish-owned metal shop, found a tenement room in the Jewish quarter, and frequented the radical Biblioteca Rusa.73 But he began to move beyond those boundaries sooner than most arrivals. Within a year he left his job to work at an Italian-owned shop where the salary was higher, found non-Jewish anarchist roommates and acquaintances, and learned sufficient Spanish so that his interrogation, unlike that of other Russian immigrants, was conducted without an interpreter.74 Apparently, he read Spanish-language newspapers regularly, because he had learned of the whereabouts of the chief of police on the day of the assassination while reading the local daily La Argentina. Some months later, he wrote a letter in proper Spanish to the director of the national prison, threatening to go on a hunger strike if he was not transferred to a facility where he could work to relieve the boredom; the letter contains a few orthographical errors, but these are ones commonly found in similar documents written by working-class native speakers.75 Belonging to what could be described as a transethnic ideological community seems to have facilitated the integration of arrivals like Radowisky into his new host society, or at least into a wider milieu beyond the confines of immigrant networks. The interrogation of another witness suggests a gendered dimension to the process. Sofia Lisichsky, a twenty-five-year-old seamstress, had also been jailed in Russia as an anarchist and now resided in Once. She did not deny her political views, which she attributed to her reading and interest in female emancipation, stressing that women should struggle hand in hand with men for these ideals that she also referred to as “agrarian socialism” (a synonym of Tolstoyan anarchism), which envisioned a return to an egalitarian rural society and denounced political violence. Yet, despite her belief 71 What’s in a Stereotype?

in female emancipation, she described a rather cloistered existence. She did not leave home often because there was a telephone in the tenement building, and she used it to order groceries delivered to her apartment. She did not go out with her husband, Pablo Karaschine, another Russian-Jewish anarchist, because he would come home from work, eat, and leave for the Biblioteca Rusa. Besides, he was very jealous and acted so nastily toward male visitors that they stopped coming. Her interaction with the outside world was limited to delivering dresses to her clients, most of whom lived in brothels (another instance of contacts between anarchists and prostitution). Unlike the interrogated males, who at least acknowledged knowing Radowisky, or of him, she claimed she had never seen him nor any of his acquaintances. She noted that their surnames indicated that many of them were ethnic Russians and that there was a big division between these Russians and (Russian) Jews. Yet it would be well to take declarations made during an interrogation about the assassination of a police chief with more than a grain of salt. Lisichsky was clearly trying to distance herself from anything having to do with the case and from her husband, who had been caught a week before trying to blow up a church where a funeral mass was being held for Carlos de Borbón, a member of the Spanish royal family. This and some contradictions in her testimony imply that she exaggerated the seclusion of her daily life. She had maintained that she always ordered home delivery of groceries and that her relationship with her husband was strained to the point that she had asked him to leave the house. But the day she was arrested she had been shopping for groceries to prepare food to take to her jailed husband and actually tried to visit him three times that day. She had claimed that male visitors had stopped coming to her house. But she also mentioned a discussion there with a Jewish anarchist who, during the protest against the execution of the Spanish anarchist-pedagogue Francisco Ferrer, barely a month before, had argued that demonstrations were not enough and that more violent means were required. Not surprisingly, she claimed to have kicked this anarchist out of the house for expressing such violent views and asked him never to come back. Nonetheless, however much she exaggerated her seclusion, her daily routine likely placed her more in the home and her immediate community than did that of her male coreligionists. To wit, although Lisichsky had been in Argentina a year longer than Radowisky, she needed an interpreter during the interrogation. The prosecutor’s presentation of the case illustrates contemporary official attitudes toward Jews and radicalism. The prosecutor first asserted that 72 José C. Moya

the assassination of the chief of police and Alberto Lartigau, his twentyyear-old personal secretary, represented the most savage example of what a police spokesperson had defined as “neomysticism” and “today is known as terrorism.” The act was the more heinous because it had taken place in a democracy whose economic and political opportunities and liberal laws annulled “even the pretext of the revolutionary explosions in which the lower depths of European societies relieve their caste hatreds in conditions that are completely foreign to our social organization.”76 He then asserted that Simon Radowisky belongs to that caste of helots that germinate in the Russian steppes, dragging their miserable lives between the harshness of nature and an inferior [social] condition. Pariahs of the political absolutisms of that milieu, subjected to the discretionary powers of the master, persecuted and massacred by the ignorance and fanaticism of a people that see in the Jew an enemy of society, they finally emigrate, like Radowisky, after having suffered sentences for the mere fact of professing subversive ideas. And when their entry into a free society, like ours, generously returns to them their rights of men, opening to them wide horizons of regeneration and prosperity, when they should consider these societies as a true promised land, the instinct of perversity in them bursts out, poorly disguised under the pretext of vindications that no longer have any justification, perpetrating assassination, devastation, and disorder. Rather than anti-Semitism or overt class prejudice, this language corresponded to a standard liberal discourse in countries of immigration about Old World miseries and repressions, New World liberties and opportunities, and ungrateful radical immigrants—a discourse that could have been as easily heard in a New York or Chicago courtroom. The prosecutor added that “excessive development of the lower mandible, preeminence of the zygomatic and supracilial arches, depression of the forehead, light facial asymmetry” constituted the somatic characteristics that revealed in Radowisky “the criminal type.” Again, to read these phrenological “observations” as an effort to racialize Jews would be specious; they were quite common, one could even say de rigueur, in contemporary criminology and applied regardless of ethnic background. Yet, perhaps one can detect in the text the incipient construction of the Jewish radical stereotype as a mechanism of exclusion like that discussed at the beginning of this chapter. 73 What’s in a Stereotype?

Indeed, the Radowisky affair, added to the bombing attempt the previous week by Pablo Karaschine and the events of the Semana Roja, seems to have cemented, in a surprisingly short period, the association of Jews with anarchism in the Argentine political imagination. Even before the identity of the assassin of the police chief was established, diplomats from the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Spain, and Brazil had informed their home governments, based on local police reports, that he was, or appeared to be, Russian.77 The decree for the state of siege sent by the president to Congress on the day of the assassination used language similar to that of the prosecutor about ungrateful immigrants, but it also referred to Radowisky’s and Karaschine’s deeds as part of a “sinister plan.” The police investigations centered on a conspiracy by a group of Russian anarchists referred to as La Comuna. Some of the putative members of this cabal were actually white Russians. But the term “ruso” had become so identified with Jews that these ethnic differences went unnoticed. The state of siege prevented the local press from printing anything about the police repression following the assassination, but letters from anarchists to their friends in Montevideo refer to massive detentions that included “the majority of the Russian comrades.”78 I have not yet transferred the surviving arrest records from the period into a database. Yet a cursory look at the material suffices to show that the arrests were indeed massive and that Jews were highly overrepresented. Data on expulsions provide a measure of the trend. Jews accounted for none of the 68 anarchists deported from Argentina before 1905; for 6 of the 159 expelled between 1905 and 1908; and for 38 of the 172 expelled during 1909–1910, representing 22.0 percent of those expelled at a time when Jews made up only 2.3 percent of the foreign-born population of the city. This was by far the highest relative rate of deportation for any ethnic or national group during those years. Apparently, more were banished from the country without being officially deported. On March 8, 1910, “a Russian who declined to give his name” told the American consul in Buenos Aires that Argentine authorities had paid the captains of two ships, one sailing from Buenos Aires to New York and the other from La Plata to Pensacola, six pounds for each of nine Russian anarchists (all suffering from trachoma!) they were taking on board as seamen.79 The identification of Jews with anarchism became so strong that even those who supported Jewish immigration felt the need to specify that anarchists and revolutionaries must be excluded.80 To return to the questions we raised at the start: what was the relationship between the stereotype of Jews as anarchists and social reality, and 74 José C. Moya

could such a stereotype function only as a signifier of alterity or a mechanism for exclusion? To begin with, we should point out that the existence of the stereotype does not necessarily support the notion of Jewish “exceptionalism.” Another group in Buenos Aires was also consistently identified as anarchist, something that offers an opportunity to place the Jewish case in comparative perspective. Less than a month before the Radowisky affair, the American ambassador noted that Argentines blamed the events of the Semana Roja on Catalans and felt that the danger posed by the radical minority coming out of Barcelona offset the benefits of Spanish immigration in general.81 The newspaper La tribuna (May 8, 1909) complained that if authorities did not stop the entry of foreign anarchists, the image of Argentina overseas would soon change from a land of opportunity to “a corner of Russia or a branch of Barcelona.” Two days after the assassination of Falcón, the Times of London maintained that “the bomb-throwing party consists of foreigners recruited from Europe” and that most of the eleven thousand militant anarchists known to the police in Buenos Aires were “Italians, Russians, or Catalonians.”82 The mention of Italians is neither surprising nor particularly telling. They accounted, after all, for more than half of the foreign-born population of the city. But Catalans were a small minority that represented, like Russian Jews, only about 2 percent of the immigrant population. Instructively, they were often referred to as “the Jews of Spain” and had been traditionally imaged through the same paradoxical stereotypes of rapacious capitalists and anticapitalist radicals. In what is often considered the first anti-Semitic novel in Argentina, La bolsa, the two miser characters are a Catalan and a Jew.83 The figure of the Catalan anarchist also became a stock character in Argentine theater.84 During the labor riots and right-wing reaction of May 1910 and of the “Tragic Week” of January 1919, Catalans became, along with Jews, the main targets of nativist vigilantes.85 Right after the Tragic Week, the Spanish embassy in Rio de Janeiro reported that the Brazilian government had restricted entries into the country, fearing an avalanche of anarchist refugees from Argentina, particularly Russians and Catalans, who were considered the most dangerous because they had led the revolt.86 To be sure, the majority of anarchists in Buenos Aires were neither Jewish nor Catalan. For this to have been true would be almost impossible since, together, Catalans and Jews represented less than 5 percent of the foreign-born and less than 3 percent of the total population of the city. But this does not mean that the stereotypes simply reflected anti-Semitism and anti-Catalanism. Jews and Catalans each accounted for about a tenth 75 What’s in a Stereotype?

of all the anarchists expelled from Argentina between the passing of the Residency Law in 1902 and the outbreak of World War I, by far the highest relative proportions of any ethnic groups. One could argue that this still may have been a sign of discriminatory behavior from the authorities rather reflecting the relative participation of members of these two groups in the anarchist movement. But Catalans were also, as we saw was the case with Jews, highly overrepresented among casualties during anarchist demonstrations and disturbances, and, once again, as with the Jews, it would be hard to attribute this result to police discrimination. Like Jews, Catalans were not physically distinguishable from other demonstrators, less so in the heat of street turmoil. Nor can stereotypes explain the fact that Jews and Catalans had committed the most visible acts of anarchist terrorism in the country. The fact that three of these had taken place within a span of a month (October 17 to November 14, 1909) increased their impact on the public and the identification of Jews and Catalans with anarchism in both the official and popular imaginary.87 That the perpetrators were recent immigrants with a history of anarchist activism in their home countries buttressed the notion that radicalism was a preexisting and essential characteristic of Jews and Catalans rather than the result of their experiences in the new land. And the widespread image of Barcelona, since the 1890s, and Russia, since 1905, as hotbeds of revolutionary ferment reinforced the notion. The stereotypes could have been, and were indeed, used as mechanisms of exclusion, but at the most primary level they represented generalized and simplified accounts that nonetheless corresponded to social reality. What could explain, then, this disproportionately high participation among the two groups? For Jews, a line of argument has centered on the overlap of Judaism’s eschatology and ethics and the anarchist worldview. A historian of Jewish anarchism argued that “the prophetic exigency of social justice, the model of liberation of Exodus, and the messianic idea” created an affinity for libertarian socialism.88 Like similar arguments based on intellectual history—Weber’s idea of the link between Protestantism and capitalism would be a parallel case—this one is difficult to confirm or refute empirically. Logically, it is not amiss. Anarchism did contain, to a greater degree than socialism, a pronounced transcendental element. Its demand for social justice was as absolute as its invocation of individual liberty and usually expressed in the righteous tone of a jeremiad. Its faith in the regenerating power of the “Social Revolution” bore a striking resemblance to the religious notion of redemption. The revolution itself had clear apocalyptic 76 José C. Moya

overtones. And anarchists’ prophesies about the imminent coming of the libertarian utopia were millenarian by definition. There are, however, at least two problems with the argument (besides the generic one related to the notion of collective mentalities or attitudes). One is that it fails to explain the intense participation of non-Jewish groups, like the Catalans (or the lack of participation of non-Ashkenazic Jews for that matter). The other is that all the quasi-spiritual traits of anarchism mentioned above are as akin to Christian as they are to Jewish eschatology. Indeed, eschatological notions such as redemption, salvation, messianic hope, the Second Coming, and the Last Judgment form the very core of Christology and of much of Christian theology in general. And if the philosophical affinity of anarchism is to Judeo-Christian principles in general, how could this explain the high participation of Jews and Catalans and the relative lack of participation of countless other “Judeo-Christian” groups, including many with a similar history of emigration? In Buenos Aires, for example, British and German Gentiles were more numerous than Jews and Catalans up to the early years of the twentieth century, and Lebanese Maronites became as numerous later. But the participation of all of these groups in the local anarchist movement was insignificant. The best explanation for Jewish, and Catalan, anarchist militancy seems to lie in two more mundane facts. One is somewhat tautological. They simply came from regions where the anarchist movement was already particularly developed. Although less intensively and visibly than Jews and Catalans, other immigrants who originated from similar regions, like southern Andalusians and Tuscans, were also overrepresented in the Argentine anarchist movement. In the case of Jews, the Russian Revolution of 1905 must have radicalized many on both sides of the Atlantic and produced a stream of anarchist refugees to Argentina and other host societies. The Argentine elite’s definition of anarchism as an imported disease was clearly self-serving. But the recent arrival of Jewish immigrants during this period and the histories of the few dozen for whom I was able to cull sufficient biographical information indicate that their radicalism had indeed premigratory roots.89 Those roots then found a fertile soil in a local anarchist movement that, by the time of their arrival, had already become one of the most vibrant in the Atlantic world. Their arrival, in turn, further energized the movement. The second explanation has to do with the groups’ socio-occupational makeup. Compared to almost all other immigrant groups, both Jews and Catalans were highly underrepresented among unskilled laborers and 77 What’s in a Stereotype?

factory workers and highly overrepresented among skilled workers and artisans. This class of literate typographers, tailors, bakers, shoemakers, and so on, working independently or in small and medium-sized shops, was precisely what made up the bulk of the anarchist movement just about everywhere. In Buenos Aires, 98 percent of the anarchists were literate. Sixty percent were skilled workers, a proportion twice as high as that of the city’s labor force in general. The only other significant occupational groups were port and transportation workers, and to a lesser degree store clerks, journalists, and students. Samples that I have gathered in Italian and German archives show a similar occupational structure for anarchists in Europe.90 Not only did the stereotype of Jews as anarchists capture a basic reality, albeit in an exaggerated form, but it also had a positive side. The image, and the realities behind it, no doubt intensified anti-Jewish feelings among the ruling groups and much of the native and immigrant middle class. But it had the opposite effect on the working-class majority. In London or in New York, the anarchist leanings of Jews separated them from the mainstream trade unions and from a native working class that was much less radical. In Buenos Aires, three-quarters of the working class was foreign-born, and anarchists had played the key role in its organization. Moreover, the other important labor organizers were the socialists, who may have argued endlessly with anarchists about tactics but shared a similar vision and definitely did not hold against them a visceral animosity. In this context, the stereotype made Jews more, not less, acceptable. It undermined, rather than bolstered, popular anti-Semitism. It made Jews the object of emulation, not rejection. Anarchist pamphlets, newspapers, and speeches are replete with appeals to follow the example of “our Russian [or our Catalan] comrades.” In this light the Radowisky affair takes on a different meaning. Because Argentine law exempted minors from the death penalty, Radowisky was condemned to life in prison, something that turned his freedom into one of the main goals of anarchists in Argentina. In January 1911, they dug a tunnel under the national penitentiary. Salvador Planas Virella and Francisco Solano Regis, who had tried to assassinate two different Argentine presidents, escaped and were never heard of again. Radowisky had been sent to the prison’s printing shop a few minutes before and lost this opportunity, but not the next, or almost not. In November 1918, anarchists used a boat to ferry him out of the national penitentiary, which had been moved to Tierra del Fuego, but the Chilean police captured them later. The campaign never stopped. General strikes were called in support of Radowisky.91 More than a dozen books and thousands of newspaper articles and leaflets appeared 78 José C. Moya

to eulogize “our Simón.” In none of these books or articles are the words “murderer” or “assassin”—the common terms employed in the “bourgeois” press—used. Radowisky was always the “avenger,” the “retaliator,” the “justice giver” (el justiciero), the “martyr of Ushuaia” (the town where the prison was located), the “libertarian saint” (santo ácrata).92 In May 1918, thousands of pamphlets filled the streets accusing the saint’s jailers of sexual sadism. Other accounts give an opposite twist: that the charisma, the kindness, the mystical magnetism of this libertarian (Jewish) Saint Francis had turned him into a hero for jailers and common criminals alike. Graphic artists contributed hundreds of sketches and reproductions of photographs. The consistency and intensity of the anarchist hagiography had the desired effect. Radowisky became a martyr of the working class in general rather than of anarchists. Even bourgeois journalists began to write of him sympathetically, which, in turn, aroused the empathy of many within the middle classes. Eventually, popular pressure reached such a point that President Yrigoyen pardoned Radowisky in 1930, despite Yrigoyen’s fears of a military coup. In this light, Radowisky’s crime became another feather on the collective Jewish cap rather than a stigma. This and the general stereotype of Jews as anarchists actually does much to explain the relative absence of working-class anti-Semitism in Argentina during the first third of the twentieth century. Whether, and how, this attitude changed after the inroads of nationalism into the labor movement during the 1940s is an important question. It is also one that is beyond this present essay’s scope. Nonetheless, the situation examined in this chapter serves to highlight the importance of place and time in defining Jewish ethnicity. Jewish immigration to Latin America outside of Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil represented a small-scale mercantile diaspora. These movements were akin to certain streams of Chinese to Southeast Asia, Indians to East Africa, or Lebanese to West Africa rather than to European migration to the River Plate region or North America. Immigrants in these cases—with the exception of indentured servants—did not move in search of wage employment. Labor was too abundant in the destinations and wages too low to make this a viable option. They went to work on their own or for relatives with a clear plan to become independent business owners. Most began the quest as humble peddlers. But from the beginning they did not identify or were identified by others as members of the laboring classes. So Jewish ethnicity in these low-wage destinations—like Palestinian ethnicity in Honduras or Lebanese ethnicity in Ecuador, to mention only two similar cases—was 79 What’s in a Stereotype?

self- and externally produced as petit bourgeois at the beginning and eventually as bourgeois. The situation in Argentina—like that in Uruguay, southern Brazil, the United States, and Canada—was, as we have seen, drastically different. Jews arrived in numbers that were too large to permit complete concentration in mercantile activities or any other single sector of the economy. The existence of large commercial middle classes of immigrant or native background in these countries further prevented such concentration. Therefore Jews, like other immigrants, occupied a broad socioeconomic spectrum within the host society. With time and upward mobility, they would move increasingly into the middle class. But this was a slower process than we have traditionally thought, one that took a generation or more. Thus, during the migration period, before the world depression of 1930 and probably before World War II, most Jews in Argentina thought of themselves, and were perceived by others, as working class. Moreover, Jewish ethnicity was shaped not simply vis-à-vis a preexisting national norm but vis-à-vis the cultures of other arrivals who, after all, made up the majority of the population. Jewish alterity was less sharp in such settings. Defining “the other” is not an easy endeavor in a place like early twentieth-century Buenos Aires where three-quarters of the adult population had been born outside of Argentina. Jewish ethnicity could not be constructed and construed as the opposite of the native and the norm—as it could in most of the rest of Latin America— because their immigration and adaptation experience actually represented the norm. Some Argentine cultural nationalists would try to turn the gaucho into the authentic emblem of the nation. But such myths clashed with a social reality in which gauchos were a small and diminishing minority and the tales rarely transcended the realm of nostalgic novels, steak houses, and tourist shops. A popular Argentine aphorism offers a more accurate axiom of national origins: “Mexicans descend from the Aztecs, Peruvians from the Incas, and we from the boats.” The positive side of stereotypes examined in this chapter is part of, and reflects, this axiom. Jewish ethnicity in Argentina fitted within this national ethos because they “descend from the boats” and arrived en masse.

80 José C. Moya

Notes 1. Contemporary dictionaries of argot illustrate this function of the stereotype. For example, Aristide Bruant, Dictionnaire francais-argot: L’Argot de XXe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1901) lists fifteen terms for juif, more than for any other ethnic group, which despite the variety seem to share the connotation of otherness. 2. The stereotype was exploited even within the labor movement. A good example of this can be found in a booklet on the perils of anarchism written under the pseudonym of Max Nomad and published by the Retail, Wholesale and Chain Store Food Employees Union in New York in 1944, titled The Jewish Conspiracy. For the gender dimensions of the stereotype see Naomi Shepherd, A Price below Rubies: Jewish Women as Rebels and Radicals (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993). 3. In a less functionalist, and more totalizing, definition, Roland Barthes maintained that “All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.” Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text (New York: Hill & Wang, 1975), 2. 4. Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 17, 40–44; Furio Biagini, Nati altrove: Il movimiento anarchico ebraico tra Mosca e New York (Pisa: BFS, 1998), 61; Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 230; Erich Haberer, Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 5. William J. Fishman, Jewish Radicals: From Czarist Stetl to London Ghetto (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), stresses the disproportionate weight of Jews in London’s anarchist movement. George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (New York, 1962), 284, maintains that they furnished more recruits to the movement than all the rest of the British population. But H. Oliver, The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), while highlighting the cosmopolitan nature of the movement, does not privilege their participation over that of Gentile German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and French expatriates, devoting only a few lines to Jewish militancy (pp. 5, 20–21, 50–51, 65–66). 6. Mina Graur, An Anarchist “Rabbi”: The Life and Teachings of Rudolf Rocker (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). Although Rocker was well known in international anarchist circles as a theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, he acquired a legendary stature among Jewish anarchists. Two of the earliest books published in Yiddish by anarchists in Buenos Aires were his Di parlamentarishe tetigkayt in der arbayter bevegung—Ratensistem oder diktatur? (Parliamentary Activity in the Workers’ Movement: Soviets or Dictatorship?) (1920) and Bolshevizm un anarkhizm (1922). 7. Richard D. Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), has more to say about anti-Semitism than about Jews but does refer to a “considerable 81 What’s in a Stereotype?















number of Jewish anarchists [most of them immigrants from eastern Europe] among the proletariat and the litterateurs” (46–47). 8. Rudolf Rocker, La juventud de un rebelde (Buenos Aires, 1947), 309. 9. Furio Biagini, “L’anarchia nel ghetto: Appunti per una storia del movimiento anarchico di lingua yiddish negli Stati Uniti,” in America anarchica, 1850–1930, ed. Antonio Donno (Rome: Piero Lacaita editore, 1990), 214. 10. These leaders included the poet David Edelstadt, one of the first editors of what became the largest Yiddish anarchist newspaper in the world, the Fraye arbeter shtime; Alexander Berkman, who in 1892 attempted to assassinate steel magnate Henry Clay Frick and had a long international career even after spending two decades in prison; and Emma Goldman, who purchased the revolver in 1892 and later became the best-known anarchist in the United States. See Ori Kritz, The Poetics of Anarchy: David Edelshtat’s Revolutionary Poetry (New York: P. Lang, 1997); Kenneth C. Wenzer, Anarchists Adrift: Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman (St. James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1996); and Candace Falk, ed., Emma Goldman: A Guide to Her Life and Documentary Sources (Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1995). For a filmic treatment see Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher, The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists, a sixty-minute documentary produced by the Pacific Street Film Collective in 1989. 11. The United States had an autochthonous tradition of individualist anarchism with its roots in the Protestant upper-middle class of New England. As a mass movement, however, it was always an immigrant phenomenon and tied to the socialist, rather than individualist, current in anarchism. 12. Richard Yoast, “The Development of Argentine Anarchism: A SocioIdeological Analysis” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1975), begins categorically on the issue: “The Argentine anarchist movement was the largest, most coherent libertarian effort of its time,” although a few lines later he wonders whether “Buenos Aires or Barcelona, was, in its time, more the focal point of world anarchist thought.” If the attention of the international press is an indication, the Argentine capital came in second. I checked the Times of London from 1909 to 1914, and it contained more anarchistrelated articles on Buenos Aires than on any other place, with the exception of Barcelona. 13. Buenos Aires’ municipal censuses of 1909, vol. 1, 3–17, and 1936, vol. 3, 295–99. Eighty percent of the city’s Jewish population in 1909 was foreignborn, a proportion that declined to 39 percent by 1936. 14. Archivo de la Policía (APC) (Chacabuco St., Buenos Aires), Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Antecedentes de Anarquistas, 1902, no. 1. 15. El anarquismo y el movimiento obrero en Argentina (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1978); Edgardo J. Bilsky, La F.O.R.A. y el movimiento obrero, 1900–1910, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1985); G. Zaragoza Ruvira, Anarquismo argentino, 1876–1902 (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1996); Juan Suriano, Anarquistas: Cultura y política libertaria en Buenos Aires, 1890–1910 (Buenos Aires: Manantial, 2001). 82 José C. Moya

16. About a quarter of a million Jews are estimated to have arrived in Argentina between 1880 and 1940. 17. Censo general de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1887, vol. 2, 22. 18. Centro de Estudios de la Policía (Lavalle St. 2625, Buenos Aires), Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Planillas de Rufianes, 1893–1894. The records did not have information on religion. But they included the individuals’ age, marital status, place and country of birth, length of residence in Argentina, first and family names, and at times those of their parents, which I used to identify Jews. The 121 I identified as such were relatively clear cases (e.g., a Moises Zukerman born in Galitzia to Abraham and Esther). The twenty-nine identified as likely Jewish had more ambiguous fore- or surnames (e.g., Mauricio Shiffman from Vienna with no information on parents). If anything, the method undercounts the number of Jews since it excludes those without typical naming patterns. 19. Thirty-six had been born in Russia, twenty-five in Austro-Hungary, twentyone in Turkey, nineteen in Poland, sixteen in Rumania, thirteen in England, and the rest in Germany, France, Greece, Egypt, Bulgaria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the United States, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, and India. 20. El perseguido, Voz de los explotados, May 18, 1890. My UCLA colleague Carlo Ginzburg felt that the use of certain terms suggests that the Italian version of the editorial must have been the original: “Noi siamo i vagabondi, i paltonieri, i randagi, la canaglia, i malfattori, il precipitato putrido, il sublimato corrosivo della dierna organizzazione sociale.” The fact that two-thirds of the paper was written in that language supports his opinion. “Sublimate” is used in the text in its chemical meaning; the psychological sense of the term did not exist yet. 21. APC, Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Guardia, Copiador de Notas, December 1902; and idem, Orden Social, Copiador de Notas n. 12, 1905. 22. Public Record Office (PRO), London, FO 371 825, September 20, 1910. El diario, October 27, 1905, made similar claims about people who made a lucrative business of obtaining citizenship papers for anarchists and other dangerous characters. 23. APC, Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Copiador de Notas n. 11, January 9–April 7, 1905. 24. PRO, London, FO 371 598, 1909, 219. 25. Ibid., FO 369 272, 1910, December 6, 1909. 26. Ibid., FO 371 823, January 29 and April 14, 1910. 27. Ibid., December 6, 1909. 28. Ibid., FO 371 825, June 30, 1910. See also FO 371 825, September 20, 1910. 29. Archives des Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, Correspondence Politique et Commerciale (Nouvelle Serie), Argentina, Politique Interieur, 3, 1910–1917, 59–60 and 68. 30. Francisco Stach, La defensa social y la inmigración (Buenos Aires: Museo Social Argentino, 1916), 26–28. 31. El rebelde: Periódico anarquista (Buenos Aires), September 3, 17, 1899. 32. L’Avvenire: Periodico comunista-anarchico (Buenos Aires), October 16, 1898. 83 What’s in a Stereotype?

33. L’Avvenire, September 10, 1899. For other articles on the Dreyfus affair, see issues of August 27 and September 23, 1899. 34. Archives des Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, Correspondence Politique et Commerciale (Nouvelle Serie), Argentina, Politique Etranger, 1902, 32–33. 35. Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, 17–18, 42, 60. 36. APC, Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Copiador de Notas n. 11, January 9–April 7, 1905. 37. El obrero, Montevideo, February 11, 1905. 38. APC, Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Copiador de Notas n. 11, January 9–April 7, 1905. 39. PRO, London, FO 6 490, 41. 40. In a column devoted to news from various countries and under the ironic title of “Rusia-Argentina,” the newspaper L’Agitatore indivudualista anarchico from Bahia Blanca, in the south of the province of Buenos Aires, claimed that about three hundred had been arrested and sixty to seventy expelled to Montevideo (March 30, 1905, 4). But internal police sources only list twenty-five individuals expelled. 41. At least one policeman, in a loud discussion with a fellow officer on a tramway, blamed his own institution for provoking the shooting. Such insubordinate interpretation was quickly reported to a district sheriff. 42. Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Ministerio del Interior, legajo 15, letter from the Chief of Police to the Minister of the Interior, May 24, 1905. 43. Eugene F. Sofer, From Pale to Pampa: A Social History of Jews in Buenos Aires (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 66–69. 44. El obrero, May 27, 1905. 45. APC, Policía de la Capital, División Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Reuniones Sociológicas, 1905. 46. Biagini, Nati altrove, 152. 47. The principal void here is the absence of women. They played an important role in the local anarchist movement but, for reasons that I have discussed elsewhere, were less likely to appear in police records. See Jose C. Moya, “Italians in Buenos Aires’ Anarchist Movement: Gender Ideology and Women’s Participation,” in Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives: Italian Workers of the World, ed. Donna Gabaccia and Franca Iacovetta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). 48. Jose C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), chapter 4. The segregation index indicates the percentage of a given group (in this case Jews) who would have to move in order for the group to be completely integrated residentially with the rest of the population. The formula for the index of segregation is Is = 1/2∑  Xi–Yi  where Xi represents the proportion of all members of any particular group residing in any areal unit i, and Yi represents the proportion of all members of the group with which the first group is being compared (or the rest of the population) who reside in that areal unit. 84 José C. Moya

49. David Schers, “Inmigrantes y política: Los primeros pasos del partido sionista socialista poalei sion en la Argentina, 1910–1916,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe (Tel Aviv) 3, no. 2 (July–December 1992): 75–88. 50. Biagini, Nati altrove, 152. 51. Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Archivo de Figueroa Alcorta, noncataloged. I thank Dr. Olga Bordi and archivist Liliana Crespi for making this document accessible. The anarchist attempt to burn the convent of Caballido during the protest resulted in a shootout that led to eighty arrests and left three wounded. A police officer was shot in the chest, but the bullet miraculously hit his pocket watch. The humorous magazine Caras y caretas (April 21, 1906, n. 394) published a photograph of the watch with the encrusted bullet and a comic strip on “Preventive Means for All Types of Demonstrations.” One of the cartoons included a man with a huge pocket watch and the caption “Buy a 12-caliber watch, the best shield against police bullets.” This bullet in particular was not likely to have come from the police, unless they were shooting each other. But the fact that the magazine described it as such is in line with its position that police excesses caused the turmoil. 52. Archivo del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid, Política Interna, Orden Público, legajo H2750. 53. Ibid., legajo 2754. A similar case is that of Russian-born Gregorio Fleischmann, who was deported from Argentina in 1919 and apprehended in Spain with his wife because the British embassy in Madrid denounced him as dangerous. The Spanish authorities were going to expel him when word arrived from Buenos Aires that an Argentine colonel vouched for Fleischmann as a philosophical anarchist and an honest person. 54. Archivo de Tribunales, Buenos Aires, División Antecedentes Judiciales, cards in file cabinet. Hantover again appears in the police arrest records during the turmoil of May 1910. APC, Policía de la Capital, División Investigaciones, Sección Guardia, Entrada de Presos, vol. 16. 55. APC, Policía de la Capital, División Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Reuniones Sociológicas, 1908. 56. Ibid. These “popular” libraries were not peculiar to Jews and anarchists. Other ethnic and ideological groups also founded many, and they existed in most working-class neighborhoods of the city. 57. Ibid., Copiador de Notas, February 1907. 58. According to P. Katz, an early secretary of Buenos Aires’ Poalei Sion quoted in David Schers’s “Inmigrantes y política,” the use of Russian and depreciation of Yiddish was particularly noticeable among socialists. 59. The Parisian police, for example, normally arrested scores of radicals before May Day and actually prohibited street demonstrations. Prefecture de Police, Paris, Cabinet du Prefet, Archives, PP, Serie BA, 1, carton 1628 (manifestations du 1er mai, 1899–1932). 85 What’s in a Stereotype?

60. La protesta, May 2, 1909, reported higher casualties: 8 dead and 105 wounded. 61. La prensa, May 3, 1909. The day before, the paper had quoted police as saying the first shots had come from the anarchist antimilitarist group Luz al Soldado. If both statements were correct, it would mean that many Russians belonged to that group. 62. APC, Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Guardia, Copiador de Notas, May 1909. 63. Anarcho-Communism, which envisioned a future society where resources would be allocated according to need, instead of productivity as proposed by anarcho-collectivists, had become the dominant strain of anarchist ideology in Argentina, and in the Atlantic world in general, since the early 1890s. 64. Archives des Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, Correspondence Politique et Commerciale (Nouvelle Serie), Argentina, Politique Interieur, 2, 1903–1909, 153–56; National Archives (NARA), College Park, Maryland, M862, 20058; PRO, London, FO 368 269, May 12, 1909. 65. La prensa, May 2, 1909. 66. How the term “Red Week” originated is not clear, but the daily El tiempo used it already on May 8, 1909. 67. NARA, M862, 20058, May 10, 1909. 68. APC, Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Copiador de Notas, May 8, 1909. 69. This was actually the term most commonly used by contemporary anarchists and socialists to refer to their comrades. It defines, after all, not only those who have the same religion but also those who share an ideal or ideology. 70. APC, Policía de la Capital, División de Investigaciones, Sección Orden Social, Copiador de Notas n. 11, February 26, 1905. 71. Ibid., May 1909. Although other leftists, such as socialists and syndicalists, also used theater as a didactic tool, the practice was much more common among anarchists. Moya, “Italians in Buenos Aires’ Anarchist Movement.” 72. Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Tribunales Criminales, R-5, 10. 73. In the annual report sent to London by the British ambassador (PRO 371 1824, page 4 of the report), he wrote that Radowisky and his brother had been proved to have participated in the rioting of the Semana Roja and that the brother had been confined in an asylum for the insane. 74. The British ambassador was “assured that he [Radowisky] spoke very pure Spanish under the stress of his first emotions.” PRO, FO 371 598, 476. 75. Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Tribunales Criminales, R-5, 53, 53.5, 63–90, 204, 236. 76. Ibid., 169–72. 77. PRO, FO 371 598, telegraph of November 15, 1909. NARA, M 862, 4519/61; Archives des Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, Correspondence Politique et Commerciale (Nouvelle Serie), Argentina, Politique Interieur, 2, telegram n. 32; Archivo del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid, Política Interna, Orden Público, legajo H2750; Archivo Histórico do Ministério das Relacoés Exteriores, Rio de Janerio, Missões Diplomaticas Brasileiras, Buenos Aires, 206–2-06. 86 José C. Moya

78. La nueva senda, Montevideo, November 19, 1909. The letters also mention that the police occupied the offices of the anarchist daily La protesta, destroying its printing press and taking the money that had been collected by the “committee pro-Russian revolutionaries.” 79. NARA, M 862, 23894/2. 80. A good example is the ex-minister of agriculture Damián M. Torino, El problema del inmigrante y el problema agrario en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1912), 30–31. He found “much good” in Jewish immigrants and maintained that “the Jew is dangerous or damaging only in poor and lethargic countries. It is a microbe that harms weak and tired organisms but adapts well to potent and virile ones. His laborious intelligence and commercial instinct strains the social fabric of weak peoples who see in them a whip. Among peoples who, on the contrary, are endowed with similar aptitudes, or even superior ones to that of the Jew, he competes with equal rivals, and his arrival yields in these prosperous environments nothing but extra vitality.” He considered Argentina such an environment but explained that this welcome of course did not extend to Jewish anarchists. 81. NARA M 862, 8717/16, August 23, 1909. A report of May 15, 1910 (NARA M 514, 77), also stated that Argentine authorities feared that Catalan anarchists would try to assassinate the infanta Isabel de Borbón, then visiting Argentina for the celebration of the independence centennial (the first member of the Spanish royal family to have done so), as revenge for the execution of Francisco Ferrer. 82. The Times, November 16 and 17, 1909, 5, c. 6. 83. Julián Martel, La bolsa (1891; repr., Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1975), 214–16. Ironically, Martel’s real surname was the unmistakably Catalan “Miró.” 84. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 371. 85. María Inés Barbero and Fernando Devoto, Los nacionalistas, 1910–1932 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1983), 40. Although I have not found any corroborating source, a letter of May 19, 1910, sent by an Italian anarchist in Buenos Aires to a companion in Italy claimed that “the Russian anarchist group that was attacked defended itself heroically forcing the assailants to retreat with many wounded and some dead,” Il terrore nella repubblica argentina (Castellammare, Italy: Camillo di Sciullo editore, 1910), 21. The repression of the Tragic Week did not stop the development of Jewish anarchism in the city. Soon after it, the Yidishe Ratsionalistishe Gezelshaft began printing what seem to be the first Yiddish-language anarchist books published in Argentina. See The Kate Sharpley Library Yiddish Anarchist Bibliography (London: Kate Sharpley, 1998). 86. Archivo del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid, Política Interna, Orden Público, legajo H2753. The ambassador added that although the restriction was “in open opposition to the letter of the [Brazilian] Constitution, it has been highly praised by the press and politicians, who declare that when its founders wrote the policy of ‘open doors’ to all the world, they could not have conceived that there would exist individuals whose only purpose would be to ruin it and destroy it.” 87 What’s in a Stereotype?

87. On August 12, 1905, Salvador Planes Virella, a twenty-three-year-old typographer from Barcelona, made an attempt on the life of President Quintana. On October 17, 1909, José Matabosch, a twenty-two-year-old mason, and Pascual Primo Valero, a bookbinder of the same age, both from Barcelona, planted a bomb on the Spanish consulate in protest of the execution of Francisco Ferrer in Barcelona. Two weeks later Pablo Karaschine tried to blow up a church for the same reason. And on November 14, Radowisky killed the chief of police and his secretary. On May 25, 1910, a bomb exploded in the cathedral. The bomber was not caught but was rumored to be Jewish. Exactly a month later, another bomb exploded during an opera performance at the Colon Theater. One of the two accused was Russian. 88. Biagini, Nati altrove, 22 and ff. 89. The degree to which this is true for immigrant groups that had been in Argentina longer than Jews is more difficult to determine. About half of a group of 220 Italians for whom I was able to find documents in Italian archives had been identified as anarchists by the Italian police before they emigrated to Argentina. This, however, likely underestimates the proportion with a history of premigratory radicalism since it does not include those who were ideologically anarchists but had not been arrested or investigated by the police before they left the country. 90. In a random sample of 175 Italian anarchists I took from the Caselario Politico Centralle at Rome’s Archivio Centralle dello Stato, 54 percent were skilled workers. Data from a three-volume file on 1,465 European anarchists assembled by the German police around 1900 and held at Hamburg’s Staatsarchiv shows a similar proportion of skilled workers (57 percent) for the 244 Italians in the file with occupations listed, and higher proportions for most other groups: Germans, 79 percent (n = 260); Austrians, 73 percent (n = 62); Bohemians, 63 percent (n = 65), French, 49 percent (n = 66). 91. L’Allarme, foglio anarchico di propaganda e d’agitazione, Buenos Aires, Octo­­­­­‑ ber 20 and November 13, 1928. The general strike was called, poignantly, on November 14, the anniversary of Radowisky’s assassination of the chief of police. 92. A good example is the book written by the Spanish anarchist militant and historian Diego Abad de Santillan, Simon Radowitzky, el vengador y el mártir (Buenos Aires: F.O.R.A., 1927).

88 José C. Moya

chapter five

Beyond the State and Ideology

Immigration of the Jewish Community to Brazil, 1937–1945 !

roney cytrynowicz

I

n 1938, during the “Estado Novo” (New State) dictatorship (1937–1945) in Brazil, a state educational inspector visited Escola Israelita Brasileira Luiz Fleitlich (Brazilian Jewish School Luiz Fleitlich), one of the many Jewish schools in São Paulo, and registered irregularities such as “teachers giving foreign language lessons in the first year and nonregistered teachers giving classes.”1 As a result, the inspector demanded the school stop teaching foreign languages and religion to children under ten years of age and register teachers with the state within eight days. The inspector’s attitude was related to one of the most important ideological principles in President Getúlio Vargas’s civic-pedagogical semi-Fascist project intended to reformulate Brazilian society. A “new” nationalist and xenophobic educational system was the core of this project, and the inspector often came to visit the Escola Israelita Brasileira Luiz Fleitlich. While the inspector’s actions might appear to be just one more story of a semiFascist dictatorship in operation, a careful examination of the documentation shows that the inspector regularly noted old and new “irregularities” because the educational practices in the school continued exactly the same as they had in the past, teaching Judaism and Hebrew to children. Put 89

differently, the semi-Fascist ideology of the state appears to have had little effect on the social and daily life of Brazilian-Jewish communities from 1937 to 1945, even as repression and violence against other immigrant groups, for example those of Japanese descent, appeared to increase. Given this dissonance, why is there general agreement among scholars who study the history of Jews in Brazil during the twentieth century that antiSemitism, prejudice, and persecution were dominant in the lives of Jewish immigrants? Indeed, the historiographical interpretations, and the social memories of the immigrants themselves, suggest that the ideology and the political actions of the Estado Novo were similar to that of Nazi Germany.2 One reason is that the Brazilian historiography focuses on state policies rather than social and cultural lived experiences. Such an approach, however, hides the fact that while Brazil’s official discourse resembled Fascism, Brazilian popular culture and daily life did not follow that path. Indeed the population did not support the nationalistic appeals of the government, even after 1942 when Brazil entered World War II on the Allied side. This chapter suggests that the standard characterization of the experiences of Jewish immigrants in Brazil as dominated by anti-Semitism tells only part of the story.3 Between 1937 and 1945 Jews living in São Paulo adapted and developed subtle and sophisticated strategies against the restrictions imposed by the Estado Novo. São Paulo had the most dynamic and the largest Jewish community in Brazil, and this case study proposes methods and approaches that can be used to analyze Jewish communities in other capitals and major cities in Brazil. An examination of the records of a range of Jewish institutions—charities, schools, synagogues, and cultural institutions—shows how they reacted against the formal legal restrictions imposed by the Estado Novo. For example, while there were restrictions against public expressions of foreignness (such as speaking and studying languages other than Portuguese), we see that Jewish institutions maintained their ties to traditional Judaism, often with the knowledge of the authorities. Jeffrey Lesser’s interpretative guidelines on immigration suggest how different minorities act under adverse circumstances. He argues that the Brazilian state’s restrictions on immigrants and minorities led to a common set of responses within a broader set of diverse ethnic identity strategies. By studying Jewish, Syrian-Lebanese, and Japanese immigration, Lesser argues that there are active, ethnically affirmative strategies designed to influence the majority discourse. In this sense, ethnic identity is a process under continuous “negotiation,” always in dialogue with tradition and between the minority and majority groups.4 90 Roney Cytrynowicz

Brazilian Jews, when negotiating identity and community issues that emerged as a result of the state policies, engendered their Brazilian-Jewish identity, establishing a pattern of social integration, not the segregation that most literature suggests. By recognizing that Jews, like a number of other minority groups in Brazil, were not simply passive actors of the state or the official ideology, we move away from the passivity-oriented positions of much scholarship regarding contemporary Brazilian history.5 We cannot understand the negotiation of Jewish identity during the 1930s and 1940s without understanding the growth of the city of São Paulo as it became the largest and most important city in Brazil, overtaking the federal capital of Rio de Janeiro. In São Paulo, during the period of the Estado Novo and World War II, daily life changed just as immigrants from around the world, and their children, were having an impact on all aspects of the city’s cultural, social, economic, and political life. Thus, when the Axis imposed a commercial blockade after Brazil entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1942, immigrants were the ones who often bore the brunt of anti-Axis discourses. For example, Jews (as incredible as it may seem) were told by authorities to stop speaking Yiddish in public because it was associated with Germany. Japanese immigrants were accused of treason and fifth column activities and were expelled from their houses in some São Paulo neighborhoods and sent to the countryside.6 São Paulo’s Jewish community followed the progress of the war with special interest because of their concern for the fate of refugees and relatives. Yet the situation in Europe, and the new challenges created by the Estado Novo, did not really change how Jewish identity was negotiated in the city. Jewish communal life flourished, and individual Jews ascended socially. Put differently, the challenges of social and economic integration and the task of creating a Jewish community that existed prior to the war continued during and immediately after the war.

Anti-Semitic Discourse and Community Development Anti-Semitism was present in important government circles and state correspondence (particularly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—Itamaraty), in some publications, and in the discourses and books edited by Ação Integralista Brasileira, a Fascist movement, beginning in the 1930s. While many anti-Semites were linked to right-wing ideologies, to define Brazil’s government categorically as Fascist or Nazi is impossible.7 The New State was not a totalitarian regime, and its Fascist features do not explain social 91 Beyond the State and Ideology

history and daily life. The regime was made up of conflicting cliques that ranged from Fascism to a liberalism that focused on state social assistance, health care, and public education.8 The challenge then is to conceptualize the Vargas regime’s stated ideology within the actual social and political life taking place in Brazil at the time.9 The most serious and tragic consequences of the anti-Semitic ideology were in the secret circulars (policy memos that were not made public) that restricted Jewish immigration into Brazil from 1937 onward. Thus, there was undoubtedly a “Jewish question” among Brazil’s elites.10 Anti-Semitic attitudes in Brazil were responsible, for example, for the denial of visas to three thousand “non-Arian” refugees in Europe (who were considered Jews by the Nazis and thus were going to be murdered in extermination camps) in spite of the Vatican’s request that they be allowed to enter Brazil.11 There are also hundreds of tragic stories of refugees during the war and the Holocaust who could not enter Brazil due to legal restrictions. The mechanism that allowed Brazil to discursively restrict the entry of new immigrants did not interfere with the lives of Jews already settled in the country. In other words, the “threat” that led to a ban on Jewish entry did not affect members of the minority already residing in Brazil. From the perspective of anti-Semitic policy makers, Jews abroad were regarded as Semites, and thus non-European and undesirable, but those in Brazil were regarded as white (or at least not black) and therefore acceptable. This is the key to understanding how an anti-Semitic policy existed even without institutionalized prejudice against Jews. It also explains why restrictions against entry during the Estado Novo were far from absolute, and thus the number of Jewish immigrants entering the country grew in 1939 when the secret circulars were in effect. A similar contradiction can be seen when examining the discourses and actions of the Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB), a Fascist party that held legal status in Brazil between 1933 and 1937. Its second-most important leader, Gustavo Barroso, translated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed an international Jewish conspiracy existed, into Portuguese and wrote several virulently anti-Semitic books. The AIB’s newspapers had a section called “International Judaism,” and Barroso was the most active anti-Semitic ideologue in Brazilian contemporary history. The AIB did not, however, persecute Jews as a matter of policy. It did not vandalize Jewish institutions and the AIB’s leader, Plínio Salgado, even publicly censured the aforementioned Gustavo Barroso for being overly aggressive in his antiJewish diatribes. 92 Roney Cytrynowicz

Given the divergence between the virulence of discursive anti-Semitism and the lack of anti-Semitic attacks, one should not be surprised that between 1937 and 1945 the Jewish minority in São Paulo experienced a vibrant public, institutional, social, cultural, and economic life that would not be expected if one only looks at state memos or the publications of a small circle of antiSemitic elites or the reports of the political police during those years. In fact, 1937 to 1945 were years of intense institutional life that allowed a boom in activities and organizations during and after the war. These were times of institutional settlement and of defining a “Jewish-Brazilian” identity. The São Paulo Jewish community, with approximately fifty-six thousand members in 1940, aided refugees during the war; adjusted to restrictions on “foreign” speeches, teaching, and publishing; and also Brazilianized Jewish institutions. As a group, Jews living in Brazil suffered no specific persecutions, and they were subject to the same constraints, political intimidation, and prohibitions as most other Brazilian minorities. In the specific case of German and Austrian Jews (like the citizens of other Axis countries), the question was more complex since they were defined as “resident enemy aliens” after Brazil joined the Allies in 1942. That is, they were categorized like all German and Austrian immigrants and residents. Yet the understandable fear among the German-Jewish immigrants did not mean the lack of a normal daily life during those years. Japanese immigrants, on the other hand, suffered a more focused and intense repression that lead to the expulsion of hundreds of people from São Paulo and other cities. Non-JewishGermans in Brazil’s southernmost states also suffered more intimidation and violence.

Jewish Institutional Life between 1937 and 1945 A critical piece of evidence for understanding the gap between anti-Semitic discourse and action can be seen in the rapid pace by which new Jewish institutions were formed in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro during the Estado Novo. New synagogues and community centers sprung up in many neighborhoods, and committees openly raised money for and helped to settle World War II refugees. One way that Jewish organizations negotiated the maintenance of culture was by insisting on a discourse that was pro-Ally and in favor of Brazil’s entry into World War II. Jewish organizations, by using this “pro–Estado Novo” discourse, thus carried out their activities quite freely, even before 1942 when the government was negotiating with both the Allies and Axis. 93 Beyond the State and Ideology

In spite of the anti-Semitic discourses mentioned above, an examination of the journals and minutes of the Jewish organizations shows that Brazilian anti-Semitism was not a central concern among Jewish leaders and communities. During the war years, Jewish organizations functioned normally, and there is no evidence that the dictatorship affected the daily activities of organizations, including German-Jewish ones. There are no documentary records of any Jewish organizations in São Paulo that were subject to state intervention (this was not the case with Japanese-Brazilian and German-Brazilian institutions). Indeed, on December 22, 1942, Getúlio Vargas welcomed a “Jewish delegation” to the president’s palace and condemned anti-Semitism.12 A number of examples make the point. In 1941 the Sociedade Sinagoga Israelita da Lapa (Jewish Synagogue Society of Lapa, a São Paulo neighborhood) was founded to “construct, maintain and take care of a temple for Hebraic cult” and “promote and aid the teaching of the Hebrew religion to children.”13 The laws against the teaching of languages other than Portuguese seem not to have been an impediment to these institutions, even in its office statutes. The founders of the synagogue created terms acceptable for the Estado Novo by accepting “only members who can read and write Portuguese” for the directors, even as those directors acted in languages other than Portuguese. Another organization formed in the same year was the Sociedade Religiosa Israelita Asilo dos Velhos (Jewish Old Age Home) in São Paulo. A 1942 report from the organization explicitly, albeit subtly, declared that one of the services offered to the sixty refugees housed there was “conducting religious rites, according to the cultural habits and religious traditions of the elders [and], also making available a library, journals and sacred books.”14 The Chevra Kadisha (Burial Society) kept its activities going during the war years and carried out burials with Hebrew inscriptions on the graves, as it always had.15 Not only did Jewish charitable organizations flourish. At a time when radio was carefully controlled by the Vargas government there were at least three Jewish radio programs in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In São Paulo, Siegfried Gothilf’s Jewish Hour began in 1940, and by 1943 the twice weekly Jewish Program and the daily Jewish-Brazilian Hour were on air. Contents included musical “Jewish folklore” that was not sung in Portuguese but rather in languages officially regarded as foreign and legally banned. In 1941 two Yiddish papers were banned (Di idishe fokstsaitung, founded 1927; Di idishe presse, founded 1930), along with all other newspapers that were not published in Portuguese. But in the same period in São Paulo books were edited with openly Jewish subjects and Yiddish titles, like Oisses dertzlein 94 Roney Cytrynowicz

(What Letters Tell), bearing the subtitle Reality and Legend in the History of the Hebrew Alphabet, by Elias Lipiner. Hebrew classes were advertised in the Jewish press, and the Sociedade Beneficente dos Israelitas Poloneses (Beneficent Association of Polish Jews) in São Paulo kept their minutes in Yiddish and received several permits to hold public performances in that language.16 These examples are not exceptional; during the Estado Novo a wide range of institutional and everyday social, cultural, and religious Jewish activities took place freely. The Estado Novo was also a time of great opportunity for immigrants in Brazil. Urban jobs, liberal professions, and specialized occupations allowed a process of social and economic integration, especially in urban centers. The restriction of imports imposed by the war accelerated industrialization and urbanization where new professional and commercial opportunities emerged. Peddling and money lending became a means of social progress for immigrants, supported by the Peddler’s Union and the Popular Credit Cooperative, both founded in São Paulo in 1929. Such social progress was closely related to the urban profile of immigrants, their previous schooling and professional instruction. The fact that Jews concentrated in centers of urban and industrial development meant that community organizations favored and stimulated the development of these activities. As a result, a stereotype developed which held that Jews had unique aptitudes that contributed to the economic development of the country.17 Such ideas helped Jews in creating ethnically based organizations even though state discourses opposed such entities. For example, the São Paulo Association of Traders and Manufacturers of Fabrics and Artifacts was founded in 1944 with a directorate and board made up of Jews. These businesspeople had no fear of founding an exclusively ethnic association although the association’s objectives do not refer to any ethnic cultural activity. Italian Jews who immigrated to Brazil after anti-Semitic laws were passed in Italy in 1938, notes Angelo Trento, were “welcomed with open arms. . . . Not by chance, the Matarazzo family [owners of the most important industrial complex in São Paulo] . . . employed several Jewish émigrés.” Technicians and merchants settled into Brazilian society with little or no difficulty and professors “had no difficulty in the local universities or in research institutes.”18

Jewish Schools and the State Education Project One of the Vargas administration’s major ideological concerns was the state education system designed by the education and health minister Gustavo 95 Beyond the State and Ideology

Capanema. In this area the generically xenophobic and anti-immigrant state discourse always came into contact with the growing influence of minorities on culture and the economy. This was especially the case in São Paulo with its millions of immigrants and their descendants. From the cultural, ideological, and political point of view, the state’s xenophobic discourse hardly exerted any influence on the city’s population. Between 1937 and 1945, two Jewish schools were opened in São Paulo: the aforementioned Escola Israelita Brasileira Luiz Fleitlich in 1937 and the Ginásio Israelita-Brasileiro Chaim Nachman Bialik in 1944. While the term “Jewish-Brazilian” (Israelita-Brasileira) was used to emphasize the “national” nature of the schools, the names Fleitlich and Bialik left no doubt about the character of those schools. These schools, along with two others (Renascença, founded in 1922, and Centro Israel Talmud Thora Bet Jacob, founded in 1935), all operated normally throughout the Vargas period. One reason that the schools were able to maintain their programs was their strategy of publicly changing their names to deflect the not-soprying eyes of the state. For example, in 1940 the Centro Israel Talmud Thora Bet Jacob changed its name to Sociedade Brasileira de Instrução Religiosa Israelita (Brazilian Society for Jewish Religious Instruction) in order to “nationalize itself, due to the new federal laws, manifestly giving up all the foreign postulates that guided it.” The official charter of the school, however, never changed, remaining to “teach the Mosaic religion to the children of its associates, side by side with subjects of General Culture, indispensable for the intellectual culture of the young.” One school statute noted that it would build “a temple for the cult of Mosaic religion,” while another stated that in order to be admitted as a member, “it is necessary to practice the Jewish religion” and “be proposed by two other associates.” In 1942 the newly nationalized school hired a Polish passport holder to teach Hebrew, with the formal approval of the Brazilian educational authorities.19 The examination of notes taken by Brazilian state school inspectors at the Escola Israelita Brasileira Luiz Fleitlich between 1938 and 1945 clarifies the difference between official discourse and day-to-day policy enforcement. While the inspector continuously found problems with the school’s operation vis-à-vis Brazilian policy, they were never acted upon, and the inspector, in each subsequent visit, never insisted that his previous complaints be resolved. For example on March 11, 1938, the inspector commented on irregularities including “teachers giving foreign language lessons in the first year and nonregistered teachers giving classes.” As 96 Roney Cytrynowicz

a result the inspector demanded that the school (a) not allow the teaching of foreign languages or religion to children under ten years of age or to illiterates of any age; (b) register teachers with the state within eight days; (c) reorganize the school schedule so that the teaching of foreign languages did not exceed a fourth of a day’s school schedule; and (d) inform the State Educational Service about any changes in the school schedule or staff and not appoint new teachers without authorization. In the same entry the inspector noted that “students who attend school classes only to learn a foreign language will have to submit a certificate signed by the director or teacher, stating the following data: name, age, day, month and year of birth and class attended. The certificate will have to bear a legally acknowledged signature.” On his return visit, four months later, school records show none of the above issues had changed. Yet the same inspector makes no mention of them, instead focusing on a new, and small, problem, the “irregularities” of a foreign woman working as a kindergarten assistant and “a first year class headed by a foreign teacher.” In 1942, after many visits and no apparent changes, the inspector noted that from mid-1938 onward there had been “no indications of major problems in the school.”20 These documents suggest how nationalist and xenophobic discourses did not lead to policy enforcement. They are documentary evidence of the complex and ambivalent nature of the relationship between ideological semi-Fascism, official prejudice, state control, and implementation of the ideology and rules. Despite the Estado Novo’s policies, Jewish schools operated regularly between 1937 and 1945, teaching religion, Judaism, and Hebrew to their students, with foreign teachers, many of whom were certainly refugees in Brazil with expired tourist visas. The inspector’s admonitions never led to sanctions, and the schools regularly contracted immigrant teachers and registered them with the state.

The 1938 Decree and the Prohibition of Zionism In 1938 the Brazilian government promulgated Decree-law 383, which prohibited “foreigners” from practicing activities of a political nature and from organizing societies, foundations, companies, clubs of a political nature, or parties “from the country of origin.” The official legislation was not specifically anti-Jewish but rather was a nationalistic decree aimed at banning “international subversive movements.” It was aimed at leftist movements, especially the Communist Party, which had been responsible for a coup d’état attempt in 1935.21 97 Beyond the State and Ideology

While some scholars have interpreted this broad law as a formal prohibition of Zionist activities in Brazil, and thus as evidence of anti-Semitism, an examination of Jewish community activities suggests that Zionist activity continued within the community and without being explicitly political. As Samuel Malamud, a Zionist leader who would be appointed the first consul of Israel in Rio de Janeiro, notes in his autobiography, “In spite of the fact that it was declared illegal by the Estado Novo in 1937, the Zionist movement in Brazil and its leaders went on holding meetings to exchange ideas and continue publicizing and recruiting activities. Meetings did not go unnoticed by the police force and were actually tolerated.”22 According to Malamud, despite the 1938 decree, the Brazilian Zionist movement continued to develop its activities all over the country and, at the same time, struggled against the anti-Semitism. Put differently, Zionist movements not only promoted their ideology openly, they confronted prejudice publicly. Zionist organizations affiliated with Brazilian nongovernmental organizations legitimize themselves exactly in the period when the historiography has argued that Zionism was banned. Fiszel Czeresnia was an important Zionist activist in São Paulo who recalls that the 1938 decree led to the founding of the Centro Hebreu-Brasileiro (Hebrew-Brazilian Center), “an apparently charitable organization—so much so that in its register it was stated ‘organization associated and registered at the Brazilian Red Cross’— but behind the scenes, its activities were political. On the one hand, it raised funds to help the survivors of the Holocaust; on the other hand it worked for the Zionist movement.”23 Many Jewish community leaders realized that if they practiced their politics only within the community, the government was uninterested in enforcing Decree 383. In 1943 Rio de Janeiro’s Biblioteca Israelita Haim Nachman Bialik commemorated the twentieth anniversary of Zionist leader Max Nordau’s death by publicly reading a speech he had given at the Eighth Zionist Congress. In that same year the Ginásio HebreuBrasileiro, one of the main Jewish schools in Rio de Janeiro, celebrated Passover by singing both the Brazilian national anthem and the “Hatikva,” the song that would become the Israeli national anthem, both with government permission. In April of 1944 the Jewish magazine Aonde vamos? published the image of a Jewish pioneer in Palestine on the front cover with the title “Consequence of Victory,” expressing openly its support for the Zionist cause. In June a representative of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem visited Rio de Janeiro where he was received openly by community leaders. A donation to the Hebrew University was made through the Banco do Brasil. 98 Roney Cytrynowicz

Such official tolerance surely explains the presence of high government officers, such as Minister Gustavo Capanema, in a March 1945 banquet in homage to the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann.

Semantic Strategies: Noun or Adjective? During the Estado Novo, Jewish organizations suffered the same restrictions as other organizations and were forced to “nationalize” their official names by taking out “foreign” references and to appoint Brazilian-born directors.24 This nationalization process has not been well studied and little is known about its concrete historical effects. In the case of Jewish organizations in São Paulo, this process had little consequence other than a change in the name, the directors, or the statutes. The organizations adjusted to this process with no fear and created strategies without yielding to intimidation. Some strategies were active and ingenious, particularly because they were simple and efficient. Yet again we see how Jews, like many other minority groups, were able to use what appeared to be restrictive laws to strengthen their ethnic communities and their places within Brazil. In one case the São Paulo city government refused to grant a real-estate tax exemption to a Jewish children’s home, saying that the organization would only look after Jewish children. By simply changing its name from Lar de Crianças Israelitas (Home for Jewish Children) to Lar Israelita de Crianças (Jewish Home for Children), the group was able to successfully convince the city government that the institution was supported by the Jewish minority but took care of children in general.25 Simply altering the grammatical and semantic structure resolved a situation that might put the existence of the organization at risk. A similar case took place in May 1940 when the Sociedade Beneficente Linath Hatzedek Policlínica (founded in 1929 as a medical clinic for Jewish immigrants) changed its name to Sociedade Linath Hatzedek—Auxílio Santo (Sacred Aid). In fact “Auxílio Santo” was simply a translation into Portuguese of the Yiddish words “Linath Hatzedek.” A few months later more legal restrictions demanded that organizational names have “national resonance.” In February 1941 the group changed its name again, to Policlínica Auxílio Santo Mantida pela Sociedade Beneficente “Linath Hatzedek” (Sacred Aid Policlinic Supported by the Charitable Association “Linath Hatzedek”). A year later Sao Paulo’s director of Social Medical Services demanded the name change to only Policlínica Auxílio Santo (Sacred Aid Policlinic), as a condition of tax and fee exemptions. This was done, but 99 Beyond the State and Ideology

the materials printed to promote the organization show the words “Linath Hatzedek” (now not officially part of the organization’s name) in a bigger size than “Auxílio Santo,” keeping the original clearly identifiable name. Jewish institutions did more than play games with their names; they also changed the language in their statutes so that they could continue along their traditional paths. For example, in May 1940 the policlinic altered its membership rules from “consists of an unlimited number of associates, exclusively Jews” to “consists of associates of any nationality, who profess the Jewish Religion.” To be a member was changed from “[it is] necessary to be a Jew, older than 18 years of age” to “older than 18 years of age, of any nationality or gender and profess the Jewish Religion.” The changes formally met the “nationality” requirement but preserved Jewish specificity. A subtle alteration adjusted to authority without yielding to pressure.26 A different set of strategies was used by the Congregação Israelita Paulista (CIP), a synagogue founded in 1936 by German-Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazism who were later joined by Italian Jews. Refugees were certainly most vulnerable to the actions of the Estado Novo, and we might expect to see refugee organizations facing great threats by the state. Indeed, in 1938 CIP’s eight hundred members were alarmed at new Brazilian laws aimed at foreign citizens (of which German- and Italian-Jewish refugees in Brazil with expired tourist visas were a part). While CIP members remember having to ask the police for authorization to hold meetings, as well as the presence of authorities at others, there still appears to have been great confidence that discursive acceptance of Brazil’s nationalist legislation was all that was necessary to allow the organization to pursue its own ethnic agenda. For example, in August 1939, three new directors were elected following a state demand for “Brazilian-born” leaders. A letter specified which three directors would resign and which three members would occupy the three openings. On the same day, another letter, signed by the president of the directorate, summoned the board of directors to meet in order to “co-opt three members with no right to vote.” In other words, the very same former three directors who had resigned in a previous letter were in fact now voting through an open façade of Brazilian-born directors. With the second letter they were formally reintegrated but would not vote (at least officially) in order to meet the new legislation. In 1942, when further pressure was brought on the CIP to Brazilianize, the institution created an entire set of administrative commissions to run the organization on a day-to-day basis, even while electing “Brazilian-born” directors to comply publicly with legal obligations. 100 Roney Cytrynowicz

Although there are stories of constraints and restrictions, there are no records of the main German-Jewish organizations interrupting their activities. The CIP conducted its activities normally during the war years and did not lose its German-Jewish identity. In March 1945, an editorial in the Aonde vamos? showed the bold posture of the Jewish community, demanding open immigration of displaced Jews on the part of the federal government. The editorial used a clear knowledge of broad Brazilian national identity tropes in arguing that Brazil had the “most advanced racial democracy on earth, the only civilized country in the world where blood or color prejudice does not exist and where a perfect fusion of three races took place and is still taking place . . . in no country do Jews live in better communion with the natives than here. There is no trace of anti-Semitism.” Even so, the complaint was made clearly and openly: “This spiritual disposition of the people is not reflected by the authorities. Brazil is the only country in the world where German Jews are equally regarded as any other subject of the Reich.”27

Conclusion The above examples of how Jewish institutional activities flourished during a period of discursive xenophobia (which included anti-Semitism) are not exceptional. They provide evidence that during the Estado Novo and World War II a varied range of organizations functioned independently and freely in Brazil. Contrary to a historiography that depicts the Jewish community in Brazil exclusively as passive victims, Jews applied several successful strategies to confront the intimidating nationalistic and xenophobic atmosphere during the Vargas regime. They did so courageously and with institutional, social, economic, and cultural ebullience and a strong sense of community. The history of Jews in Brazil from 1937 to 1945 has been predominantly interpreted with a bias toward state discourses, which included anti-Semitic laws and ideology. Historians who focus on anti-Semitism have reinforced interpretations of victimization because they consider the Estado Novo as having an ideology close to Fascism and even Nazism. For many in the Jewish-Brazilian community, memorializing a supposed anti-Semitic past reinforces an identity that emphasizes victimization rather than “positive” values. This historical perspective stimulates an identity that focuses on internal strength against the “danger” of anti-Semitism and assimilation. Future research needs to examine still further why the community and some historians continue to obscure the successful story of social, economic, 101 Beyond the State and Ideology

political, and social insertion in favor of a vision of the 1930s and 1940s that the evidence does not seem to support. The Estado Novo years were ones of change and identity consolidation as the Jewish communities of Brazil stopped regarding themselves as immigrant and “foreign” and began to see themselves as Jewish-Brazilian. The “invention” of a Brazilian-Jewish identity, with a hyphen and the Jewish element slightly in secondary position, has been constant in the settlement process of the “Jewish minority.” Such an identity served the project of insertion and nationalization and was a response to a broad Brazilian society intensely discussing its national character within the broad nationalistic and xenophobic framework so common throughout the Americas. As such, it is a phenomenon that can be observed in numerous other Brazilian ethnic groups. Quotidian history cannot be deleted vis-à-vis the obscurantist history of anti-Semitism found in the Brazilian immigration policies and within important circles of the ruling elites. This article has demonstrated how misleading a unilateral view can be. In spite of the xenophobic and nationalist measures of the 1937–1945 period, diverse groups’ patterns of integration show a broad process of social, economic, and cultural integration, a pattern that inserted Jews in general patterns of immigration to Brazil in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

102 Roney Cytrynowicz

Notes 1. Livro de Visitas da Escola Israelita Brasileira Luiz Fleitlich, de 27-7-1937 a 6-10-1969, Fundo Centro Israelita do Cambuci and Escola Religiosa IsraelitaBrasileira do Cambuci, Arquivo Histórico Judaico Brasileiro. 2. The most significant book in this regard is Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, O anti-semitismo na era Vargas: Fantasmas de uma geração (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988). The first author to deal with anti-Semitism during the Vargas regime is Robert Levine, in the article “Brazil’s Jews during the Vargas Era and After,” Luso-Brasilian Review 5, no. 1 (June 1968): 45–58. 3. On the contemporary history of Jews in Brazil, especially immigration and anti-Semitism in the 1930s and 1940s, is Jeffrey Lesser’s Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), published in Brazil as O Brasil e a questão judaica (Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1995). Another fundamental work is Jeffrey Lesser, “Pawns of the Powerful. Jewish Immigration to Brazil, 1904–1945” (PhD diss., Department of History, New York University, 1989). A bibliographical synthesis of anti-Semitism in Brazil is Carlos Eduardo Calaça e Marcos Chor Maio, “Cristãos novos e Judeus: Um balanço da bibliografia sobre o anti-semitismo no Brasil,” BIB 49, no. 1 (semestre de 2000): 15–50. For a historiographical discussion see Marcos Chor Maio, “Qual anti-semitismo? Relativizando a questão judaica no Brasil dos anos 30,” in Repensando o estado novo, organized by Dulce Pandolfi (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1999), 239. A well-supported synthesis of the relations between Jews and the Itamaraty is Avraham Milgram, “The Jews of Europe from the Perspective of the Brazilian Foreign Service, 1933–1941,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9, no. 1 (spring 1995): 94–120. On the church and anti-Semitism, see Graciela Ben-Dror, “The Catholic Elites in Brazil and Their Attitude toward the Jews, 1933–1939,” Yad Vashem 30 (2002): 229–70. 4. This article owes much to the approach to ethnicity and identity in Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Antropologia do Brasil (São Paulo: Brasiliense/Edusp, 1986). Regarding Jewish identity, see Robert Alter, Anjos necessários. Tradição e modernidade em Kafka, Benjamin e Scholem (Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1993). 5. Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 6. Roney Cytrynowicz, Guerra sem guerra. A mobilização e o cotidiano em São Paulo durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial (São Paulo: Edusp/Geração Editorial, 2000). 7. About the ideology of the Estado Novo: Alcir Lenharo, Sacralização da política (Campinas: Papirus, 1986), and Simon Schwartzman, organizer, Estado novo, um auto-retrato (Arquivo Gustavo Capanema) (Brasília: Editora UnB, 1982). The most thorough book on Integralismo is Hélgio Trindade, Integralismo, o fascismo brasileiro na década de 30 (Sãn Paulo: Difel, 1974). On Gustavo Barroso and Integralist anti-Semitism, see Marcos Chor Maio, Nem Rotschild nem Trotsky: O pensamento anti-semita de Gustavo Barroso (Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1992), Antonio Rago Filho, “A crítica romântica à miséria brasileira: O Integralismo de Gustavo Barroso” (MA thesis, PUC-SP, 1989), and Roney Cytrynowicz, “Integralismo e anti-semitismo nos textos de Gustavo 103 Beyond the State and Ideology















Barroso na década de 30” (MA thesis, FFLCH-USP, 1992). On Integralism see Stanley E. Hilton, “Ação integralista brasileira: O fascismo no Brasil, 1932–1938,” in O Brasil e a crise internacional 1930/1945, ed. Stanley Hilton (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1977), and Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas. The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 8. Ângela Castro Gomes, organizer, Capanema: O ministro e seu ministério (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2000), op. cit., and Dulce Pandolfi, organizer, Repensando o estado-novo (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 1999). 9. Simon Schwartzman, organizer, Estado novo: Um auto-retrato (Arquivo Gustavo Capanema) (Brasília: CPDOC-FGV/Editora de UnB, 1982). 10. Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables. 11. This episode is analyzed in Avraham Milgram, Os judeus do Vaticano. A tentativa de salvação de católicos—não-arianos—da Alemanha ao Brasil através do Vaticano, 1939–1942 (São Paulo: Imago, 1994). 12. Aonde vamos? 4, October 28, 1943, 3. 13. Fundo Sinagoga Israelita da Lapa, Acervo AHJB. 14. Information on the school in Cambuci, the synagogue in Lapa, and the Old Age Home can be found in the Arquivo Histórico Judaico Brasileiro (AHJB): Fundo Centro Israelita do Cambuci and Escola Religiosa Israelita-Brasileira do Cambuci; Fundo Sinagoga Israelita da Lapa; “Relatório e resumo histórico apresentado e lido no primeiro aniversário do funcionamento do Asilo dos Velhos em 1 de agosto de 1942.” Archives of the Sociedade Religiosa Israelita Asilo dos Velhos, Fundo Alfred Hirschberg, Caixa 6. AHJB. On the history of charitable associations see Roney Cytrynowicz, Unibes 85 anos. Uma história do trabalho assistencial na comunidade judaica em São Paulo (São Paulo: Narrativa Um, 2000). 15. Sociedade Cemitério Israelita de São Paulo (SCISP) documents include the board of directors minutes. See minutes of meeting on 2-1-1945 and 4-2-1945. Files SCISP and Minutes of the Extraordinary General Assembly dated 1-18-1931. SCISP. The institution stopped elaborating official minutes between the twentieth of April 1934 and the fourth of September 1940, except for the twentieth of August 1936. See also Egon and Frieda Wolff, Breve histórico da sociedade cemitério israelita de São Paulo—65 anos (Rio de Janeiro: Sociedade Cemitério Israelita de São Paulo, 1989), 26. 16. Aonde vamos? March 11, 1943, 9 and 16; March 25, 1943, 7 and 13; May 6, 1943, 7; March 30, 1944, 9; and December 21, 1944. See also Elias Lipner, Breve história dos judeus no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Biblos, 1962). On the Associação dos Israelitas Poloneses, see Fundo Associação dos Israelitas Poloneses de São Paulo. AHJB. 17. Jeffrey Lesser, “From Antisemitism to Philosemitism: The Manipulation of Stereotypes in Brazil, 1935–1945,” Patterns of Prejudice 30, no. 4 (1996): 43–45. 18. Angelo Trento, Do outro lado do Atlântico. Um século de imigração italiano no Brasil (São Paulo: Nobel/Istituto Italiano di Cultura di San Paolo/Institute Cultural Ítalo-Brasileiro, 1989), 384–85. 19. Documentation on the Colégio Talmud Torá at Documento da Diretoria Geral do Ensino. Delegacia Geral do Ensino Privado, 12-4-1935; Documento da 104 Roney Cytrynowicz

Directoria do Ensino da Secretaria dos Negócios da Educação e Saúde Pública, 6-5-1936; Licença para Funcionamento. Departamento Estadual de Imprensa e Propaganda (DEIP) de São Paulo, 12-11-1941; Estatutos da Sociedade Brasileira de Instrução Religiosa Israelita; Documento do Departamento de Educação de São Paulo. Registro de Professor Particular de Szejna Liwszyc, 13-4-1942. Archive of the Colégio Talmud Torá/AHJB. 20. Documents on the Escola Luiz Fleitlich: Livro de Visitas da Escola Israelita Brasileira Luiz Fleitlich, de 27-7-1937 a 6-10-1969. Fundo Escola Luiz Fleitlich/ AHJB. 21. Pedro Vicente Bobbio, ed., Lex. coletânea de legislação. Legislação federal. 1938 (São Paulo: Lex, 1938, Ano II), 119–20. 22. Samuel Malmud, Do arquivo e da memória. Fatos, personagens e reflexões sobre o sionismo brasileiro e mundial (Rio de Janeiro: Bloch, 1983), 36–37. 23. Fiszel Czeresnia, Uma história para meus netos (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1998), 81. 24. Regarding Germans in Rio Grande do Sul, see René Gertz, O fascismo no Sul do Brasil (Porto Alegre: Mercado Aberto, 1987), and Gertz, O perigo alemão (Porto Alegre: Mercado Aberto, 1991). 25. Minutes of the meetings (Atas de diretoria) held by diretoria Organização Feminina Israelita de Assistência Social (Ofidas), 12-1-1944/6-12-1944 e 27-2-1945/Archive of the União Brasileiro-Israelita do Bem-Estar Social. 26. Minutes of the meeting (of the diretoria da Sociedade Beneficente Israelita Linath Hatzedek (Policlínica), 5-1-1943. AHJB. 27. Aonde vamos? April 22, 1943, 17; April 29, 1943, 17; June 15, 1944, 11; and March 8, 1945, 2.

105 Beyond the State and Ideology

chapter six

The Scene of the Transaction

“Jewishness,” Money, and Prostitution in the Brazilian Imaginary !

erin graff zivin

W

hile issues of ethnic, economic, and sexual difference have become central to debates on Latin American culture, within both the social sciences and humanities, little has been written about representations of “Jewishness” in the Latin American literary and cultural imaginary. Despite the fact that Jews inhabit every Latin American country—from a small community in Nicaragua to a significant population in Argentina—they are not generally considered to make up a substantial presence in literature and popular culture. Indeed, when I was first beginning my (then, dissertation) research, interviews with numerous Latin American literary scholars yielded such answers as, “Are there any Jewish figures in Latin American texts?” or “Do you mean Jewish writers?” or “That’s not my area of specialization— why don’t you talk to someone in Jewish studies?” And yet, Jewish characters and other representations of “Jewishness” can be found in works by writers as widely read as Jorge Luis Borges, Rubén Darío, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa.1 Despite this substantial incidence of Jewish figures in widely circulated cultural products, the phenomenon has gone largely, curiously unnoticed.2 This paradox of simultaneous invisibility and prevalence merits further investigation: what is it about the notion 106

of “Jewishness” that lends itself to such diverse texts, written in dramatically different historical, intellectual, and political moments, and why has such a dynamic been overlooked? The tendency among these prominent (and extremely well-read, I might add) intellectuals to refer me “elsewhere” is fascinating because it reveals the extent to which anything “Jewish” is thought to pertain to somewhere else: another country, another neighborhood, another academic discipline. I think that this has to do with the dynamic described by Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein in chapter 2 of this volume as the “closed community approach,” which is based on the assumption that “Jews lived unconnected to general society.” If Jews have nothing to do with mainstream culture in their respective countries, what would they possibly be doing in canonical works authored mainly by non-Jews? Fortunately, several “Jewish studies” scholars to whom I was referred—whose research, in fact, is not restricted to Jewish topics at all but rather treats broader themes of race and ethnicity, slavery and citizenship, political militancy, journalism, and censorship—were able to help.3 This study, then, joins the others in this collection in its attempt to move beyond conventional approaches to “Jews” and “Jewishness” in Latin Amer­ ican culture. By exploring the rhetorical linking of “Jewishness,” money, and prostitution in early twentieth-century Brazilian culture, I propose an analysis of the Jewish presence in Brazil that parts with past research in the field of Latin American Jewish studies, which remains focused on isolating and clarifying Jewish-Latin American identity.4 To be sure, there are a small number of literature studies that detail the ways in which the idea of the “Jew” is imagined. Doris Sommer, for example, explores the way that inassimilable “Jewishness” stands for racial ambivalence in postabolition Colombia in Jorge Isaacs’s famous novel María, while Josefina Ludmer undertakes a broader analysis of “Jews” in turn-of-the-century Argentine literature in a chapter of her recent book, The Corpus Delicti.5 Evelyn Fishburn and Edna Aizenberg, moreover, have produced interesting work that considers representations of “Jews” and Jewish themes in Borges.6 In the field of history, Jeffrey Lesser highlights the constructed nature of Jewish-Brazilian ethnic identity, both by Jewish-Brazilians as well as their non-Jewish counterparts.7 Yet, the majority of research in the area of Latin American Jewish studies has as its goal the delineation of a Jewish-Latin American identity that—even when it allows for the possibility of hybridity—tends to overlook the invented or constructed nature of what we call “Jewishness.” The “closed community approach” certainly accounts for part of the problem, yet I would like to maintain that even those who take into account 107 The Scene of the Transaction

the possibility of a “hybrid” identity can run the risk of essentializing “Jew­ ishness.” Saúl Sosnowski, for example, opens a recent essay on Jewish identity in Argen­tina with the commonly overheard question from Jewish schools in Argentina in the 1950s: “If there were a war between Argentina and Israel, for which side would you fight?”8 Despite the fact that Sosnowski criticizes this question for ignoring the possibility that Jewish-Argentines might have double loyalties (he rightly argues for a defense of the “hyphen” in an earlier essay),9 I find the retention of the military metaphor for identity highly significant. It reveals not only a dependence on nationalistic definitions of identity even when we would like to subvert them, but also that the very attempt to define a singular Jewish-Latin American identity is riddled with problems. Sosnowski continues his discussion by citing Alberto Gerchunoff’s Jewish gaucho as an example of a hybrid identity that synthesizes Jewish and Argentine qualities, without problematizing the equally essentialist idea of hybridity, disregarding the fact that any Jewish figure in literature is just that: a figurative “Jew.” The common conflation of the categories of figurative and historical “Jewishness”—the idea that written representations of “Jewishness” reflect some kind of positive essence—is not only based on the assumption that language is transparent, it relies on a fixed notion of Jewish identity and experience, a problematic concept at best, even when designated as multiple or hybrid. I would therefore like to explore the phenomenon of “Jew” as metaphor, carefully examining the ways in which ideas of “Jewishness” are imagined and used rhetorically in order to address preoccupations with issues such as nationality, modernity, capitalism, foreignness, and sexuality: issues critical to the elaboration of urban and national identities in early twentieth-century Brazilian society. I will focus on two cultural products that reside at the limits of what we could call “literature”—“Quem dá mais?”10 a 1930 samba composed by Noel Rosa, and Madame Pommery,11 a 1920 chronicle written by Hilário Tácito—in order to explore the symbolic power of the “Jew” within the Brazilian imaginary. Specifically, I will analyze the presence of “Jewishness” within what I term the scene of the transaction, an ideologically charged, libidinally invested space in which everything—money, sex, identity—is subject to financial or cultural negotiation. By engaging with the rhetorical uses of “Jewishness” in Brazilian cultural production, I hope to signal the powerful presence of a community that, while small in number, nevertheless pervades the general cultural imaginary. The implications are thus dual: recognizing the figurative power of the “Jew” allows us to analyze what “Jewishness” means for non-Jews in Latin America, and it 108 Erin Graff Zivin

gives us a broader understanding of the images “real” Jews face in constructing their own identities. Within the scene of the transaction, “Jewishness,” money, and prostitution are discursively linked as part of projects of imagining the self, the nation, and modernity. By considering the juxtaposition of three concepts with such fertile symbolic presence—both in Europe and the Americas—I attempt to address the following issues: What kinds of social anxieties are addressed through metaphors of “Jewishness,” money, and prostitution? What role do the concepts of value and promiscuity play within textual attempts to fashion individual and national subjects? How are problems of globalization, modernity, subjectivity, and difference played out through the rhetorical linking of the “Jew,” money, and the prostitute? These questions are vital to the elaboration of a contextualized Latin American Jewish studies, that is, an area of inquiry that sees Jewish identity as part of a broader, multiethnic dynamic of imagining subjectivity and nationhood. Of course, the intersection of these three overdetermined concepts does not originate with Rosa’s samba nor with Tácito’s chronicle. In nineteenthcentury Europe and turn-of-the-century Latin America, cities in the process of modernization and industrialization become influenced and populated by capitalism and prostitution on a social, economic, and rhetorical level. The “transaction” emerges as the preferred mode of social interaction, and the “Jew” becomes a convenient figure through which these political, financial, and cultural shifts can be debated. Yet the discursive linking of “Jewishness,” money, and prostitution is not a new phenomenon. The relationship between these three elements within the European cultural imaginary dates back to medieval Christian society, and the philosophy of Italian philosopher and theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas.12 The canonical prohibition of interest taking—which limited the profession of money lending to Jews—was deduced from money’s status as an object. Since money was not alive, reasoned Aquinas, it should not be able to reproduce. Thus, the taking of interest by Jews was understood by Christian society as the reproduction or sexualization of money: Jews, in taking money, treated money as if it were alive, as if it were a sexualized object. The Jew takes money as does the prostitute, as a substitute for higher values, for love and beauty. . . . But the image of the Jew as prostitute is not merely one that draws an economic parallel between the sexuality of the Jew and that of the prostitute. It also reveals the nature of the sexuality of both Jew and prostitute as diseased, as polluting.13 109 The Scene of the Transaction

The association between “Jews” and money is not a neutral judgment; rather, the relationship is construed as a perverse one, in which money is distorted from its true function. In the same way, the prostitute contaminates ideals of spiritual love, femininity, the family, the nation. Thus, both “Jew” and prostitute actively participate in the commodification of sex and the sexualization of money. The triad “Jewishness”-money-prostitution has also been linked to a discourse surrounding disease in the Western imaginary. Within the violently anti-Semitic ideological apparatus of Nazi Germany, Jews, prostitutes, and money were linked to the spread of syphilis in Germany: “Jews were the arch-pimps; Jews ran the brothels; but Jews also infected their prostitutes and caused the weakening of the German national fiber.”14 Yet while the radical implications of such discursive associations can be located within Nazi rhetoric, less Fascist versions of this phenomenon continuously resurface throughout the Western imaginary. Narratives of “Jewishness” are narratives of difference, of immigration, exile, travel, and, in many cases, of negotiation. Thus it is no coincidence that many literary texts and other cultural products utilize figures of “Jewishness” within scenes of transactions. These scenes, in which everything can be negotiated—value, identity, alterity—establish an economy of difference. Here, alterity is simultaneously invented and evaluated using metaphors of exchange. The “Jewish transactions” that appear in these texts often go beyond hackneyed stereotypes of Jews being “wealthy,” “cheap,” “bankers,” or “moneylenders,” though they depend on these recycled ideas for verisimilitude, strength, success. The scene of the transaction is “successful”— convincing—on a rhetorical level because metaphors of “Jewishness,” money, and prostitution function well together; a long historical trajectory of associations between these symbolic elements compounds and is reaffirmed with every new invention. They work well together because each motif— “Jewishness,” money, and prostitution—represents that which travels from country to country, body to body, contaminating all involved and threatening to destroy that which would keep these systems discrete. In addition to existing on the limits of body, family, and nation, “Jew­ ishness,” money, and prostitution traditionally reside on the margins of the law. Of course, prostitution has historically vacillated between the realms of the legal and the illegal, and even during periods of legalized prostitution, we find strict regulations governing the trade. Historian Donna Guy writes that “like many other nineteenth-century cities in the throes of modernization and industrialization, Buenos Aires legalized prostitution to isolate 110 Erin Graff Zivin

and, it hoped, control the social and medical consequences of commercial sex.”15 In Paris, an 1830 police edict prohibited prostitution in the arcades, limiting it to licensed brothels.16 By controlling prostitution in this way, the power to legitimize is reserved for the state, while the prostitutes and their clients remain on the border between legality and illegality. Financial transactions, too, offer an inherent possibility of transgression, and Jewish transactions in particular bear traces of suspicion, originating perhaps in the practice of usury condemned by the church and thus relegated to the margins of morality. What, then, does this margin between legal and illegal signify? Argentine critic Josefina Ludmer details the importance of the “crime” in her book The Corpus Delicti, in which she argues that the crime represents a powerful, oftused motif in literature due to its ability to distinguish “culture” from “nonculture”: “From the very beginning of literature, crime appears as one of the instruments most utilized to define and found a culture: to separate it from nonculture and to mark what culture excludes.”17 The power of differentiation referred to by Ludmer is relevant to our discussion of Rosa’s samba and Tácito’s chronicle. Yet in some texts, “Jewishness,” prostitution, and money are used not simply to separate culture and nonculture—same and other— but to address the tension inherent in the space in between these spheres. What is the site of the in-between? Where does the in-between take place? In his writings on the Parisian arcades, Jewish-German philosopher and literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin proposes the passagen (arcades) together with the bordello and casino as sites of transaction, situated “within as well as outside the marketplace, between the worlds of money and magic.”18 Within these passagen, these spaces of passage from one realm to the other, these thresholds, can be found the figures privileged by Benjamin: the prostitute, the gambler, the flaneur,19 the collector. In modern life, he argues, “we have grown very poor in threshold experiences,” with the possible exceptions of falling asleep and waking up.20 The threshold, a half-dreamlike state between two levels of consciousness, is distinct from the concept of a border in that it designates a zone, rather than a line. While he mourns the loss of such spaces within urban modernity, he maintains that prostitutes (and, by extension, gamblers)21 “love the thresholds of these gates of dream.”22 By establishing a correlation between financial and sexual impropriety (though he does not link it to “Jews” or “Jewishness”), Benjamin outlines the theoretical framework necessary to see thresholds within modernity. Perhaps Benjamin has mourned too early, then, for it is precisely in these 111 The Scene of the Transaction

liminal spaces that the “Jew” resides: if not in reality, then in its figurative representation. While modern life may not be characterized by the threshold experience that Benjamin describes, we nevertheless find echoes of the threshold in the margins of modernity. The idea of the in-between gains further significance when we are discussing cultural products from Latin America, where the idea of modernity has been characterized as unequal, incomplete, and even impossible.23 Within this context we can begin to discuss the rhetorical use of “Jewishness,” prostitution, and money as part of larger debates surrounding national identity and modernization in the Brazilian cultural imaginary.

“Quem dá mais?” Brasilidade for Sale À vendre ce que les Juifs n’ont pas vendu. —Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and Illuminations If we are to follow Josefina Ludmer’s theory of “the ‘story’ of ‘the Jews’” in Argentine narrative, we see that the association between money and “Jewishness” does not only have to do with stereotypes about Jewish moneylenders, but also with the symbolic function of both “Jews” and money. By linking the idea of “the ‘story’ of ‘the Jews’” with the “economic story,” Ludmer demonstrates the way in which the signifier “Jew” joins the signifier “money” to create an exponential form of representation: “The Jews” are always the representatives of money, and the narrative that includes them is an economic narrative: banks, stock exchanges, and gold. “The Jews” are the sign of the money sign: a sort of representation squared. Or better yet, “the Jews” are the representatives of money, which is itself an apparatus of representation. For money is a symbolic substance, a pure abstraction that reduces everything to a common denominator; it is at once material and immaterial, it is mental but it is also a mental “thing,” it is a mediator of social relations, and it represents social interaction. Money creates “reality” and reduces everything to merchandise; everything can be bought, everything has its price, above all that which is priceless.24 While I would take issue with Ludmer’s insistence that “Jews” are always representative of money, I believe it is worthwhile to consider her explanation 112 Erin Graff Zivin

of the symbolic relationship between “Jews” and money. The “story”—which Ludmer defines loosely as “a moment, a scene in a story or a novel, a quote, a dialogue, but also a long ‘history’ encompassing many novels”—that includes “Jews” is not always an economic tale, as Ludmer would have it.25 Yet, despite this generalization, I agree with the idea that “Jews” and money both function as symbols, as representatives of broader ideas, as abstractions. While I would question the causality of this relationship—do “Jews” represent money or does money represent “Jews”?—I would affirm that we are dealing primarily with a question of representation and that both “Jews” and money serve as mediating forces in social relations. The linking of “Jews” and money in a complex web of signification can be seen in “Quem dá mais?” a samba written in 1930 and recorded in 1932 by one of Brazil’s leading sambistas, Noel Rosa. By situating the “Jew” within the scene of the auction, Rosa utilizes “Jewishness” as part of a broader attempt to imagine a heterogenous Brazilian identity. “Quem dá mais?”— as well as Rosa’s short-lived but prolific career as sambista—appears during a moment in Brazilian history in which samba was, to use the words of Brazilian anthropologist Hermano Vianna, “invented” and converted into a symbol of Brazilian national identity. This is a curious point in time and space, a moment of encounter—between “white” and “black,” elite and popular, center and margin—in which a musical tradition (already the result of a series of encounters between different sectors of society) began to be widely consumed by dominant classes. What is perhaps most fascinating about this encounter—transculturative to be sure—is the way in which samba (now considered the prototypical Brazilian musical genre) not only became widely listened to, thanks in part to its diffusion by a rapidly exploding radio industry, but the way that it came to signify Brazil’s national essence. Indeed, at the same time that Brazilian sociologist and anthropologist Gilberto Freyre was writing about race mixing (mestiçagem) as the defining characteristic of Brazilian culture, Brazilianness (brasilidade) was being actively invented by intellectuals, politicians, and artists. What role would the notion of foreignness play in the constitution of an authentic national subject? To what extent was the presence of the foreign necessary to realize this project? During a time in which the division between “black” and “white” was being blurred in order to imagine a collective autochthonous subjectivity, who would mark the limit between self and other? By analyzing “Quem dá mais?” in which typically Brazilian artifacts—a mulata,26 a guitar, and a samba—are sold to foreign buyers at an auction, I hope to begin to address these questions. While my argument 113 The Scene of the Transaction

will draw upon historian Bryan McCann’s contention that for Rosa, foreigners pose a threat to the culturally rich world of samba by selling out the Brazilian soul, I will suggest that a more ambivalent, paradoxical relationship between foreignness and Brazilianness is imagined through the figure of the “Jew.” “Quem dá mais?” portrays “Jewishness” as that which threatens to de­stroy the nation through suspect financial dealings. Composed not long after nationalist Getúlio Vargas’s rise to power as a result of the revolution of 1930, Rosa’s samba emerges as nationalism is on the rise and as an increasing number of Jewish immigrants arrives in Brazil.27 While the fictional horizon of the lyrics is not unrelated to the presence of “real” Jews in the country, I would like to focus on how the idea of “Jewishness” serves a rhetorical function in the invention of brasilidade. Rosa’s samba, as I have mentioned, depicts a fictional auction, in which Brazilian cultural artifacts are sold off one by one to willing buyers. The scene of the auction is unique in that value is not predetermined by the seller, but rather is negotiated between the auctioneer and potential buyers. Likewise, the notion of Brazilianness is undetermined, open, ready for definition by both native and foreign actors. As each article is called out by the auctioneer, as each potential buyer is addressed, brasilidade is offered as a sacrifice and, paradoxically, constituted through the very threat of its loss. The first item for sale is a mulata, a stereotypical figure at once con­ noting Brazilian sensuality and racial hybridity. In Brazil, the rise in popularity of the samba in the 1930s coincides with a growing acceptance—and romanticization—of Afro-Brazilian culture by the whiter elites. As Vianna demonstrates, samba serves as one of the key tools in the “invention of Brazil’s national essence” as specifically Afro-Brazilian.28 That she is a mulata, in particular, represents an erotic yet safe solution to the problem of race: her whiteness promises assimilation into the dominant classes, her blackness stimulates in the whiter consumer the desire for that which is other, while her gender assures a lack of political agency. North American and Caribbean literary scholar Vera Kutzinski, whose work traces the power dynamics at play within discourse on race mixing in Cuba, explains that the mulata “is a symbolic container for all the tricky questions about how race, gender, and sexuality inflect the power relations . . . in colonial and postcolonial Cuba.”29 That the mulata should appear at the auction, a site of economic and cultural negotiation, is therefore unsurprising. In Rosa’s lyrics, she is described by the auctioneer as a “beautiful lady, flirtatious, vain, and very false,”30 at once inspiring attraction and suspicion. She is 114 Erin Graff Zivin

finally sold to Vasco da Gama, a popular Brazilian football club named after the Portuguese explorer that was “founded by and strongly associated with Portuguese immigrants.”31 The club purchases her as a gift for their star player, Russinho (literally, “the little Russian”),32 in place of a car: “Vasco pays the lot . . . / and instead of a car / offers Russinho a mulata.”33 From the outset, there is a complex dynamic at play between the national and the foreign. On the one hand, the song implies that brasilidade—through the figure of the mulata—is sold, or sold out, to Vasco to be given to Russinho, both of whose names connote foreignness. Yet each agent in the transaction participates in a complicit relationship, and in the end any attempt on the part of the lyrical subject to rhetorically separate self and other is thwarted, because the mulata remains within the space of the national: soccer, after all, rivals samba as the ultimate emblem of Brazilianness. The second item up for auction is a guitar, a symbol of Brazil’s rich musical tradition. Like Brazil itself, this instrument possesses colonial roots: “It belonged to Dom Pedro, it lived in the palace / It was put in a pawnshop by José Bonifácio.”34 That the guitar was placed in a pawnshop by Bonifácio—an intellectual who as the counselor for Dom Pedro I (the first emperor of Brazil) participated in the fight for Brazil’s independence—establishes an inextricable link with Brazil’s status as an autonomous nation. Yet by recalling Bonifácio’s act, the samba seems to suggest a betrayal at the heart of Brazil’s existence; even the moment of independence is marked by the selling or selling out of a precious national commodity. The guitar, which is characterized as an incomplete object—“it’s missing an arm, base, and stand”35—signifies an inherent imperfection, or lack, at the center of brasilidade. This authentic yet flawed artifact is bought by a Jew, who threatens Brazilian authenticity not only through his foreignness, but also because he complicates the very idea of national identity by not belonging to any nation. The final item for sale is a samba: a metalyrical reference that reveals one of the song’s principal objectives: to announce its own centrality within the landscape of Brazilian culture. By juxtaposing the samba with the mulata and guitar, Rosa performatively establishes its status as an emblem of brasilidade. Like the two other items for sale, the samba is a vulnerable, incomplete object: it has only a refrain and is missing the introduction and second part. Yet while the mulata and guitar are both purchased, there is no reply to the auctioneer’s offer of the samba, which could be interpreted in a number of ways. It is not that there is no buyer, but rather that the lyrics trail off before the sale can be completed, designating the samba as an open text whose meaning is only fully determined through its reception. Moreover, it 115 The Scene of the Transaction

is as if the listener of Rosa’s song were to function as a potential buyer, who does not answer, but is nevertheless implicated in the selling out of Brazil simply by consuming one of its products. An alternative reading might be that Rosa proposes the samba as that which cannot be sold, an object that refuses to be converted into a commodity, that transcends the market and the value assigned to items within the scene of the transaction. While “Quem dá mais?” ends before the price of the samba can be determined, the lyrical subject’s objective has been fulfilled: he has warned the Brazilian public about the threat to their national patrimony. The auction thus stands for that which disrupts a stable—albeit hybrid— national subject. One by one, various figures of Brazilianness—a mulata, a guitar, and a samba—are put on the auction block, awaiting the highest bidder. Yet I would like to propose, perhaps counterintuitively, that the announcement of the loss of Brazilianness actually serves to reify the very possibility of its existence. The mulata, the guitar, and the samba are stereotypes that, one could argue, surface especially during times of crisis. That is, the overdetermined items on the auction block are infused with the responsibility to represent the nation precisely at the moment that it is endangered; the condition of possibility of brasilidade is the very threat of its destruction. The figure of the “Jew” is important, because while he is not the only one to purchase a relic of Brazil’s uniqueness, he is the one who, according to the lyrical subject, will probably resell his lot to a museum for a profit: “The one who picks up the lot is a Jew / . . . who’ll sell it for double to a museum.”36 Not only is the Jewish figure depicted as the most cunning, indeed the most entrepreneurial of the buyers, through this hypothetical transaction with the museum, he extracts a supplementary value from the national artifact. In a sense, he profits from this deal in a manner analogous to the auctioneer; by becoming the salesman, he participates in the selling (or the selling out) of Brazil. At the same time, one could argue that by returning the guitar to a museum, the Jewish buyer is restoring this symbol of Brazilianness to its rightful owner: the Brazilian people. In this sense, Rosa constructs the “Jew” in a more ambivalent manner than is understood by McCann; in a perverse way, Rosa’s “Jew” could be understood as a productive figure for the nation. Thus the “Jew” possesses contrasting qualities, fulfilling multiple functions at once. As both buyer and seller, he is not only a flexible figure; he becomes, more specifically, a middleman, which recalls Benjamin’s idea of the threshold. The middleman possesses an intermediate status that, while 116 Erin Graff Zivin

destroying the possibility of Brazilianness (both by selling it out and because the very idea of a middleman interrupts the categories it straddles), could on another level offer a distinct mode of defining national identity. The fact that the auctioneer, the one who has sold Brazil to foreigners, is himself Brazilian—“How much will the auctioneer earn / He’s also Brazilian / and in three lots he sells all of Brazil”37—suggests that what is really being talked about here is the question of Brazilian subjectivity itself. The middleman signals a struggle in Brazilian culture to articulate a concept of identity that incorporates heterogeneity, a notion that Gilberto Freyre termed hybridity in the 1930s, and which Brazilian novelist and cultural critic Silviano Santiago would call “the space in-between” decades later.38 Or maybe the subject in question is the sambista himself, who, as Vianna tells us, acts as a mediating force between different sectors of society: “the samba composers of the 1920s and 1930s . . . connect the elite and middle class to the world of popular street festivals like carnival.”39 Noel Rosa, as one of the first white samba composers, takes his role as middleman to a new level. He embarks upon ethnographic-like research visits to favelas in order to learn as much as possible about the popular classes whose music he appropriates and sells to middle- and upper-class Brazilians. His task, to a certain degree, resembles that of the auctioneer’s: selling “authentic” (read: popular, mixed-race) cultural artifacts to willing buyers. At the same time the sambista aids in the construction of an autochthonous cultural product, paralleling the Jewish buyer’s conservation of the Brazilian guitar in a museum. Both “Jew” and sambista, indirectly work to preserve Brazilian music for the nation. In this way, then, I both agree and disagree with McCann’s argument that Rosa “perceived Brazilianness as an endangered quality, threatened by the encroachments of foreigners and squandered by bad Brazilians.” 40 I see in Rosa’s samba a slightly more nuanced vision of national identity politics, an aporia of sorts in which brasilidade is simultaneously threatened and made possible through perverse transactions between foreigners and natives. While Rosa unquestionably blames both the “Jew” and the Brazilian auctioneer for the buying and selling of the nation, the hidden actor within this scene is the sambista himself, a transcultural subject who, through his lyrics and musical production, asserts his own role at the same time that he announces the loss of brasilidade. By simultaneously appropriating and popularizing samba, Rosa himself participates in the buying and selling of Brazil, establishing a locus of enunciation for the lyrical subject of samba, while revealing a double bind at the heart of the Brazilian subject. 117 The Scene of the Transaction

Signifying Promiscuity in Madame Pommery Promiscuous: adj. 1. consisting of different elements mixed together or mingled without discrimination 2. characterized by a lack of discrimination; specif., engaging in sexual intercourse indiscriminately or with many persons —Webster’s Dictionary Jews trafficked in their own daughters until Moses prohibited this custom. —Cesare Lombroso, Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman Unlike the invention of money, and the ambivalent value constructed in relation to it, prostitution almost always represents a marginal aspect of society, an activity confined to subaltern spaces, which, even when rampant, is often hidden, denied, or repressed. Although both reside on the border of legality and illegality, morality and immorality—as I have suggested—prostitution remains the more charged of the two categories. While prostitution and prostitutes are less often imbued with positive value by mainstream society, they are nevertheless inscribed with the ideolog­ ical, sexual, and moral preoccupations of this society. For this reason, the literary representation of prostitution engages a sphere whose meaning is already overdetermined, casting a positive, negative, or ambivalent light on the commodification of sex. While my reading of Madame Pommery will address the intersection of “Jewishness” with prostitution, it will also treat the broader issue of “promiscuity”—a notion that, while generally used in reference to loose women, alludes to an entire field of behavior that falls outside of the realm of morality (while, of course, sustaining the very morality it is thought to destroy). Yet, as the first epigraph to this section indicates, promiscuity is not simply a slackening of sexual mores, but rather a broader corruption of borders, of the very limits that are established as part of attempts to construct the nation. There is a problematic of “visibility” at work here, an exhibition and an exhibitionism of alterity. If, as literary scholar Sylvia Molloy suggests in her essay on the politics of posing, “countries are read like bodies” and “bodies, in turn, are read (and are offered up for reading) as cultural statements,” then the literary representation of a promiscuous body 118 Erin Graff Zivin

would seem to denote a corruption of the distinction between the public and the private, between the same and the other.41 Taken in this broader context, promiscuity would serve as a characteristic associated with prostitutes—unsurprisingly—but also, perhaps less predictably, with “Jewishness.” Like promiscuity, “Jewishness” as a constructed concept represents that which does not remain restricted to designated categories. Both ideas allude to a sort of transgression of boundaries, whether literal or figurative, whether sexual, religious, cultural, or national. Promiscuous “Jewishness” would be that element of difference that, instead of remaining relegated to its own discrete/discreet realm, bleeds into the public space, the site of the collective or the national. In his work on the turn-of-the-century Spanish-American modernista chronicle, literary and cultural critic Julio Ramos remarks upon the treatment of the prostitute, which he describes as embodying the dangerousness of the modern city within the broader cultural imaginary. Early twentieth-century chroniclers, among them Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío and Guatemalan novelist Enrique Gómez Carillo, go out to the street in order to register this newfound urban promiscuity. Ramos affirms a connection between the chronicler and the prostitute, both representative of a mercantilization of the private, the interior, the sexual, the aesthetic. In the chronicle, he suggests, there is a constant slippage between the idea of prostitution and the mercantilization of art, which “forces us to at once suspect the chronicler’s introjection of the prostitute’s condition into his own practice. For is not the chronicle precisely an incorporation of art into the market, into the emergent culture industry? And was not mercantilization, following the idealism professed by many modernists, a form of prostitution?”42 But if Ramos’s analysis focuses on the dangerousness of the prostitute—and, by extension, of the modern city—it is because he wishes to emphasize the socioeconomic character of both, that is, their working-class status. What happens, then, when that which is represented in the chronicle is so-called luxury prostitution, when the action is situated within the bordello and not on the streets, when the prostitute is Jewish, and when the very genre of the chronicle appears unstable?43 In Madame Pommery, a satirical chronicle-novel from 1919, we see a dynamic similar to the one that Ramos details, but in an altered context. Written on the eve of São Paulo’s Semana de Arte Moderna and the inauguration of Brazilian modernism (avant-garde) in 1922, Madame Pommery marks the limits of Brazilian premodernism, the parallel of SpanishAmerican modernism.44 The author, José Maria Toledo Malta, publishes the 119 The Scene of the Transaction

text in the intellectual periodical Revista do Brasil in 1920 under the pseudonym Hilário Tácito. This fictitious name reveals a simultaneous attempt to parody (the hilarious) and to document (after the Latin historian Tacitus).45 (Of course, the notion of the “tacit” also alludes to that which does not require verbal communication, that which is beyond or before language.) The text, which bears characteristics of the novel and, at the same time, is defined as a “very truthful chronicle”46 by the author himself, plays on the border between poetic and scientific discourses, fiction and biography, premodernism and modernism, realism and parody, public and private, in addition to complicating notions of class, nation, and modernity. I propose that the figure of the Jewish prostitute is what allows for the creation of a flexible space within which it is possible to negotiate the fixity of these concepts. In the preface to the fifth edition of the text, published in 1997 by the Brazilian cultural institution Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa,47 Francisco Foot Hardman, a historian who studies ideas of progress in Brazil, describes the story of Madame Pommery as “a history of the progress of São Paulo.”48 The first decades of the twentieth century represent a moment of transition for São Paulo, which was experiencing a rapid urbanization and industrialization at the time. The prostitute in general played a central role within the city in the process of modernization, on both empirical and symbolic levels. Historically, prostitution grew in popularity as the white slave trade brought poor European women—many of them Jewish—to Latin America (specifically to Buenos Aires and the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre) under the pretense that they would marry men who later turned out to work for the mafias (such as the infamous criminal gang Zwi Migdal).49 While Madame Pommery’s history follows a different trajectory, in which a prostitute comes to America alone and becomes her own boss, the connection between prostitution and “Jewishness” was already well established in the urban Latin American imaginary at the time of the chronicle’s publication. Further, these elements were linked to money, because both the “Jew” and the prostitute were perceived as elements of a foreign, capitalist modernity. Josefina Ludmer illustrates the paranoia that surfaced in response to the presence of these elements in turn of the century Argentina: “‘Jews’ as usurers, simulators, madmen, effeminate men, who sexualize money and power (and who are linked to prostitution) hide in the shadows, in the caves, and from there they carry out a clandestine invasion of society, a conspiracy against ‘the nation.’”50 As I have suggested, the connection between “Jewishness” and promiscuity works on a rhetorical level because of the flexibility of both concepts—both destabilize boundaries between bodies, 120 Erin Graff Zivin

nations, subjects, and families, threatening the existence of these systems. We should ask, then, how this relationship is appropriated in Tácito’s text and to what rhetorical ends. The narrator—also named Hilário Tácito—admits that Madame Pom­ mery possesses a metaphorical weight, while simultaneously defending the text as “truthful.” He addresses the issue of the protagonist’s historicity, anticipating possible criticism by the reader: Does Madame Pommery exist, in flesh and blood? Behold the insidious question that, if I don’t take care to answer preemptively, would be capable of turning posterity into a crass and fundamental error. Madame Pommery would risk being reduced to a mere symbol, and my true story to a simple fiction; and possibly less. . . . Madame Pommery is a symbol, if you wish; I can’t hide that. But, for the love of truth, eternal and intangible, let this point be heard:—that Madame Pommery lives and breathes, as alive and real as I, who writes, and the reader, who reads me, but with a great deal more appetite and stamina.51 Although he insists on the protagonist’s historicity, the narrator cannot deny the rhetorical value of Madame Pommery. His exaggerated defense of the “eternal and intangible” truth exposes a tension in the text between reality and fiction, whether in reference to the literary genre or to the protagonist herself. He exploits this tension in order to create a new authority that challenges premodernist discourse and anticipates the literary heterogeneity of the modernists.52 Yet, what meaning can we extract from the fact that Madame Pommery is Jewish? Does “Jewishness” merely represent one more characteristic on a list of marginal qualities, or does it function as a discursive force that interrupts a premodernist homogeneity? Far from being a one-dimensional caricature of marginality, Madame Pommery incorporates elements of contradiction and ambivalence. The daughter of Ivã Pomerikowsky, a Polish-Jew, and Consuelo Sánchez, a Spanish nun who fled the convent to be with her Jewish lover, Ida Pomer­ ikowsky embodies an ironic hybridity.53 The narrator tells us that Consuelo left Ivã and their three-year-old daughter in order to run away with a new lover, a bullfighter from Barcelona, and that for this reason, Ida inherited few characteristics from the ex-nun. From her father, on the other hand, she inherited a crooked nose and a taste for finance, both stereotypically Jewish traits. Her financial talent helps her as a prostitute, the narrator tells 121 The Scene of the Transaction

us: she demonstrates the ability to “negotiate kisses.”54 While wandering through European cities as an itinerant prostitute, she changes her last name to Pommery, the reason for which is unknown, according to the narrator, though he suggests that the French brand of champagne has something to do with it: “It was natural that she would adopt it, considering the advantages of brevity and of allusion.”55 Her nontraditional genealogy, together with her peregrinations and her self-invention as a Frenchified lady, constitute Madame Pommery as a malleable, translatable figure. By codifying her in this way, Tácito privileges the act of assimilation, which is realized in the text on the level of form as well as content. At the age of thirty-five, after a period in Marseilles, Madame Pommery travels to Brazil on the Bonne Chance with the desire to “do” America.56 After a difficult start in São Paulo, the wandering Jew-turned-prostitute opens a bordello (under the guise of a boarding house) called the Paradis Retrouvé, establishing herself as a property owner and, in this way, entering the São Paulo bourgeoisie.57 The existence of the bordello differentiates this text from the chronicles cited by Ramos, in which we witness a public promiscuity, a promiscuity of the streets. Here, in contrast, we find a site that is private, closed, controlled. The bordello, then, represents a privileged space: Madame Pommery specializes in “high prostitution” and attracts an upper-class clientele. Among the residents of the Paradis Retrouvé are Leda Roskoff, a blonde Slav, the Italian Coralina, and Isolda Bogary, a French woman whose name combines with the protagonist’s to remind the reader of Madame Bovary.58 The international character of the bordello—headed by Pommery, a Frenchified Spanish-Polish-Jew—juxtaposes the idea of cultural hybridity with promiscuity. Both concepts represent a transgression of limits, whether national, religious, familial, or sexual. The image of a confused mixture of ethnicities is used to describe São Paulo itself: “The city of São Paulo is a cosmopolitan capital, where the ancient national element, still a majority, appears mixed, in an undigested confusion of races and civilizations, with peoples from all across the globe, from Greece to Japan.”59 Madame Pommery, as a promiscuous mixture of different cultures, signals the possibility of bettering oneself in São Paulo and, at the same time, suggests a modernizing potential of the city itself. In this way, the ambivalent attitude toward prostitution, money, and foreignness acquires an affirmative tone in this text. Just as Madame Pommery appropriates a French name in order to climb the paulistana60 social hierarchy, the text seems to suggest that the city possesses a similar ability to reinvent itself as modern. The manipulation of “Jewishness,” then, serves as a model for modernization in 122 Erin Graff Zivin

São Paulo and, by extension, in Brazil. Yet, what kind of perverse modernity does the text postulate? In addition to offering sexual pleasure, the marginal space of the bordello is populated with alcohol, especially Pommery champagne. The narrator relates to the reader the notion, popular in psychiatric thought at the time, that alcohol is the force that allows prostitution to exist. The protagonist’s name, a synecdoche for the evils of society, doubly signifies these vices; further, it points to the causal relationship between the two phenomena. The narrator continues his argument by pointing out that poets, too, support this theory: The poets . . . have said more or less the same thing . . . but with much more grace and truth. Thus I conclude that poetry knows more, or better, than science; but that’s not where I was heading. What I wanted was to demonstrate my admiration for the intuition of Mme. Pommery, who, on matters of drinking and drunks, knew as much as the scientists and the poets.61 Of course, by pretending to state his intentions, the narrator is actually revealing a different motive: that of placing poetic discourse on par with scientific discourse, and ultimately of privileging the former. By linking alcohol with prostitution, the text simultaneously problematizes scientific authority and postulates a new category of knowledge, possessed by the heroine. The deconstruction of scientific discourse is developed further through the character of Doctor Felipe Mangancha. One of the bourgeois clients of the bordello, the doctor represents the paulistana elite and scientific authority, though it is through him that both are parodied. On the one hand, he is a famous surgeon; on the other, he is writing a book entitled, “Of Alcoholism. Adaptation and Selection in the Human Species,” a ridiculous manuscript that appropriates Darwinist discourse in order to postulate alcohol as an agent in the perfection of the human race. Drunk from two bottles of Pommery champagne, Doctor Mangancha defends the civilizing effects of alcohol, citing Noah as the first alcoholic.62 He compares alcohol with the sun, which has also been accused of having a degenerative effect on tropical races, though in reality it sustains life: It’s true that a Swede, a Scot, a German withers in this torrid climate. It’s true that if they bring their families, their offspring degenerates generation after generation. . . . However, after a long 123 The Scene of the Transaction

series of descendants, a new type emerges, resistant to the burning sun, full of vigor and endowed with admirable qualities, unknown in his ancestors.63 In this excerpt, the narrator inverts the pseudo-scientific theory in which African and indigenous “races” must mix with European blood in order to dilute the degenerative effect. Here, in contrast, the European race becomes strengthened through contact with a tropical influence. This inversion suggests a new reading of the dedication of the book to the Eugenic Society, the early twentieth-century Brazilian organization whose mission was the “moral and physical strengthening of the Brazilian people.”64 The ironic allusion to the society simultaneously appropriates the authority of Eugenic discourse and questions its methods in order to propose an alternative Darwinism.65 Doctor Mangancha’s thesis also appropriates the notion of the pathological genius, so in vogue among Symbolists, Parnasianists, and Spanish-American modernists.66 He admits to the existence of degeneration due to alcoholism but insists that alcoholic geniuses compensate for the degenerates: Goethe, for example, drank until he stumbled, and until his death, at eighty-three years, he never lost the habit of having a drink for his health. Beethoven was a maniac, son of a drunk; and these two should suffice, because only a Larousse could contain all those I haven’t cited. . . . Long live alcohol, gentlemen, the benefactor of humanity!67 In this quote, we see the humoristic reclamation of the category of the drunk in order to advocate a perverse modernization. Alcohol—represented by Madame Pommery, synecdoche of champagne—here becomes the protagonist of modern paulistana society. Although Mangancha’s theories are not meant to be taken seriously—it is possible that the text parodies the doctor himself more than the positivist theories that he attempts to dismantle— there is no doubt that the theories of eugenics so popular in Brazilian culture are called into question. I would like to suggest that only in the bordello, the space constructed by Madame Pommery, can such irreverence occur; the fatal combination of “Jewishness” and prostitution creates the necessary conditions for an alternative discourse. As Ludmer has argued, the idea of the nation in early twentieth-century Latin American culture is reinforced by the notion of the sexualization of money by the “Jew.” In Tácito’s text, the “Jew” exercises this destructive power from the bordello, and it is recodified as positive. Questioning the 124 Erin Graff Zivin

limits of genre, sexuality, and nation, Tácito appropriates positivist discourse in order to privilege the marginal; in this way, “Jewishness,” prostitution, alcohol, and dangerous urban heterogeneity become the heroes of progress. The implications of this decentering move, which is realized on multiple levels, have to do with an affirmation of poetic discourse, in addition to the postulation of São Paulo as a protagonist of modernity. While the appropriation of scientific discourse situates Madame Pommery in an intertextual relationship with other works from the pre-avant-garde generation in Spanish-American letters (such as Rubén Darío’s Los raros and José Asunción Silva’s De sobremesa), it also anticipates the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity and satire of the Brazilian modernistas. In this way, the text performs assimilation and offers itself as a cosmopolitan model of the transition to modernity.

! Analyzing Tácito’s “hilarious” chronicle alongside Rosa’s allegorical samba, it becomes possible to theorize the rhetorical use of the “Jew” within two distinct scenes of transaction, that of the auction and of “luxury prostitution.” Within these spaces of cultural, financial, and sexual negotiation, the idea of “Jewishness” is manipulated in order to postulate original national subjectivities. What is interesting about both works is the way in which this signifying operation is realized performatively; that is, the transactions occur on the level of both form and content. Rosa imagines a figurative space of exchange in order to negotiate brasilidade through samba, while Tácito thinks about the problem of cultural “looseness” through the invention of a promiscuous genre, the novel-chronicle. Finally, each artist creates a locus of enunciation for himself as a cultural authority by appropriating the position of the rhetorical “Jew”: the idea of the “Jew” as middleman allows Rosa to imagine a central role for the sambista in the Brazilian cultural scene, while the figure of the Jewish prostitute creates what is both a privileged and marginal discursive space for the chronicler Tácito. Both Rosa and Tácito find a rhetorical productivity in the flexible signifier “Jew” and utilize the idea of intermediate “Jewishness” within a threshold-like space in order to articulate a hybrid notion of Brazilianness during the first part of the twentieth century. Of course, the presence of “rhetorical Jewishness” in twentieth-century Brazilian culture does not end in the Vargas era, despite the fact that the 1930s represent a period of increased Jewish immigration to Brazil and 125 The Scene of the Transaction

ambivalent attitudes toward these newcomers. Curiously, the figure of the “Jew” returns several decades later in two well-known works of fiction published during the military dictatorship of the late 1960s and 1970s. Alfredo Dias Gomes’s play O Santo Inquérito (The Holy Inquisition) and Heitor Carlos Cony’s novel Pessach: A travessia (Passover: The Crossing) both utilize the idea of “Jewishness” to articulate subjects of resistance to the repressive military regime.68 Gomes, who allegorizes the dictatorship by situating the play within the context of the Inquisition, casts a converted Jew (cristã nova, or “New Christian”) as the heroine who remains loyal to her principles and dies at the hands of her inquisitors. Cony, casting an assimilated Jew as his newly militant hero, employs the trope of the Jewish exodus from Egypt as a way to imagine the transformative potential of political engagement. The scene of the transaction—which we have explored in detail in this essay—is therefore not the only context within which we witness the idea of “Jewishness” manipulated to fit the rhetorical needs of the text: in Dias Gomes and Cony, the Jewish other is literally converted in order to articulate the politicization of the Brazilian subject. The fact that the idea of “Jewishness” travels not only between texts and scenes but also between historical periods and political contexts reveals the radical malleability of the signifier “Jew.” As constructions of ethnicity shift and ideological struggles evolve, ideas of “Jewishness” are continuously redefined as a way to confront issues of identity and difference.

126 Erin Graff Zivin

Notes 1. I am thinking of “Emma Zunz” and “Deutsches Requiem” in El Aleph [The Aleph] (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg y Círculo de Lectores, 1999); Los raros [The Rare Ones] (Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1972); Del amor y otros demonios [Of Love and Other Demons] (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1994); and El hablador [The Storyteller] (Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, 1987). Of course, these are only a few examples. 2. Representations of Jewishness are not limited to literary texts, but can be found in film, visual arts, and popular music as well. 3. I am very grateful to Keila Grinberg, who introduced me to Noel Rosa’s “Quem dá mais?” and Beatriz Kushnir, who referred me to Hilário Tácito’s Madame Pommery. 4. Robert DiAntonio and Nora Glickman, eds., Tradition and Innovation: Reflections on Latin American Jewish Writing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Florinda F. Goldberg, “Literatura judía latinoamericana: Modelos para armar,” Revista Iberoamericana 191 (April–June 2000): 309–24; Regina Igel, Imigrantes judeus/Escritores brasileiros: O componente judaico na literatura brasileira (São Paulo: Perspectiva, Associação Universitária de Cultura Judaica, Banco Safra, 1997); Leonardo Senkman, “La nación imaginaria de los escritores judíos latinoamericanos,” Revista Iberoamericana 191 (2000): 279–98; Bernardo Sorj, “Sociabilidade brasileira e identidade judaica,” in Identidades judaicas no Brasil contemporâneo, ed. Bila Sorj (Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora, 1997), 9–31; Bila Sorj, ed., Identidades judaicas no Brasil contemporâneo (Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora, 1997); Saúl Sosnowski, “Fronteras en las letras judías-latinoamericanas,” Revista Iberoamericana 191 (2000): 263–78; Saúl Sosnowski, “Latin American–Jewish Writers: Protecting the Hyphen,” in The Jewish Presence in Latin America. Thematic Studies in Latin America, ed. Judith Laikin Elkin and Gilbert W. Merkx (Winchester, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 297–307; Ilan Stavans, ed., Tropical Synagogues: Short Stories by Jewish Latin American Writers (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1994); and Ilan Stavans, The Inveterate Dreamer: Essays and Conversations on Jewish Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). 5. Doris Sommer, “María’s Disease: A National Romance (Con)founded,” in Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); and Josefina Ludmer, The Corpus Delicti: A Manual of Argentine Fictions, trans. Glen S. Close (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004). 6. Evelyn Fishburn, “Reflections on the Jewish Imaginary in the Fictions of Borges,” Variaciones Borges: Journal of the Jorge Luis Borges Center for Studies and Documentation 5 (1998): 145–56; Edna Aizenberg, The Aleph Weaver: Biblical, Kabbalistic and Judaic Elements in Borges (Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1984). 7. Jeffrey Lesser, “Jewish Brazilians or Brazilian Jews? A Reflection on Brazilian Ethnicity,” Shofar 19, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 65–72; Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Jeffrey Lesser, Welcoming the 127 The Scene of the Transaction

Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 8. Sosnowski, “Fronteras,” 263. 9. Sosnowski “Latin American–Jewish Writers,” 297. 10. Noel Rosa, “Quem dá mais?” Quem dá mais (1932). Quém Dá Mais. Sambahumorístico. 1930. Ed Magione. “Quem dá mais?” roughly translates into English as “Who’ll give more?” or “Who’ll pay more?” although, of course, in the context of an auction (which is the setting of Rosa’s samba) one would say, “Do I hear (five hundred)?” I have decided to keep the Portuguese title of the samba in the text of this essay in order to maintain its colloquial tone. 11. Hilário Tácito (José Maria de Toledo Malta), Madame Pommery, 5th ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1997). 12. Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York and London: Routledge, 1991), 124. 13. Ibid., 124. 14. Ibid., 97. 15. Donna Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 47. 16. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 499. 17. Ludmer, The Corpus Delicti, 4. 18. Eiland and McLaughlin, “Translators’ Foreword,” in Benjamin, The Arcades Project, xii. 19. First identified by French poet Charles Baudelaire, a flaneur is a gentleman who wanders the streets of a city, observing urban public life, watching without engaging. 20. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 494. 21. Like prostitution, gambling resides on the margins of the law; further, gamblers resemble investors within the context of capitalism. Benjamin highlights the link between gambling and capitalism by quoting Paul Lafargue, who points out that investment in the stock exchange is often described as “playing the market.” Ibid., 497. 22. Ibid., 494. 23. John Beverley and José Oviedo, “Introduction,” in The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America, ed. John Beverley, José Oviedo, and Michael Aronna (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 1–17; José Joaquín Brunner, América latina: Cultura y modernidad (México: Editorial Grijalbo, 1992); Julio Ramos, Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, trans. John D. Blanco (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 24. Ludmer, The Corpus Delicti, 155. 25. Her argument refers specifically to Argentine literature at the turn of the nineteenth century, in which metaphors of Jewishness and money are often juxtaposed. Ludmer, The Corpus Delicti, 6. 26. A female of mixed-race descent. 27. Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables, 28. 128 Erin Graff Zivin

28. Hermano Vianna, The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil, ed. and trans. John Charles Chasteen (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), xvii. 29. Vera Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 7. 30. “Moça formosa / fiteira, vaidosa e muito mentirosa.” 31. Bryan McCann, “Noel Rosa’s Nationalist Logic,” Luso-Brazilian Review 38 (2001): 7. 32. The nickname “Russinho” (literally, “little Russian”) is a term of affection for children of mixed-race descent who have light hair; it is interesting that the idea of the foreign is used to differentiate racially fair children from their more “Brazilian” relatives or friends, regardless of the fact that their nationality is identical. 33. “O Vasco paga o lote na batata / E em vez de barata / Oferece ao Russinho uma mulata.” 34. “Pertenceu a Dom Pedro, morou no palácio / Foi posto no prego por José Bonifácio.” 35. “Só não tem braço, fundo e cavalete.” 36. “Quem arremata o lote é um judeu / . . . Para vendê-lo pelo dobro no museu.” 37. “Quanto é que vai ganhar o leiloeiro / Que é também brasileiro / E em três lotes vendem o Brasil inteiro.” 38. Gilberto Freyre, Casa grande e senzala: Formação da familia brasileira sob o regime de economia patriarcal (Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio, 1943); and Silviano Santiago, The Space In-Between: Essays on Latin American Culture, ed. Ana Lúcia Gazzola, trans. Tom Burns, Ana Lúcia Gazzola, and Gareth Williams (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 39. Vianna, The Mystery of Samba, 84. 40. McCann, “Noel Rosa’s Nationalist Logic,” 3. 41. Sylvia Molloy, “The Politics of Posing,” in Hispanisms and Homosexualities, ed. Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 142. 42. Ramos, Divergent Modernities, 139. 43. For a discussion of the phenomenon of “luxury prostitution” in turn of the century São Paulo, see chapter 1 of Margareth Rago’s Os prazeres da noite: Prostituição e códigos da sexualiade feminina em São Paulo 1890–1930 (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1991). Rago maintains that while prostitution certainly represented a marginal (and more public) form of femininity, so-called luxury prostitutes (prostitutas de luxo) were seen as offering a more French (or more broadly European), “superior” cultural experience. In particular, foreign prostitutes were emblems not only of an exotic sexuality, but also of modernity itself. 44. Pré-modernismo (the Brazilian counterpart of Spanish-American modernismo) is a literary generation that roughly spanned the last two decades of the nineteenth and the first two decades of the twentieth century. Not to be confused with Spanish-American modernism, Brazilian modernismo (initiated in the 1920s) would be the rough equivalent of the Spanish-American vanguardia. While the former was heavily influenced by the Parnassian, Symbolist, and Decadent movements of the time, the latter sought to create more “local” 129 The Scene of the Transaction

cultural products (though they, too, were impacted by European avant-garde movements such as Expressionism, Futurism, and Cubism). 45. The choice of pseudonym by José Maria Toledo Malta has been treated in Beth Brait, Ironia em perspectiva polifônica (Campinas, SP: Editora da UNICAMP, 1996), 136–37; and Sandra Aparecida Ferreira, “Entre a biblioteca e o bordel: A sátira narrativa em Madame Pommery, de Hilário Tácito” (MA thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 1998), 27. 46. “Crônica muito verídica.” 47. This edition was published as part of a larger study project on the topic of Brazilian premodernism, which included a seminar, an exposition, the publication of a volume of scholarly essays on the literary period, as well as new editions of premodernist texts like Madame Pommery. 48. “Uma historia do progresso da cidade de São Paulo,” Francisco Foot Hardman, “São Paulo de Pommery,” in Madame Pommery, by Hilário Tácito (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1997), 9. 49. Rago points out that the Zwi Migdal exercised considerably more influence in Buenos Aires than in Brazil. Rago, Os prazeres da noite, 286. 50. Ludmer, The Corpus Delicti, 155. 51. “Mme. Pommery existe, de verdade, em carne e osso? Eis a pergunta insidiosa, que, se eu ñao tomo o cuidado de contestar peremptoriamente, era capaz de induzir a posteridade em erro crasso e fundamental. Mme. Pommery arriscava-se a decrescer às proporções de um mero símbolo, e a minha história verdadeira ao simples título de romance; e talvez menos. . . . Seja, pois, Mme. Pommery um símbolo, se o quiserem; que o não posso vedar. Mas, por amor da verdade, eterna e intangível, fica estabelecido este ponto:—que Mme. Pommery vive e respira, tão real e efetivamente como eu, que escrevo, e o leitor, que me lê, apenas com muito mais apetite e fôlego.” Tácito, Madame Pommery, 49. 52. Two examples of the parodic, cannibalizing trend of this avant-garde artistic movement are Oswald de Andrade’s “Manifesto antropofágico,” in Obras completas (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1970); and Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma, trans. E. A. Goodland (New York: Random House, 1984). 53. Of course, Orthodox Jewish law would not consider Ida to be Jewish, since her mother was not. 54. “Ida . . . [p]eregrinou por cidades e nações de toda a Europa, a negociar os beijos e os sorrisos, como a mesma finura e com o mesmo talento que revelara de princípio.” Tácito, Madame Pommery, 54. 55. “Era natural que o adotasse, consideradas as vantagens da brevidade e da alusão.” Ibid., 54. 56. “Encasquetou-se-lhe a idéia de ‘fazer América.’ Só pensava na América.” Ibid., 55. 57. Madame Pommery has a rough beginning in Brazil: she participates in spectacles of Roman fights with other women, in which she turns into a celebrity by being named “heavyweight” champion. Later, she opens the “Paradis Retrouvé,” a house in decay with pretensions of a “school of refinement and society.” Ironically, this refinement is realized through prostitution; 130 Erin Graff Zivin

paradoxically, society is constituted through vulgarity. Ferreira, Entre a biblioteca e o bordel, 43. 58. For an analysis of Tácito’s allusions to Madame Bovary, see Brait, Ironia em perspectiva polifônica, 132–33. 59. “A cidade de São Paulo é uma capital cosmopolita, onde ao antigo elemento nacional, ainda em maioria, se vieram misturar, numa indigesta confusão de raças e de civilizações, outras gentes escumadas de todas as terras do mundo, desde a Grécia até o Japão.” Tácito, Madame Pommery, 138. 60. Of or describing the city of São Paulo. 61. “Os poetas . . . têm dito mais ou menos a mesma coisa . . . mas com muito mais graça e mais verdade. Donde concluo que a poesia sabe mais, ou melhor, que a ciência; mas não era aí que eu pretendia chegar. O que eu queria era mostrar-me admirado da intuição de Mme. Pommery, que, neste assunto de álcool e de alcouces, sabia tanto como os sábios e os poetas.” Tácito, Madame Pommery, 101, italics my own. 62. “Humanity is improving thanks to Noah, Dionysus and Bacchus, instead of degenerating” (“a humanidade vai melhorando graças a Noé, Dionísio e Baco, em vez de degenerar”). Ibid., 112. 63. “É certo que um sueco, um escocês, um alemão, definham nesses climas tórridos. É certo que, se trouxerem família, a prole irá degenerando de geração em geração. . . . Entretanto, depois de uma longa série de descendências, surge um tipo novo, fixo, resistente à combustão da soalheira, cheio de vigor e dotado de qualidades admiráveis, desconhecidas dos seus antepassados.” Ibid., 107. 64. “A Sociedade Eugênica de São Paulo teve sua sessão inaugural em 15 de janeiro de 1918. Nos Annaes de Eugenia, encontram-se os discursos inaugurais e os estatutos da sociedade; nestes últimos se coloca como um de seus objetivos ‘o estudo da regulamentação do meretrício.’ Ao longo dos anais lêem-se trechos como ‘eugenizar quer dizer selecionar a espécie humana’ (220) ou ‘a plausibilidade da instituição de um centro científico, donde dimanarão estudos, conselhos, regras, para o fortalecimento moral e físico dos brasileiros’ (4).” Ibid., 165n1. 65. For a more thorough discussion of the theories of eugenics and social engineering that became fashionable during this period, see Nancy Stepan’s “The Hour of Eugenics”: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 66. Here I am thinking of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Rubén Darío, José Asunción Silva, among others. 67. “Goethe, por exemplo, bebia de cair, e até morrer, aos oitenta e três anos, não perdeu o costume de tomar pileques, por higiene. Beethoven era um maníaco, filho de um bêbedo; e bastam estes dois, porque so um Larousse pode conter os que não cito. . . . Viva o álcool, senhores, o benfeitor da humanidade!” Tácito, Madame Pommery, 113. 68. Alfredo Dias Gomes, O Santo Inquérito (Rio de Janeiro: Editôra Civilização Brasileira, 1966); Heitor Carlos Cony, Pessach: A travessia (Rio de Janeiro: Editôra Civilização, 1967). 131 The Scene of the Transaction

chapter seven

Protest from Afar

The Jewish and Republican Presence in Victoria Ocampo’s Revista SUR in the 1930s and 1940s !

rosalie sitman

S

ince the late nineteenth century, literary reviews have played an important role in the production and transmission of culture, often acting as barometers through which one can measure the atmosphere of the times. Victoria Ocampo’s SUR, in Argentina, is a case in point. As much a product of the personal tastes and whims of its founder as of the shared aesthetic, ethical, and political preferences of the group of intellectuals that comprised the “grupo SUR,” Ocampo’s review was also both a product and reflection of the historical circumstances that helped define its course throughout the journal’s protracted existence. Thus, particularly when viewed in the context of its relationship with other contemporary publications, SUR provides eloquent testimony of the issues and quandaries with which Argentine intellectuals wrestled in the politically charged climate of the 1930s and 1940s. Earlier and modified versions of this study are “Victoria Ocampo and SUR’s Attitude toward the Jews during World War II,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory, ed. Kristin Ruggiero (Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 18–33; and “¿Una estrategia de protesta antifascista? En torno a la presencia de exiliados republicanos españoles y judíos en SUR, 1936–1947,” Judaica Latinoamericana 5 (2005): 287–309. 132

The rise of Fascism and National Socialism in Europe, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War all had a profound impact on Argen­ tina, as on other Latin American nations, evoking strong emotions and antagonistic attitudes. In the wake of the rupture of 1930 and the evergrowing Hispanophile and anti-Semitic discourse of right-wing Catholic Nationalists on the domestic front, the polarization between democracy and Fascism on a global level forced Argentine intellectuals to take a stand on the side of one of the two opposing forces. As international and national problems intertwined, the pages of their publications recorded the tensions and confrontations that racked the Argentinean intelligentsia during this period of political and ideological ferment. One of the leading exponents of culture in Argentina during those critical years of Spain’s internecine war and the European debacle was the literary review SUR, which, quite atypically, boasted a woman at the helm—its founder Victoria Ocampo, scion of an established oligarchic family, who would continue to finance and direct the magazine and namesake publishing house during almost four decades of regular publication.1 Determined to fulfill what they perceived as the “civilizing” mission of their enterprise by “publishing the very best” and setting the standard for literary decorum—a task that they deemed incompatible with any form of political or partisan commitment—Ocampo and the grupo SUR focused at first on aesthetic considerations and strove to remain outside the political fray, in consonance with their own particular conception of human existence: the essence of man being freedom and creativity.2 How­­ever, this was to prove impossible in the politically charged climate of the thirties and forties. Before long, the clash with Criterio—avowedly the voice of Argentinean right-wing Catholicism—over SUR’s endorsement of French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s integral humanism, against the background of the Spanish Civil War, would force SUR to make a clear political stand on the side of the Republic. A commitment that, as we shall see, went hand in hand with the group’s concern for the fate of European Jewry, and which sprang, in both instances, again from the group’s understanding of the human condition in the face of the new circumstances. Gradually, as one armed conflict succeeded the other and the Argentinean government closed the gates of the country to “undesirable” immigration, all the while allegedly maintaining a policy of neutrality, Spanish Republican exiles and the plight of the Jewish refugees were afforded a warm welcome and given ample space in the offices and pages of Ocampo’s magazine.3 133 Protest from Afar

Since these two cases of forced immigration are obviously very dissimilar, what does their convergence in a literary review of the nature of SUR at this particular historical juncture tell us about contemporary Argentine society and culture? This study will reflect upon the implications of the continued Jewish and Republican presence in a purportedly apolitical journal such as SUR and venture some suggestions toward possible readings of the journal’s manifest pro-Republican and philo-Semitic sympathies in the context of the political and ideological debates that raged within Argentina’s intellectual field as the European liberal model collapsed and the Old World succumbed to war. More specifically, I would argue that, although genuinely concerned for the fate of these oppressed groups, SUR’s attitude toward both Jews and Spanish Republican exiles should be viewed less as a humanitarian response to the reality of their tragedy, inspired by inherent philo-Semitic and proRepublican sentiments, than as rhetorical leitmotivs within a broader discursive strategy. A strategy that, on the one hand, allowed Ocampo and the grupo SUR to express their staunch anti-Fascism on a global level, and at the same time enabled them, on the domestic front, to articulate a counterdiscourse that conveyed simultaneously their opposition to three pillars of the Argentinean establishment: namely, the government, the Catholic Church, and the right-wing Nationalists, at the extreme end of the cultural spectrum. In this way, by expressing their support for the Republic and denouncing the plight of the Spanish exiles and European Jews, the intellectuals of SUR were in fact expressing their identification with other liberal, anti-Fascist, pro-Allied intellectual circles in Argentina, as well as highlighting and setting apart their own position within Argentina’s intellectual field. In other words, if SUR’s pro-Republicanism and philo-Semitism helped define who they were, by the same token these attributes also defined who they were not—xenophobic, Hispanophile, pro-Francoist, philo-Fascist—that is, the “other,” in this case, right-wing Catholic Nationalists, determined to stay the onset of the “Red” menace and keep “undesirable,” non-Catholic minorities and “inferior” ethnic groups at bay outside of Argentina’s borders. In SUR, then, as the pages below will show, the Republican and Jewish presence in the pages of the magazine during the Spanish and world wars functioned as a cultural code that allowed the intellectuals of Ocampo’s magazine to define themselves politically and ideologically within Argentine society and culture, in response to momentous historical junctures both at home and in the international arena.4 No less important, this framework also enabled SUR to shed at will its oft-reiterated apolitical mantle and intervene, 134 Rosalie Sitman

if somewhat obliquely, in discussions in the public sphere on some of the burning issues of the day: immigration to the country and immigration controls; the mission of intellectuals; liberalism versus state intervention and the restriction of civil liberties; the nature of the Spanish Civil War; democracy versus totalitarianism; intervention or neutrality . . . What is important here, more than the Jewish or Republican issues in themselves, is what their inclusion in SUR might tell us about the collective identity and collective action of the grupo SUR, about the individual identity and action of its leading members, about patterns of national identity, about the nature of contemporary public debates, and about the schisms and coalitions within Argentina’s intellectual field at a time when liberalism was on the defensive in the face of the overwhelming advances made by authoritarian, nationalist, and totalitarian regimes.5

SUR Makes a Stand: The War in Spain SUR was born in January 1931, less than a year after the coup of General José Félix Uriburu rocked the foundations of Argentine society, inaugurating an “infamous decade” characterized by the curtailment of political freedom, economic difficulties in the wake of the Great Depression, growing conservatism, state intervention, and electoral fraud. During this period, the Catholic Church gained strength and influence in Argentina, as did the militant and xenophobic Nacionalista groups, whose pro-Fascist sympathies and blatant anti-Semitism—largely inspired by the church—did not augur well for the Jews within Argentina nor for those fleeing Europe and seeking to enter the Latin American republic.6 Greatly influenced by Ramiro de Maeztu’s ideas about Spanish identity, these groups blamed the great waves of immigrants for Argentina’s ills and sought to turn the clock back to the pre-immigration days of Argentina’s glorious Hispanic past. Naturally, they supported Franco’s military insurgence and new regime, which they felt acted to safeguard the religious, cultural, and moral values that were being undermined both in the Iberian Peninsula and in Argentina. At the same time, they applauded the open persecution of Jews in Europe and readily accepted Nazi propaganda at face value.7 The close alliance between church circles and the Nationalists manifested itself most clearly in the right-wing Catholic press—Criterio, Bandera Argentina, El Pampero, Crisol, Pueblo, La Fronda, Sol y Luna—which denounced “Red” excesses against the clergy and religious institutions in Spain and gave ample space to the anti-Semitic diatribes of activist Argentine clerics 135 Protest from Afar

Gustavo Franceschi, Julio Meinvielle, and Virgilio Filippo.8 Zealous to ward off what they perceived as an impending “Semitic invasion of the country,” they, of course, welcomed all governmental measures that restricted immigration and kept dubious types and subversive elements, such as “Bolsheviks,” Republicans, and Jews, out of Argentina. By contrast, SUR, originally conceived as a cultural bridge between the Americas and Europe, was cosmopolitan and firmly positioned within the liberal democratic tradition that the Nationalists rejected. Certainly in the early years, SUR clearly strove to maintain the liberal consensus that had characterized Argentina until the late 1920s. Different ideologies could be seen to coexist, as right-wing Nationalists such as Ramón Doll, Julio Irazusta, and Ernesto Palacio published various contributions in the magazine. Irazusta’s reminiscences of this early collaboration are indicative of the ecumenical spirit that prevailed in SUR at the time: “Eduardo Mallea, Henríquez Ureña, María de Maeztu, Carmen Gándara, Carlos Alberto Erro . . . and countless others I cannot recall mingled with us in an atmosphere of civilized conviviality that might have been equaled, but certainly not surpassed, in another literary salon.”9 However, this conviviality would soon come to an end with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the buildup to the Second World War, as hostility mounted and the ideological differences between SUR and the Nationalist groups became irreconcilable. SUR abhorred Fascism, which it identified as a manifestation of “las fuerzas de la barbarie” that threatened intellectual freedom and the higher ideals of the human spirit that SUR was committed to defend and perpetuate.10 The clash, therefore, was inevitable. For a start, it cannot have escaped the Nationalists’ notice that there was always a Jewish presence in SUR, beginning with the foundational letter addressed to Waldo Frank, an American Jewish intellectual of leftist leanings who is often credited, in SUR’s lore, with the idea of its inception.11 Frank, whom the Nationalist mouthpiece El Pampero pejoratively dubbed “Yankee-Jew,” not only became a regular contributor to SUR in the 1930s and 1940s, but worse, he proudly made frequent reference to his Semitic origins in his writings.12 SUR’s publication in 1934 of Frank’s essay, suggestively entitled “¿Por qué ha de sobrevivir el judío?” (Why Should the Jew Survive?), acquires added poignancy when viewed in the context of the intensely anti-Semitic climate—no doubt fueled by the aggressive antiJewish and anti-Communist campaign waged by the Nationalist press in the early thirties—that engendered such widely acclaimed works as Hugo Wast’s rabidly anti-Semitic Kahal-oro (1935).13 Evidently, SUR was positioning itself very clearly within the Argentinean intellectual field.14 136 Rosalie Sitman

No less eloquent are the other essays, subsequently published by SUR, in which Frank denounced Fascism or extolled the Jews’ contribution to America.15 The latter in particular can be read as an attempt by SUR to foil the argument, commonly brandished by those opposed to a relaxation of the immigration laws, that refugees brought no good to the countries that were willing to host them. In addition, the inclusion of several favorable reviews and articles about the Jewish-American intellectual, penned by non-Jewish members of the group, point to a wider effort by SUR to forge closer ties with their North American peers and build bridges between the two Americas, in consonance with their growing perception of a continental dimension to their American identity.16 At the same time, equally aware of their debt to Europe, the magazine also gave ample space during this period to the Romanian-born French-Jewish philosopher and filmmaker Benjamin Fondane, a disciple of Russian philosopher Leon Chestov.17 In 1936 Ocampo even invited him to visit Buenos Aires, where he spent several months making a film.18 Unlike Europe and North America, where the Spanish conflict was perceived as a confrontation between democracy and Fascism, in the Latin American nations reactions to the war were determined to a large degree by the particular circumstances of their own internal reality rather than mere ideological differences. Thus, most of the Latin American governments and ruling military and oligarchic elites, fearing that the processes of political democratization and social radicalization might threaten their own privileged positions, were sympathetic to the Spanish rebels, while the majority of public opinion endorsed the legitimate authority of the Republic. This was the case in Argentina, where the civilian coalition government headed by President Agustín P. Justo supported the military uprising in Spain and—officially, at least—adopted a position of neutrality toward the Spanish conflict, the same policy that would punctuate the performance of successive governments during the impending European war. By contrast, most of the opposition—the Radical Civic Union, the Argentine Socialist and Communist parties—as well as large sectors of public opinion stood behind the Spanish Republic and even organized activities on its behalf.19 The Argentine Catholic Church, for its part, like the Catholic press, supported Franco’s rebellion and mobilized on behalf of the insurgents, campaigning incessantly against the “Reds” and making every effort to prevent the Republican exiles from being allowed entry to the country. Monsignor Gustavo Franceschi, editor of Criterio from 1932 and author of its leading 137 Protest from Afar

articles and editorials, was one of the most ardent and vocal supporters of Franco’s cause and of the Spanish church in Argentina. Incensed, therefore, by SUR’s publication of Maritain’s “Sobre la guerra santa” (About the Holy War), which derogated Spain’s fratricidal war as a horrible sacrilege and totally debunked the Iberian church’s justification of the atrocities under the guise of a holy crusade, Franceschi launched a virulent attack on Ocampo’s review, accusing it of being a leftist and antireligious publication.20 While SUR normally preferred to let texts speak for themselves and, by extension, for the magazine, without need for manifestos or lengthy editorials, this time it chose to break its silence and, in August 1937, published its “Posición de SUR” (Position of SUR) in response to Criterio.21 In a deliberate effort to combat the Nationalists with their own arms, SUR borrowed heavily from the unorthodox personalist Christian discourse of Maritain, Nicholas Berdiaeff, and Emmanuel Mounier. With its rejection of the “dictatorial violence of the right” (Fascism) and of the “dictatorial violence of the left” (Communism), and its emphasis on an alternative third party to both the Popular Front and the National Front, this synthesis of Christian social and religious thought and democracy fit in well with the orientation of Ocampo’s magazine and was accorded ample space in its pages during this period.22 Taken together, Maritain’s texts and the numerous personalist contributions formed a corpus that would provide a coherent ideological backbone for SUR’s “political” participation in the contemporary debate over the role of intellectuals vis-à-vis the European conflicts. “All sectarian persecutions—whether racial or political, or unjust persecutions couched in legal or codified forms—are equally odious and equally monstrous in our eyes,” read SUR’s position.23 Obviously, SUR’s protest here is directed not just against the excesses of the Francoist Falange, but alludes equally to the Nazi persecutions and the Stalinist purges, as well as to the abuses of President Justo’s Concordancia government (1932–1938) in Argentina, and certainly the relentless persecution of the Jews in the organs of the Nationalist press.24 A few lines further, a scarcely veiled reference to Franceschi’s own activities on behalf of Nationalist Spain conveyed SUR’s piercing indictment of Argentina’s church hierarchy: “We want a better clergy, a clergy who will be more concerned with spiritual matters of eternal salvation than with the transitory wheeling and dealing of politics.”25 From this point on, SUR’s political commitment would only grow stronger, culminating with the magazine’s eventual alignment with the Allies, in blatant defiance of the policy of neutrality doggedly espoused by the Argentinean government.26 138 Rosalie Sitman

SUR’s opposition to all forms of oppression and dictatorial or totalitarian regimes would remain a dominant theme throughout the review’s existence and would also manifest itself outside the confines of the magazine, in the conduct and personal example set by Ocampo herself and other prominent members of the group. Thus we find the names of some of SUR’s most representative figures swelling the ranks of the assorted organizations that were springing up as part of a wider, heterogeneous anti-Fascist effort that ran the gamut of the democratic and Socialist opposition to the conservative government, in what Socialist leader Nicolás Repetto described ideally as “a movement of parties, groups and factions that would come to represent virtually the ‘only party of Argentinean democracy.’”27 For instance, Jorge Luis Borges, in all likelihood the most outstanding member of SUR during this period, was among the signatories of the First Declaration of the Committee against Racism and Anti-Semitism, which was created in 1937 with the aim of rebutting Nazi racial propaganda and reaffirming the status of the Jewish community as an integral, and worthy, part of the Argentine nation.28 Other signatures included those of prominent representatives of the diverse elements comprising the anti-Fascist bloc: Progressive Democrats (Lisandro de la Torre), Socialists (Américo Ghioldi, Carlos Sánchez Viamonte), Radicals (future presidents Arturo Frondizi and Arturo Illia), university professors (Ernesto Laclau), Communist sympathizers (Álvaro Yunque), and writers (César Tiempo).29 Borges was also on the organizing committee of the First Congress against Racism and Anti-Semitism, held in Buenos Aires on August 2, 1938, which demanded that the gates of the country be opened to Jews fleeing persecution. The congress naturally aroused the ire of Monsignor Franceschi, who denounced the “violent Semitism of the Jews,” comparing them with the Nazis, and blasted the organizers as “judaizantes” (Jew lovers).30 Evidently, the immigration question had become a cornerstone of the political and ideological battles that divided Argentine intellectuals with regard to the country’s internal and external political scene, in the global confrontation between democracy and Fascism. With the civil war raging in Spain and Europe headed for another allencompassing war, SUR escalated its criticism of Nazism and Fascism and its condemnation of the nacionalismo cruzado (crusader nationalism) of the Spanish church and its supporters in Argentina—that is, the church and the pro-Francoist Nacionalistas.31 El Pastor Hall, a play by the GermanJewish writer Ernst Toller published in three consecutive installments in 1939, was a scathing condemnation of Nazi policies and practices in the 139 Protest from Afar

Third Reich.32 Below the title, in small print, was written that the author dedicated the drama to the day when it could be performed in Germany. At the bottom of the same page, also in small print, a grim announcement informed SUR’s readers that after the issue had gone to press, word had arrived of Toller’s suicide in New York’s Mayflower Hotel, “by cruel coincidence, named after the ship that had brought to those same shores the first group of Pilgrims fleeing from the intolerance that reigned in their native land.”33 The allusion is unmistakable, and a much more effective conduit for expressing disapproval and condemnation than an impassioned declaration. This would become one of the group’s preferred methods of protest, and it would prove particularly handy during the difficult years (for SUR) of the Peronist regime. Issue after issue, in “Calendario,” the section devoted to current events that had been inaugurated in June 1937, SUR denounced the crimes and atrocities that were being perpetrated in Europe against both the Spanish Republicans and the Jews: the bombing of Durango and near destruction of Guernica went hand in hand with countless reports informing of the discrimination against and persecution of the Jews by the German Nazis and Italian Fascists.34 Over the years, SUR made skillful use of “Calendario” to buttress its position on burning issues with carefully selected items extracted from speeches and magazines, laced with apparently innocent disclaimers and tangential remarks—“We reproduce these sensible and lucid words” (of Léon-Paul Fargue on anti-Semitism); “Unless one has substituted faith for bad faith, that is: unless one is a Catholic-Nationalist.”35 These “innocuous” comments left little doubt as to SUR’s stance on anti-Semitism or their opinion of the Nacionalistas’ (mis)interpretation of Catholic teachings. The carefully manipulated juxtaposition of Catholic/Nationalist and Jewish was a clever ploy that allowed SUR to convey its sympathies and antipathies in a subtle yet unequivocal way. A case in point is the “Calen­ dario” for the month of August 1938, where declarations made by Pope Pius XI condemning both racism and nationalism (evidently aimed at the Nacionalistas)—“Catholic means universal. Therefore: neither racist, nor nationalist, nor separatist, but Catholic”—stand in sharp contrast to the fragment of a speech made by the interior minister of the Burgos government of Nationalist Spain: “Jacques Maritain’s wisdom has nuances which recall the lips of Israel, and he has the false mannerisms of a Jewish democrat.”36 No comment is necessary. Again, in October 1938, Pius XI’s words in the Belgian L’avant garde, “We call Abraham our Patriarch, our forebear. . . . Anti-Semitism is inadmissible. . . . We, Catholics, are spiritually Semitic,” 140 Rosalie Sitman

are deliberately contrasted with Arriba España’s: “Because the Spanish Civil War is also a battle against international Judaism. The Jews have always been the enemies of civilization.” SUR asks, “Are the Phalangist Catholics in favor of Mussolini and against the Pope?”37 The irony is inescapable. Not long afterward, SUR would underscore the contrast between this Pope’s vocal commitment and the (now controversial) silence of his successor, Pius XII: “The authority of the Head of the Church has decreased in this world of infidels”;38 uncharacteristically, the item was signed with the initials J. B., belonging to José Bianco, SUR’s editor-in-chief. Meanwhile, SUR’s sympathy for the Republican cause was becoming more explicit in the main body of the magazine as well. In sharp contrast to oblique references to the civil war dotted throughout earlier contributions, mostly by Ramón Gómez de la Serna and Guillermo de Torre, José Bergamín’s “La máscara de sangre. Tiempo y drama” (January 1937) left little to the imagination and constituted a rude awakening to the horrors of Spanish reality.39 Various poems and texts by and about Lorca, or alluding to his death, pointedly followed along the same line. Since for the Republicans the Andalusian poet had become an accusatory symbol against Franco, the appearance of these texts in SUR could only be interpreted as an expression of support for the Republic.40 In May 1939, SUR announced the formation of the Comisión Argentina de Ayuda a los Intelectuales Españoles (Argentine Commission of Aid to Spanish Intellectuals), whose purpose was to raise funds to free Spanish refugees in the Pyrenees, aid those in France, and help them find safe passage to countries where they might rebuild their lives.41 The list of signatories boasted many names closely affiliated with SUR: Francisco Romero, María Rosa Oliver, Eduardo Mallea, Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, Guillermo de Torre, and Alfonso Reyes. The latter was ambassador of Mexico in Buenos Aires at the time. And Cárdenas’s regime in Mexico was the only Latin American government that lent more than just diplomatic support to the Spanish Republic. Thus, many exiles found refuge there.42 The item was very likely intended to convey SUR’s protest against the government’s imposition of stricter immigration controls (which excluded Jews) and the Argentine church’s vehement opposition to the admission of Republican exiles into the country. Hardly by coincidence, SUR had published one month earlier an impassioned vindication of the potential benefits that European refugees—Jews in particular—might bring to the country that gave them asylum, penned by the Jewish-Italian writer Gina Lombroso.43 Then in July 1939, this time in “Calendario,” SUR 141 Protest from Afar

deplored President Roberto Ortiz’s rejection of entreaties by leading French men of letters to allow Spanish intellectuals into Argentina, for fear that “underneath that mask, the journalist, the ideologue and the failed politician are hiding.”44 Clearly, Argentina’s purported neutrality with regard to the Spanish conflict was a sham.45 By December of that same year, the names of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Benjamín Jarnés, Maruja Mallo, José Moreno Villa, Pedro Salinas, Américo Castro, Manuel Altolaguirre, Francisco Ayala, Rosa Chacel, and María Zambrano, among many others, swelled the ranks of Spanish contributors to SUR, alongside old regulars like Guillermo de Torre, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Salvador de Madariaga, and Amado Alonso. Later additions would include Rafael Alberti, Ricardo Baeza, Jorge Guillén, Arturo Serrano Plaja, and José Ferrater Mora. Writing about Spanish and American topics, these authors would keep the specter of the war and the agony of Europe alive in the pages of SUR.46 Nevertheless, I would like to reiterate that it is their presence in the pages of a journal of the nature of SUR, in Argentina at that particular time, that is significant and relevant here, more so than what they actually wrote. The important fact is that, with one hapless exception, Ocampo’s literary review would remain out of bounds to any Nationalist sympathizer or, for that matter, to anyone still living in the peninsula.47 The exclusions, then, were as eloquent as the inclusions. SUR’s continued endorsement of Christian humanists like the Belgian Georges Bernanos, whose pronouncements were anathema to the Argentine Catholic Church, traditionally of Spanish orientation, ensured that relations between the intellectuals of Ocampo’s magazine and Nationalist circles remained strained.48 The “established” Catholic press certainly cannot have regarded with benevolence SUR’s willingness to lend its pages to Christian democrats such as Rafael Pividal and Augusto Durelli, who were also associated with Orden Cristiano, the progressive Catholic publication that was eventually disavowed by the Argentine church hierarchy.49 “We do not believe that nationalism and Catholicism are synonymous or that the civil war is a holy war,” wrote Durelli in a letter published in SUR in July 1938.50 Not satisfied, he proceeded to berate the disinformation campaign orchestrated by the Argentinean church, which had chosen to keep from public knowledge the speeches made by Cardinal Verdier or by the patriarch of Lisbon “that show us the naked truth of the horrendous ‘nationalist’ conception of Catholicism.” The words speak for themselves, and clearly also for SUR. In another contribution early in 1939 about “three martyred peoples,” Durelli typically evoked the atrocities perpetrated by the Spanish Nationalists 142 Rosalie Sitman

against the Basques and in the next breath, in plain and simple terms, drove home to SUR’s readers the desperate situation of European Jewry: “The Jew is a pariah. The Jew cannot write, speak, marry, or pray freely. The Jew cannot buy, nor sell, nor travel. The Jew cannot sit on park benches nor attend the cinema or the theater. Hundreds of them have been murdered in concentration camps. Thousands are roaming the world, without a homeland and lawless, persecuted and hated.”51 After which, he went on to mock Nationalist—“the new crusader of religion”—protestations that they did not hate Jews but drove them to desperation and suicide for their own good. As was often the case in SUR, the plight of the Spanish Republicans was juxtaposed with that of the Jews. And, once again, SUR resorted to tools provided by contemporary Christian discourse (as opposed to traditional Catholic) in order to intervene in the broader debates over the quandaries posed by the convulsions and repercussions of the European conflicts.

SUR Makes a Second Stand: The War in Europe The outbreak of the European war forced Ocampo’s magazine to make a second public stand. In “Nuestra actitud” (Our Attitude), SUR declared its alignment with the democracies and exhorted the Argentine government to renounce the country’s neutrality: “In such circumstances, nobody can remain morally neutral. We are not neutral.”52 Yet these words should be understood more as a show of solidarity and an expression of moral support for Great Britain and France than a call to belligerence.53 Not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the European war home to the shores of America did SUR’s tone change dramatically, demanding intervention on behalf of the cause “that we would like to defend and for which others are spilling their blood.”54 In December 1941 SUR published a special issue devoted to the war (“The War in America”), in which it reiterated its adherence to the Allied cause and enthusiastically extolled the notion of “an indivisible America [stretching] from the Behring Strait to Cape Horn.”55 However, regardless of SUR’s impassioned espousal of Pan-Americanism and strong criticism of the government’s refusal to abandon its policy of neutrality, President Ramón Castillo was unmoved, and his stubbornness would cost his country dearly.56 At the same time, the journal stepped up its unrelenting and stark reporting in “Calendario” of the urgent plight of the Republican refugees, as they poured into France, “struck dumb by horror, by suffering, by hunger,” and of European Jewry’s systematic extermination: 143 Protest from Afar

The Committee of Interallied Information details the persecutions that the Semites have suffered in this war: in Yugoslavia, 99 percent have been killed; in Poland, chosen as the “central slaughterhouse” of the Jews, 2.000.000 have died and 5.000.000 are in the same danger; of the 52.000 Jews who lived in Belgium, half have been deported and the rest confined in concentration camps; in Czechoslovakia, 72.000 have been sent to Poland. . . . It is said that in Poland, since August 17, 10.000 Jews are taken daily from the ghettoes to their ultimate death.57 By highlighting these atrocities, SUR was not only sounding the alarm against the perils of Fascism and raising consciousness regarding the fact that the Jewish problem was in fact of concern for all humanity, but was also pressing the Argentine government to change its insensitive immigration policy and not turn the victims of Francoist and Nazi persecution away. In a sense, too, this practice can be construed as an attempt on the part of SUR to counteract the inroads being made by Nazi propaganda in Argentina, with the willing connivance of local Nacionalistas. By then, the breach between the members of SUR and the Nationalists had become irreparable. The former, now openly committed to the Allied cause, regarded the latter as Nazi agents who were de facto pulling the strings of the government behind the scenes. This explains the virulence of the resounding “Voice of Alert” that SUR issued in 1940, in which it denounced Catholic nationalism for its support of totalitarian regimes, branding it as indecent, gangsterlike, anti-Argentina, and anti-Christian.58 In harmony with the attitudes expressed in her magazine, Victoria Ocampo felt compelled, on a personal level, to join several protest groups in the face of the intense pro-Fascist activity and Nazi propaganda in the country. In June 1940, she became one of the founding members of Acción Argentina (Argentine Action), a militant pro-Allied organization aimed at combating Nazi infiltration and Fascism in the country, which strove to mobilize public opinion in order to force the government to change its international policy. Its roster boasted such names as finance minister Federico Pinedo, historian Emilio Ravignani, former president Marcelo T. de Alvear, and the ubiquitous Nicolás Repetto, illustrating, once again, the wide scope of the liberal democratic/Socialist, anti-Fascist political spectrum.59 Later, upon learning of the invasion of Russia in 1941, Ocampo rejoined her close friend María Rosa Oliver, also a member of the group although a Communist sympathizer, at Junta de la Victoria (Victory Association). 144 Rosalie Sitman

Junta was an anti-Fascist organization that included women from all walks of life and diverse political leanings, many of them former volunteers in the relief operation for Republican Spain (Ayuda a la España Republicana) who now gathered to work on behalf of the Allied cause.60 Jewish women, many also affiliated with the Communist Party, were actively involved in Junta. Probably there Ocampo also came into contact with Mika Feldman Etchebéhère. An Argentine Jew who had taken command of her husband’s POUM (Worker Party of Marxist Unification) regiment after his death in Spain, Etchebéhère spent the years of the world war back in the country of her birth. Upon her return to Europe, SUR published several installments of her impressions of life in postwar France.61 Ocampo’s efforts to provide her Spanish and Jewish friends and acquaintances with safe passage to Argentina should also be seen as part of her broader anti-Fascist sentiments and activities, again in consonance with the conduct of the magazine with which her name had become synonymous. The daughter of former Spanish ambassador to Chile Ricardo Baeza emphasizes, in an interview cited by Dora Schwarztein, the crucial role played by Ocampo in arranging her family’s departure from Europe and securing the residence permit that enabled them to stay in Argentina. Ocampo was even waiting for them at the port on the day of their arrival.62 An avid reader and expert translator, Baeza’s friendship with Ocampo had consolidated during his visit to Buenos Aires in 1922. His most important contribution would be the compilation of a special issue of SUR devoted to Cervantes in 1947. Also through Ocampo’s offices was María de Maeztu able to leave Europe, armed with an invitation from SUR to give a series of lectures in Argentina on women’s education and women’s rights. The two women had first met during Maeztu’s visit to Amigos del Arte (Friends of the Arts) in Buenos Aires in 1926.63 Maeztu’s case is particularly noteworthy for, despite the circumstances of her brother Ramiro’s death, the former director of the Residencia de Señoritas continued to maintain a prolonged and close association with such liberal, pro-Republican circles as Ocampo and her group, a fact that must have irked the Argentine right-wing Nationalists who had espoused her martyred brother’s ideas.64 Needless to say, their hispanofilia was a far cry from that being practiced by SUR. The poet Rafael Alberti and his wife, writer María Teresa León, whose close affiliation with the far left was no secret, were also harbored by Ocampo in a flat she owned on Tucumán Street at the start of their protracted exile on Argentine soil. Not much time would pass before Alberti, too, was contributing regularly to SUR. Also, SUR had close ties with several of the Spanish 145 Protest from Afar

émigré publishers that had succeeded in moving their center of operations to Argentina or founded new houses, turning Buenos Aires into the publishing capital of the Spanish-speaking world. Losada in particular, an offshoot of Espasa Calpe headed by Gonzalo Losada, became the hub of Spanish Republican thought in Argentina, publishing the works of García Lorca, Alberti, Pedro Salinas, and León Felipe, among others. SUR’s Guillermo de Torre collaborated closely with Losada, while Ocampo herself was on the board of Sudamericana. Thus, the network of solidarity cast by Ocampo through her enterprise not only eased the Spanish refugees’ road into “a gentle and benign exile”—to quote Francisco Ayala—but played a role in their integration into the new society and their insertion in the new labor market.65 Sadly, Ocampo failed in her attempt to save Benjamin Fondane. Although she had secured a visa for him to leave Europe, she was unable to locate him. Turned in to the Gestapo by his concierge, Fondane and his sister were held for a while in the detention center at Drancy before being deported to Auschwitz, where he died in October 1944. Afterward, Ocampo wrote that Fondane was punished for several crimes: for having been born a Jew, for being an intellectual, for owning nothing more precious than a handful of [existentialist Russian philosopher Leon] Chestov’s letters and a pair of green woolen gloves . . . for being intelligent, laughing and knowing how to make others laugh. He was punished in the Nazi way, in the totalitarian way.66 Fortunately, SUR’s director fared better in her efforts on behalf of GermanJewish photographer Gisèle Freund. Ocampo had met Freund on a visit to Europe before the war, at the home of French bookseller Adrienne Monnier, and invited her to visit Buenos Aires. While hiding from the Gestapo in France, Freund remembered Ocampo’s invitation and cabled her for help. Ocampo immediately set about making the necessary financial arrangements and obtaining an Argentine visa for Freund. All told, it took about a year, but she finally succeeded in bringing Freund over to Buenos Aires in 1941, where Ocampo then harbored her in her own home until the photographer was in a position to make her own living.67 At Freund’s instigation, Ocampo established the Committee of Solidarity with French Writers and launched “Operación Encomiendas” (Operation Parcels), using Monnier’s bookshop on the Left Bank of Paris to distribute relief packages to needy French intellectuals.68 146 Rosalie Sitman

Loyalty, evidently, was an outstanding feature of Victoria Ocampo’s personality, together with the ability to rise above ideological differences, as attested by the reception she extended Alberti, even though SUR regarded Communism with suspicion. This also accounts, in part, for Ocampo’s supportive behavior toward her old friend José Ortega y Gasset during his unhappy third stay in Argentina (1939–1942), in spite of the Spanish philosopher’s withdrawal from SUR after the magazine had mordantly ridiculed Franco and the “hispanidad retinta” (pitch-black hispanidad) of the pro-Francoist, Catholic Sol y Luna in an item in “Calendario.”69 And it very likely explains her refusal to renounce her friendship with the French writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, despite the latter’s full-blown commitment to Fascism during the war, which she concurred with Jean-Paul Sartre was attributable to some kind of death wish.70 She did, however, have his name removed from the International Editorial Board of SUR. One of the few letters that La Rochelle left on his desk upon his suicide in 1945 was addressed to Ocampo, and in that letter he wrote that he had never actually hated the Jews. That he had felt the need to tell her precisely this just as he was about to take his own life is interesting. Ocampo was equally careful to single out this fact in an exculpatory essay she published, in which she attempted to fathom the ghosts that had driven her erstwhile lover and friend of seventeen years to suicide.71 Returning to the magazine, again mostly in “Calendario,” SUR consistently ridiculed the excesses of Nazi propaganda and the Nazi press and denounced the activities of Nazi infiltrators, Nazi spies, and Nazi sympathizers in Argentina, who operated with the tacit approval of the government.72 Hence SUR followed very closely the incident involving Waldo Frank’s attack during his third visit to Buenos Aires, on a conference tour under the auspices of the American government in 1942.73 Shortly before leaving for Chile, Frank published in an evening paper his “Farewell to Argentina,” which was ill received in certain political circles. El Pampero, a major organ of Nazi propaganda reputedly financed by the German embassy, retaliated the following day with “Farewell, Miserable Waldo Frank.” But things did not stop there. “Calendario” for August 1942 informed its readers that the Germans had arrested eighteen thousand Jews in Paris, who were to be sterilized, and announced that Frank had been declared persona non grata and subsequently been attacked by six armed thugs in Buenos Aires. In September, SUR reported that Frank had declared in Rio de Janeiro that he was convinced that the German embassy was behind the attack, and he did not think that the perpetrators would be arrested. Finally, in November, an item in the 147 Protest from Afar

“Noticiario” coolly announced that a certain Jorge Fernández Murray, one of Frank’s attackers, had been brought before a judge but immediately been set free, for there was no reason to hold him. SUR’s readers were left to draw their own conclusions. In the main section of the magazine, Borges’s contributions during this period are paradigmatic of SUR’s anti-Fascist (and, by extension, philoSemitic) discourse. In “Una pedagogía del odio” (A Pedagogy of Hatred, 1937), he vehemently condemned the demonization of Jews in the Third Reich as manifested in the virulently anti-Semitic Nazi literature to which schoolchildren were being exposed in Germany. Four years later came his venomous attack on Nationalist Nazi sympathizers in Argentina, “1941,” in which he masterfully turned their own rhetoric against them: “Hitler’s mercy is ecumenical; shortly (if undisturbed by traitors and Jews) we shall all enjoy the benefits of torture, sodomy, rape and mass executions.”74 Likewise, many of Borges’s famous short stories, which he first published in SUR during these years, were openly pro-Jewish or infused with explicit— and sometimes veiled—Jewish references. Clearly, as Edna Aizenberg has pointed out, when viewed as a coherent corpus in the context of SUR’s overall anti-Fascist line, the philo-Semitism of Borges’s stories assumes an added intensity.75 Thus, in “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbius, Tertius” (1940), “El milagro secreto” (The Secret Miracle, 1943), and “Deutsches requiem” (1946), for example, totalitarianism, Nazism, and anti-Semitism are depicted as detestable abominations.76 Toward the end of the war and in the years immediately after, instead of waning, the Jewish presence in SUR was augmented with the publication of several important contributions on explicitly Jewish issues, including a scathing indictment of National Socialism and its persecution and extermination of six million Jews, written by Máximo José Kahn.77 These texts acted as constant reminders of the evil that man was capable of when blinded by pernicious ideologies such as anti-Semitism. However, SUR’s publication of Kahn is significant from another perspective as well. A German-born Jew who had lived for many years in Spain and Greece before finally settling in Argentina, Kahn epitomized the wandering Jew that was anathema to the Nacionalistas and anti-Semitic officials in Juan Domingo Perón’s government, like immigration director Santiago Peralta, who were bent on preventing the entrance of such “undesirable” elements to the country.78 By giving Kahn ample space in the journal, the group was ratifying what they perceived as the positive contribution of Jews to Western civilization and to Argentine culture in particular, while 148 Rosalie Sitman

reiterating their dissatisfaction with the government’s immigration policies. Typically, upon Kahn’s death in 1953, SUR published a moving eulogy by Rosa Chacel, herself a Spanish exile who had found refuge in Argentina, and in SUR.79 Once the magnitude of the Holocaust was known, SUR brought the overwhelming reality of it home to its readers by publishing various testimonies, among them the wrenching “Memories of Auschwitz” of the Jewish-Italian writer Giuliana Tedeschi, which tells of her despair at the indignities and tortures that her body and spirit endured in the subhuman conditions of the camp, and of the examples of supreme heroism and triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity that she also witnessed there. No less chilling was the account of the tragic fate suffered by Kafka’s sisters in the Nazi crematoria.80 Equal space was given to testimonies of non-Jews, which also told of the fate suffered by Jews that they had witnessed. Thus, French Resistance fighter Jean Bloch-Michel spares no stomach-churning detail in his account of the tortures to which he and the Jews confined with him were subjected at the hands of the Gestapo.81 In her memoirs of the years she spent in occupied France, previewed by SUR, Victoria Kent, formerly a Republican deputy in the Spanish Cortes (Parliament), paints a dismal portrait of the routine of daily life for Jews at Drancy, the French detention center where Fondane and his sister had been interned. She writes for herself, she says, lest she forget, determined to record every minute detail of that grim existence, not least the eighteen-month-old baby registered as a “terrorist,” so that one day others might judge.82 Yet Kent’s “Four Years in Paris” acquires added meaning when viewed in the context of SUR’s running polemic against Fascist manifestations within Argentina, and without. Perchance—or not—the chosen extract included Kent’s jubilant outburst upon seeing Republican tanks from the campaign in North Africa among the liberators of Paris: “Paris applauds the Spaniards, hardened after nine years of struggle, who today smile at the liberated people. Paris applauds the heroic Spain of yesterday, [and] the free, democratic and strong Spain of tomorrow.”83 The anti-Francoist allusion is unmistakable, as are the anti-Fascist overtones. But more important, bearing in mind that this was published in 1947, was the implicit criticism directed by SUR against Franco’s new ally, Argentinean president Juan Domingo Perón.84 Although the war was over, SUR’s refusal to let go of the Jewish question attests to the group’s determination to ensure that such appalling crimes 149 Protest from Afar

against humanity not be repeated—and not be forgotten. SUR’s publication of Sartre’s “Portrait of an Anti-Semite” (1946), together with Editorial SUR’s translation of his Reflexiones sobre la cuestión judía (1948), fit in nicely within this concerted effort. As does Victoria Ocampo’s moving and insightful account of her impressions of the Nuremberg trials, which she had attended at the invitation of the British government. For anti-Semitism was still rife, and the dangers very real; there was no doubt about it. In a survey carried out by Lettres françaises and reported in “Calendario” in January 1949 under the heading “Malos y buenos Judíos” (Good and Bad Jews), 548 anti-Semites were asked if some of their best friends were Jewish; all 548 answered affirmatively and immediately added, “You know . . . , he [she] isn’t like the other Jews.”85

Conclusion The European ideological and armed conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s crossed the ocean and sharpened the ideological, political, and cultural de­­ bates within Argentina, forcing intellectuals to ponder their role with regard to these phenomena, and to take sides. In a context marked by the polarization between democracy and Fascism in the international arena, and by the polemic over the policy of neutrality that characterized Argentine foreign policy, the schism within Argentina’s intellectual field deepened, as liberal democratic elements such as Victoria Ocampo and SUR aligned themselves first with the Spanish Republic and then on the side of the Allies, while those representing the various strains of right-wing Catholic nationalism identified with Fascism, Francoism, and neutralism. SUR’s conduct in the face of the upheavals unleashed by the European conflagrations was coherent with its liberal ideology and its particular conception of human existence. For them, as self-appointed standard-bearers of civilization, committed to safeguarding man’s natural liberties and the lofty ideals of the human spirit, Francoism and Fascism constituted the negation of everything that they stood for—of the person—and therefore could not be tolerated. One simply could not remain impassive before the onslaught of these “barbarous” forces. Thus, yielding to the sheer urgency of the historical moment, SUR takes up the gauntlet thrown by Criterio and, shedding its apolitical mantle once and for all, rises in “true” Sarmientian tradition to the defense of “civilization” and of democracy by declaring its support for the Spanish Republic and the Allied cause, and opening its pages to voices that were being extinguished elsewhere. 150 Rosalie Sitman

There can be no doubt that SUR’s steadfast pro-Republican stance and manifest philo-Semitism, evidenced by the continuous Republican and Jewish presence in its pages, were much more than a humanitarian response to the horrific crimes being perpetrated in Europe. Beyond that, the RepublicanJewish interplay during this period clearly formed part of a wider discursive strategy that allowed Victoria Ocampo and the grupo SUR to define themselves as a group as well as their position within the Argentinean intellectual field and to counteract the anti-Semitic, xenophobic rhetoric of their Hispanophile, pro-Fascist, right-wing Catholic Nationalist interlocutors. At the same time, this ploy provided SUR with tools to intervene politically and convey its opposition to the Argentine political, religious, and cultural establishment. In so doing, Ocampo and her magazine were able to rise “a la altura de los tiempos” (to the height of the times) and craft a niche for themselves in the pantheon of Argentine letters.

151 Protest from Afar

Notes 1. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the world of letters was still predominantly a male enclave. At most, the ladies of Ocampo’s class were expected to host events at established cultural institutions such as Amigos del Arte. One rare precedent was Clorinda Matto de Turner, who published El búcaro americano between 1896 and 1908. Of the various biographies of Victoria Ocampo, see Doris Meyer, Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and the Tide (1979; repr., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); Laura Ayerza de Castilho and Odile Felgine, Victoria Ocampo (Barcelona: Circe, 1993); María Esther Vázquez, Victoria Ocampo. El mundo como destino (Buenos Aires: Seix Barral, 2002). As for SUR, one of the most comprehensive studies to this day remains John King’s seminal Sur: A Study of the Argentine Literary Journal and Its Role in the Development of a Culture, 1931–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). See also Rosalie Sitman, Victoria Ocampo y SUR: Entre Europa y América (Buenos Aires: Lumiere, 2003); Nora Pasternac, SUR, una revista en la tormenta: Los años de formación, 1931–1944 (Buenos Aires: Paradiso, 2002); Oscar Hermes Villordo, El grupo SUR. Una biografía colectiva (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1993). 2. Influenced, no doubt, by the ideas about the role and responsibility of the intellectual and elite minorities, and the separation between politics and intellectual activity, propounded by Julien Benda in La trahison des clercs (1927) and by José Ortega y Gasset in La rebelión de las masas (1930). See also Julien Benda, “La cuestión de la ‘élite,’” SUR 27 (December 1936): 117–20. 3. Leonardo Senkman has written extensively about Jewish and Spanish immigration to Argentina: “Ethnicity and Immigration Policy in the Holocaust Period,” in Society and Identity in Argentina: The European Context [Hebrew], ed. Tzvi Medin and Raanan Rein (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1997), 199–230; “La argentina neutral de 1940 ante los refugiados españoles y judíos,” Ciclos 5, no. 9 (1995); “Etnicidad e inmigración durante el primer peronismo,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 3, no. 2 (July–December 1992): 5–38; Argentina, la Segunda Guerra Mundial y los refugiados indeseables, 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1991); “Las relaciones EE.UU.-Argentina y la cuestión de los refugiados de la posguerra,” Judaica Latinoamericana 1 (1988): 90–114. See also, Avraham Milgram, Entre la aceptación y el rechazo: América latina y los refugiados judíos del Nazismo (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003); Elvira Rissech, “Inmigración judía a la Argentina, 1938–1942: Entre la aceptación y el rechazo,” Rumbos 15 (1986): 91–113. For Spanish immigration to Argentina, José Moya’s Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), is indispensable. 4. Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 23 (1978): 25–46. This also helps to explain why philo-Semitic and anti-Fascist liberal sectors did not necessarily mobilize on behalf of Jewish refugees. 5. John C. Turner, “Henri Tajfel: An Introduction,” in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. P. Robinson (Oxford and Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996), 1–23. 152 Rosalie Sitman

6. On the Argentine Catholic Church during this period, Loris Zanatta’s books are compulsory reading: Del estado liberal a la nación católica: Iglesia y ejército en los orígenes del peronismo, 1930–1943 (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1996); and Perón y el mito de la nación católica: Iglesia y ejército en los orígenes del peronismo (1943–1946) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1999). See also, Lila Caimari, Perón y la Iglesia Católica: Religión, estado y sociedad en la Argentina, 1943–1955 (Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia, 1995). 7. Naturally, they did not constitute a monolithic bloc but comprised various strains, with room for a range of different attitudes. Manuel Gálvez, for example, did not share either the Judeo-phobia or rabid anti-Semitism of notable right-wing Catholic Nationalists such as Enrique Osés: Leonardo Senkman, “La representación ficcional del fascismo católico en Manuel Gálvez,” in Sobre Nazis y Nazismo en la cultura argentina, ed. Ignacio Klich (College Park, MD: Hispamerica, 2002), 37–50. In the preface and introduction to his Fascismo, liturgia e imaginario: El mito del general Uriburu y la Argentina nacionalista (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002), 9–40, Federico Finchelstein thoroughly reviews the extensive historiography of right-wing Catholic nationalism in Argentina. 8. Graciela Ben-Dror has researched in depth the attitude of these priests and of the Argentine Catholic Church toward Jews: Católicos, Nazis y Judíos. La iglesia argentina en los tiempos del Tercer Reich (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Lumiere, 2003); The Catholic Church and the Jews: Argentina, 1933–1945 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: SICSA Publications, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000); “Three Anti-Semitic Priests in the Catholic Church: Deviation or Norm?” [Hebrew], in Society and Identity in Argentina: The European Context, ed. Tzvi Medin and Raanan Rein (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1997); “La revolución militar, la Argentina católica y los Judíos (1943–1945),” Judaica Latinoamericana 3 (1997): 227–44; “Posturas del Catolicismo argentino durante los primeros años de la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 7, no. 2 (1996): 101–32; “La conferencia de Evián: El periodismo católico argentino y la conformación de la opinión pública,” Judaica Latinoamericana 2 (1993): 87–97. 9. Julio Irazusta, “Historia de una revista,” La Opinión Cultural, March 4, 1979. 10. The antithetical “civilización y barbarie,” immortalized by the liberal nineteenth-century statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in his Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga: Civilización y barbarie (1845), constitute a key concept in Argentine history. In the original context of liberal demographic policies, the terms referred to the need to populate (and thus vanquish) the vast expanses of sparsely inhabited “badlands” with desirable white immigrants, preferably from northern Europe. The people of SUR saw themselves as heirs of the Sarmientian tradition and therefore defenders of the lofty values of civilization, which were being threatened by the “barbarous” forces of Fascism and totalitarianism. 11. Victoria Ocampo, “Carta a Waldo Frank,” SUR 1 (Summer 1931): 7–18. 12. Sandra McGee Deutsch and Ronald H. Dolkart, eds., The Argentine Right: Its Historical and Intellectual Origins, 1910 to the Present (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1993), 91. 153 Protest from Afar

13. SUR 9 (July 1934): 152–70. Hugo Wast was the pseudonym of Gabriel Martínez Zuviría, an extreme right-wing Nationalist. He was director of the National Library and later became minister of education and justice during the military regime that came to power after the coup of 1943. In this capacity, he was responsible for implementing the law of compulsory Catholic instruction in all state schools that the ultranationalists had demanded previously. In this novel, Martínez Zuviría expounded the idea of a universal Jewish conspiracy. 14. As illustrated by the Italian Futurist writer Marinetti’s attack on Ocampo at the PEN Congress celebrated in Buenos Aires in 1936. The participants (as well as the “absentees”), and the speeches on this occasion, dispelled any possible doubt about the polarization of the international intellectual community. 15. Waldo Frank, “Nuestra culpa en el fascismo,” SUR 69 (June 1940): 7–26, and “El Judío en el futuro de América,” SUR 77 (February 1941): 12–20. 16. One such example is Carlos Alberto Erro, “Un filósofo americano: Waldo Frank (Con motivo de ‘América Hispana’),” SUR 7 (April 1933): 45–95. Patricio Canto, in his review of “Chart for Rough Water,” singled out Frank’s typically Jewish joie de vivre, as well as a certain quality reminiscent of a biblical prophet: “Waldo Frank: ‘Chart for Rough Water,’” SUR 73 (October 1940): 75–81. 17. Benjamin Fondane, “El cinema en el atolladero,” SUR 1 (Summer 1931): 158–65, “Prefacio para el presente,” SUR 21 (June 1936): 72–86, “Nietzsche y los problemas ‘repugnantes,’” SUR 42 (March 1938): 53–60, “Lévy-Brühl o el metafísico a pesar suyo,” SUR 57 (June 1939): 65–75. 18. The Bulletins and the Cahiers Benjamin Fondane, edited by Monique Jutrin (Tel Aviv University) are an invaluable source of information on the philosopher. Of particular interest here is Cahiers 1 (1997), devoted in its entirety to “Fondane et l’Argentine,” and featuring an article by Gloria Alcorta, “Du nouveau sur Tararira,” about the film that Fondane made in Buenos Aires. See also, Monique Jutrin, “Tararira, une mise au point,” Cahiers 5 (2001–2002), and David Vergara, “Tararira: Une nouvelle hypothèse,” Cahiers 7 (2004); Ayerza de Castilho and Felgine, Victoria Ocampo, 170–71. 19. Much has been written about the impact of the Spanish Civil War on Argentine intellectuals: Raanan Rein, “Between Republican and Nationalist Spain: Argentina and the Spanish Civil War” [Hebrew], in They Shall Not Pass: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, ed. Raanan Rein (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 2000), 252–71, and “Another Front Line: Francoists and Anti-Francoists in Argentina, 1936–1949,” Patterns of Prejudice 31, no. 3 (1997): 17–33; V. Trifone and G. Svarzman, La repercusión de la guerra civil española en la Argentina (1936–1939) (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1993); Mónica Quijada, Aires de república, aires de cruzada: La guerra civil española en Argentina (Barcelona: Sendai Ediciones, 1991); Beatriz Sarlo, Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión, 1988); Ernesto Goldar, Los argentinos y la guerra civil española (Buenos Aires: Editorial Contrapunto, 1986); Mark Falcoff and Frederick B. Pike, eds., The Spanish Civil War, 1936–39: American Hemispheric Perspectives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982). 154 Rosalie Sitman

20. SUR 35 (August 1937): 98–117. With an emphasis very different from that of traditional Catholic teachings, Maritain’s earlier contributions also cannot have sat well with Franceschi: “Carta sobre la independencia,” SUR 22 (July 1936): 54–86, “Conferencia de Jacques Maritain a propósito de la ‘Carta sobre la independencia,’” SUR 27 (December 1936): 7–41, “Con el pueblo. De un nuevo humanismo,” SUR 31 (April 1937): 7–21. On the Criterio-Maritain controversy, see Marcelo Monserrat, “La polémica doctrinaria: El caso Maritain,” Usos de la memoria: Razón, ideología e imaginación históricas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, Univesidad de San Andrés, 1996), 186–96; Pasternac, SUR: Una revista en la tormenta, especially chapters 3 and 4; Mark Falcoff, “Argentina,” in The Spanish Civil War, 1936–39: American Hemispheric Perspectives, ed. Mark Falcoff and Frederick Pike (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982); King, Sur, 86–89. In this context, it is interesting that in 1938, as the situation for European Jews became more urgent, Editorial SUR saw fit to publish Maritain’s The Jews among Nations. 21. SUR 35 (August 1937): 7–9. 22. Grouped around Esprit, founded by Emmanuel Mounnier, this movement’s particular brand of Christian social thought provided a palatable alternative (for SUR) to traditional Catholic attitudes toward the political and ideological dilemmas of the day. For a definition of personalism, see Nicolás Berdiaeff, “Personalismo y Marxismo,” SUR 13 (October 1935): 7–39; Emmanuel Mounier, Manifeste au service du personalisme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1936), and “Inteligencia y personalismo,” SUR 46 (July 1938): 38–42. 23. “Posición de SUR,” SUR 35 (August 1937): 7–9. All translations are the author’s. 24. As described in Ben-Dror, “Posturas del Catolicismo argentino” and “La conferencia de Evián.” 25. “Posición de SUR,” 8. 26. The question of the reasons for Argentina’s neutrality during World War II has sparked a heated debate. See, among others, Mario Rapoport, “Argentina y la Segunda Guerra Mundial: Mitos y realidades,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 6, no. 1 (January–June 1995): 5–22, and Gran Bretaña, Estados Unidos y las clases dirigentes argentinas, 1940–1945 (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1981); Carlos Escudé, “Un enigma: La ‘irracionalidad’ argentina frente a la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 6, no. 2 (July–December 1995): 5–34, and Gran Bretaña, Estados Unidos y la declinación argentina, 1942–1949 (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1983); Leonardo Senkman, “El nacionalismo y el campo liberal argentinos ante el neutralismo: 1939–1943,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 6, no. 1 (January–June 1995): 23–50. 27. La vanguardia, December 17, 1937, 3, quoted in Andrés Bisso, “La recepción de la tradición liberal por parte del antifascismo argentino,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 12, no. 2 (July–December 2001): 86. Although united around a common objective, this was not, however, a monolithic bloc. Leonardo Senkman has ably exposed the cracks in this liberal democratic front: “El nacionalismo.” See also, Bisso, “La división de la comunidad antifascista argentina (1939–1941),” Reflejos 9 (2000–2001): 88–99. 155 Protest from Afar

28. This was almost to be expected. Already in 1934, Borges’s perceived philoSemitism had caused the Nationalist organ Crisol to accuse him of being secretly Jewish. Borges retorted by publishing in Megáfono his “Yo, Judío,” a masterpiece of irony, in which he wrote that it would not displease him to be Jewish and that his surname “Borges-Acevedo” was of Jewish-Portuguese origin. In later years, he would often reiterate that he would consider it an honor to belong to one of the most civilized races in the world. See María Esther Vázquez, Borges: Esplendor y derrota (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1996), 66; Gustavo Daniel Perednik, “La Judeidad entre las ideas de la na­­ rrativa de Borges,” Reflejos 2 (August 1993): 37–42; Evelyn Fishburn, “Borges, Cabbala and ‘Creative Misreading,’” J. L. Borges Center for Studies and Documentation, www.hum.au.dk/romansk/borges/bsol/evi1.htm. 29. Pseudonym of the Jewish writer Israel Zeitlin, whose magazine Columna and various ancillary publications also evidenced a manifest preoccupation with the fate of European Jews and concern over the phenomenon of growing anti-Semitism worldwide; Naomi Lindstrom, “The Role of Jewish Editors in Argentine Publishing, 1920–1940,” Judaica Latinoamericana 3 (1997): 371–83. 30. Ben-Dror, “La conferencia de Evián,” 92–93. 31. The enormous support in the Argentine church for the Spanish church’s legitimization of Franco’s “crusade” owed much to the contacts forged by the Archbishop of Toledo, Isidro Gomá y Tomás, an ally of Franco, during his visit to Buenos Aires for the Eucharistic Congress in 1934. 32. SUR 56 (May 1939): 39–69; Ibid., 57 (June 1939): 43–64; Ibid., 58 (July 1939): 21–34. 33. Signed with the initials “M. R. O.” (María Rosa Oliver), SUR 56 (May 1939): 40. 34. Nidia Burgos, “La repercusión de la guerra civil española en la sección ‘Calendario’ de la revista SUR,” Cuadernos Americanos 74 (March–April 1999): 72–84. 35. “Calendario,” SUR 53 (February 1939): 81–82; Ibid., 68 (May 1940): 78. 36. SUR 47 (August 1938): 91 and 88. 37. Ibid., 49 (October 1938): 90. 38. “Calendario,” SUR 68 (May 1940): 79. 39. SUR 28 (January 1937): 31–46. 40. Federico García Lorca, “Poemas póstumos,” SUR 34 (July 1937): 29–32; José Bianco, “García Lorca en el Odeón,” SUR 32 (May 1937): 75–80; Victoria Ocampo, “Carta a Federico García Lorca,” SUR 33 (June 1937): 81–83. 41. “Comisión Argentina de ayuda a los intelectuales españoles,” SUR 56 (May 1939): 103. 42. “The Argentinean authorities, in contrast with those of Mexico and Santo Domingo or Chile, did not seem well disposed to welcome the Republicans fleeing from Franco. Then president Ortiz, whose family boasted of being of Basque origin, was finally moved to issue a decree, of an exceptional nature, allowing entry to Basques; but other Spaniards like us to whom this privilege was not granted, we had to manage as best we could,” remembers Francisco Ayala in his memoirs: “Mi Buenos Aires querido,” Recuerdos y olvidos 1. Del paraíso al destierro 2. El exilio 3. Retornos (Madrid: Alianza, 1988), 260. Regarding the Spanish exile in Mexico, see Gonzalo Santonja, Los signos de la 156 Rosalie Sitman

noche: De la guerra al exilio: Historia peregrina del libro republicano entre España y México (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 2003). 43. Gina Lombroso, “El problema de los refugiados,” SUR 55 (April 1939): 60–69. 44. “Calendario,” SUR 57 (June 1939): 110. Ortiz’s declarations had been prompted by a petition he had received signed by leading French intellectuals, among them André Gide, Nobel Prize winner Fréderic Joliot, Jacques Maritain, François Mauriac from the French Academy, and Jean Perrin, another Nobel Prize recipient. 45. In her memoirs, María Rosa Oliver exposes her government’s repeated attempts to hinder activities on behalf of the Spanish Republicans: “Although the Argentinean government maintained diplomatic relations with the government of Spain, it succeeded in hindering or preventing aid to the Republicans. Pressure to deny permission for the use of facilities to hold acts of solidarity, hanky-panky in issuing police permits for these events, impediments to the shipment of food and medicine, all seemed geared to forcing us to go underground,” Mi fe es el hombre (Buenos Aires: Ediciones C. Lohlé, 1981), 11. 46. Emilia de Zuleta, “Las letras españolas en la revista ‘SUR,’” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 80, no. 1 (1977): 113–45, and Españoles en la Argentina: El exilio literario de 1936 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Atril, 1999). Also by the same author, Relaciones literarias entre España y la Argentina (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica del Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1983). 47. Gregorio de Marañón, “Soledad y libertad,” SUR 31 (April 1937): 60–91. This prompted an irate exchange of letters between José Bergamín, editor of the Republican organ Cruz y raya, and Ocampo: “Cartas abiertas: De José Bergamín a Victoria Ocampo—De Victoria Ocampo a José Bergamín,” SUR 32 (May 1937): 67–69. 48. For example, Georges Bernanos, “Georges Bernanos escribe para ‘SUR,’” SUR 48 (September 1938): 7–19; and Robert Weibel-Richard, “El testimonio de Bernanos y las responsabilidad del Cristianismo,” SUR 47 (August 1938): 64–69. 49. As illustration, see Rafael Pividal, “Católicos fascistas y Católicos personalistas,” SUR 35 (August 1937): 87–97, and “Un ministro nacionalista insulta a Maritain,” SUR 47 (August 1938): 70–72; Augusto J. Durelli, “La unidad entre los Católicos,” SUR 47 (August 1938): 72–80, and “Los Cristianos y el reposo,” SUR 60 (September 1939): 74–80. 50. SUR 47 (July 1938): 72–73. 51. “Tres pueblos mártires,” SUR 52 (January 1939): 64–65. 52. SUR 60 (September 1939): 8. 53. In fact, during this time SUR published several contributions that appeared to endorse the policy of neutrality that Argentina still shared with the United States and the other Latin American nations, in accordance with the agreements reached at the meeting of foreign ministers that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had convened in Panama shortly after the outbreak of the war in 1939. See, for example, Carlos Alberto Erro, “La Argentina frente a la nueva guerra,” SUR 60 (September 1939): 13–15; Eduardo González Lanuza, “Posición del escritor frente a la actual guerra europea,” SUR 61 (October 1939): 30–35; and Enrique Anderson Imbert, “Hitler corre el amok,” SUR 61 (October 1939): 41–45. 157 Protest from Afar

54. “Voz de alerta,” signed May 15, 1940, SUR 67 (April 1940), n.p. Clearly, at this juncture, SUR’s position appears to be closer to that of the United States than that of its own government. This would continue to be the case until Argentina finally broke off relations with the Axis in January 1944 and ultimately declared war in March 1945. 55. Victoria Ocampo, “América indivisible,” SUR 87 (December 1941): 7–9. 56. Secretary of State Cordell Hull would exact his revenge by imposing an embargo on Argentina and withholding all economic and military aid, all the while bolstering her neighbor, Brazil. On U.S.-Argentine relations, see Joseph S. Tulchin, Argentina and the United States: A Conflicted Relationship (Boston: Twayne, 1990). On Pan-Americanism from Argentina’s perspective, see the issue of Todo es historia devoted to “Cien años de Panamericanismo,” no. 270 (1989). 57. SUR 99 (December 1942): 104. 58. “Voz de alerta,” signed May 15, 1940; SUR 67 (April 1940), n.p. 59. Hebe Carmen Pelossi, Vichy no fue Francia: Las relaciones franco-argentinas (1939–1946) (Buenos Aires: Nuevohacer Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 2003). 60. See Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Changing the Landscape: The Study of Argentine Jewish Women and New Historical Vistas,” Jewish History 18 (2004): 49–73. 61. Mika Etchebéhère, “Itinerario de posguerra,” SUR 139 (May 1946): 84–87; SUR 140 (June 1946): 80–82; Ibid., 141 (July 1946): 84–88; Ibid., 142 (August 1946): 107–11; Ibid., 143 (September 1946): 92–97; Ibid., 144 (October 1946): 74–78; Ibid., 145 (November 1946): 93–97; Ibid., 146 (December 1946): 87–91; Ibid., 150 (April 1947): 68–71; Ibid., 151 (May 1947). Communist sympathizer Dalila Saslavsky was also actively involved in Junta. Her husband’s (Luis’s) film commentaries appeared from time to time in SUR. 62. Dora Schwarzstein, Entre Franco y Perón: Memoria e identidad del exilio republicano español en Argentina (Barcelona: Crítica, 2001). 63. Victoria Ocampo, “María de Maeztu,” in Soledad sonora (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1950), 270–76. Also, Emilia de Zuleta, Españoles en la Argentina, chapter 4. 64. The conservative Catholic intellectual Ramiro de Maeztu had amassed a large following among Argentine nationalists during his stint as Primo de Rivera’s ambassador to Buenos Aires from 1927 to 1930. He was executed by a Republican firing squad in October 1936. Raanan Rein, The Franco-Perón Alliance: Relations between Spain and Argentina, 1946–1955 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), and “Another Front Line: Francoists and Anti-Francoists in Argentina, 1936–1949,” Patterns of Prejudice 31, no. 3 (1997): 17–33; Beatriz J. Figallo, “Ramiro de Maeztu y la Argentina,” Res Gesta 24 (1988): 78–92. 65. Francisco Ayala, Recuerdos y olvidos. 66. Cited in Ayerza de Castilho and Felgine, Victoria Ocampo, 283. 67. Gisèle Freund, “Reina Victoria,” La Prensa, June 10, 1979. See also, Ayerza de Castilho and Felgine, Victoria Ocampo, 188–90. 158 Rosalie Sitman

68. Ayerza de Castilho and Felgine, Victoria Ocampo, 221–25. Both André Gide and Paul Valéry wrote letters expressing their gratitude to Ocampo for her efforts on their behalf during the war: “Correspondencia,” SUR 347 (July– December 1980): 37, and “Lettres de Paul Valéry à Victoria Ocampo,” SUR 132 (October 1945): 80–104. 69. Following the publication of “Capricho español” in SUR 58 (July 1939), Ortega y Gasset, who had christened the magazine during a transatlantic telephone conversation with his friend Victoria Ocampo, asked to have his name removed from the review’s International Board. This did not deter Ocampo from helping him throughout his third stay in Argentina. See Tzvi Medin, Ortega y Gasset en la cultura hispanoamericana (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994). 70. Victoria Ocampo, “El caso de Drieu La Rochelle,” in Soledad sonora, 13–40 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1950), 30. 71. Ibid. In her biography of Borges, María Esther Vázquez is similarly perplexed by the fact that Borges, as much an anti-Fascist as Ocampo, likewise would never condemn La Rochelle, whom he had admired since the early days of their friendship, forged during the Frenchman’s visit to Buenos Aires in May 1933, invited by SUR (that is, by Ocampo); Vázquez, Borges, 136–38. 72. As an example, in December 1939, SUR published a separata with the translation of a Nazi propaganda text about the Russian-Finnish conflict, which had appeared in the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung on the first of that month. 73. While Argentina suffered the embargo imposed by the United States because of the government’s stubborn neutrality, SUR reaped many benefits from its privileged relationship with Nelson Rockefeller’s Office for Inter-American Affairs, through the presence in Washington of María Rosa Oliver. Frank’s visit on this occasion was an example of these cultural exchanges. 74. SUR 32 (May 1937): 80–81; Ibid., 87 (December 1941): 22. 75. Given Borges’s amply demonstrated Jewish sympathies, it is fitting to find the names of two Jews—the Argentinian playwright Samuel Eichelbaum and the Venezuelan philologist Ángel Rosenblat—in the roster of leading intellectuals who contributed to the special issue of SUR designed to indemnify Borges for having been denied the national prize for literature in 1942; “Desagravio a Borges,” SUR 94 (July 1942). 76. Antonio Gómez López-Quiñones, Borges y el Nazismo: Sur, 1937–1946 (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2004); Ilan Stavans, “A Comment on Borges’s Response to Hitler,” Modern Judaism 23 (2003): 1–11; Saúl Sosnowski, “Letras e imágenes de guerra,” in Sobre Nazis y Nazismo en la cultura argentina, ed. Ignacio Klich (College Park, MD: Hispamérica, 2002), 15–26, esp. 16–20; Edna Aizenberg, Borges, el tejedor del Aleph y otros ensayos (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 1997); Perednik, “La Judeidad,” 38–41; Naomi Lindstrom, Jewish Issues in Argentine Literature: From Gerchunoff to Szichman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989); Jaime Alazraki, Borges and the Kabbalah. And Other Essays on his Fiction and Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). SUR 86 (May 1940): 30–46; Ibid., 101 (February 1943): 13–20; Ibid., 136 (February 1946): 7–14. 159 Protest from Afar

77. “‘Mit Brennender Sorge.’ La contra inquisición,” SUR 133 (November 1945): 44–61. Significantly, “Mit Brennender Sorge” is an obvious reference to Pope Pius XI’s papal bull condemning the religious situation under the Third Reich. Other texts were “La sinagoga,” SUR 117 (July 1944): 48–61; “Judaísmo, sueño soñado por la deidad,” SUR 152 (June 1947): 59–75; and “Los antijudíos filosemitas,” SUR 160 (February 1948): 48–57. 78. See the interesting study about Kahn’s life and work by Leonardo Senkman, “Máximo José Kahn: De escritor sefardí del exilio a escritor del desastre judío,” Zwischen Literatur und Philosophie. Suche nach dem Menschlichen (Jerusalem: 2000): 221–39. 79. Rosa Chacel, “Una palabra de adiós; Máximo José Kahn, 1897–1953,” SUR 224 (September–October 1953): 124–29. 80. Published in two installments, in SUR 140 (June 1946): 44–60, and SUR 151 (May 1947): 69–90; H. Zylberger, “El trágico fin de las tres hermanas de Kafka,” SUR 145 (November 1946): 73–76. 81. Jean Bloch-Michel, “La prisión,” SUR 145 (November 1946): 62–73. 82. Victoria Kent, “Cuatro años en París,” SUR 150 (April 1947): 32–37. Editorial SUR published the entire text in 1947. Already in 1936, SUR had printed a text by Chilean Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral praising Kent’s illustrious career: “Recado sobre Victoria Kent,” SUR 20 (May 1936): 7–19. An advocate of prison reform, Kent was not exactly the kind of role model that would have appealed to Argentina’s Catholic establishment, which tended to view askance any female incursion into the public sphere. 83. Kent, “Cuatro años en París,” 55. 84. For Ocampo and the people of SUR, Peronism was tantamount to a vernacular version of Fascism, only more dangerous since it was right on their doorstep. For SUR’s trajectory during the years of the first Peronism, see Sitman, Victoria Ocampo y SUR, especially chapter 6, and idem, “Resistencia cultural a un régimen autoritario: El ‘sonoro’ silencio de SUR durante el primer pero­ nismo,” in Temas de Historia Argentina y Americana 3 (2003): 173–98. 85. The magazine and collection of titles in French started by Roger Caillois, under SUR’s aegis, during the French sociologist’s sojourn in Buenos Aires as a protegé of Ocampo during the war years. SUR 171 (January 1949): 84.

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chapter eight

Changing the Landscape

The Study of Argentine-Jewish Women and New Historical Vistas !

sandra mcgee deutsch

I

n September 1941 a diverse set of women in Argentina created the Junta de la Victoria (Junta of Victory). In this organization, Jewish women figured prominently. One of the largest and best publicized of the anti-Fascist organizations that arose in the 1930s and early 1940s, the Junta recruited an estimated forty-five thousand women to support the Allied cause in World War II. Yet we know little about it or its Jewish membership. The case of the long-forgotten Junta de la Victoria calls attention to broader gaps in the historiography on Argentina, on its Jews, and on its women. Jewish women have played critical roles in Argentina and its sizable Jewish community, the largest in Latin America and the third largest in the hemisphere. They helped create communal organizations, farm settlements, labor unions, and human rights groups. However, ArgentineJewish women are virtually absent from the secondary historical sources. Studying them is vital for its own sake, to recover the voices and tell the untold stories of the unheard half of the Jewish population.1 Yet it is also crucial for another reason, as the example of the Junta demonstrates. In the course of my research on the history of Argentine-Jewish women from 1880 to 1955, I conducted interviews with Jewish women of 161

varied ethnic and class backgrounds. My informants discussed what was important to them in their own lives, and they often raised issues that had not occurred to me.2 One matter of importance to women of Eastern Euro­ pean backgrounds was their participation in the Junta de la Victoria. Once alerted, I began to find discussion of the Junta in written sources as well. My interviewees belied the notion often conveyed by Argentinists that only the Europhile elite, not the masses of people, opposed Fascism. As Aurora Levins Morales has noted, putting women and their concerns at the center of our inquiries “changes the landscape.”3 Four examples from Argentine-Jewish women’s lives illustrate this point very well. They are the daily routines and education of Eastern European women in the farming communities; Zionism and philanthropy among Eastern and central European and Mediterranean women; and the participation of Eastern European women in the Communist Party and in the Junta de la Victoria. Placing these examples at the center of our interest changes the landscape of the history of Argentina, Argentine Jews, and Argentine women both metaphorically and spatially. It also changes the landscape of ethnic studies. It reveals that ethnic groups are not monolithic; instead they are fragmented by gender, class, and place of origin. Centering on Jewish women shows that ethnic groups are not closed communities, nor are they exceptional. It also demonstrates that anti-Semitism is not the sum total of Jewish lives. First one must situate these women within larger Argentine and Argentine-Jewish contexts. Argentine Jews created a set of communities of diverse origins. A few relatively well-off Jews from western Europe and others from Morocco arrived before 1889, when a mass migration from eastern Europe began. A significant minority of the eastern Europeans became farmers, but most settled in the cities. Here, starting out as workers and peddlers, some men managed to build small industries. The Yiddishspeaking eastern Europeans and their offspring, known as Ashkenazim, form the majority of Argentine Jews.4 Jews from the Balkans, Turkey, North Africa, and the Middle East came before 1930. These Jews who had lived under Ottoman rule are commonly called Sephardim. Many men from these groups became peddlers and merchants, and a few became textile manufacturers. Generally more privileged than their predecessors, central European and Italian Jews entered during the Nazi era, and the men of these communities augmented the numbers of Jews in the professions and light industry. After World War II a handful of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Egypt and Morocco completed the local Jewish population. 162 Sandra McGee Deutsch

“Sephardim” accounted for perhaps 17 percent of Argentine Jews in 1930 and 10 percent in 1985.5 I use the word “Sephardim” in quotation marks because a generalized Sephardic identity did not exist until the 1940s, as we will see. Rich and poor, rural and urban, of many different geographical origins, Argentine Jews are hardly a monolithic presence. The Jewish population grew to 310,000 in 1960, constituting only a small part of the immense flow of immigrants to Argentina.6 During the peak years between 1870 and 1910, about 2.2 million people settled permanently in the country. In 1914 about 30 percent of the total population and an even greater percentage of the inhabitants of the economically dynamic portions of the country were foreign-born.7 These were higher proportions than those ever reached in the United States. However, most of the immigrants were Italians and Spaniards; they were similar culturally to nativeborn Argentines, and like them they were Catholic. Jews stood somewhat apart in an immigrant nation that was more homogeneous than the United States, but they were not isolated.

Pioneer Women Many of the eastern European Jews who arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s headed directly to the agricultural settlements. These settlements have received much scholarly attention. Existing histories of the colonies focus on communal politics, the formation of cooperatives, and conflicts with the landlord, the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA). Founded in 1891 by philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the JCA settled thousands of Jews on its Argentine lands. Women participated only indirectly, or informally, in these activities, and studies have accordingly overlooked them. The JCA awarded land titles to male heads of households alone; the few female titleholders were widows who inherited deeds from their husbands. The rare women who appear in the records of the cooperatives as members or petitioners also were widows. Only in recent years, well after the decline of the colonies, have women participated actively in the rural political arena. Viewed through women’s eyes, during its golden years Jewish rural life revolved around education, philanthropic and Zionist groups, and daily routine. The daily routine included rearing, feeding, and clothing large families and cleaning the home under arduous, pioneer conditions. It also meant absorbing local customs, such as food preparation, from Creoles (nativeborn, generally mestizo Catholics) who worked in Jewish homes and farms 163 Changing the Landscape

or lived nearby. Women worked the fields alongside the men, tended gardens and animals, and sold produce in nearby towns.8 The struggle for education helped define women’s lives. In 1914 less than half of the Russian-born women in the country were literate.9 (This is only an approximation of the Jewish population. At the time most Jews in Argentina were of Russian origin, but some Russians were not Jewish, and this category excludes Jews of other origins.) Many hungered for learning, for themselves and their daughters. Children often had to ride a horse or carriage long distances to attend the first few grades at a rural school. Any further education meant living with relatives or in a pension in a distant city. Lacking financial resources, unwilling to lose their daughters’ labor, or loathe to risk the possibility of their daughters moving out of a Jewish orbit, some parents did not encourage them to seek education. However, aware that the horizons in farming were limited, others did, risking criticism from socially conservative neighbors.10 Attending normal school became a formative experience for Jewish women able to continue their studies. Teaching at the primary level appears to have constituted the typical path of upward mobility for young women in the countryside and city alike, and not only for Jews. Jewish women, then, were not exceptional. Teachers were respected despite the low pay. There was much competition for teaching positions, and political influence was needed to secure a job. That Jews acquired teaching positions suggests that some had made these valuable connections.11 Much of the literature on Argentine Jews emphasizes anti-Semitism, yet the study of women indicates that Jews were not as marginalized as one might think. Normal school students absorbed pride in the liberal national project and a sense that women could contribute to it through teaching; both notions had characterized liberal president Domingo F. Sarmiento (1868–1874), who had promoted secular education and teacher training.12 The desire to transform society propelled some Jewish women educators into teachers’ unions and the Socialist, Communist, and other leftist movements. A few teachers also went to Spain in the 1930s to participate in the Civil War, pitting the democratic Republic against rightist rebels. They participated with other Argentines in all these progressive causes. The authorities were aware of these political affiliations; even where they did not exist, officials tended to identify Jews with leftist attachments, because many were of Russian origin. Such linkages dated back to the early 1900s, when rightist Argentines began to identify Jews with Bolshevism 164 Sandra McGee Deutsch

and anarchism. Such sentiments had led policemen and bourgeois citizens to attack Jewish workers in 1910 and 1919.13 In 1943 rightist military officers took control of the government, and their underlings carefully monitored the political leanings of Jewish and other Argentines. In 1944 Governor Lieutenant Colonel Carlos María Zavalla of Entre Ríos province, the center of Jewish agricultural settlements, fired the Jewish teachers of Villa Domínguez, all of whom were women, accusing them of being unpatriotic citizens and Communists or fellow travelers. In his view, Jews were not genuinely Argentine. One attributed her dismissal to the fact that her principal denounced her and her colleagues for laughing at a speech given by the president. Zavalla followed this action by firing about 120 more teachers from across the entire province, most of whom were Jewish and many female. Some of these teachers were fired simply because of Jewish-sounding last names, even though they were of German Christian descent. These Christian teachers immediately returned to work, but not the Jews. The Jewish teachers and their supporters within and outside the community, including teachers’ unions, protested for months until the new governor, General José Humberto Sosa Molina, reinstated them.14 This incident is telling. It belies the common notion that Jewish women’s public and especially political roles were muted until the 1960s. Fur­ thermore, it changes the landscape of Argentine women’s history. Scholars have concentrated on how women entered the public arena through feminism, unions, and Peronism.15 Teaching constituted another path. The episode also shows how Jewish women fought attempts to exclude them from the nation. Rather than choose between their ethnic and national identities, they insisted on both. Women’s lives in the agricultural colonies also revolved around charity work. Like their Catholic counterparts, wealthier Jewish women collected, administered, and distributed aid to the poor, communal institutions, and local schools. Groups of older pious women gave alms to the needy, prepared bodies for burial, and provided trousseaus for impoverished women.16 Such circles were the precursors of the ladies’ beneficent societies that arose in many Jewish communities. Providing health care for the indigent and maintaining Jewish hospitals were additional tasks. The beneficent societies often contributed funds to Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires and sent people to the federal capital to access these services. Such establishments also had branches in the interior that collected money for them. Parents— but more typically mothers—formed societies that watched over the schools, served milk and snacks to pupils, inspected the premises for cleanliness, 165 Changing the Landscape

supplied equipment, and provided children with clothes. To raise money, these charities held dances, picnics, theatrical and musical performances, films, and other cultural events, which enriched social life.17 The study of Jewish women calls attention to the dense associational networks in the small towns and colonies, which created links among women, assisted the poor, enhanced children’s education, and maintained the quality of local services. They strengthened the bonds of community yet also may have highlighted the class divisions within it, since women of means dispensed largess to those who needed it. Ignored in most of the published work, these networks were a vital feature of daily existence. In addition, placing women at the center of Jewish rural life changes the landscape in a concrete spatial sense. It demonstrates how women helped fill in the terrain of the colonies by opening new spaces for communal sociability. Women also struggled to create spaces for themselves. Associational records chronicle their continual negotiations and conflicts with male organizations over self-expression, competing activities, and securing their own meeting places. In 1928 the female auxiliary of the Hospital Clara in Villa Domínguez, Entre Ríos, received the male board’s permission to attend and speak out at its meetings, but not the right to vote. In another case, in 1926, the local ladies’ beneficent society repeatedly complained to the male board of the hospital of Basavilbaso, Entre Ríos, about the lack of cleanliness at the facility, to which the men reacted rudely; they also refused to clean up the hospital. Additional frustration arose when the board insisted that the society delay a long-planned fund-raiser to help it construct its headquarters. The men wanted to schedule a benefit of their own. In the end, the society’s protests forced the board to compromise.18 The battle over the fund-raiser related to the society’s larger struggle to attain its own building. Over the years the ladies had met in private homes and in the local Jewish library, but these arrangements proved unsatisfactory. Having their own space would allow the women to congregate and voice their concerns freely, as well as to extend and more fully control their activities. Acceding to the ladies’ request, the JCA gave them a piece of land in 1916. However, the society could not secure the money to develop it, and by late 1925, the JCA threatened to repossess the land if construction did not begin. The beleaguered women bargained with the JCA until, at last, they raised the funds, which included a grant from the provincial governor. By 1935 the ladies finally had their own building.19 The existing histories of the colonies barely mention women, let alone their relations with men.20 The silence leaves the impression that women 166 Sandra McGee Deutsch

compliantly followed the men’s lead in the struggles to survive in the difficult rural environment and attain rights from the JCA. Focusing our gaze on women shows that they were not passive. They constantly negotiated with men, at times contentiously, and created, maintained, and developed spaces for themselves, demonstrating that gender divides ethnic groups. Moreover, Jewish women’s involvement in teaching and politics, and the government recognition they received, demonstrates that they were neither isolated nor unique.

Ashkenazic Women and OSFA Ashkenazic women created the Organización Sionista Femenina Argentina (OSFA; Argentine Feminine Zionist Organization), the Argentine branch of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), in 1926. OSFA spread across the country, with the Jewish agricultural settlements hosting particularly active chapters. In 1931 the rural centers of Villa Domínguez and Moisés Ville (Santa Fe) boasted 205 and 222 members, respectively, while Córdoba, a major city, only had 100.21 Some have claimed that all female Jews in the colonies and small towns belonged to OSFA, rather than the small percentage of women who joined in the cities. Setting themselves apart from other Jewish women’s groups, OSFA members described their purpose as primarily one of liberating and reconstructing a nation, instead of dispensing alms. Their task was to help create a new country and tighten the links between it and Argentine Jews. They sent aid to the Jewish community in Palestine and contributed funds to a school in the town of Afulah that trained young Jewish women in agricultural work. To heighten a sense of Jewish identity tied to Zionism, they ran cultural programs, founded libraries, formed kindergartens, and disseminated information on Palestine through lectures, meetings, and a magazine. Women’s duties in OSFA took them outside the usual female roles. Many Argentine-Jewish families deposited spare change destined for the Jewish National Fund, which purchased land in Palestine, in little boxes they kept in their homes. OSFA members traveled hours down rugged country roads in horse-drawn carriages to collect these funds.22 Like women in the beneficent societies, OSFA women grew accustomed to keeping records, handling finances, and organizing; much more than the philanthropists did, however, they also learned how to write articles and give speeches. The articles appeared in their magazine, which was inaugurated in 1935.23 Women gave talks at local, regional, and national OSFA meetings, cultural events, and 167 Changing the Landscape

community forums. Perhaps for the first time in their lives, some left their homes to travel unescorted on OSFA business throughout Argentina or to other nations. These experiences inspired OSFA activists not only to work to revive the Jews as a people, but, as the Revista WIZO put it, to convert homemakers who, until this point, had been “a passive element,” into an “active” one. Once such women became members, many discovered previously unknown talents. On the tenth anniversary of the periodical, the first to be created and published exclusively by Argentine-Jewish women, the editors recalled that when they had set out to launch a magazine, they had little confidence in their abilities, not to mention that they lacked resources, experience, and guidance from the central office in London. Yet their desire to express their Zionism helped them attain their goal.24 The magazine was significant for another reason as well. In it many articles and photos appeared featuring Jewish women’s participation in the military, agricultural, and other uncustomary arenas in Palestine/Israel. This was also a favorite topic for OSFA orators. Members read or heard— however true these reports were in fact—about Ashkenazic women in Palestine, who lived in “almost complete equality” with men, even in public life, enjoyed the same rights, and freely entered the professions.25 The constant repetition of this theme may have led OSFA members to reflect upon the differences between their lives and those of their counterparts and so to regard their activity in OSFA as a means of lifting women’s status. According to one long-time activist, OFSA/WIZO did more for women in Argentina and Latin America than it did for women in Israel.26 Centering on women enables one to see that they believed they had a dual mission. Zionism not only related to Jewish national fulfillment in Israel, but Jewish women’s status in Argentina.

Activism among Mediterranean Women Women of Mediterranean origin did not come to Argentina through the auspices of the Jewish Colonization Association. The few such women found in the agricultural colonies were the wives of JCA administrators and teachers, the latter chosen for their knowledge of Spanish. Moroccans dispersed throughout towns in the interior and in Buenos Aires, where the majority of Ashkenazim also lived. Jews from the Balkans, Turkey, and the Middle East settled in larger cities, particularly Buenos Aires. Although most Mediterranean women, like their Ashkenazic counterparts, saw themselves 168 Sandra McGee Deutsch

at this time primarily as homemakers, women commonly “helped out” in family enterprises, or they earned money sewing and embroidering. Members of these communities themselves have assumed that Med­ iterranean Jews were less active than Ashkenazim in communal affairs. According to this view, unlike the Ashkenazim, many of these Jews went to Argentina planning to save money and return to their homelands. Organiz­ ing was not on their minds. Either they had not yet developed a Zionist consciousness, or they tended to be suspicious of the predominantly Ashkenazic Zionist leadership and doubted that the movement would help their brethren. A more recent work, however, has found signs of early Sephardic interest in Zionism.27 Many have also assumed that until recently women of these backgrounds were less likely to attain a higher education or involve themselves in endeavors outside the home. Such notions about education and careers may have some foundation; the first Argentine Sephardic woman to become a physician, Victoria Simsolo, received her degree in 1946, whereas her Ashkenazic counterpart had graduated in 1909.28 However, there is evidence of Mediterranean female participation in philanthropic groups as early as the late nineteenth century, predating the rise of the principal urban Ashkenazic women’s association, the Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas de Beneficencia (Israelite Beneficent Ladies Aid Society) of Buenos Aires, in 1908.29 A first example comes from the Moroccan community; not coincidentally, early Moroccan immigration preceded the mass migration from the Russian empire. By 1899 the Sociedad de Beneficencia “Damas de Sión” (“Ladies of Zion” Beneficent Society) in Buenos Aires helped the indigent and sick and sent groups to visit the bedridden. Members particularly were interested in aiding expectant mothers, whom they supplied with bedsheets, wine, chocolate, and small stipends.30 Jews of a particular origin, such as those from Aleppo, Syria, or the Aegean island of Rhodes, organized their own synagogues; there was little sense of any overarching Sephardic identity that linked these narrow communities. Small groups of women associated with these temples distributed aid to the poor of the congregations. For example, the Sociedad “Damas Sefardí de Beneficencia” (Sephardic Ladies Beneficent Society) was the female charitable arm of the Etz Ajaim synagogue, founded by the Moroccans of Rosario in 1909. When the Damas consolidated is not clear, but they had been engaged in philanthropy for some time before 1917.31 There were other forms of female activism. Women gave small donations to communal causes and figured among the contributors to the 169 Changing the Landscape

Comité Israelita pro Víctimas de Salónica, which sent relief to the victims of the disastrous fire of 1917 in that Greek city.32 Social clubs and youth groups had male and female members. The Sephardic Ateneo Juventud Hebraica Argentina (Argentine Hebrew Youth Atheneum) of Rosario had a female officer in 1928, and five of the eight “members at large” on its governing body were women.33 Young women in these groups typically raised money and organized social gatherings. Mediterranean women’s participation in Zionist programs began in earnest in the late 1930s. Aside from the reasons already mentioned, the use of Yiddish within OSFA no doubt put off, if it did not exclude, Ladino, Arabic, Italian, and Spanish speakers. The first evidence of broader participation in this organization appeared in 1937, with the creation of an OSFA center in the prosperous Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Sharing class affiliation, neighborhood, and the use of languages other than Yiddish, well-off central European and Mediterranean Jewish women joined this chapter.34 By 1940 the Comisión de Señoritas del KKL (Young Women’s Commission of Keren Kayemet Israel) formed within the Centro Sionista Sefaradí (Sephardic Zionist Center).35 The catalysts for greater involvement were World War II, German persecution of Jews in southeastern Europe, and the impending creation of the State of Israel. Assisting the OSFA executive, the Comisión helped lay the groundwork for Sephardic participation by compiling names of potential members and contacting them. Building on this foundation, Sara de Cuenca, the president of the WIZO Sephardic chapter in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Alegre de Bonomo founded the Centro Sefaradí in Buenos Aires in 1946. The Italians formed their own OSFA center in 1954. By 1955 there was a fullblown Sephardic sector within OSFA, containing 1,340 members in centers in the Buenos Aires area and several provinces.36 One prominent member was Bruria Elnecavé, an ardent Zionist of Bulgarian origin who joined the OSFA executive in 1950. As director of the department of culture, Elnecavé gave speeches, taught classes, and directed a publication series.37 Judith Cohen de Isaharoff, originally of Samarkhand, was responsible for another Zionist initiative. Previously involved in philanthropy, in 1940 Isaharoff had helped organize a benefit for the Jewish girls’ orphanage. A speech given by the Argentine Socialist feminist leader Alicia Moreau de Justo on the Jewish labor federation in Palestine intrigued Isaharoff, who leaned toward Socialism; her interest in Moreau de Justo indicates that Jews of non-Ashkenazic origins were not as isolated from Argentine politics as some have thought. Personally convincing women of different communities 170 Sandra McGee Deutsch

to put aside their particularisms, Isaharoff created the Amigas Sefaradíes de la Histadrut (Sephardic Friends of the Histadrut, the labor federation in Palestine/Israel) in 1946, and she served as its president for forty years. By 1947 the Amigas, whose principal activity in its early years was to send clothing and financial contributions to Palestine, had six hundred members in its main Buenos Aires chapter. Other members belonged to affiliate chapters in various neighborhoods of the capital city, and there was a youth chapter in Rosario.38 Meeting in 1948, the Segunda Convención Regional Sefaradí Argentina (Second Regional Argentine Sephardic Convention) resolved to create a Consejo Central de Damas Sefaradíes (Central Council of Sephardic Ladies). The idea was to unite the various communities, involve women in Zionism, and gather funds for needy Sephardim throughout the world. The Convención invited women of Zionist groups, beneficent societies, and social clubs to participate. Some members of OSFA responded, siphoning off personnel and energy from its Sephardic sector. Consejo members grouped themselves in subcommittees according to their places of origin: Italy, Palestine, Morocco, Aleppo, and Damascus (Syria). Division by place of origin thus persisted, although the women came together under the umbrella of a single organization. Aside from holding cultural events, the Consejo sent clothing, blankets, medicine, hospital equipment, and funds to Israel. Despite the rivalry between the two groups, the Consejo contributed to OSFA causes in Israel, for example, by constructing a kindergarten building for its Afulah school.39 In 1944 the youth department of the Centro Sionista Sefaradí, headed by Julieta Camji, inaugurated the custom of an annual Purim party to raise money for the Zionist cause and convoke the various communities. According to the magazine Israel, never in local history had so many young people of these backgrounds attended the same social event. Over twelve hundred youths whose family roots lay in Aleppo, Damascus, Salonika, Bulgaria, Jerusalem, the central Asian cities of Bukhara and Birobidzhan, and Smyrna and Istanbul, Turkey, participated in the festivities. Yet, as the magazine observed, “the youth no longer understand the old distinctions of origin”; most were “Argentine-born, sharing the same tastes and language.” Another factor of unity was their sense of allegiance to a Jewish nation. Candidates nominated by social clubs and youth groups vied for the titles of Queen Esther and Miss Congeniality—significantly replaced in subsequent years by the title “Miss Sefaradí.”40 The Gran Baile de la Colectividad Sefaradí quickly became the yearly social event, featuring the crowning of Miss Sefaradí, who symbolized the merging of the various collectivities. 171 Changing the Landscape

The Amigas, Consejo, OSFA Sephardic sector, and young women of the Centro Sionista Sefaradí performed the role of uniting the disparate communities and forging a broad sense of Sephardic identity that overrode narrow regional and city boundaries. Although the word “Sephardic” had appeared in the names of institutions, periodical subtitles, and visionary articles, until the 1940s, in Argentina, it existed mainly in theory. The dances, meetings, collections of goods, and recruitment of members for the Zionist cause fostered interaction among the various groups and helped convert this abstract term into a reality.41 The literature on Argentine Jews often emphasizes the divisions among the Jewish communities, including the Sephardic ones. Putting women at the center of interest teaches us how Sephardic Argentine Jews came together and pulled down these barriers. It also shows how people construct ethnicity and how ethnic markers change.

The Communist Party Before a firm sense of Sephardic identity consolidated, a strong working class of Yiddish-speaking origins had formed in Buenos Aires. Concentrated in the needle and textile trades, women labored in factories, small workshops, and home industries largely located in the neighborhoods of Villa Crespo and La Paternal and the suburb of Villa Lynch. Jewish workers resided, shopped, and socialized in these locations, reinforcing the ties among them. Jewish working-class women became active in unions, the Socialist and Communist parties, anarchist circles, and smaller leftist factions. Seasoned in work outside the home and union struggles, Polish women arriving in the 1920s and 1930s added to this developing sense of militancy. Jewish women were especially conspicuous in the Communist Party, where they played important roles in cultural outreach toward other Yiddish speakers. In the 1920s and 1930s, Communist women began to educate the community, teaching children in the Jewish worker schools, coaching Jewish immigrants in Spanish and Marxism, and working in Jewish Communist libraries. Mothers of young pupils went from door to door, encouraging other mothers to enroll their children in the schools associated with the party. Drawing upon workers who were amateur actors and actresses, the IFT (Idische Folks Teater) presented leftist-oriented plays in Yiddish. ICUF (Idischer Cultur Farband, or Yiddish Culture Organization), the Argen­ tine branch of the Soviet-sponsored global organization founded in 1937, which promoted a progressive Yiddish-based Jewish identity divorced from religion or Zionism, took over these activities.42 Women were involved in 172 Sandra McGee Deutsch

all the ICUF ventures, which included schools, children’s programs, the Zumerland camp, IFT, and a translation and publication series. Through its reading circles and magazine, entitled Di idische froi (The Yiddish Woman), the ICUF female commission, created in 1947, awakened women to issues of broader concern to the party, such as opposition to the arms race. It concentrated its efforts on homemakers generally ignored by Communist leaders, thus complementing the party’s recruitment strategy among women.43 Women did not have to choose a Jewish or Communist identity; they could have both. Jewish women also involved themselves in Communist arenas beyond the Yiddish-speaking milieu. In the early 1920s the party sent Ida Bondareff to speak to workers outside factories and at union halls. She served as secretary general of the women’s branch of the central committee but clashed with party leaders and left for Russia. In the 1940s Fanny Edelman headed the party’s National Feminine Commission and entered its central committee. At lower levels, Jewish women organized discussions, distributed and sold Marxist literature, and wrote articles for Communist periodicals. Many participated in labor unions, particularly those of textile workers and seamstresses. The few who returned from serving in the Spanish Civil War gave lectures on that conflict and helped organize aid for the refugees. Jewish girls participated in the Communist high school and university student movements, selling their newspapers and attending demonstrations and youth conferences. Women joined the various party-sponsored groups of the 1930s and 1940s that opposed anti-Semitism and Fascism, such as the Organización Popular Contra el Antisemitismo (Popular Organization against Anti-Semitism) and the more select Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores (Group of Intellectuals, Artists, Journalists and Writers).44 Jewish women were particularly active in efforts to help those detained for political reasons. As members of the local branch of Socorro Rojo Internacional (International Red Aid) and its successor, the Liga Argentina Por los Derechos del Hombre (Argentine League for the Rights of Man), they raised money for prisoners’ legal defense and visited them in jail, bringing them meals, clothing, and messages. The Jewish feminine section of the Liga was known for its solidarity and courage, and no one stood out more than its legendary figure Comrade Zlate, whom the police detained several times. Other women of Jewish origins, such as the aristocratic Delila Saslavsky, gave speeches on human rights at Liga events.45 The rich texture of Jewish women’s participation contrasts with the treatment of the Communist Party in the historical literature. Except for 173 Changing the Landscape

Communist participation in the labor movement, there are few serious studies of this political persuasion, or indeed of any leftist group after 1930.46 Existing accounts tend to be narrowly partisan, in part, because decades of fierce political conflict and repression resulted in the destruction and scattering of primary sources. Some of these have become accessible only recently. Archives in the former Soviet Union were also long closed. Yet there is another compelling reason for the lack of work on Com­mu­ nists and other leftists. Coming to power in 1946, Juan and Eva Perón appropriated the mantles of the labor movement and progressives, saying they would Argentinize and fulfill the reformist programs of these groups; they would also convert what had been an unofficial colony of Great Britain into an independent nation. The message they projected was that the struggle for legitimate, nationalist change had culminated in Peronism, rendering other organizations outmoded and unnecessary. The Peronist government suppressed independent trade unionists and leftists who were unwilling to forsake partisan, internationalist, and revolutionary aspirations. Pro-Peronist authors treated competing movements as preludes to Peronism, dismissing those that did not fit this narrative as peripheral, foreign inspired, or antinational. Its pursuit of goals that often corresponded more with Soviet than Argentine needs made the Communist Party an easy target, as did the party’s frequent accord with liberals. Peronists successfully criticized the Communists about their role in the presidential election of 1946, in which the Communists had joined Socialists and moderates in the Unión Democrática (Democratic Union) to run against Perón. Endorsed by U.S. ambassador Spruille Braden, this coalition denounced Perón as a Fascist. However, this claim did not outweigh the popular social welfare measures Perón had implemented while secretary of labor during the military government of 1943–1946. These reforms gave a powerful boost to his election bid. Its association with centrists and the United States, as well as its opposition to Peronism, severely weakened the Communist Party’s progressive and anti-imperialist credentials.47 These Peronist interpretations of Communists and other leftists still tend to prevail. While this criticism of Communist leaders is cogent, it tells us little about the motivations and daily activities of the rank and file. But this may be remedied. Centering on Jewish women indicates the need for researching the grassroots after 1930. Such work could bring to the surface a different world of popular mobilization and counterhegemonic projects, one that brought together Argentines of varied backgrounds.48 174 Sandra McGee Deutsch

Junta de la Victoria Any exploration of the Communist Party from the ground up would have to include consideration of the Junta de la Victoria, which is best viewed within the context of the mobilization against Fascism in Argentina that began in the early 1930s. A coup in 1930 ousted a democratic government and installed a Fascist-leaning military dictatorship that ruled until 1931. Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, and the democratic-centrist Radicals protested the repressive policies of the military regime. They also demonstrated and fought against the radical rightist Nationalist movement in the streets. In the middle of the decade the struggle gained steam, as moderate and leftist parties used anti-Fascist rhetoric to contest the fraudulently elected conservative governments that succeeded the dictatorship, as well as to oppose the Nationalists, who sometimes were its allies. Leftists, including Jewish women, formed organizations throughout the country to work against the German Nazi threat in Europe, as well as the threat that they sensed at home. Rosa M. de Ziperovich, a teacher, Communist, and union leader, founded such a group in the small town of Palacios, in the Jewish agricultural zone of Santa Fe province.49 The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 catalyzed opponents of Fascism. Leftist intellectuals and workers alike saw these events as the opening salvo of a battle between Fascism and democracy that could soon envelop the world, including Argentina. The war was pivotal in raising the political consciousness of many Argentine women, and Jews were among them. Girls walked from door to door and collected newspaper, metal scraps, and donations; women participated in Jewish, Socialist, and Communist groups that sent aid to the Republic and its refugees. Communists Raquel Levenson, Dora Trumper, and Fanny Edelman, among others, went to Spain to contribute to the Republican war effort. There, Mika Feldman Etchebéhère captained a regiment of the Trotskyist Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Worker Party of Marxist Unification).50 For many Jewish women, the Spanish Civil War marked the beginning of their political involvement in the left; for others it represented a culmination of militancy. From helping the Spanish Republicans it was a logical step to work for the Allies during the Second World War, despite Argentina’s neutrality until near the end of the conflict. The greatest effort began after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Before this, the Soviet-German defense pact had kept Communists from taking part in such activities; afterward, they became the main impetus behind the aid effort. September 1941 witnessed the formation of the Junta de la Victoria, dedicated to defeating Fascism overseas 175 Changing the Landscape

and preventing it from spreading to Argentina. The president was Ana Rosa Schlieper de Martínez Guerrero, a non-Jewish aristocrat active in PanAmerican feminist circles, member of the Radical party, and secretary general of the anti-Fascist Acción Argentina (Argentine Action). The Junta included women from different sectors and classes: feminists like Schlieper who had belonged to the pro-suffrage Unión Argentina de Mujeres (Argentine Union of Women); intellectuals and artists; members of the Argentine upper class, who idealized the British and French cultures; liberal Catholics; prominent immigrants and wives of diplomats from anti-Fascist nations; plebeian urban and rural women, many of them originally from the occupied countries; and Communist militants.51 During the war the Junta’s diversity represented strength, since it signified widespread involvement, but its heterogeneity presaged the difficulties Perón’s opponents would eventually face. Inspired by solidarity and the desire to defeat Hitler, many Ashkenazic Jewish women in the cities and colonies affiliated with the Junta. These included the sculptor Cecilia Marcovich, the writer and educator Berta de Braslavsky, and Fanny Edelman and Dalila Saslavsky. Associated with the Communist Party, they figured in the Junta’s national leadership. Others served as officers in local chapters, such as Clara Schliapnik, a medical doctor and Jewish community activist, who was the Junta president in Villa Domínguez, Entre Ríos.52 Raquel A. de Monín, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, married to a Socialist and living in a working-class suburb of Buenos Aires, belonged to a chapter located in a nearby, more privileged neighborhood. Most of its members were wealthy Anglo-Argentines or their Argentine wives. They rented a house, where they held benefit teas and raffles and knit clothes to be sent overseas. Monín and her daughter went from house to house in her barrio selling raffle tickets, while other members collected materials for recycling.53 In the Argentina of the 1940s, working-class women of any origin had few opportunities to intermingle and collaborate with women of upper-class backgrounds. By helping to construct these spaces, Jewish women changed the landscape, creating a more pluralistic and integrated nation. Supplying the Allies involved many tasks. The leaders established ties with diplomats of the Allied countries, solicited donations from businessmen, and traveled through Argentina, founding an estimated 125 chapters. They drafted press releases and delivered speeches. The Junta executive organized exhibitions of anti-Fascist artists, teas to honor Allied female dignitaries and dedicated Junta members, and large benefits featuring wellknown performers, statesmen, and thinkers. At the chapter level, members 176 Sandra McGee Deutsch

met to knit or pick up wool to knit at home, organize smaller benefits, and discuss civic and women’s concerns. They also were supposed to look for and document the activities of Nazi sympathizers.54 The members’ discussions of issues indicated that the Junta defined its purpose broadly: “to definitively annihilate fascism, establish peace, defend the rights of the woman and solve the problems of children’s health and education.”55 Defeating Fascism entailed incorporating women into the public arena and relieving poverty, although such measures would have to await the end of the war to begin;56 it also meant an egalitarian style of debating and decision making. In May 1943, two hundred delegates attended the Junta’s national congress to discuss their labors. The Junta boasted that each chapter had “democratically” formulated work plans to be submitted to the assembly and that the goal of the meeting was to articulate the aims of women who defended democracy in the world and practiced it in their daily lives.57 Through their involvement in the Junta, observed Schlieper, women gained expertise in “norms of getting along with others collectively and training in tasks useful to the State and its defense.”58 Thus Jews joined with Christians in the Junta to promote democracy. The Junta faced detractors, particularly from the far right. Hostile to Communist influence, sympathetic to Fascism, and favoring a neutrality policy that tilted toward the Axis, Nationalists denounced the Junta as “a movement of social dissolution.”59 Foreshadowing the future rhetoric of Peronist historians, another frequent Nationalist complaint was that the Junta ignored local problems and focused on matters that did not affect the country. For example, María Esther Méndez compared her fellow women Nationalists, who apparently collected aid for impoverished Argen­ tines, with the Jews, Communists, and oligarchs of the Junta, who shipped goods abroad.60 The Junta also faced opposition from two successive governments. During President Ramón S. Castillo’s increasingly repressive administration (1940–1943), the police kept the Junta from holding some of its meetings, public rallies, and benefit performances, and broke up others in progress. From time to time, the authorities in the federal capital detained Junta members. Junta leaders talked with government officials about their goals and demanded the right to continue their activities.61 Such action did not bring lasting results. The even more rightist military government that ousted Castillo closed the Junta down, in June 1943, shortly after coming to power.62 This was part of the regime’s policy of clamping down on all proAllied, leftist, and democratic movements. 177 Changing the Landscape

The Junta, however, did not end here. When the Allies liberated Paris in 1944, the leaders of the dormant organization invited women to a demonstration in the Plaza Francia in Buenos Aires; many others unconnected to the Junta, including men, also gathered there. One who turned up was the Jewish performer Berta Singerman, known for her dramatic poetry recitations. Sympathetic to the left and the Allied cause, Singerman had also belonged to the Junta and performed at its benefits before 1943. She recited “La Marseillaise” to the cheering crowd of about two hundred thousand. The democratic message of the song and assemblage and the demonstration of support for the Allies did not appeal to the authorities, who tried to break up the rally.63 As part of the democratic opening that accompanied the campaign for the election of 1946, the military government permitted the Junta to reopen in April 1945. Although the group continued to send clothing to European refugees, the end of the war compelled it to redefine its goals. From now on, it would focus on women’s issues: day care for working mothers, enforcement of legislation protecting female workers, the high cost of living, and preparing women to vote. It redirected its anti-Fascism by organizing rallies, fund-raising, and aid against the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain and on behalf of the Republican exiles. Another part of its anti-Fascist campaign, as the Junta saw it, was to support the Unión Democrática and oppose “Nazi-Peronism.” Although it continued some of its activities after Perón’s election in 1946, a loss of focus and an inability to attract large numbers of workers, not to mention police repression, contributed to its final decline.64 Pro-Peronist authors have regarded the participants in the anti-Fascist and pro-Allied campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s as “sepoys” who emphasized foreign over local concerns.65 They have pointed out how these activists ignored the opportunity offered by neutrality to free Argentina of British economic control. In their view, by the time the war ended, Fascism was a chimera, fostered by the Unión Democrática for its electoral advantage. The main intention of the so-called anti-Fascists was to prevent Perón from delivering social justice to the workers and liberating the country from foreign capital. A disguise for oligarchical and imperialistic machinations, anti-Fascism was a trumped-up cause that attracted little popular support.66 Influenced by such opinions, until recently scholars have not considered the anti-Fascist movement important enough to warrant examination. Women’s anti-Fascism has received even less attention.67 Focusing on Jewish women allows us at last to catch a glimpse of the scope of the anti-Fascist movement. One cannot simply collapse all the 178 Sandra McGee Deutsch

anti-Fascist and pro-Allied sentiments into a monolithically antipopular and antinational scheme, as pro-Peronist authors have done. The motives of antiFascists were varied, and their goals, especially those for the home front, were more diverse than many historians have recognized. Apart from helping Spanish Republicans and, later, the Allies, anti-Fascist women sought to strengthen democracy at home, which had been assaulted by fraudulently elected governments, the military, and the Nationalists during these years. The story of women’s grassroots efforts thus adds complexity to existing treatments of politics in the 1930s and 1940s. It again shows that Jewish women fit into larger movements and engaged the nation.

Conclusion The insertion of Jewish women changes the landscape of Argentine, Jewish, and women’s history. It adds nuance and texture to the study of the colonies, Zionism, Sephardim, the Communist Party, and the anti-Fascist struggle. It provides a more rounded portrait of Argentine Jews, for female perceptions and experiences were not necessarily the same as those of the men on whom the histories have been based. Putting women at the center alters the historical terrain of the colonies from one that focuses on relations with the JCA to one of education, the daily routine, and philanthropy. Teacher training provides a useful window through which to view the incorporation of Jews into the Argentine milieu and liberal project. That Jewish women had the political influence needed to secure teaching positions indicates there was more pluralism in Argentina than many might have thought. The controversy in Entre Ríos shows that Jewish and other Argentine women entered the public arena not just through feminism, unions, and Peronism, but through the highly visible task of educating the young. Through their institutional networks women helped fill in the landscape of rural life, securing spaces for themselves and the community, providing aid for the needy, and enhancing local services. Women’s groups negotiated with and contested male leaders, demonstrating that male-dominated harmony between the sexes did not always prevail in the agricultural settlements. Zionism expanded the horizons of women of all the Jewish collectivities in different ways. It acquainted homemakers with the possibility of expanded roles outside the household, through organizational activity, travel, and identification with Israeli women. Through Zionist activity, Mediterranean women changed the landscape of their communities by breaking down the walls that separated them to forge a larger Sephardic identity. Their participation in the 179 Changing the Landscape

Jewish national cause and synagogue-based charities shows that they were more involved in communal matters than many have thought, and this realization may prompt reevaluation of the degree of male activity. Ashkenazic Jewish women were leading participants in the Communist Party and the Junta de la Victoria. The rich texture of their involvement suggests a new historical terrain, one that takes account of the vitality of Communism at the grassroots level and the broad appeal of democratic sentiments. Historians cannot simply reduce these phenomena to a static vision of anti-Nationalist activity dictated by Moscow, the elite, or the United States. Thus, the insertion of Jewish women contests hegemonic narratives. Putting Jewish women at the center also contributes to the study of ethnicity. Ethnic groups are not undifferentiated wholes; gender, class, and place of origin divide them. Gender norms circumscribed the lives of Jewish women, who sometimes contested the men of their communities. As noted in the discussions of beneficence, the Communist Party, and the Junta de la Victoria, there was a class hierarchy among Jews. The categories of Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and central Europeans separated Argentine Jews, and these groupings were further split. Yet the weakening of particularistic identities in favor of a Pan-Sephardic one demonstrates that ethnicity is protean and malleable. Ethnic groups consist of more than individuals affiliated with communal institutions. Only a portion of the women depicted here belonged to such organizations. Nevertheless, all were Jews, and all had a rich history deserving of attention. The case of Argentine-Jewish women shows that ethnic groups are not hermetically sealed. The former enjoyed political contacts and government recognition, and as teachers, union members, leftists, and opponents of Fascism they tried to construct a more democratic and pluralistic Argentina. They accompanied other Argentines in these struggles. Jewish and non-Jewish women entered intellectual, professional, and political life through teaching. The similarity between their beneficent societies and Catholic ones further indicates that Jewish women were not exceptional. Jewish women did not have to choose between Jewish and other identities. Instead they formed multifaceted identities with gender, ethnic, national, and political components. One cannot reduce Jewish life in Argentina to mere victimhood. Jewish women experienced discrimination, but they fought back, as did the teachers in Entre Ríos in 1944 and the various anti-Fascist groups. More importantly, this article has shown that Jewish women engaged in a myriad of activities. Their lives consisted of far more than experiences with prejudice.

180 Sandra McGee Deutsch

Acknowledgments I thank Dora Barrancos, Andrés Bisso, James Cane, Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Rosa Faingold de Villagra, Adela Harispuru, Jeffrey Lesser, Daniel Lvovich, Margaret Power, Raanan Rein, Mina Ruetter, Kathleen Staudt, and Horacio Tarcus for offering materials and ideas that proved useful in this article.

Notes 1. On recovering voices see Aurora Levins Morales, Medicine Stories: History, Culture and the Politics of Integrity (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1998), 26. The only works focusing on the history of Argentine-Jewish women are Myriam Escliar, Mujeres en la literatura y la vida judeoargentina (Buenos Aires: Milá, 1996); Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Women: The Forgotten Half of Argentine Jewish History,” Shofar 15, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 49–63; Nora Glickman, The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman (New York: Garland, 1999); and Donna J. Guy’s selection in this volume. A third of Escliar’s short book, however, is devoted to literary depictions of these women. Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), also contains historical data on Jewish women. 2. On oral history methodology see John D. French and Daniel James, “Oral History, Identity Formation, and Working-Class Mobilization,” in The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers. From Household and Factory to the Union Hall and Ballot Box, ed. John D. French and Daniel James (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 298; Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, eds., Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York: Routledge, 1991). 3. Levins Morales, Medicine Stories, 26–27. 4. Although one would normally consider central Europeans to be Ashkenazim, in Argentina the former distinguish themselves from the latter. 5. Simón Weill, “Población israelita en la República Argentina,” in Estudios sobre las comunidades judía y francesa en Argentina. Los escritos de Simón Weill, ed. Alberto Kleiner (Buenos Aires: Libreros y Editores del Poligono SRL, 1983), 82. On Jewish immigration to Argentina see, for example, Haim Avni, Argentina & the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration, trans. Gila Brand (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991); Victor A. Mirelman, Jewish Buenos Aires, 1890–1930: In Search of an Identity (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1990). 6. Sergio DellaPergola, “Demographic Trends of Latin American Jewry,” in The Jewish Presence in Latin America, ed. Judith Laikin Elkin and Gilbert W. Merkx (Boston: Allan & Unwin, 1987), 92. 7. República Argentina, Dirección Nacional del Servicio Estadístico, Cuarto censo general de la nación (Buenos Aires, 1947), 1:lxii, I; Gino Germani, Política y sociedad en una época de transición: De la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidos, 1962), 179, 188. 181 Changing the Landscape

8. Daniel Fernando Bargman, “Un ámbito para las relaciones interétnicas: Las colonias agrícolas judías en Argentina,” Revista de Antropología 11 (1992): 54–55; Avni, Argentina, 62–63. For firsthand accounts of women’s lives in the colonies, see Raquel Zimerman de Faingold, Memorias (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1987); Hèléne Gutkowski, Rescate de la herencia cultural. Vidas . . . en las colonias (Buenos Aires: Editorial Contexto, 1991); Haim Avni and Leonardo Senkman, eds., Del campo al campo: Colonos de Argentina en Israel (Buenos Aires: Milá-AMIA, 1993), esp. 135–46, 193–211. 9. República Argentina, Tercer censo nacional levantado el 1 de junio de 1914 (Buenos Aires: 1916), 3:329. Whether the census takers included literacy in Yiddish was unclear. 10. María Arcuschin, De Ucrania a Basavilbaso (Buenos Aires: Marymar, 1986); Lea Literat-Golombek, Moisés Ville: Crónica de un shtetl argentino (Jerusalem: La Semana Publicaciones, 1982); Tuba Teresa Ropp, Un colono judío en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Instituto Científico Judío, 1971); Osías Shijman, Colonización judía en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Germano Artes Gráficas, 1980); Dora Bortnik de Duchovny, Recuerdos de una maestra de campaña (San Isidro: División Gráfica Profesional del Instituto Dr. Juan S. Fernández, 1980). 11. Luisa Furman de Bendersky, interview with author, Villa Domínguez, Entre Ríos, 1997. 12. Georgette Magassy Dorn, “Sarmiento, the United States, and Public Education,” in Sarmiento and His Argentina, ed. Joseph T. Criscenti (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1993), 77–89; Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Marifran Carlson, Feminismo! The Women’s Movement in Argentina from Its Beginnings to Evita Perón (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1986), 63–79. 13. Sandra McGee Deutsch, Counterrevolution in Argentina, 1890–1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 34, 74–75, 78–79. 14. On this incident see Furman de Bendersky, interview; Olga Kipen, interview with author, Basavilbaso, Entre Ríos, 1997; U.S. Department of State, “The Fascist-Totalitarian Character of the Present Argentine Regime,” Oct. 1944, 835.00/6–1848, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; La acción (Paraná), September 5, 1944, n.p. 15. Carlson, Feminismo; Asunción Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Marysa Navarro, “Hidden, Silent, and Anonymous: Women Workers in the Argentine Trade Union Movement,” in The World of Women’s Trade Unionism: Comparative Historical Essays, ed. Norbert C. Soldon (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 167–86; Estela dos Santos, Las mujeres peronistas (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1983); Susana Bianchi and Norma Sanchis, El partido peronista femenino. Primera parte (1949/1955) (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latin, 1988); Mirta Zaida Lobato, “Mujeres obreras, protesta y acción gremial en la Argentina: Los casos de la industria frigorífica y textil de Berisso,” in Historia y género, ed. Dora Barrancos (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1993), 65–97. 16. Literat-Golombek, Moisés Ville, 44. 182 Sandra McGee Deutsch

17. On these school groups, see Rosa Gabis archive, Archivo IWO, Buenos Aires; Furman de Bendersky, interview. 18. Libro de Actas, Sociedad de Damas Auxiliares al Hospital Clara, acta 3 (January 24, 1928), SSJ 1 Hospital, Museo Las Colonias, Villa Domínguez, Entre Ríos; Libro de Actas, Sociedad de Damas de Beneficencia, actas 44 (August 24, 1926), 48 (September 2, 1926), 50 (September 5, 1926), Archivo de la Asociación Israelita de Basavilbaso, Entre Ríos. Also see Celia Gladys López de Borche, Cooperativismo y cultura: Historia de Villa Domínguez 1890–1940, 2nd ed. (Concepción de Uruguay: Tall. Gráf. “El Pensador,” 1985), 77. 19. Libro de Actas, Sociedad de Damas, actas 4 (November 18, 1923), 6 (December 29, 1923), 27 (December 14, 1925), 29 (January 13, 1926), 30 (January 28, 1926), 32 (February 7, 1926), 34 (March 4, 1926); Mundo Israelita, March 16, 1935, 3. Unless otherwise stated, all Argentine periodicals are from Buenos Aires. 20. One exception is López de Borche, Cooperativismo. 21. OSFA, “Informe de la Organización Sionista Femenina W. I. Z. O., años 1929–1931,” n.d., Box 149, Archivo IWO. 22. Revista WIZO 34–35 (November–Decmber 1938): 5. 23. Vivencias 24 (November 1996): 5. 24. Revista WIZO 49 (June 1941): 3, and 63 (April 1945): 1. 25. Ibid., 31 (July 1938): 17–18. 26. Amalia de Polak, interview with author, Buenos Aires, 1997. 27. La Luz, March 13, 1931, 3; Victor A. Mirelman, “Early Zionist Activities among Sephardim in Argentina,” American Jewish Archives 34, no. 2 (November 1982): 190–205. The revisionist view is found in Adriana Brodsky, “The Contours of Identity: Sephardic Jews and the Construction of Jewish Communities in Argentina, 1880 to the Present” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2004). 28. Israel, November 8, 1946, 10; Alberto G. Kohn Loncarica, Norma Isabel Sánchez, and Abel Luis Agüero, “La contribución de las primeras médicas argentinas a la enseñanza universitaria,” Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina 228, no. 2 (1998): 42. 29. The Ashkenazic women’s group initially arose in 1892, faded into obscurity, and revived in 1908. On its origins see Lázaro Schallman, “Las primeras agrupaciones de mujeres judías en la Argentina,” Revista OSFA 306 (December 1972): 37; Mundo Israelita, May 29, 1923, 4. 30. Israel, September 23 and 30, 1927, n.p. 31. Ibid., March 1918, 280. 32. Ibid., 286. 33. Ibid., April 19 and 26, 1928, 48. 34. La Luz, May 28, 1937, 220–21. 35. Julieta Camji, phone interview with author, 2001. 36. Israel, June 16, 1944, 20, and October 25, 1946, 9; La Luz, November 25, 1955, 333; Grinberg to Levy, July 21, 1955, WIZO collection, F49/19, Central Zionist Archive (CZA), Jerusalem; Revista OSFA 155 (May 1954): 11. 37. Bruria Elnecavé, Crisol de vivencias judías (Buenos Aires: Ediciones “La Luz,” 1994), 66–68, 97–98; Revista OSFA 106 (December 1949–January 1950): n.p. 183 Changing the Landscape

38. Judith Cohen de Isaharoff, interview, 1992, no. 182, Archivo de la Palabra, Centro Marc Turkoff, AMIA, Buenos Aires, 6–8, 10; La Luz, March 22, 1940, 142; Israel, August 16, 1946, 15; Ibid., December 13, 1946, 4; Ibid., February 7, 1947, 18. 39. Nissensohn to Hauser Zeissler, September 24, 1952, F49/12, and Hauser Zeissler to Consejo, December 31, 1952, F49/12, CZA; Chola Tawil de Ini, interview with author, Buenos Aires, 1998; Israel, May 31, 1948, 6–7, 21; Ibid., June 25, 1948, 18; Ibid., November 5, 1948, 13; Ibid., June 17, 1949, 18; Ibid., September 30, 1951, 31; Ibid., May 2, 1952, 9. 40. Israel, February 11, 1944, 13; Ibid., April 28, 1944, 12–13, quote on 12; Ibid., May 25, 1945, 11. 41. This is reminiscent of the manner in which other immigrant groups, both in Argentina and elsewhere, began to identify with their former homeland, rather than their region of origin, only when they settled in a new country. See Arnd Schneider, “Organizing Ethnicity: Three Episodes in the Politics of Italian Associations in Argentina, 1947–1989,” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 25, no. 50 (2000): 199. Again, it shows Jews were not exceptional. 42. Politically conservative and religious Jews regarded ICUF with suspicion, yet its institutions were represented in Jewish umbrella organizations until 1952. See Lawrence Bell, “Bitter Conquest: Zionists against Progressive Jews and the Making of Post-War Jewish Politics in Argentina,” Jewish History 17 (2003): 285–308. 43. Leike Kogan, “Achievements and Future of Jewish Women in Argentina” [Yiddish], Revista ICUF 101–2 (October–November 1951): 50–54; Gregorio Lerner, interview, 1986, 41, Archivo de la Palabra; Di idische froi 20–21 (March–June 1956): 1, and 25 (June–August 1957): 1–2, 10. 44. La internacional, January 9–10, 1922, 3–4; Ibid., February 3, 1924, 4; Ibid., January 17, 1925, 5; Fanny Edelman, Banderas, pasiones, camaradas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Dirple, 1996), 98; Mina Ruetter, interview with author, Buenos Aires, 2000; Organización Popular Contra el Antisemitismo, Estatutos, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1938), lists a female officer; Berta Baumkoler, La lucha es vida (Buenos Aires: Carlos A. Firpo, 2000), 27, 52, 60; James Cane, personal communication; Navarro, “Hidden.” 45. Derechos del hombre, 2nd period, 1, no. 1 (November 1945): 2, 8; Baumkoler, La lucha, 20; Ruetter, interview; La voz argentina contra la barbarie (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Alerta, 1942), 12. 46. On the lack of research on the Communist Party see Jorge Cernadas, Roberto Pittaluga, and Horacio Tarcus, “La historiografía sobre el Partido Comunista de la Argentina. Un estado de la cuestión,” El Rodaballo 4, no. 8 (Fall/Winter 1998): 31–40. Exceptions to this rule are Silvia Schenkolewski-Kroll, “El Partido Comunista en la Argentina ante Moscú: Deberes y realidades, 1930–1941,” E.I.A.L. 10 (1999): 91–107; Silvia Schenkolewski-Kroll, “Los judíos comunistas de Argentina de grupo idiomático a la emigración a Biribidian (1920–1937), en los archivos de Moscú” (paper presented at the Latin American Jewish Studies Association meeting, Princeton, NJ, March 1999). Scholars have also begun to work on leftist cultural circles in the 1930s and 1940s, in which 184 Sandra McGee Deutsch

Communists participated. See James Cane, “‘Unity for the Defense of Culture’: The AIAPE and the Cultural Politics of Argentine Antifascism, 1935–1943,” Hispanic American Historical Review 77, no. 3 (August 1997): 443–82; Sylvia Saítta, “Entre la cultura y la política: Los escritores de izquierda,” in Nueva historia argentina. Vol. 7: Crisis económica, avance del estado e incertidumbre política (1930–1943), ed. Alejandro Cattaruzza (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2001), 383–428; María Cristina Mateu, “La integración de los grupos idiomáticos en la cultura obrera argentina, a través de la política del Partido Comunista en la década del ’20” (paper presented at the Congreso de las Colectividades, IDES, Buenos Aires, October 2000). On the Socialist Party after 1930, see Hernán Camarero and Carlos Miguel Herrera, eds., El Partido Socialista en Argentina: Sociedad, política e ideas a través de un siglo (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005); Andrés Bisso, Acción Argentina: Un antifascismo nacional en tiempos de guerra mundial (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005); Marcela García Sebastiani, “The Other Side of Peronist Argentina: Radicals and Socialists in the Political Opposition to Perón (1946–1955),” Journal of Latin American Studies 35, no. 2 (May 2003): 311–39. 47. Pro-Peronist critiques of the Communist Party include Juan José Hernández Arregui, La formación de la consciencia nacional (1930–1960) (Buenos Aires: Hachea, 1960); Jorge Abelardo Ramos, Breve historia de las izquierdas en la Argentina, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1960), and Historia del Stalinismo en la Argentina, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Mar Dulce, 1969). On such authors see Michael Goebel, “Marxism and the Revision of Argentine History in the 1960s,” E.I.A.L. 17, no. 1 (January–June 2006): 161–84. 48. As do Cane, “Unity”; Bisso, Acción; and Camerero and Herrera, El partido. 49. Andrés Bisso, “La apelación antifascista y su recepción en la práctica política de la Unión Democrática,” Políticas de la Memoria 3 (October 2000): 22–23; Mujeres en la ayuda (1942): 50. 50. Ester and Salo Koval, interview with author, Buenos Aires, 1998; Edelman, Banderas, 42–49, 52–76; Ayuda al pueblo español, June 21, 1941, 7; Mika Etchebéhère, Mi guerra de España (Barcelona: Plaza y Janis Editores, 1976). Also see Dora Schwartzstein, Entre Franco y Perón: Memoria e identidad del exilio republicano español en Argentina (Barcelona: Crítica, 2001); Mónica Quijada, Aires de república, aires de cruzada: La guerra civil española en Argentina (Barcelona: Sendai Ediciones, 1991). 51. La Hora, August 22, 1941, 4; María Rosa Oliver, Mi fe es el hombre (Buenos Aires: Ediciones C. Lohle, 1981), 41–45; María Rosa Oliver, interview, May 13, 1971, 53, Proyecto de Historia Oral del Instituto Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires; Lily Sosa de Newton, Diccionario biográfico de mujeres argentinas, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1980), 433. 52. Mujeres en la ayuda, 11–13, 47–48, 62–64; Kogan, “Achievements,” 50–54. 53. Ana Monín, interview with author, San Isidro, Buenos Aires, 1997. 54. On this last task, see La Hora, April 15, 1942, 5. 55. Junta de la Victoria, Estatutos (Buenos Aires, n.p., n.d.), 3. 56. Mujeres en la ayuda, 8. 57. La Hora, May 5, 1943, 5. 185 Changing the Landscape

58. Ana Rosa Schlieper de Martínez Guerrero to President Pedro P. Ramírez, June 30, 1943, Junta de la Victoria file, Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas en la Argentina, Buenos Aires. 59. Quoted in La Hora, May 5, 1943, 5. 60. Crisol, December 16, 1941, 3. 61. La Hora, April 24, 1942, 8; Ibid., December 6, 1942, 6; Ibid., December 10, 1942, 6; Ibid., December 31, 1942, 5; Ibid., February 11, 1943, 5; Ibid., March 21, 1943, 6. 62. Mujeres argentinas, August 7, 1946, 7. 63. La Hora, December 5, 1942, 5; Ibid., December 27, 1942, 5; Edelman, Banderas, 89; Berta Singerman, Mis dos vidas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Tres Tiempos, 1981), 112–14. Other groups could not celebrate the liberation of Paris, either. See Arnd Schneider, Futures Lost: Nostalgia and Identity among Italian Immigrants in Argentina (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), 141. 64. Raanan Rein, The Franco-Perón Alliance: Relations between Spain and Argentina, 1946–1955, trans. Martha Grenzeback (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 150, 152, 286n39; Berta Perelstein de Braslavsky, interview with author, Buenos Aires, 2000; Mujeres argentinas, August 9, 1946, 7; La Hora, November 15, 1945, 6; Ibid., November 22, 1945, 1; Ibid., December 12, 1945, 6; Ibid., December 16, 1945, 3; Ibid., December 19, 1945, 3; Ibid., December 20, 1945, 1; Ibid., April 4, 1946, 6. 65. The term refers to inhabitants of India who fought in the British army when it was a colony. Some Argentines have used this word to signify lackeys of imperialism. 66. See, for example, Ramos, Breve historia, 2:136; Hernández Arregui, La formación, 139–41. 67. The recent works on anti-Fascism are Bisso, Acción; Jorge Nallim, “The Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1946” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2002); Cane, “Unity.”

186 Sandra McGee Deutsch

chapter nine

Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages in Buenos Aires, 1918–1955 !

donna j. guy

B

efore World War I, despite the presence of a lively and vigorous Jewish community in Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, no Jewish institutions existed to care for orphaned, abandoned, or needy Jewish children. A 1918 study published by renowned Argentine public health physician Emilio R. Coni (1854–1928) on the state of welfare services in Buenos Aires listed more than one hundred institutions, public and private, to help single mothers and poor or orphaned children. Almost all of them received municipal subsidies, and some of them also received national subventions as well. When it came to the Jewish community (which Coni identified as the colectivdad rusa—the Russian community) he noted that it consisted of 28,436 persons and that within the city of Buenos Aires they were the thirdlargest immigrant group, although they operated no orphanages.1 Among the Jewish organizations sponsored by the immigrant community, Coni noted that Bikur Joilim, a Jewish workers’ mutual association, was the oldest, having been founded in the late nineteenth century, and had over two thousand members. Other groups were more religious and educational in nature, such as Talmud Torah, which subsidized the religious instruction of poor students, and the Congregación Israelita Argentina. The 187

latter had been founded in 1868 to build a synagogue in the city. In 1900 the Ezrah Society was founded to provide aid to the poorer members of the community, as well as to collect funds to build a Jewish hospital.2 Most literature on the Jewish community in Argentina has dealt with political topics focusing on men. This paper deals with two major groups of Jewish philanthropic women who labored to provide housing, religious instruction, and secular education for the orphans and poor children in their community, as well as for refugee Jewish orphans during the two world wars. This topic not only expands our understanding of how women participated in activities related to the Jewish community, it also places Jewish women among the many groups of female philanthropists who forged links with the government though the receipt of subsidies and who helped build the initial edifice of the welfare state. Furthermore, the performance of philanthropy not only helped the community, it also helped women advance their status at a time when there were few opportunities for professional women. In the case of Jewish women, however, the community was less willing than others to promote their status. The first group of Jewish female philanthropists eventually became known as the Sociedad de Damas Israelitas de Beneficencia (Society of Israelite Beneficent Women). They operated the girls’ orphanage, the Asilo Argentino de Huérfanas Israelitas. The second, the Idischer Frauenhilfsver­ ein, founded the Hogar Infantil Israelita as a day care center and kindergarten for poor Jewish children. The first group began operations in 1908 and continued into the 1950s. The second group opened its home in 1931 in the midst of the depression and operated facilities well into the 1980s. These were not the only Jewish child welfare organizations, but they represent some of the largest and most important institutions principally operated by women. The women who operated the asilo and the hogar are also interesting because they chose different paths during the years of Juan Perón’s first presidency (1946–1955); one offered services that competed with those offered by Eva Perón, while the other openly courted Peronist support. Despite their reactions to Peronism, both reached their moments of greatest expansion between 1945 and 1955, a fact that sheds new light on Peronism and the Jewish community. Emilio Coni’s 1918 report carefully cataloged child welfare organizations as well as those that provided health and welfare services for adults in the city of Buenos Aires. Among other Jewish organizations mentioned by Coni, several women’s groups showed indications that they were following the path already established by Catholic women’s groups that provided services 188 Donna J. Guy

to needy pregnant women and their children. The Aid Society of Israelite Women (Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas), an association within the Congregación Israelita Argentina, in 1908 formed to help Jewish childbearing women and newborn children. Initially they limited their program to providing medical help, clothing, and food. In 1912 their goals were also adopted by another group called the Israelite Female Beneficence Society (Sociedad Israelita Femenina de Beneficencia) who lent small amounts of money to the poor as well as helped pregnant women. The two groups may in fact have been the same group, as Coni noted that the Society of Israelite Women contemplated the establishment of an “asilo infantil,” or children’s home. According to a fragment of a magazine article published in a Yiddish version of the magazine Caras y caretas, the idea of a Jewish orphanage resulted from the 1915 appearance in Buenos Aires of a Jewish widow from the Carlos Casares colony who could no longer care for the various orphans in her charge. She called upon Clara de Banadir to find space in an orphanage for the children. Señora de Banadir became the first president of the Sociedad Israelita Protectora de la Infancia, a short-lived organization. That year they held a fund-raising event at the theater of Max Glücksmann, the future patron of the Asilo Argentino de Huérfanas Israelitas.3 The first Jewish orphanage for boys and girls opened in 1918 as an adjunct to a nursing home. The following year the Jewish girls’ orphanage opened and became the special responsibility of the Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas, which in 1927 renamed itself the Sociedad de Beneficencia Damas Israelitas. Four distinguished male members of the Congregación Israelita, specifically Hermann Goldenberg, president of Congregación Israelita, Gustavo Weil, Max Glücksmann, and S. Krämer, helped the women search for a suitable property. Goldenberg purchased the building at auction for the women, and Weil contributed 1,000 pesos in his wife’s name. President Hipólito Yrigoyen of Argentina sent his personal representative to the opening ceremony on December 23, 1919. The intendant (mayor) of Buenos Aires then attended the celebration honoring the home’s first anniversary, and Argentine president Marcelo T. de Alvear appeared at the inauguration of a new building constructed specifically for the asylum on Arévalo Street in March 1927. It marked the first time an Argentine president attended personally an official function of the Jewish community.4 The orphanage filled an important need within the community, and shortly after opening, everyone realized that the dormitory space was too small. In response to this problem the Chevra Keducha Ashkenazi Society donated 5,000 pesos to help the group, and the Buenos Aires Municipal 189 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

Council offered a 5,000-peso subsidy to deal with the large number of children seeking entry. By 1923, when it became evident that the impact of post–World War I immigration to Argentina meant that even the expanded orphanage facilities were too small, the male leaders at the Congregación Israelita once again offered to help the orphanage by lending the women’s group 21,973.06 pesos without interest to construct a new building on land purchased in the Palermo neighborhood. That same year the Argentine government, in response to the women’s requests, began to subsidize the orphanage initially with an annual stipend of 1,800 pesos, one that eventually reached 10,000 pesos.5 Meanwhile the Jewish damas raised money for the orphanage by or­­­­gan­­izing raffles, having dances and kermesses (fashionable fairs where money was raised through raffles, races, etc.), asking for donations from the Jewish communities of the interior, and receiving special donations from the wealthier members of the congregation. A frequent contributor in the early years was the pioneer cinematographer Max Glücksmann, who also often held special benefit performances in his movie theater the Grand Splendid. His wife, Rebecca, became fourth president of the sociedad in 1914, replacing señora Francisca R. de Krämer, whose husband helped select the site for the first orphanage. Rebecca R. de Glücksmann remained president until 1954, providing unwavering assistance to the home.6 Her lengthy administration, however, led to criticisms within the Jewish community that a select group of rich members controlled the orphanage for their own status satisfaction. This meant that Buenos Aires collections and donations beyond the circle of founders and those who attended the parties at the fancy hotels rarely met either needs or expectations, and the damas had to hire a man to travel to the interior to collect money from the Jewish communities scattered throughout Argentina.7 However, well into the 1950s no one stepped up to oppose señora de Glücksmann, and she continued to run the organization with the unpaid labor of hundreds of women and men. Despite the elitist accusations lodged against the board of the orphanage, the women’s group contributed to the welfare of the Jewish community in many ways. They adopted as their motto and repeated in each report: No hacemos beneficencia por caridad, sino por solidaridad humana. De manera que el menesteroso de hoy, mediante nuestra ayuda en un momento crítico de su existencia, sea mañana, en circunstancias propicias, protector de otros necesitados. Como consecuencia 190 Donna J. Guy

de estos principios, nadie debe implorer ayuda si realmente no la precisa, para no degenerar y hacer la caridad un vicio. [We engage in welfare work not for charity, but for human solidarity. Poor people who are helped by us in their moment of need tomorrow will be able to aid others. And, as a consequence of these principles, no one should ask for aid if they don’t really need it, so that they do not end up making charity a vice.] The damas followed this principle when they shared the expenses of sewing machines and small business loans to women with the Ezrah Society. Besides providing layettes for poor pregnant women, they also assisted Jewish immigrants of both sexes who arrived from Europe during and after World War I. Among these refugees, thirty female Ukrainian orphans arrived in Buenos Aires in 1926. Their presence at the orphanage made the damas realize that Buenos Aires could be a haven for refugees, and to prepare for this, they requested double the annual contribution of each patron and planned to construct a new wing at their property on Curupaligüe Street.8 In 1921 the Sociedad de Protección a los Inmigrantes Israelitas invited the women running the orphanage to collaborate and help immigrant women obtain jobs. To that end, they donated sewing machines for a workshop in downtown Buenos Aires. The damas also received an invitation to ally themselves with several Jewish philanthropies, a plan intended to rationalize Jewish charity, promote greater efficiency, and end the need for each group to support a variety of social events and campaigns. Instead the umbrella organization planned to charge a single membership quota. The damas opposed closer association with the various groups for several reasons. First of all, they doubted whether a system of dues collection would yield adequate income for all Jewish philanthropic endeavors. Second, they argued that they were special because only the woman who directed the orphanage received compensation—the other employees served voluntarily. Finally they resisted joining a group that principally identified itself with the Ashkenazi community. Even though most of the members of the Congregación Israelita were of Russian origin, the orphanage accepted children regardless of their links to Ashkenazi or Sephardic groups. They also relied on Sephardic groups to promote special activities to support their institution. And finally, they believed that their social agenda offered a form of sociability across ethnicities that would be destroyed by such an alliance, and no other community in Argentina relied on such an 191 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

umbrella group or philanthropy. The Jewish damas recognized the complex ethnic character of Jewish immigration and felt they had a particular obligation to the entire group.9 In this way the Jewish community, led by prominent women, joined other Argentine groups in the battle against infant mortality and child abandonment. Since 1823 the Sociedad de Beneficencia de la Capital (Beneficent Society of the Capital, created by the Argentine liberal Bernardino Rivadavia) operated the orphanages and girls’ schools confiscated from the Catholic Church by officials in Buenos Aires. Supposedly disconnected from the Catholic Church, the elite women’s group in fact turned to nuns in the 1880s to staff their orphanages and hospitals. For the Jewish community of Buenos Aires, the risks of relying on the Sociedad de Beneficencia–controlled orphanages were high because all in­­fants without proof of baptism were baptized and thus lost to the Jewish community. A 1914 article in the publication of the Ezrah Society clearly noted this problem: Our collectivity, whose advancement can be tracked year by year and which already has resulted in mutual associations . . . still completely lacks an asylum that collects and cares for our orphaned or abandoned children. Perhaps we justify this omission because there are already many asylums in the country. But we must keep in mind that these charitable institutions pose a grave risk for the continued independence of certain religious traditions because far from being lay associations, on the contrary, they are eminently Catholic, run by nuns who are strongly influenced by a proselytizing mission. And already there have been cases of baptized Israelite children.10 Equally disturbing to the Jewish community, if mothers had to choose between baptism and misery that could lead to death, maternal instinct to keep their babies alive led them to permit baptism. Before the Jewish orphanages opened, orphanages operated by the Spanish community took in Jewish orphans and promised not to baptize them. An examination of the records of the Patronato Español, the principal girls’ orphanage, offers neither an explanation nor an indication of when and how many Jewish orphans entered, although the woman in charge of the archives, señora de Insogna, believes that the Spanish damas observed the pretext that all Jewish orphans came from Sephardic families and were 192 Donna J. Guy

therefore eligible to enter because they had once been Spanish. Other explanations offered included the belief that some Spanish orphanages were organized by Republicans and were less influenced by the Catholic Church. No evidence has been located to verify either hypothesis. As the number of Spanish orphans began to increase, it became clear that there would be limited space for so-called Sephardic orphans.11 In 1926 the plight of Jewish children in Catholic orphanages still preoccupied the Jewish community. Members of the board of the boys’ orphanage met with Rabbi Men on July 18 of that year to discuss the situation. They estimated that approximately three hundred Jewish children lived in Catholic orphanages, but to rescue them would be very difficult both politically and financially. The financial considerations related to the fact that any “family” member who retrieved a child from an orphanage could be asked to pay for each child’s room and board at 15 pesos per month for his or her entire stay. Evidently the Jewish community believed that this fee would be imposed on them as well, although records from the Sociedad de Beneficence acknowledge that few families actually paid the lodging and boarding costs. Nevertheless, the Jewish orphanages had barely enough money to sustain the children in their care, let alone rescue others.12 The Jewish damas, cognizant that Jewish children entered state orphanages, used this reality to spur contributions. In 1931 they published an advertisement to encourage members of the community to become patrons of the girls’ orphanage by arguing that “the Girls’ Orphanages save hundreds of souls for Judaism, because without its help they would be condemned to conversion or at least to a loss of familiarity of Judaism [la desjudaización].”13 For the Jewish women charity work offered several attractions. First of all their good deeds acknowledged and reaffirmed their understanding of Jewish solidarity in Buenos Aires. Secondly, women often organized programs along with their husbands, and their presence as married couples further reinforced their status within the community. Finally they created a social space within the Jewish community that paralleled that of the Catholic Sociedad de Beneficencia, whose name they adopted in 1927, and the Patronato de la Infancia, another charity organized by the city of Buenos Aires in 1890 and operated by men with a group of equally elite women supporting them. These groups initiated yearly fund-raisers in neighborhoods. The women displayed poor children collecting contributions and held special elegant occasions that served as fund-raisers. Jewish women who copied these groups legitimated their presence in some of the most elite social spaces in the city, particularly the Plaza Hotel and the Alvear Palace 193 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

Hotel. The fact that these women had no problems sponsoring activities at elegant hotels indicated that Buenos Aires high society accepted this Jewish women’s group at a time when anti-Semitism was increasingly visible.14 While the Jewish damas patterned their name and social activities on the Catholic model, their attitude toward their charges, as well as their willingness to acknowledge their husbands’ roles in their activities, set them apart. Historically the Catholic damas of the Sociedad de Beneficencia refused to share power and authority with anyone. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century they vigorously opposed efforts to remove female education and the medical care of poor women from their responsibility. Their disputes with male public health physicians became notorious, and in the 1930s and 1940s they struggled against public officials who wanted to incorporate the sociedad’s institutions into the nascent welfare system.15 They rarely acknowledged any role played by their husbands and only relied on the recommendations of male legal counsel and powerful politicians when necessary. If friends or family left property or money to the sociedad, the donations were never discussed in terms of kin relationships. These women could afford to publicly ignore their husbands because their married last names, their apellidos, automatically identified them with their often powerful male relatives, linking them to the most socially, politically identifiable individuals in the country. The Jewish damas, on the other hand, were part of a group officially separated from the Argentine aristocracy by religion and professions. Therefore the women needed more than apellidos—they needed the physical and often the financial support of their spouses to retain their support within the Jewish community. Equally important, the damas of the Sociedad de Beneficencia de la Capi­­­­­ tal and those in the Patronato de la Infancia never felt a close personal bond with their charges. A wide class gulf always separated the abandoned and orphaned children from their guardians. Indeed, these women refused to give infants last names, thereby relying on foster parents to permit their wards to adopt their last names. The rest had to make do with matriculation numbers or, upon leaving the orphanages, adopting the last name of exposito, or “foundling,” to define their social standing. When they spent time with the children, it was usually to mark official holidays or to make a public spectacle of charity.16 In contrast, the Jewish damas often celebrated the religious holidays at the orphanages with their families and charges. They organized parties attended by some of the most respected members of the Jewish community and their families. The damas encouraged members of the Jewish 194 Donna J. Guy

community to celebrate their own family events such as a bar mitzvah by offering hot chocolate to the orphans. The women insisted that the orphans address them informally, using tu rather than the impersonal third-person form usted of Spanish. They also refused to send their wards into foster care. This meant that all the girls who entered as foundlings or orphans stayed until the age of majority—twenty-two—or until they married. In 1927 the first female orphan to get married received the blessings of the community. In celebration of the wedding the temple waived all fees, and Chief Rabbi Samuel Halphon married Dora Verona and her husband in a ceremony attended by many people from the Jewish community. A luncheon and reception followed the wedding, and the bride received a complete trousseau, a gift from each woman on the damas’ commission, and Gustavo Glaser gave furniture as a gift. Donations for the newlyweds came in from all over Argentina. As the damas put it, “In a word, the Israelite collectivity married off an orphan in the same way they would have done for a daughter.”17 Some girls stayed on because there was simply no other place for them. The Ukrainian orphans grew up and some still lived at the orphanage at the age of twenty-five. In the midst of the depression there was neither work nor lodging for these women, yet Mundo israelita urged the damas to have the twenty women leave and not live together outside the institution so that they could learn the meaning of independence. The fates of these women were not addressed in annual reports, but they probably stayed on as employees, which often occurred. Education consisted of religious and practical courses as well as the basic curriculum up to the sixth grade as required by Argentine laws. The girls learned Hebrew and Yiddish and each year had to pass public examinations. While the local newspapers rarely mentioned the quality of education male orphans received, the Jewish public remained extremely concerned that the girls be cognizant not only of language and Bible stories, but also Jewish spirituality. Unlike the boys, they did not have a bar mitzvah (in the case of the orphans these were often conducted in mass groups of twenty or so orphans followed by a big party), and since religious identity was passed on through mothers, the girls’ education became a public preoccupation. In all likelihood the orphan girls ended up much more aware of ritual and religious matters than those brought up in private homes where public authorities did not investigate the quality of religious education.18 This did not mean, however, that the girls were raised with solely middleclass identities. Instead they learned sewing just like the girls raised by the 195 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

Sociedad de Beneficencia, as well as the waifs rounded up by the police and sent to the Women’s Correctional Facility. Later the older girls also went to secretarial and nursing schools. By 1943, within the asylum, girls attended classes from kindergarten to grade six and also learned nursing, decorative arts, secretarial, and bookkeeping skills.19 The outbreak of World War II presented new challenges for the Jewish damas. As refugees began to arrive, the damas believed they would have to expand their facilities even more. In 1944, for example, the Jewish community unsuccessfully lobbied to bring in one thousand refugee children, but only sixty-five arrived due to Argentine restrictions. Then in 1947, members of the Jewish community approached the Peronist minister of foreign relations to admit one thousand child refugees, again in vain. This time, the Peronist government supported the request but never admitted the children. For the damas, their mission to provide lodging for these refugees encouraged them to believe that there would always be a need for their orphanage.20 In addition to caring for orphans, the damas bought small businesses for adults, obtained sewing machines and other work implements as well as jobs, and paid the rent for those who could not. They had a social worker, Aída Cherniak, and two women, Sofía S. de Reinoff and Rosa R. de Goldfarb, who served as inspectors and distributed layettes (ajuares) and clothing for poor women. By that time the damas also welcomed orphans from Buenos Aires, the interior, neighboring countries, and still thought orphans would arrive in droves from Europe. They therefore decided to construct a fifth dormitory and continued their fund-raising activities.21 The 1943 revolution, added to growing demands on the women’s group, according to the traditional historiography of Peronism, should have led to reduced activities on the part of these damas, but the hopes of admitting one thousand child refugees, along with Argentina’s recognition of Israel, meant that relations between Jewish charities and the government were not affected by the government’s intervention in the Sociedad de Beneficencia in 1946. In 1943 the Asilo Israelita de Huérfanas celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, and Mundo israelita devoted an entire page to the gala event. Two years later, the women purchased a rural property in General Belgrano, Province of Córdoba, so that orphaned girls could have summer vacations. The local committee in Córdoba took care of the property. Back in Buenos Aires, the damas began to receive inheritances from the community that had supported them for so long, and they continued to receive a national 196 Donna J. Guy

subsidy as well as occasional donations such as 2,500 pesos from the YPF, the state petroleum monopoly.22 This trajectory continued under Peronism. In the 1950–1951 report of the damas, they mentioned having distributed 27,835 pesos in subsidies to poor Jews, with only 4,560 going to mothers with children. They continued to provide jobs, pay rent for the poor, and provide shoes and clothing. Furthermore, in direct imitation of Eva Perón who had her own charitable organization, the Jewish damas opened up their own hostel for adult women who found themselves in Buenos Aires without lodging. These poor women were also offered adult education religious classes. Clearly the damas did not want Jewish women to enter Peronist homes for transient adult women. Perhaps this also explained why the annual financial report did not include a national subsidy as in past years.23 In any case, the Asilo Argentina de Huérfanas Israelitas survived the war years and was neither interfered with nor taken over by the government. In fact, few philanthropic groups felt the wrath of the Peronist government. Instead, they all faced decreased subsidies as the welfare state proceeded. The history of another group of Jewish philanthropic women in Argen­ tina showed that the experience of the Sociedad de Beneficencia de Damas Israelita was not unique. Although the second group began its efforts to aid children more than a decade later, it, too, became part of the community support offered to poor Jewish children. In the midst of the worldwide depression, in 1931 Yiddish-speaking Jewish women of German origin banded together and founded the Hogar Infantil Israelita (Jewish Infants’ Home) that helped women of newborns or poor women. The home was designed as a temporary place to house young children whose parents were ill or had to work, or one of whom was in the hospital or deceased. The founders—Rosa G. de Gierson, who within several years was named president and, like Rebecca de Glücksmann, served for many years, Ana S. de Gaversky, Tary B. de Svartz, Esther de Fischer, Sofía de Milleritsky, Paulina Goldfarb, and Eva Priluk—planned to admit the children on a case by case method; Esther de Fischer became the first president. The kindergarten received children between the ages of four and six, and they were bussed to school each day. Within one year the home provided day care facilities for seventy children under the age of six, mostly during the day at their establishment in the Flores neighborhood.24 The records of the Hogar Infantil initially recorded all the cases they encountered. Often the petitioners had a letter from some member of the community. The women paid for circumcisions for boys and generally 197 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

took in children of hospitalized parents. They drew the line at unweaned babies until they opened their own infants section in 1934, but they provided health information to immigrant women by calling upon them and speaking Yiddish. They also published pamphlets in Yiddish. The women accepted Jewish children from the Argentine interior to justify the donations they solicited there, and they even gave monthly contributions to the local police home for children.25 Since the children in their care had parents, most stayed at the institution or attended the day care facilities as needed. Thus when these damas were approached by individuals seeking a child to adopt, they quickly noted that they did not deal with such issues. They willingly cared for children in abusive families. In a case that occurred on February 2, 1934, señora Fischer reported to the committee that upon visiting a woman living at Avellaneda 925, and having talked with the mother of several children, señora Fischer determined that the woman suffered from bad health and mistreatment by her husband. Accordingly, señora Fischer urged the group to admit the children.26 Each week the group recounted the impoverished situations of immigrant Jewish families. Like the Sociedad de Beneficencia de Damas Israelitas, the Idischer Frauenhilfsverein raised money through dances at fancy hotels, but more often they held events on the grounds of the hogar.27 In fact, there never seemed to be any accusations of elitism lodged against these women. Perhaps it was due to their association with a noted physician, Dr. Jaime Favelukes. Favelukes represented the Jewish community and championed the use of social workers to help immigrant families at the First Congress of Social Work and Infancy held in 1932. The following year he gave a similar talk to the First National Conference on Social Work. At that time he argued that social workers’ efficacy was limited because they acted as representatives of charity, rather than professionals. To reinforce his ideas concerning immigrant families, ones that included an ability to speak the language of the family as well as understand the living conditions and situations confronting the immigrant poor, Favelukes remarked that he had learned about social work in 1925 while performing medical duties for several Jewish organizations. At that time Favelukes headed the Liga Israelita Argentina Contra la Tuberculosis (Argentine Jewish Anti-Tuberculosis League) where a social workers’ office took shape. Favelukes soon understood the merits of trained specialists, and in 1932, upon becoming the president of the Jewish Hospital, he opened a similar

198 Donna J. Guy

office. With these credentials, his association with the hogar identified the institution as progressive and scientific.28 In 1933 the organization acknowledged the need for an infants’ dormitory, and even before they could add one to the property, they began to hire wet nurses to help mothers “whose husbands have taken up drinking and cannot support the family.” Their reports provide insights into the plight of poor Jews rarely found elsewhere. As far as the children were concerned, they did not live at the hogar permanently, but some stayed until family problems disappeared.29 By 1938 the missions of the women who operated the Hogar Infantil Israelita seemed to be very similar to those who ran the Asilo Argentino de Huérfanas Israelitas. When they were approached regarding possible unification, the Frauenhilfsverein rejected this path. Instead, in 1940 they formalized their ideas and proposed statutes for the institution and defined themselves as an organization of Israelite women who operated a children’s home designed to help indigent parents of preschool children. They planned to create similar institutions throughout the capital city and operate a ward for children under age two.30 By that time the home had moved to a new, larger location and defined its character as a kindergarten with more than ninety children, most of them children of working people. They, too, opened their doors to Sephardic children, although the majority of children were of Ashkenazi origin.31 In 1936 Ana de Gaversky became president of the hogar. The institution cared for 100 to 130 children each day, and they had two buses that transported the children from the center to their homes. At that point they owned no buildings of their own but instead relied on renting from others. They began a building campaign that continued into the 1940s. Eventually they purchased a building. By 1946 the organization was swamped with requests to help children, and they began to contemplate opening another institution.32 To support their activities, the damas of the Hogar Infantil organized collections similar to many Buenos Aires child welfare charities. Each year there was a campaign just before the Jewish New Year to pay for gifts of food, and they relied on bridge tournaments, dances, and an annual dinner. Equally important were individual contributions by donors, which were always mentioned in extensive lists published in the hogar’s annual reports along with many pages of paid advertisements by members of the Jewish community, a tactic also pursued by the Damas de Beneficencia.

199 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

From time to time they also solicited contributions at synagogues during important holy days such as Yom Kippur.33 Between December 1, 1930, and 1967, more than 4,048 children attended the day schools or lived in the dormitories of the Hogar Infantil. Children often attended the day school with their siblings. While the great majority were identified as Argentines because they were born in Buenos Aires, the next most frequent nationality was Polish. Others included Cuban, American, Uruguayan, Brazilian, Greek, Lithuanian, Palestinian, Chilean, German, and Austrian. These last two groups were most notable in the late 1930s. Many of the Argentine children had Syrian parents, indicating the hogar’s commitment to the Sephardic community. By the 1950s many of the parents were second-generation Argentines, indicating that many in the Jewish community had not been able to prosper after their arrival in Buenos Aires.34 During those years, the women who ran the hogar seemed to be on better terms with the Perón government than the damas of the girls’ orphanage. Perhaps this was due to Perón’s willingness, at least rhetorically, to allow the European refugee children into Argentina, as well as his government’s recognition of Israel. As testimony to their support, the women of the hogar for several years ran a page dedicated to Perón’s Second Five-Year Plan (Segundo Plan Quinquenal) in their newsletter. In 1955 they advocated creating a forest in Israel named after Perón by “planting trees as a just homage and expression of the friendship between two nations that are fighting to achieve greatness: Argentina and Israel.”35 The hogar continued all throughout the Peronist era to operate day care services for young children. The comparison of these two institutions reveals important aspects of the history of the Buenos Aires Jewish community. Just as Emilio Coni noted that Jewish women desired to participate in child-focused charities in Buenos Aires, upper-class Jewish women also wanted these activities to validate both their position in the Jewish community as well as the Jewish upper-class presence in the fashionable spaces of Buenos Aires and the interior. Although these women had their critics, they were usually found within the Jewish community itself. This community was further divided by a series of ideological issues as well as by class differences. Despite these criticisms, the Jewish community lauded the women for their wellrun institutions, and Argentine political officials attended the institutions’ important ceremonies. Indeed, one could argue that these women forged linkages of acceptability for the Jewish community with the larger Argentine society that heretofore have been ignored. 200 Donna J. Guy

The demise of these groups had less to do with Peronism and much more to do with restrictions placed on Jewish immigrants, both young and old, in the 1940s. The community had invested time and money to ensure that there would be sufficient space to house all Jewish orphans needing care. The creation of the State of Israel, however, preempted that role for Argentina, and Perón’s recognition of Israel softened the reality that his government would not allow Jews to enter Argentina at will. Thus the number of Jewish orphans needing care diminished rather than expanded, and soon the orphans remaining in Argentina were sent to Israel, along with thousands of other Argentine Jews who joined the Zionist cause. By the 1950s there were simply too few female Jewish orphans to justify the maintenance of the girls’ orphanage. Parts of the orphanage were rented out to Hebrew language schools, and the girls who remained went to Israel or returned to their relatives.36 The elegant edifice housing the Jewish girls’ orphanage was subsequently used by several organizations until sold to a bus company for its head­­quarters, and it still functions in that capacity. A smaller institution, known as the Hogar de Niñas, with no public Jewish identification, took over the orphanage and it was operated by a Jewish-Dutch refugee. It functioned as a home and a school linked to the Sojnut, a Zionist institution, but did not teach religious classes as before. Instead girls learned Hebrew to prepare the children for emigration. Finally, in the 1980s, even those limited functions proved unnecessary, and most of the girls emigrated to Israel when the home closed.37 The dearth of clients forced the Hogar Infantil to become a regular day school with no facilities to house children after school. The days of large institutions with resident facilities had ended, not only in Argentina, but throughout the world. New approaches to orphans included a greater emphasis on foster care and adoption, a legal procedure finally available in Argentina in 1948, although not frequently used due to its cumbersome requirements. And, with changing economic conditions that pushed women into the paid workforce, fewer volunteers offered to staff the homes. Collective memories of the immigrant experience often focus on the personal, rather than the institutional. This is particularly true for the history of child welfare institutions. Neither the women who labored without pay to administer, care for, and educate orphan and poor Jewish children, nor the institutions themselves, have been embedded in the history of the Argentine-Jewish community. The relationship of Peronism to the closure of the Sociedad de Beneficencia and frequent reports of anti-Semitic attacks 201 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

during the 1940s have led to strong accusations of anti-Semitism under the Peronist regime. Recent scholars like Raanan Rein have begun to create a more nuanced perspective by carefully analyzing the complex relationship between Perón and Israel and Peronism and the Jewish community, while others have explored anti-Semitism as an Argentine theme.38 Nevertheless, none have looked at how Jewish women were capable of entering social spaces reserved for Catholic elites, nor how they helped shape community identity through child welfare. These very public groups, even at the height of Argentine anti-Semitism, were never criticized by the dominant community. As these women danced at cocktail parties and kermesses at the Alvear Palace Hotel and invited the community to attend Jewish holidays with them, the larger Argentine community found reasons to protect and sustain these female-operated institutions until the welfare state had no more need for their services. The history of these philanthropic women is embedded in the Argentine-Jewish immigrant experience.

202 Donna J. Guy

Acknowledgments The research for this article was made possible by grants and fellowships from the University of Arizona, Social and Behavioral Sciences Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies, and an Ohio State University leave of absence. I would like to thank Abraham Lichtenbaum of the IWO Archives for permission to work in those archives and Ana Weinstein of the Mark Turkow Archives of the AMIA for similar permission. I would also like to thank Sandra Deutsch for comments on earlier drafts and Alma Ruibal for her notes on Mundo israelita.

Notes 1. Emilio R. Coni, Higiene social; Asistencia y previsión social. Buenos Aires caritativo y previsor (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Emilio Spinelli, 1918), 656–57. By defining the community simply as being Russian, Coni ignored the other members of the Jewish community such as the Sephardic and German Jews. His definition makes it clear how difficult it was to “count” the Jewish community when most information was provided by nationality. 2. Coni dates the founding of the Sociedad de Damas to 1903, but according to the Jewish newspaper Mundo israelita, it began on September 17, 1908, as the result of efforts by Rabbi Samuel Halphon; Coni, Higiene social, 657; Archivo IWO, Mundo israelita, June 26, 1943. 3. Gloria Rut Lerner, “El Asilo de Huérfanas Israelitas” (Licenciature Thesis, Universidad Nacional de Luján, 2001), 35–36. The fragment can be found at the Instituto Científico (IWO), Buenos Aires. I would like to thank Gloria for this information. 4. Coni, Higiene social, 658. Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas, Reseña sobre la marcha de la Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas, 1918–1919, 11; Ibid., 1920–1921, 12–13. The society changed its name to the Sociedad de Beneficencia de Damas Israelitas in 1927. In addition to helping pregnant women, the Jewish community had already established an association to prevent young Jewish girls, particularly immigrants, from becoming entrapped in “white slavery” or the international traffic in women and children. See Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991). The advertisement was published in Mundo israelita, May 7, 1927, 4. It noted that the president of Argentina would be accompanied by his wife, members of the Argentine congress, and ambassadors of foreign countries. 5. Lerner, “El Asilo de Huérfanas Israelitas,” 23. 6. There were earlier presidents of this women’s group, but after 1919 they identified these two women as the first and second presidents. See Lerner, “El Asilo de Huérfanas Israelitas,” 20. 7. A long controversy preoccupied the Buenos Aires Jewish Community. It began in 1931 when Mundo israelita urged the group to provide an alternate slate of candidates. Subsequently the newspaper realized that those opposing 203 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages













Rebecca R. de Glücksmann never bothered to organize their own slate and that unfounded rumors existed in the capital accusing the philanthropic women of forming a closed circle of aristocrats. Although Mundo israelita subsequently refuted this accusation, the orphanage suffered by having many fewer patrons. “La renovación el la Sociedad de Damas,” Mundo israelita, August 22, 1931. 8. Reseña sobre la macha de la Sociedad, 1921–1922, 11; Ibid., 1922–1923, 16. 9. Ibid., 1922–1923, 25–30. 10. Archivo Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaísmo “Mark Turkow,” (Archivo Turkow), “Ezrah” 7–98, Hospital Israelita (enero 1 1914): 97–98, “La infancia abandonada; Necesidad de un asilo infantil en nuestro medio.” 11. Conversation with señora Insogna at the Patronato Español, 2002. 12. “Asilo israelita argentino,” Mundo israelita, July 24, 1926. 13. Advertisement, Mundo israelita, undated, ca. 1931. 14. For example, the Sociedad de Beneficencia de Damas Israelitas sponsored a tea dance at the Imperial Salon of the Alvear Palace Hotel on July 22, 1941. The proceeds were intended to subsidize the girls’ orphanage. Archivo IWO, Mundo israelita, July 14, 1941. Prior to the construction of the Alvear Palace, the damas held events in the Plaza Hotel and the Savoy Hotel, both considered fine upper-class city hotels. Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas, Reseña sobre la marcha de la Sociedad, 1920–1921, 12–13. 15. José Luis Moreno, organizador, La política social antes de la political social; (Caridad, beneficencia y política social en Buenos Aires, siglos XVII a XX) (Buenos Aires: Trama Editorial, 2000). 16. Film clips as well as photos of gatherings sponsored by Catholic women’s charities often indicate clear social cleavages, including making the orphans wear uniforms for collection drives. In contrast, the Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas de Beneficencia, Asilo Argentino de Huérfanas Israelitas memoria y balance, 1945–1946, 31–32, contains a list of holidays both secular and religious celebrated at the orphanage, along with a long list of prominent Jewish families who attended Passover services there. 17. This information came from a conversation with señora Berta Bairach, who went to live in the asilo after having spent time at the Casa de Expósitos and the Sociedad de Beneficencia’s Asilo de Huérfanas in the 1930s and 1940s because her mother died at birth. She claims that members of the community urged her father to send the daughter to the Jewish orphanage. Conversation, September 23, 2002, Buenos Aires. I thank her for her comments. 18. See the long article about girls’ spiritual welfare in “Ampliación spiritual del Asilo de Huérfanas,” Mundo israelita, November 25, 1936. 19. Donna J. Guy, “Girls in Prison: The Role of the Buenos Aires Casa Correcional de Mujeres as an Institution of Child Rescue, 1890–1940,” in Crime and Punishment in Latin American Law and Society since Late Colonial Times, ed. Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 369–90. Sociedad de Socorros de Damas Israelitas, Reseña sobre la marcha de la Sociedad, 1923–1924, 17. Immigrant women also worked at the asilo as seamstresses, but the 204 Donna J. Guy

workshop closed the following year. IWO, “Através del Asilo de Huérfanas se cumple una tarea de gran importancia,” Mundo israelita, June 26, 1943, 12. 20. Archivo IWO, “Informe de la ‘Soroptomis’ por el año 1944,” manuscript, 14; “Han tenido éxito las gestiones de la DAIA para lograr que mil niños ingresen al país,” Mundo israelita, January 18, 1947, 7. 21. Sociedad de Damas Israelitas de Beneficencia, Memoria, 1941, 14–16, 30, 37. 22. Ibid., 1946, 35, 41, 50. The society had been receiving 10,000 pesos per year from the national government. Private inheritances that year, however, reached 47,000 pesos out of 267,807.84—a truly unusual event. 23. Ibid., 1950–1951, 15–16, 42, and unpaginated financial report to June 30, 1951. 24. Archivo IWO, Hogar Infantil Israelita Argentina, Libro de actas, 1931, f. 141; Mundo israelita, August 1, 1931; an advertisement from the Hogar Infantil Israelita Argentino invited members of the Jewish community to an open house; “El Hogar Infantil en su primer aniversario,” Mundo israelita, November 21, 1931. 25. Archivo IWO, Hogar Infantil Israelita Argentina, Libro de actas, May 31, 1933, ff. 14–24; Ibid., September 19, 1933, ff. 44–50; Ibid., January 2, 1934, ff. 167–71. 26. Ibid., May 31, 1933, f. 14; Ibid., September 19, 1933, ff. 44–50; Ibid., January 2, 1934, ff. 167–71. 27. See for example, Mundo israelita, November 23, 1931, and February 20, 1932. 28. “Primer congreso nacional del servicio social a la infancia,” Mundo israelita, October 1, 1932, 2; Dr. Jaime Favelukes, “El servicio social del inmigrante,” in Primera conferencia sobre asistencia social, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1934), 26–33. 29. Archivo IWO, Hogar Infantil Israelita Argentina, Libro de actas, August 22, 1933, f. 36. 30. Ibid., August 23, 1938, f. 21; Ibid., December 18, 1940, f. 27. 31. Ibid., Memoria y balance general, 11th ejercicio, 1938–1939, 15–16. 32. Mundo israelita, October 4, 1941, 8; Hogar Infantil Israelita Argentina, Memoria y balance general, 1946–1947, 48–49. 33. Archivo IWO, Hogar Infantil Israelita Argentina, Memoria y balance general, 1946–1967, 39; Ibid., Memoria, 1985–1986, unpublished document. 34. Ibid., Registro de niños. This is a two-volume ledger where all children are identified by name and nationality, but not all parents’ nationalities are identified. Other information includes reasons for admission such as “father abandoned the home,” the child’s domicile, and who went to interview the family. Although the information is rather sparse, it gives a vivid picture of the poverty and social problems encountered by working-class immigrant Jewish families in Buenos Aires and in the interior. 35. Ibid., Memoria y balance general, 27th ejercicio, 1954–1955, 33. 36. Berta Bairach, for example, still had a father, uncle, and disabled brother living in Buenos Aires. As an adolescent she finally went to live with her father and worked in his garment factory, eventually taking it over until it closed. Interview, September 23, 2001. 205 Women’s Organizations and Jewish Orphanages

37. Lerner, “El Asilo de Huérfanas Israelitas,” 64, 68. 38. Raanan Rein, Peronismo, populismo y política: Argentina 1943–1955 (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1998); Raanan Rein, Argentina, Israel y los Judíos: Encuentros y desencuentros, mitos y realidades (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Lumière, 2001). See also Lawrence D. Bell, “In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955,” Hispanic American Historical Review 86 (February 2006): 93–122.

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chapter ten

Nation and Holocaust Narration

Uruguay’s Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío !

edna aizenberg

A Picnic on the Boardwalk Wonderful bicycle ride along our exceptional “rambla,” enjoying the fresh sea air of famous Pocitos Beach, the most popular in Monte­ video. The package includes transportation to a booth just meters from the shore and a nice bicycle to enjoy the charms of our seashore. Bikes available for ladies, gentlemen and children. —From a tourist brochure for Montevideo

M

ontevideo’s rambla, or “boardwalk,” characterizes the city, running for miles along the banks of the River Plate, crossing neighborhoods and landscapes. I landed in this coastal city on August 5, 2002, the day the banking system collapsed. “When Argentina sneezes Uruguay catches a cold,” the saying goes, and that’s exactly what had happened. After months of ever more severe economic bronchitis on the other bank of the River Plate, accompanied by ever louder monetary coughing in the form of defaults and devaluation, poor Uruguay had finally caught the bug. The day I arrived, the banks were shut down, there were street riots, and the armored trucks I saw on the highway leading from the airport to the city were filled—so rumor 207

had it—with fresh dollars dispatched by the International Monetary Fund to shore up Uruguay’s battered peso. In the lead gray of the Southern Hemisphere winter, Montevideo seemed a shuttered ghost town, much like the desperate fictional city of Santa María created by Uruguay’s master writer, Juan Carlos Onetti. But in the midst of this deep crisis that had turned Montevideo’s citizens into hostages of its failing currency, at least one family had decided to escape its seeming house arrest in order to enjoy the fresh sea air of famous Pocitos Beach. When I got to the rambla, this family was sitting comfortably in folding chairs on the splotchy seaside grass, gamboling with its terrier, pouring hot water from a thermos and enjoying mate, the bitter tea no self-respecting Uruguayan can do without. A few steps away from the impromptu picnic, this déjeuner sur l’herbe criollo style, and almost hidden among the stubby bushes, there were two short pieces of railroad track and a plaque carved with this inscription: El Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío fue erigido en nombre del Uruguay, a iniciativa del Poder Ejecutivo aprobada por el Parla­ mento mediante el Art. 252 de la Ley 16320, bajo la Presidencia del Dr. Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera, e inaugurado el 10 de noviembre de 1994. [The Memorial to the Holocaust of the Jewish People was erected in the name of Uruguay, at the initiative of the Executive Branch, approved by Parliament through Art. 252 of Law 16320, under the presidency of Dr. Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera, and inaugurated on November 10, 1994.] While I was standing near the picnickers, looking out from the boardwalk toward the water, I could see little of a memorial (figure 4). All I saw was a low-lying red-granite wall jutting up from the beach below, surrounded by broken rocks, and right near it two taller walls tumbling on their sides (figure 5). Only when I walked down to the river along a sloping, rough wooden ramp and turned my back to the Río de la Plata in the direction of the rambla did the full presence and impact of the memorial begin to emerge. Now the seemingly calm horizontal slabs that mimicked the placid waterline took on a much more ominous coloring, sundered by the huge gap yawning between the precariously tilted vertical boulders (figure 6). 208 Edna Aizenberg

figure 4. View of the Holocaust memorial plaque near the picnickers. © Photographed by Edna Aizenberg, 2006.

figure 5. View of the memorial looking out from the boardwalk toward the River Plate. All that is visible is the low-lying granite wall with two taller walls tumbling on their sides. © Photographed by Edna Aizenberg, 2006. 209 Nation and Holocaust Narration

These cleft surfaces enclosed an open plaza also paved with red-granite rock, their unsettling effect heightened by the four tombstonelike tablets arrayed along the breached rampart. Each tablet had a saying etched in Hebrew-looking Spanish characters. “Siete veces cae el justo y siete veces volverá a levantarse (Seven times shall the just man fall and seven times shall he rise) (Proverbios 24:16),” read one (figure 7). “Elegid siempre la vida y el bien pues la elección está en vuestras manos (Always elect life and good, for the choice is in your hands) (Maimonides),” said another. “En el recordar está la redención (Remembrance brings redemption) (Baal Shem Tov),” noted the third. And “A la tristeza queremos que la acompañe la esperanza (Let hope accompany sorrow) (Elie Weisel),” the fourth. As I moved from tablet to tablet, from maxim to maxim, the path led me gently upward, out to the other end of the plaza, back to boardwalk level (figure 8). A few more steps and I was again strolling on the grassy knoll, once more squinting at the luxury high-rises of Pocitos Beach, at the family drinking mate, at the frolicking dog.

figure 6. View of the memorial looking from the River Plate toward the boardwalk. This view shows the tilted vertical slabs separated by a gap. © Photographed by Edna Aizenberg, 2006. 210 Edna Aizenberg

figure 7. Tablet with the saying “Seven times shall the just man fall and seven times shall he rise” (Proverbs 24:16). © Photographed by Edna Aizenberg, 2006.

figure 8. Path up from the Holocaust memorial back to the boardwalk. © Photographed by Edna Aizenberg, 2006. 211 Nation and Holocaust Narration

What was one to make of this memorial at once so rooted in its environment yet alien to it, at once so naturalized and disruptive? What relation did it bear to Uruguay’s history, to the men of marble and bronze riding through Montevideo’s plazas or entombed in the mausoleums that fill the nation’s memory spaces, its lieux de mémoire, in Pierre Nora’s terminology? What did it say to the mate sippers on the lawn, who when I chatted with them seemed oblivious to the less than fun associations of their picnic site? And how did it dialogue with better-known Holocaust memorials and with other remembrance traditions, the Jewish tradition, for example? I ask these questions as part of a larger reflection, for a book entitled Stones of Memory, on public space and Jewish memory in Latin America, a topic that has been barely studied. Jewish memory now has inserted itself openly in Latin America’s cityscapes, fostering new dialogues and new ways of understanding “the Jewish” within “the nation,” while redefining “the nation” from the perspective of “the Jewish.”1 Like all dialogues born of memory, these conversations can be knotty and painful. What I’d like to do here is to confront just one site, less well known than the Jewish memory sites that have sprung up around the destroyed AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina) building in Buenos Aires, but as important—Montevideo’s Memorial to the Holocaust. I want to do so as a way of probing the challenges of this novel Latin American Jewish “irruption” and of expanding my arguments in Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires.2 There, still reeling from the hurt of the AMIA bombing, I wrote, “The fruitful insertion of Jewish culture within Latin America’s exuberant hybridities fosters a liberating unhinging of people and ideologies from fixed categories, the kind of categories that undergird inquisitorial flames, Nazi guns, and Buenos Aires bombs.”3 Now moving out into the open from the more protected space of literature, I’d like to add Uruguayan dictatorships to my historia latinoamericana de la infamia.

Nation and Holocaust Narration James Young, author of most authoritative study on the subject, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, has masterfully glossed the varying textures of Holocaust memory in the “central” countries. Each nation inscribes the catastrophe according to its needs, myths, and history. Nation and narration go hand in hand. In Germany, conflicted remembrance swirls around the conundrum, How does a state “memorialize” a Nazi genocide that the state itself perpetrated? The complexities of dealing 212 Edna Aizenberg

with this dilemma are obvious in the convolutions of every museum, every memorial, including the Jewish “extension” of the Berlin Museum and the disputed Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe whose very name betrays the tangles.4 In Poland, site of the Holocaust’s major killing fields, commemoration focuses on the World War II martyrdom of the Polish and other nations, with slaughtered Jews constituting the absence that Poland fills with significance of its own. The January 2005 ceremonies on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz did finally recognize Jewish suffering, but Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski still tried mightily “to balance the different meanings of Auschwitz.”5 In the United States, freedom, democracy, and pluralism are the key themes—the Americans defeated the Nazis, liberated the camps, and opened the doors to the tortured remnants of European Jewry. The Holocaust Memo­ rial Museum in Washington reflects this understanding of the Shoah most dramatically. And in Israel, the overpowering memory of the Shoah justifies the very existence of the state; Holocaust recollection marks the latest version of the age-old Jewish passage me-hurban le-geulah, “from destruction to redemption.” From the viewpoint of the power-filled Northern Hemisphere, to erect and to study these Holocaust memorials in Germany or Poland, Israel or the United States, seems to make perfect sense, but in little Uruguay? Like so much in Latin America, the influential ignore Uruguay’s unique response, despite the fact that the Memorial del Holocausto shapes an urgent and different Holocaust memory. Here is my thesis: Montevideo’s memorial engages many of the textures outlined by Young and in Latin American style recycles them into a sort of postmodern mestizo, or culturally hybrid, memorial that adds its own singular history to the mix.6 The memorial to the Shoah insinuates a specifically Uruguayan tragedy, the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s, when Fascists schooled in Hitler’s philosophy established one of the most pervasive systems of totalitarian control of any such regime in the world. Through progressive repression, summary trials, long sentences, physical torture, and the disappearance of children and adults, the Holocaust was replayed in a minor if no less horrible key in the far South.7 This brutal regime was a departure from Uruguay’s generally representative twentiethcentury tradition, with decades of electoral politics, and the country’s reputation as a prosperous and tolerant “Switzerland of the South.” The dictatorship resulted from many factors, hard to simplify, but fundamentally 213 Nation and Holocaust Narration

the breakdown of the state under the pressure of economic and social cleavages. A rise in Marxist urban guerrilla movements gave the military the justification to destroy political and human rights.8 The Memorial del Holocausto tells the story of the Holocaust when Uruguay, like so many countries, had less than a laudatory response to Jewish suffering in Europe, and then, it incorporates Holocaust memory into a remembrance of Uruguay’s own tragedy and into a contemporary, democratic, postdictatorship definition of nation.9 Small wonder, then, that in 1994, the year the memorial was erected at the initiative of the national government, Uruguay’s conflicted remembrance swirled around the conundrum: How does a nation remember—or forget—the atrocities that the nation itself perpetrated? How can it seek justice if it gives amnesty to the guilty in the interest of social peace? And how can it elaborate the traumas of the body politic if it lacks an appropriate symbolic language?10 As a means of addressing, and eliding, these problems the recollection of World War II’s slaughtered Jews was correlated with the not yet entirely approachable memory of Uruguayans tortured and massacred by the generals. Only in 2002 would a memorial directly devoted to the detained and disappeared in Uruguay be dedicated on the Hill, El Cerro, Montevideo’s other great emblematic place, and then only at the initiative of the left-controlled Montevideo municipality, not the center-right national government (which “adhered” to its importance ex post facto). By their own testimony, the designers of the Memorial to the DetainedDisappeared had the “imprint” of the Memorial del Holocausto indelibly in mind, establishing a colloquy of public spaces, while pointing to the segmented politics of remembering and reimagining the nation. Jews, nation, and narration danced a convoluted dance of memory at a Holocaust memorial, a memorial that architecturally rehearsed new possibilities for Uru­ guayan democracy.

Montevideo: Men, Bronze, and Marble To understand the steps in that dance’s choreography I needed to survey Uruguay’s traditional memory places, first up on the Hill. Montevideo was originally founded on a promontory beside a large bay that forms a perfect natural harbor. I could get a sweeping view of the city from that promontory, better known as El Cerro, a proud rise in a region of lowland pampas and Montevideo’s chief symbol. But despite the elevation, there are no heights 214 Edna Aizenberg

of Machu Picchu here, no ruins of Chichén Itzá, the grand telluric stones of pre-Columbian antiquity hanging in Peru’s towering Andes or sprouting on Mexico’s mighty Mesoamerican peninsulas. These are the monuments we usually associate with Latin America, primeval remains that elicit wonder, visitation, and song—witness Pablo Neruda’s sonorous “Heights of Machu Picchu” or Octavio Paz’s meditative “Hymn among the Ruins.” Yet if hoary archaeological sites didn’t make up Montevideo’s existing public memory maps, I found no lack of stones that celebrated the saga of the nation, the other major component of Latin America’s official memory. Crowned by massive statues of próceres, illustrious founding fathers astride gargantuan horses, these stones charted a citywide itinerary of men, bronze, and marble, as one historian of Montevideo aptly and wryly puts it.11 With human rights activist Danny Kripper and his wife, Flora, as my guides, I saw the huge bronze statue of the gaucho, the archetypal cowboy-centaur of the pampas. I saw La carreta, the gigantic bronze ox-drawn wagon set on a base of the red granite typical to Uruguay and betokening nineteenth-century settlement, transportation, and progress. I saw the four-figured Los últimos Charrúas (Last of the Charrúa Indians), another bronze and red granite “homage,” this time to Uruguay’s now largely exterminated Native American peoples. (I refer later to Hugo Achugar’s penetrating reading of this monument.) And to cap it all, I saw the equestrian extravaganza to General José Gervasio Artigas (1764–1850), the founder of Uruguayan nationality. I remembered how many years earlier I had read and taught the wonderfully droll description of the statue, which stands in Montevideo’s Independence Plaza, by the distinguished Uruguayan author Cristina Peri Rossi: It was an enormous horse, mounted by a national hero. It was customary for visitors and many tourists to stop and contemplate both horse and hero. The stateliness of the horse, his colossal size, the perfection of his muscles, his stance, his crest, everything about that magnificent beast gave cause for admiration. They were the work of a professional sculptor who specialized in monuments commemorating special anniversaries of historical events, and had been commissioned many times by the government for that reason. The horse was enormous and seemed to be almost breathing. His magnificent haunches always elicited praise. The guide would draw the public’s attention to the tension in his muscles, the space behind his knees, his neck and formidable jaws. The hero, meanwhile, was dwarfed.12 215 Nation and Holocaust Narration

In Peri Rossi’s Botero-esque, magical realist re-creation, el prócer stirs back to life, jumps down from his overwhelming steed, and begins to walk about, taking stock of his troubled country. The time is the late sixties and early seventies when Uruguay was descending into its dictatorial hell. Soldiers armed to the teeth surround the horse, tanks and army vehicles patrol the city—his beloved city—beggars crowd the sidewalks, and troops arrest alleged opponents. Could this be his country, the old leader sadly muses, the one he had fought so hard to shape? Did he have any descendents in this cowed and crestfallen land? The story ends on a somber but still hopeful note, as a student assures the hero that all isn’t lost, that the resistance to Fascism goes on. Peri Rossi’s deflationary verbal legerdemain transformed this most official of Uruguayan monuments, the awesome place where the mighty commanded the cityscape and manipulated history, into what art historian Sally Morgan calls a guerrilla memorial. Her unsanctioned, seriously humorous intervention—dropping the founding father from his pedestal, pumping up the horse, which involves siding the hero with the hunted—deflates this architectural control marker and defiantly delivers an alternative version of heritage—a guerrilla version.13 In 1970 it could only be done on paper. For such variant renditions to follow Peri Rossi’s Artigas, spring off the written page, and take on the cityscape would take several more decades, and much blood. The Memorial del Holocausto represented one of the first steps in this architectural “taking on.”

Zorrilla de San Martín’s Atelier I had another stop with Danny and Flora on my itinerary of marble and bronze machos—the tucked away, largely forgotten workshop on Tabaré Street where many of them were engendered. This was the studio of José Zorrilla de San Martín (1891–1975), one of Uruguay’s most prolific official sculptors, son of its putative national poet, Juan Zorrilla de San Martín. The elder Zorrilla was the author of Uruguay’s national epic poem, Tabaré (1888), about the “dead race” (read “the massacred”) Charrúa Indians, and a known anti-Semite. When I stepped into the old barnlike taller from the small tree-filled patio behind the Zorrilla family manse, I felt that, like Alice, I had passed through the looking glass. I had entered a fantastically ominous plaster-of-paris land whose denizens were the broken casts and discarded molds of the monumental statues I had just seen on Montevideo’s avenues. Fragmented and hidden from public view, they didn’t seem quite 216 Edna Aizenberg

so grand, amassed as they were in a chalk-white jumble of bodiless heroes, beheaded warriors, armless deities, and shrunken gauchos. There were many plaster versions of Artigas, including giant heads of the hero and the model of Zorrilla’s final, never completed prócer, standing with his extended arm pointing to the words at the base of the statue: “Mi autoridad emana de vosotros y cesa ante vuestra presencia soberana” (My authority derives from you and ends before your sovereign presence). The rough-hewn model dated from 1973, and some thirty years later, a book about Zorrilla’s studio still has trouble talking openly about the horrors of those days, euphemistically beating around the bush. It stammers, “The unfinished statue surely reflects the sculptor’s troubled state of mind about the exceptional situation that our country was experiencing at the time.”14 The finger of the unfinished Artigas who never saw the light of day pointed to the end of constitutional legitimacy and to the absurd and exclusionary outer limit of the men, bronze, and marble aesthetic. At the end of the troubled twentieth century could you still stage the fatherland on horseback without Peri-Rossi-style irony? The answer would seem to be a resounding no, but that’s exactly what the dictatorship did. Uruguay’s generals went on a mad building spree in the best tradition of Caligulalike monumental Fascism. Bombastically declaring 1975, the 150th anniversary of independence, as El Año de la Orientalidad, “the Year of All Things Uruguayan” (the country’s official name is República Oriental del Uruguay from its location on the eastern bank of the River Plate), the military co-opted and reshaped public space. Silence and repression amplified the clang-clang of new statuary and mausoleums noisily and monumentally going up on often renamed plazas, streets, and other localities. The Army Plaza, Plaza del Ejército, in honor of the country’s “defenders,” and an equestrian statue of the nineteenth-century hero General Juan Antonio Lavalleja, second only to Artigas in the national pantheon, were among the centerpieces.15 But the build-till-you-drop ethos didn’t end there. Old-fashioned equestrian colossi could still be sabotaged, transformed into guerrilla monuments, but a mausoleum? Today, thanks to the military, you can descend underground below the massive Artigas statue in Independence Plaza to witness the dictatorship’s crowning architectural achievement. As your eyes adjust to the huge subterranean granite penumbra, you confront the urn containing General Artigas’s mortal remains, with two grenadiers standing on either side in stiff attention. A truncated pyramid hanging directly above the mortuary vase bathes the hallowed remains in eternal incandescent light—emergency generators assure continuous illumination in case 217 Nation and Holocaust Narration

of power failures. Along the walls, huge concrete bas-relief inscriptions mark major moments in the prócer’s life. The thought seized me: was this some ancient Egyptian tomb, some pharaoh’s crypt whose sides were hieroglyphs inscribed with the great deeds of the fallen leader? The analogy isn’t frivolous, since this was Artigas mummified, removed from the din of competing interpretations, frozen into the armed forces’ rigidly authoritarian, xenophobic Doctrine of National Security, which fed its military recruits on pro-Fascist and anti-Semitic literature. In this sanctum there was no chance of Artigas leaping into action or stretching his arm toward the rule of law.

Lest We Forget With this immersion in Uruguay’s traditional, and dictatorial, memory stones, I was ready to return to the Memorial to the Holocaust of the Jewish People to try to find answers to my questions. My patient guides were architect Fernando Fabiano, one of its designers; Roberto Wajner, president of the Memorial Commission, and his daughter, Raquel; and architect Marta Kohen, who designed the Memorial to the Detained-Disappeared along with her partner, Rubén Otero. I am deeply grateful to all of them. Abstract, environmentally aware, integrated with the rocks, bushes, lagoons, and green zones of the coastal landscape, unabashedly confronting the river that flows out to the world, the Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío unmistakably overturned the military’s aesthetic of sunken mausoleums and anachronistic horsemen. It was a postdictatorship public space, a sensitive memorial rather than a turgid monument that pointed beyond Uruguay to Jerusalem, the Western Wall, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish heritage. Revising the hoary iconography of Uruguay’s national memory, it employed the traditional material par excellence, red granite, to bespeak something else—freedom, democracy, and pluralism. The Memorial del Holocausto marked the passage from destruction to redemption of the Jewish people, and the Uruguayan people, asserting a civilian and constitutional Uruguayan state. For the first time, Jewish experience and symbolic language became part of the nation’s vocabulary for its civic landscape. Here is how Roberto Wajner describes the process of the Holocaust memorial’s coming into being: The initiative for the building of our Memorial came entirely from President Lacalle. It materialized through a series of decrees to form a commission to carry out the project. The Memorial is a national work, 218 Edna Aizenberg

the congress and all of the political parties unanimously approved an appropriation ($25,000) for the initial phase. There was a public competition for the Memorial’s design and about twenty projects were submitted by teams of architects and artists; we selected the one that was eventually built. The jury that selected the winner was made up of university administrators, representatives of the Uruguayan Society of Architects, the Mayor’s Office, and the participants themselves. Financing was obtained through contributions from the public and donations from the general and Jewish community. Naturally, Jewish contributors were more motivated than others to give. The Memorial’s building commission was mostly made up of members of the Jewish community, but also included non-Jews. The Ministry of Culture gave us an office . . . and we had complete cooperation from the authorities. . . . While the Memorial was being built, the congress again unanimously voted to exempt the Memorial’s commission from taxes and social welfare payments on materials and labor.16 As Wajner explains, the memorial was the brainchild of Luis Alberto Lacalle, Uruguay’s second democratically elected president after the brutal era (he served from 1990 to 1995). A veteran politician from the center-right herrerismo wing of the Partido Nacional or Blanco, one of the country’s two traditional parties, Lacalle has always been close to the Jewish community and a firm supporter of Jewish causes, from the fight for Soviet Jewry to Israel’s right to exist. Lacalle attended the World Conference on AntiSemitism held in Brussels in 1992. And in 1994, the year of the memorial’s inauguration and the year the terrorist bomb blew up the AMIA Jewish center across the river in Argentina, he was the first Uruguayan chief of state to take part in the March for Life, the symbol-filled pilgrimage between the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. During the 2005 commemorations of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, he returned to Montevideo especially to attend ceremonies at the memorial. In defending Jewish rights, Lacalle was following a thread that has long existed in Uruguay’s politics, most notably at the time of Israel’s founding. Then, Enrique Rodríguez Fabregat, Uruguay’s representative on UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) lobbied energetically together with Guatemala’s Jorge García Granados for the creation of a Jewish state.17 In Uruguay itself, there was at the time a community of some forty 219 Nation and Holocaust Narration

thousand Jews with Eastern and Central European and Sephardic immigrant roots. About fifteen to twenty thousand remain today after the political and financial crises. Having suffered persecution and jail under the dictatorship, Lacalle has continually condemned genocide—the Holocaust, the Turkish massacre of the Armenians, Stalin’s purges, “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans; he has unequivocally underlined his commitment to “para que no olvidemos” (lest we forget) and “nunca más” (never again). The Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío forms part of that commitment, but one may justifiably ask—and I will—where is Uruguay on your list of lest-we-forgets? Or to put it more bluntly en buen criollo, ¿Qué hay del Uruguay? What’s up with Uruguay? My question is a deliberate riff on the old self-congratulatory slogan, “Como el Uruguay no hay,” which I’d like to translate as “There’s no high like Uruguay.” The phrase once synthesized the buoyant belief in the small republic’s exceptionality as the “Switzerland of South America,” but after the dictatorship the jingle jangled. It had turned into a bitter commentary on a country gone astray, but trying however fitfully to address its errors. Lacalle’s advocacy for Uruguay as a “tierra de paz, de tolerancia, de respecto y de libertad” (a land of tolerance, respect, and freedom), as he said in his memorial dedication speech on November 10, 1994, mirrors a postdictatorship stocktaking aimed at strengthening civil society and the democratic process.18 During the early twentieth century, Teresa Porzecanski notes, Uruguay welcomed immigrants of many ethnicities—Italians, Armenians, Lebanese, and Jews—as the “motors of modernization.” But, in line with the crisol de razas ideology prevailing in Uruguay and other Latin American countries, it expected the greenhorns to jump unhesitatingly into the melting pot and lose their Old World quirks. Porzecanski labels this process “un proceso cívico hiperintegrador,” the super-integration thought required to create a modern state.19 After Uruguay’s fall from grace, so to speak, a new multicultural perspective emerged that allows citizens “greater freedom to be at once the same and different in the eyes of others, and to exercise that freedom without fear of stigma or discrimination” (“mayor libertad de aparecer al mismo tiempo frente a otros, como un semejante y como un diferente, y de ejercer esa diferencia sin las presiones del estigma o la exclusión”).20 Nation and narration have changed, and with it the slot Jews occupy. Instead of a single utopian tale of origin, a smooth and peaceful march forward of the great and democratic Uruguayan people, the changed narration 220 Edna Aizenberg

includes multiple origins born of conquest, violence, slavery, dictatorship, and genocide—most notably, the nineteenth-century extermination of the Charrúa Indians. The annihilation of these indomitable native people has become a kind of perverse piedra de toque, a foundational trauma that cannot be washed away. Hugo Achugar’s powerful critique of the monument to the last Charrúas, which I visited earlier in this essay, exemplifies the return of the repressed at this particular juncture in Uruguay’s development. Skewing Pierre Nora’s influential term, Achugar calls the monument a “realm of distorted memory,” since it literally whitewashes the atrocities perpetrated in the name of building a more “European” Uruguay.21 The fact that the massacre was carried out by the army at the order of a general, Fructuoso Rivera, then Uruguay’s president, links past and present, human rights violations then and now, acts of memory then and now, Achugar writes. In Tomás de Mattos’s novel Bernabé, Bernabé!—a searing historical re-creation of the killing campaign—the author explicitly relates the Charrúas’ obliteration to the Nuremberg Trials and the recent Uruguayan dictatorship.22 The novel opens exactly at the time of the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, leaving no doubt about the parallelism. To relate this changed narration, this new understanding of Uruguay­ anness to my topic, I observe that today, Uruguay’s executive branch, Parliament, and other private and public entities, in cooperation with the shrinking Uruguayan-Jewish community, can erect then declare as a national historic monument a memorial to a catastrophe until now considered very little “Latin American.”23 A catastrophe that, despite repercussions in the area, occurred far away from the River Plate to a numerically insignificant, if symbolically potent, minority. Government-sponsored guided tours held on El Día del Patrimonio, “Uruguayan Heritage Day,” now include the memorial together with Montevideo’s most venerable museums, plazas, houses, and parks.24 Uruguay has issued a stamp showing the memorial, and the highest echelons of Uruguayan public life—government ministers, former president Julio Sanguinetti (1985–1990), and members of the diplomatic corps—attended its inauguration. Current president Tabaré Vázquez, then Montevideo’s mayor, signed the decree ceding the land where the memorial was built. President Lacalle’s emotional address at the memorial’s opening underlined how starkly it brought the updated concept of Uruguayanness to the seashore through the idiom of space and stone, how it appeared both alien and allied, singular and same, to return to Porzecanski’s formulation. His carefully calibrated grasp of architecture as a language that gives expression 221 Nation and Holocaust Narration

to collective values was evident throughout, when he constantly shuttled from the Jewish to the Uruguayan, from the Holocaust to all forms of intolerance, from openness to Jews to openness to all people.25 The sundered memorial, the chief executive said (and he emphasized that it is a memorial) grew out of the great break of the Shoah (la Shoá) half a century ago. Its voluminous walls, hewn out of the noble red granite so typical of Uruguay, reference the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. But the memorial also grew out of a greater concern—to sound a warning against present-day intolerance and racism in many parts of the world. It was a call to remember what happened and a reminder that such episodes should not happen again. Yet despite the split and hurt, if you look out from the rambla toward the river, the two severed blocks suggest another symbolism: the Red Sea parting, doors opening to a path of fulfillment and freedom—freedom for the Jewish people after the terrible enslavement. And looking from the river toward land, these gates symbolize still something else: a Uruguay welcoming immigration from all corners of the globe, a land of peace, tolerance, respect, and liberty. That is why this project has deep national roots and the support of the entire Uruguayan collectivity, the president concluded. He closed his speech dramatically with three references from the Jewish canon. The reassuring verses of the “Shema Israel” (Hear, O Israel, the Lord Your God is One). The warning, a kind of lest we forget, etched on the wall in the Book of Daniel. And finally the miracle of the Hanukkah, when the flames wavered, but when light, as always, triumphed over darkness.26 What President Lacalle did not mention was that such episodes had happened again, in none other than the tolerant land of Uruguay, and that the entire Uruguayan collectivity was not united behind the cause of a memorial remembering its own detained and disappeared.

That Wall Left Its Mark on Me Forever One of the questions I posed at the beginning was how did the Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío dialogue with better-known Holocaust memorials and Jewish remembrance traditions? Put another way: what’s the Jewishness that’s irrupting onto the new Uruguayanness? By bringing the wall to Montevideo, architect Fernando Fabiano and his team activated a formidable network of associations, an intertextual vision swirling with multiple geographies. “I visited Jerusalem in 1980, and the impact of that Wall remained with me forever,” Fabiano told me. “The memorial’s stone 222 Edna Aizenberg

wall is meant to evoke the Wailing Wall as well as the walls of the South Boardwalk, integrating the two cultures.”27 The Western (Wailing) Wall, Ha-Kotel Ha-Maaravi, alludes to the absence and presence of the Second Temple, Judaism’s holiest shrine and by extension memorial to the destruction and redemption of the Jewish people. Because of its iconic power it has been “reconstructed” in many places around the world. One of the first, great monuments to the Holocaust, Nathan Rappaport’s Memorial of the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, erected on the Polish capital’s Zamenhof Street in 1948, mimics the huge blocks of the ghetto’s segregating wall and the holy temple’s sacred stones. These doubly significant rocks enclose the sculpted figures of the deported Jews and of the heroic ghetto fighters against the Nazis. The Kotel’s fragmented rock imagery also pullulates in the memorial wall to the assassinated Jews of Kazimierz, Poland, a tragic patchwork basted out of the desecrated tombstones of the old Jewish cemetery and cut in two by a jagged fissure. In a kind of recycling to the second degree, Rappaport’s copy of the wall has been rebuilt in the home of the original wall, Jerusalem. Israel officially opens Yom Hashoah, “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” in front of this copy at Yad Vashem. By bringing the meaning-filled wall to Montevideo, Fabiano and his team connected their version to this compelling international itinerary of Holocaust memory and to the objects of Jewish remembrance—the ancient, sacred ruin at which we pray and leave kvitlach, little notes with petitions. The holy fragment at which we pay homage to what was and might still be. The jagged tombstones, markers of loss and connection, at which we leave pebbles to note a visit. Paradoxically, Jewish history and the Jewish emphasis on memory have provided a visual language more adequate to Uruguay’s contemporary needs than the men-and-bronze heritage, giving material substance to the saying from the Baal Shem Tov, etched on one of the memorial’s tablets: “En el recordar está la redención” (Remembrance brings redemption). But even as the reproduction reactivates the original, it imbues it (and transgresses) with other meanings, as Walter Benjamin, the eminent theorizer of reproduction, reminds us.28 Warsaw’s Kotel isn’t Kazimierz’s or Yad Vashem’s or Montevideo’s. “We all fill the wall with new content, our own content, according to our knowledge, sensibility, and experience,” Fabiano said, echoing Benjamin’s remark. In Uruguay, the new content was the general antigenocidal “lest we forget” and “never again,” but I said that I’d ask ¿Qué hay específicamente del Uruguay? What’s up specifically with Uruguay? 223 Nation and Holocaust Narration

Gerardo Caetano and José Rilla give an answer on the closing pages of their history of the dictatorship: the end of the terror resulted in a much more conservative and traditional panorama than had been expected. By means of pacts, laws, and plebiscites (El Pacto del Club Naval, 1984; La Ley de Caducidad, 1986; the referendum of 1989) the majority of the Uruguayans opted for a general amnesty; the crimes of the barbarous years would be pardoned in order to “turn over a new leaf.” The people’s decision shut off public debate for many long years, including the presidential terms of Lacalle and Sanguinetti. The subject only reappeared on the national agenda in 2000 during the presidency of Jorge Batalle, with much opposition from many sectors of society.29 Unsurprisingly, the Memorial to the DetainedDisappeared was built in this more open period. The Memorial del Holocausto can be seen as part of this “cautious” approach to the great challenges of the postdictatorship era (I’m putting it mildly). As Hugo Achugar caustically expressed it in a volume marking the thirtieth anniversary of the coup: “La sociedad uruguaya o la modernidad uruguaya es una modernidad en ralenti; es decir, ha tenido y tiene un ritmo propio de ‘paso lento.’ Se cambia en ciclos de larga duración o se cambia ma non troppo.”30 The memorial dealt with the challenges of the postdictatorship ma non troppo, its very design—an abstract blank wall—enshrining the lingering obliqueness. The wall defied representational authoritarian monumentality, but fostered indirection—the saying and unsaying of the barbarous era. The wall’s abstractness in some ways also said and unsaid the Shoah; as Fabiano himself suggested, it could be filled with new content suited to Uruguay’s, not necessarily the Jewish people’s, experience.

The Good and Not So Good News I’d like to circle to the beginning in order to sum up. First the good news. Facing the river, surrounded by a sea of injured rocks, marked by the simple elegance that the evocation of such a tragedy demanded, the Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío forged new artistic and conceptual paths. A decade later these dialogic paths facilitated the building of the Memorial to the Detained-Disappeared, made of glass walls anchored in the bedrock, different yet related to its forebear.31 Jews participated on the second memorial’s commission, and the Jewish community contributed monies for its construction, in yet another dialogic gesture.32 The Memorial del Holocausto likewise helped implant the contemporary concept of the memorial in opposition to the traditional monument, substituting for congealed 224 Edna Aizenberg

triumphalism the austere but insistent call to active memory. It equally helped “the Jewish” break out of its small communal spaces, inserting it onto the nation’s most prominent public places and calendar of civic commemorations. Holocaust narration became bound to a new pluralistic and democratic vision of the nation.33 As an innovative intervention, the memorial received international recognition and was selected as one of the twenty best Latin American architectural projects of the nineties by the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, but, as I said at the outset, every dialogue born of memory is fraught with danger. And here is the less good news. Voices in the Jewish community objected precisely to the austere bareness so prized by the cognoscenti, the polyvalent strippeddown abstraction, and demanded clearer figurative symbols more directly tied to the Holocaust of the Jewish people. Hence the tablets with the inscriptions, the train tracks, and the project to raise a giant menorah on the site, none included in Fabiano’s original universalizing design. The dilemmas of Holocaust appropriation so troubling in other latitudes weren’t entirely absent in Uruguay. (Of course, when anti-Semitic fringe groups decided to deface the memorial, most recently in June 2006, they had no problem with Jewish specificity, abstractness or no abstractness.) Does the value of Jewish “irruption” on the nation’s narrative diminish, then, if it means appealing to the most horrendous massacre in Jewish history—a question I’d pose with regard to other museums and memorials dedicated to the Shoah? For all its lofty integrationist desires, the memorial’s emplacement also raised problems, as I witnessed on my refreshing stroll along the rambla. On the one hand the memorial forms part of Montevideo’s main public pleasure boulevard, where people bike, jog, picnic, sip mate, frolic with their dogs; on the other, it is a sober, even somber, place to commemorate genocide. How do you mesh these two diametrically opposite purposes? Can you mesh them? The architects tried to resolve the tension with their two-view approach: smooth from the rambla out, jagged from the river in, but they couldn’t completely overcome the aesthetic and ethical stresses. The picnickers I met were obviously oblivious to the memorial’s chilling connotations. Otherwise how could they be having fun there? Partly based on these irreconcilable imperatives, the designers of the Memorial to the Detained-Disappeared decided it to place it far away from the boardwalk, in a specially carved out and elevated clearing surrounded by a forest of trees, high up on the Cerro. You must climb up to this memorial, this shrine to atrocity, separate yourself from the hubbub, and think about what you’re seeing.34 225 Nation and Holocaust Narration

When all is said and done, however, the Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío marked a watershed moment in the rewriting of the nation: bringing Jewish memory into the national memory, using Jewish iconography, preparing the intellectual and artistic terrain for Uruguay’s arduous march toward a memory site to its own history—most of all, mightily contributing to a democratic recapturing of public space as a place where citizens of all ethnicities can come together, find welcome, and dream. Dream without fear that there will be more Holocaust or detained or disappeared.

226 Edna Aizenberg

Notes 1. See Raanan Rein, “New Approaches to Latin American Jewish Studies,” Jewish History 18, no. 1 (2004): 1–5, and “Together yet Apart: Israel and Argentine Jews,” Latin American Jewish Studies 24, nos. 1–2 (2004): 1–6. 2. On irruption see Alexander Wilde, “Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile’s Transition to Democracy,” in Genocide, Violence, and Popular Memory: The Politics of Remembering in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Lorey and Willaim H. Beezley (Willmington, DE: SR Books, 2002), 3–29. On general memory places, Elizabeth Jelin and Victoria Lanland, eds., Monumentos, memoriales y marcas territoriales (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2003). 3. Edna Aizenberg, Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires: Borges, Gerchunoff and Argentine Jewish Writing (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2002), 2; see also Edna Aizenberg, “Hope and Contradiction Ten Years after the AMIA Bombing,” Latin American Jewish Studies 24, nos. 1–2 (2004): 17–18, “Las piedras de la memoria: Buenos Aires y los monumentos a las víctimas,” Iberoamericana 1, no. 1 (2001): 121–32, and “Making Monuments in Argentina, a Land Afraid of Its Past,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2002, B10–B11. 4. See James Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1993); Homi K. Bahbha, ed., Nation and Narration (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); and Andreas Huyssen, Past Presents: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 5. Tom Hundley, “Giving Voice to the Lost,” www.chicagotribune.com, January 28, 2005, March 31, 2005, ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N339.tribuneinteractive.com (emphasis added). 6. On the current understanding of cultural mestizaje, see Ricardo Feierstein, Contraexilio y mestizaje (Buenos Aires: Milá, 1996). 7. See Servicio de paz y justicia. Uruguay. Nunca más. Human Rights Violations, 1972–1985, intro. Lawrence Weschler, trans. Elizabeth Hampsten (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992). On Fascist-inspired military schooling, see Gerardo Caetano and José Rilla, Breve historia de la dictadura, 1973–1985, 2nd ed. (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1998). 8. See, on this era, Gerardo Caetano and José Rilla, Memoria para armar-uno: Testimonios coordinados por el Taller de Género y Memoria ex-Presas Políticas (Montevideo: Senda, 2001); and Aldo Marchesi, Vania Markarián, Alvaro Rico, and Jaime Yaffe, eds., El presente de la dictadura (Montevideo: Ediciones Trílice, 2003). The Uruguayan-Jewish author and former antigovernment guerrilla leader Mauricio Rosencof chillingly relates of the Shoah and the dictatorship in his fictional memoir Las cartas que no llegaron [Letters That Never Arrived] (Montevideo: Alfaguara, 2000). Argentine-Jewish poet Juan Gelman lost part of his family as disappeared in this maelstrom, in a case that made news worldwide. 9. On Uruguay’s refugee policies in the war, see Daniela Bouret, Alvaro Martínez, and David Telias, Entre la matzá y el mate: La inmigración judía al Uruguay: Una historia en construcción (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1997); Clara Aldrighi, María Magdalena Camou, Miguel Feldman, and 227 Nation and Holocaust Narration

Gabriel Abend, Antisemitismo en Uruguay: Raíces, discursos, imagenes, intro. Teresa Porzecanski (Montevideo: Trílice, 2000); Haim Avni and Rosa Perla Raicher, eds., Memorias del Uruguay: Holocausto y lucha por la fundación del Estado de Israel (Jerusalem: Hebrew University–Institute for Contemporary Judaism, 1986); Miguel Feldman, Tiempos difíciles: Inmigrantes judíos en Uruguay, 1933–1945 (Montevideo: Universidad de la República, 2001); and Teresa Porzecanski, ed., Historias de vida de inmigrantes judíos al Uruguay (Montevideo: Comunidad Israelita del Uruguay, 1986). 10. On these issues see Teresa Basile, “Revisión de las narraciones de la nación en la posdictadura uruguaya” (paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association Conference, Dallas, 2003). 11. Juan Carlos Pedemonte, Montevideo: Hombres, bronce, mármol (Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1971). 12. Cristina Peri Rossi, “The Hero” [El prócer] in Panic Signs, trans. Mercedes Rowinsky-Geurts and Angelo A. Borrás (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002), 108. 13. Sally Morgan, “Guilt and Commemoration: Guerrilla Memorials and Contested Memory” (unpublished paper). 14. Miguel Alvarez Montero, Juan Zorrilla de San Martín: Su obra y su taller (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Plaza, 2001), 206. 15. See Isabela Cosse and Vania Markarián, 1975: Año de la orientalidad (Montevideo: Trílice, 1996); Emilio Irigoyen, La patria en escena (Montevideo: Trílice, 2000); Caetano and Rilla, 35, 169; and Estatuas y monumentos de Montevideo (Montevideo: Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo, 1986). 16. Roberto Wajner, e-mail, October 28, 2002. I had further e-mail correspondence from Wajner relevant to this article on November 11, 2002, November 19, 2002, and March 10, 2005. 17. See Avni and Reicher, Memorias del Uruguay, and Granados’s memoir, Así nació Israel (México: Novaro, 1986). 18. Luis Alberto Lacalle, Sí, soy el guardián de mi hermano (Montevideo: Tradinco, 1998), 32. 19. Teresa Porzecanski, “Indios, Africanos e inmigrantes europeos: La búsqueda del orígen en los nuevos discursos del imaginario uruguayo,” in Como el Uruguay no hay (Montevideo: Museo Municipal Juan Manuel Blanes, 2000), 98. On analogous processes in Argentina, see Edna Aizenberg, Parricide on the Pampa? (Frankfurt: Vervuert; Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2002); on Brazil, Jeffrey Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995); and on Latin America as a whole, Judith Elkin, The Jews of Latin America (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1998). 20. Porzecanski, “Indios,” 98. 21. Hugo Achugar, “Monuments, Commemoration and Exclusion: Politics of Memory in the Construction of Uruguayan National Imaginary” (unpublished paper, 2000). See also Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 228 Edna Aizenberg

22. Tomás de Mattos, Bernabé, Bernabé! (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1988). 23. Montevideo has a bronze monument in homage to the Armenians massacred by the Turkish government in 1915, sculpted in the shape of a naked woman raising her arms heavenward. It resulted from a private initiative by Uruguay’s Armenian community and was inaugurated in 1975. Roberto Wajner noted, “In difficult times for Uruguay it might have been easier to get permission for certain things” (e-mail, November 19, 2002). Was this a way for the dictatorship to shift attention away from its own (local) crimes? 24. See “No hay excusas,” El observador, September 12, 1998, 10. 25. On architecture as collective language, see Gustavo Remedi, “Los lenguajes de la conciencia histórica: A propósito de una ciudad sin memoria,” in Memoria colectiva y políticas de olvido: Argentina y Uruguay, 1970–1990, ed. Adriana J. Bergero and Fernando Reati (Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo, 1997), 345–69. 26. Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío: Febrero 1995 (Montevideo: Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, 1995). 27. Fernando Fabiano, e-mail, November 20, 2002. Also essential for this essay were the personal interview I had with Fabiano on August 6, 2002, as well as his “Memoria explicativa del Memorial del Holocausto del Pueblo Judío” (Montevideo, August 6, 2002), and the e-mail of August 10, 2004. 28. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), 217–51. 29. See Luis Alberto Lacalle, “Entrevista de Álvaro Barros-Lómez,” in Lacalle (Montevideo: Monte Sexto, 1990); Claudio Paolillo, “¿Historia o presente?” La democracia, April 24, 2003, webs.montevideo.com.uy/lademocracia/ paolillo.htm (accessed June 10, 2003); “Uruguay,” Freedom House: Freedom in the World, July 9, 2002, www.freedomhouse.org . . . eworld/2002/countryratings/uruguay2.htm (accessed July 10, 2003); and “Uruguay, cerrando heridas,” BBCMundo.com, June 7, 2000, www.bbc.co.uk/spanish/news/ news00076uruguay.shtml (accessed July 10, 2003). 30. Achugar, El presente de la dictadura, 212. 31. Hugo Alfaro, “Las cosas que veo, que veo, que veo,” Brecha, June 2, 1995, 2; and Natali Scheck de Solari, “Un memorial por la paz,” El país, September 3, 2000, 8. 32. Daniel Kripper, e-mail, October 27, 2002. Rabbi Daniel Kripper served on the Memorial to the Detained-Disappeared’s commission appointed by Montevideo’s municipality. Kripper was active together with members of the Catholic clergy, human rights organizations, and members of the victims’ families in calling for a full investigation of the dictatorship’s crimes. Rabbi Kripper’s congregation, the Nueva Congregación Israelita (NCI), along with other institutions, contributed funds for the memorial. This decision created some controversy, as did the construction of the memorial itself (personal interview with David Raij, president of the NCI, March 24, 2005). 33. See Marilla Russi Podestá, “Nuevos sueños urbanos,” El observador, June 5, 1997, 4. 229 Nation and Holocaust Narration

34. On the memorial see Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos, El futuro es memoria / Disappeared Detained Citizens Memorial: The Future is Memory (Montevideo: Comisión Memorial, 2000); Rubén Otero and Rubén and Mario Sagradini, entrevista con Rosario Castellanos, “Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos: Fundamentos del proyecto premiado,” Radio El Espectador Uruguay, February 22, 1999, www.Espectador.com/text/ clt02233.htm (accessed February 19, 2003); Marta Kohen, personal interview, August 6, 2002; e-mail, October 31, 2002; and “Written in Stone: Memory and Reconciliation Intersecting the Urban Biosphere,” Annals of the New York Academy of Science 1023 (2004): 282–88.

230 Edna Aizenberg

chapter eleven

Singing for Social Change

Nostalgic Memory and the Struggle for Belonging in a Buenos Aires Yiddish Chorus !

natasha zaretsky

E

Introduction

very Monday morning, for over ten years, Argentine citizens gathered together in the Plaza Lavalle of Buenos Aires to face the high courts of Argentina and demand justice for a bombing that killed eighty-five people and wounded hundreds on July 18, 1994. On that day, a Monday, a car bomb exploded in front of the AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, or the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Society) building in the center of Buenos Aires. This attack destroyed the building that housed the AMIA and several other Jewish community organizations and institutions, including a library and community archives. In the aftermath, people came together to mourn, to fight for justice, and to remember the victims. One of those groups, Memoria Activa (Active Memory), began holding weekly protests in front of the Palace of Justice, convoking the public to give their testimonies, a form of reflection on the impunity of the bombing and its resonance in their lives. On Monday, August 25, 2003, over nine years had passed since the bombing of the AMIA building. The winter morning was bright, and Reizl Sztarker stood together with the rest of the supporters, members, and onlookers of Memoria Activa. Reizl had been invited to give her testimony, 231

and as it was a cold day, she wore a long scarf that she wrapped several times around her neck, trying to keep warm as she waited for the protest to begin. As they did every week, a Memoria Activa member started by wishing everyone good morning and then counting the number of weeks they had been standing there. He then invited a man to stand in front of the crowd and blow the shofar, a ram’s horn traditionally used in Jewish religious ceremonies. The piercing sound rang out across the plaza, and a moment of silence was observed in memory of the victims. Following this, Reizl was invited to give her testimony at the microphone. She approached the stand, an elderly woman of small stature who nonetheless had a powerful presence, and, as part of her testimony, spoke about a Yiddish song, “Mein nisht,” which she described using words in Spanish, translating for her primarily non-Yiddish-speaking audience: Our great writer Yitskhok Leybush Peretz wrote a poem entitled, “Do Not Think,” “Mein nisht”! “Do not think the world is a tavern where you fill yourself eating and drinking while others look on with weak eyes. . . . Do not think the world is a chaos—Everything is measured, everything has weight. Do not think there is no law and no justice.” Reizl then went on to address her government: Mister President, Ministers, Legislators, Judges: . . . Do not rest until you identify and punish all of those responsible for the victims of the Embassy [bombing], the AMIA [bombing], the 30,000 disappeared, the hunger of our children and all of the problems plaguing our society. Do not rest until your courageous and honest struggle allows us to live in the nation of our dreams. And this is how we will be able to tell our poet: you were right, in Argentina there is law and there is justice.1 If one were to have been in the Plaza Lavalle that day and listened to Reizl’s testimony, one may have wondered, what does a Yiddish song have to do with justice in Argentina? That day at Memoria Activa, Reizl Sztarker referred to the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in 1992, the bombing of the AMIA in 1994, the thirty thousand Argentines “disappeared” and tortured during the political repression of the Dirty War (1976–1983), and the poverty that persists in Argentina—all complex events and social problems. Yet, 232 Natasha Zaretsky

for Reizl, the founding director of the Coro Judío Popular Mordje Guebirtig (Mordechai Gebirtig Popular Jewish Chorus), and many chorus members, Yiddish and their performance of Yiddish music intersects quite closely with political activism, citizenship, and their sense of Jewish and Argentine identity. Indeed, what Reizl Sztarker in her testimony and her work as a choral director invites us to reflect upon is the possibility of Yiddish music and nostalgic memory to become spaces for social change. Experiences of violence and terror like the AMIA bombing fundamentally challenge the “limits of representation” and threaten the fabric of order and meaning that organizes human life.2 Yet, despite this challenge, memories of violence, along with other strategies, can become critical tools for surviving such experiences, and rebuilding societies and selves.3 Indeed, the responses of Jewish-Argentines to the AMIA bombing, often through their use of memory, represent attempts to make sense of what happened and to rebuild their community—a process that involved renegotiating their relationship to the state, society, and each other. The 1994 bombing of the AMIA building in Buenos Aires fundamentally transformed Jewish life in Argentina. In addition to the death of eighty-five people and the destruction of a central community building, the bombing generated a crisis of belonging that forced many Jewish-Argentines to question their place in the Argentine nation and the possibility of safe Jewish practice in Argentina. In the aftermath, two significant changes developed in Jewish life: new Argentine social movements formed to fight for memory and justice, including the group Memoria Activa,4 and heightened security measures, such as cement barricades, were installed at the vast majority of Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires. While the social movements and security measures represent responses to the immediate concerns for justice and safety, respectively, these changes in Jewish life also represent commentaries on belonging and the struggle to rebuild the social sphere and redefine the meaning of citizenship. The Coro Guebirtig, like Memoria Activa, also formed after the bombing, in response to its violence and destruction. This article examines this Yiddish chorus as a different cultural space from which to explore the way a community responds to destruction. I argue that the Coro Guebirtig’s practices reveal a different dimension to the complex struggles for citizenship experienced by Jewish-Argentines and, further, expand the concept of social change and demonstrate the transformation of traditional genres and personal memories for new uses. Following the work of Sandra Deutsch, I ask, what can such a focus on a nontraditional space of social change reveal 233 Singing for Social Change

about the complexities of resistance in the Jewish community of Argentina after the AMIA bombing?5 How does this “change the landscape” of how we understand contemporary Jewish-Argentine life?6 Finally, how might the Coro Guebirtig speak to the broader issue of the very possibility of plurality in Argentina?7 Although the Coro Guebirtig cannot be understood to fight for justice in the same way as social movements like Memoria Activa, in this article I argue that this group can also be a vehicle for social change that plays a role in rebuilding a plural, inclusive social sphere in Buenos Aires. Indeed, the relationship of Jewish-Argentines to the Argentine state has long been complicated, and the Coro Guebirtig’s practices represent part of this historical struggle to define their place as Jews and Argentines in the nation and can thus be interpreted within the framework of a more nuanced understanding of how ethnicity functions in the aftermath of violence.

Jewish-Argentine Belonging In many ways, Jews have long occupied a shifting position within Argentina’s national imaginary. The first major wave of Jews migrated to Argentina beginning in the late nineteenth century to flee the pogroms under way in eastern Europe and czarist Russia. They arrived during what became known as the alluvial era (1880–1930), when approximately four million European immigrants settled in Argentina.8 Yet Jews were not the immigrants from Europe envisioned by Argentine elites and intellectuals, who imagined immigration as the road to progress and modernization for their new nation. The nineteenth-century climate of positivism and scientific racism helped generate beliefs that white, and preferably northern, Europeans would be vehicles of civilization for the native nonelites.9 Indeed, Alberdi, an intellectual from the Generation of 1837, was originally a strong proponent of mass European immigration as a solution to Argentina’s problems and famously stated that “to govern is to populate”— specifically, to populate with a white European civilizing force.10 Although the majority of these immigrants were not those originally sought, the Argentine elite accepted the labor of these southern and eastern Europeans, mostly Italians and Spaniards, and benefited from the economic prosperity their work produced. That elite, however, was less prepared for the rise of labor movements and radicalism in the early 1900s among this new immigrant population, which then led to an increase in nationalism and anti-Semitism in the early twentieth century.11 234 Natasha Zaretsky

Despite the initial anti-immigrant sentiment, the Italian and Spanish immigrants eventually became incorporated into the national fabric of Argen­ tina. The position of Jews, on the other hand, remained ambiguous throughout their history. They did enjoy periods of growth in their social, cultural, and religious institutions—including the Yiddish press, theater, Jewish schools, and synagogues. But they also remained vulnerable to surges in anti-Semitism throughout their history, stemming from other members of Argentine society and from the state. One of the earliest instances of anti-Jewish violence occurred in 1919, in what came to be known as the Semana Trágica (Tragic Week) in Buenos Aires, when what began as labor unrest ultimately led to series of violent acts directed against Jews in the city.12 In the late 1950s and 1960s, Jews were also vulnerable to attacks and anti-Semitic propaganda.13 The abduction of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann further exacerbated these attacks and led to the 1962 kidnapping and torture of Graciela Sirota, a young Jewish student on her way to the University of Buenos Aires.14 In addition to these violent acts, many state policies were unfavorable toward Jews, if not overtly anti-Semitic. In the first half of the twentieth century, official state policies toward Jewish immigration reflected ambivalence at best, and indeed, many European Jews looking for a refuge after World War II were forced to enter Argentina using false names and papers, unable to enter legally as Jews.15 During the 1940s and 1950s, Catholic religious education was provided in state schools, leading to incidents of Jewish students being effectively excluded from one part of the public sphere.16 But perhaps the most extreme instances of anti-Semitism occurred during the political repression of the Dirty War (1976–1983). Although the military dictatorship did not target Jews as such, a disproportionately large number were disappeared (some estimates put Jews as 10 percent of the disappeared, much greater than their percentage of the population).17 Even if it was not an official state policy, according to many sources, there was a clear anti-Semitic dimension to the military dictatorship and the treatment and repression of Jews.18 During this period, many argue that the DAIA (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, or Delegation of Jewish Argentine Associations)—the political umbrella organization of the Jewish community whose mission includes defending the community from anti-Semitism—failed to effectively advocate for Jewish victims of the political repression.19 In response, the group Movimiento Judío por Derechos Humanos (Jewish Movement for Human Rights) formed, under the leadership of the journalist Herman Schiller and 235 Singing for Social Change

Rabbi Marshall Meyer.20 This moment is significant in that one sector of the Jewish community branched outside of the formal institutional leadership (the DAIA) in order to fight for their cause; this would come to pass again in the aftermath of the AMIA bombing. Thus, while in many ways Jews in Argentina thrived culturally, professionally, and economically, anti-Semitism persisted throughout their history, both in state policies and in incidents of anti-Jewish violence, especially during the Dirty War.21 The experience of Jewish-Argentines alternated between acceptance and tolerance in a multicultural society on the one hand, and discrimination, exclusion, and violence on the other—lending a persistent ambiguity to their place in society. Rather than a binary notion of Jewish or Argentine identity, their experience would be better described as a tension between their Jewish ethnicity and their relationship to the Argentine state and non-Jewish-Argentine society, a tension they had to negotiate in different ways throughout their history, but one that did fundamentally frame their experience.

The AMIA Bombing The ambiguity that characterized Jewish life in Argentina throughout their history continued to define the early 1990s, when Buenos Aires experienced two anti-Jewish terrorist attacks. The 1994 bombing in particular became a critical turning point for Jews in Argentina, as well as their place in public consciousness and politics.22 On July 21, 1994, just three days after the bombing, Argentine citizens of all backgrounds showed their solidarity in a protest that became known as the Tarde de las Paraguas (Afternoon of the Umbrellas) in the Plaza of the Two Congresses of Buenos Aires. While many showed their support during this time, others distanced themselves from Jews, refusing to play opposite Jewish soccer teams and no longer desiring Jewish institutions as their neighbors.23 And even some displays of support in themselves were complex. For instance, during that protest in the Plaza of the Two Congresses, a sign “Todos Somos Judíos” (We Are All Jews) may have been intended as support and solidarity but could also be interpreted as suggesting that this attack ultimately was a Jewish problem and was not perpetrated against all Argentine citizens. The state’s response to the bombing only exacerbated the sense of dislocation experienced by Argentine Jews as citizens after the bombing. Most Argentines perceived both the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing and the 1994 236 Natasha Zaretsky

AMIA bombing as part of the Middle East conflict, originating from abroad.24 Many Jewish-Argentines, however, felt their own state shared responsibility in investigating the attacks and held its officials accountable. Ultimately, the failure of the state to adequately investigate the AMIA bombing and its apparent complicity in obstructing justice contributed to an overwhelming feeling of impunity associated with this bombing—lending a sense of insecurity to the place of Jews in society.25 After the attack, family members of the victims and their supporters joined together to remember their loved ones and to fight against the impunity surrounding the attack. The group Memoria Activa has been at the forefront of efforts to hold the state accountable and protest the lack of justice in this case.26 For over ten years (from 1994 to 2004), the members met every Monday morning (the day and time of the bombing), in front of the high courts, to protest and demand justice.27 They have been extremely vocal in their criticism of the state and, later, of the Jewish community leadership for its failure to denounce the state in its failed investigation of the bombing.28 In 1999, with the support of CELS (Center for Legal and Social Studies) and later, CEJIL (Center for Justice and International Law), Memoria Activa brought a petition against the Argentine state before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. Their case was temporarily put on hold pending the results of a trial that began in Argentina starting in September 2001. However this trial did not yield any significant new information and concluded in 2004, with no convictions or further clarification of what occurred and who was responsible. In March 2005, the Argentine state accepted responsibility before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for its failure to prevent the 1994 attack, its failure to adequately investigate the bombing, and in effect, its denial of justice in this case.29

Yiddish and Politics in Buenos Aires Memoria Activa’s principal objectives were political in nature, yet the group’s weekly protests also came to serve an important social function. Protesting in a highly symbolic public place on a weekly basis positioned them squarely within other traditions of social protest in Argentina, most notably, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who march every Thursday in the central plaza of Argentina to protest the disappearance of their children during the political repression of Argentina’s Dirty War. By engaging public space in 237 Singing for Social Change

figure 9. Memoria Activa protest in Plaza Lavalle. © Photographed by Natasha Zaretsky.

the same way, Memoria Activa actively placed their cause within a broader history of impunity in Argentina, inviting other Argentines to include the AMIA bombing within the national imaginary (figure 9).30 In addition, the members of Memoria Activa also incorporated Jewish traditions into their protests. Every morning, they would begin by blowing the shofar to convoke the people to listen and remember the victims; also, in the beginning of their movement, a rabbi (Rabbi Sergio Bergman) actively and quite visibly participated in their protests. They thus incorporated Jewish religious practices and symbols into the public sphere of Argen­tina, including other Argentines in their political struggles, and essentially arguing that they be included as Jews and Argentines in the national body. In this way, Memoria Activa positioned their own struggle with impunity within a longer history in Argentina and also introduced one dimension of Jewish practice into the public sphere, accessible to everyone, in effect inviting them to imagine the Jewish as Argentine as well, refusing a simple binary. 238 Natasha Zaretsky

While political activism occupied a central dimension of the response of Jewish-Argentines to the bombing, many also turned to the arts to respond to the crisis of belonging and the destruction. Their work included fiction and nonfiction, art and sculpture, theater, and the construction of memorials and monuments in honor of the victims (most notably, Yaacov Agam’s monument in front of the newly reconstructed AMIA building and Mirta Kupferminc’s monument in the Plaza Lavalle, where Memoria Activa gathered for its protests).31 During the period following the attack, the Coro Guebirtig also began to meet, as an attempt to respond to the loss and destruction of the bombing with music.32 They officially formed in 1995, named for Mordechai Gebirtig, a Polish-Jewish poet killed in the Kraków ghetto. What distinguishes this chorus from many others in Buenos Aires is its affiliation with the ICUF (Idisher Cultur Farband, or Federation of Yiddish Cultures)33—a progressive Jewish institution that separated from the formal organized Jewish community (the AMIA and the DAIA) in the early 1950s, or from the perspective of the rest of the community was expelled.34 Some, though not all, ICUF members were also members of the Com­ munist Party, and many defended the actions of the Soviet Union during the years of the infamous Doctors’ Trial and the murder of Soviet-Jewish writers. The relationship of the ICUF to the Soviet Union became one of the key points of tension between the ICUF and the rest of the Jewish community.35 Their separation from the rest of the community also stemmed from significant ideological differences relating to the ICUF’s position on the State of Israel, the Soviet Union, the Prague trials targeting Zionists, and the role of Yiddish in Jewish life.36 The ICUF maintained a Jewish and progressive identity—integrating progressive ideals with a secular, traditionalist, and nonreligious notion of Jewish identity and culture. For them, being Jewish centered heavily on Yiddish identity and culture, which became a central part of their ideology and their secular Jewish education.37 When the majority of JewishArgentine schools elected to teach Hebrew instead of Yiddish, following the lead of the State of the Israel in their choice of national language, the ICUF set itself apart by continuing to teach Yiddish.38 Yiddish was also an essential cornerstone of Jewish life in Argentina more broadly. For many years, Yiddish language, literature, and theater thrived in Buenos Aires. The majority of immigrants arriving from Europe from the late 1800s through the early 1950s spoke Yiddish as their main language. This period also saw the flourishing of the Yiddish press 239 Singing for Social Change

and theater.39 Spanish, however, soon overtook Yiddish as the main spoken language for the children of these immigrants.40 Yet, Argentine-Jewish schools did teach Yiddish until Hebrew was adopted as the national language of Israel, after which many schools stopped teaching Yiddish in favor of Hebrew.41 As Yiddish declined in the daily life of much of the community, the ICUF schools continued to teach it to their students—a choice certainly linked to their ideological position on the place of Jews in society and the role of Yiddish in their Jewish identity. Significantly, they believed Jews should become integral members of their own states, rather than claim allegiance to the State of Israel. This position against Hebrew coupled together with the secular nature of their Jewish identity, which many of my informants defined as “cultural” or “traditional,” created the context for Yiddish to become such an important part of their identity as Jews. By the late 1960s, the ICUF schools began to close, but during their existence, they did play an important role in the transmission and preservation of Yiddish.42 In addition to Yiddish newspapers, theater, and the IWO (Jewish Research Institute), the ICUF schools actively sustained Yiddish in Argentina. Later, the Coro Guebirtig, many of whose founders were teachers in those ICUF schools, continued that role.43

The Coro Guebirtig Reizl Sztarker, the founding director of the Coro Guebirtig, lived in the neighborhood “Once” in Buenos Aires for many years.44 Once, one of the iconic Jewish neighborhoods in the city, was home to the first immigrants, their stores, synagogues, and social institutions. Like many other immigrants in Argentina, Ashkenazi Jews (primarily those of Eastern European and Russian descent) united to form a mutual aid society in order to assist each other through the difficulties of adjusting to a new land and to help each other maintain those customs important to them.45 The AMIA originated as a burial society formed by Ashkenazi Jews in 1894 and later expanded to include other services and became a community center, dedicated to education, assistance with jobs, and culture, among other activities. In 1945 the AMIA moved to its current location at 633 Pasteur Street, in the heart of the Once neighborhood where Reizl and many other Jews lived. The building came to house other important Jewish organizations like the DAIA and the IWO, along with its library and archives. 240 Natasha Zaretsky

Reizl lived just around the corner from the AMIA and watched the street and the fabric of the everyday destroyed below her balcony. For a month, she wasn’t able to walk by the ruins, until the one day when her husband told her that she couldn’t go on like that anymore and took her by the hand to lead her down the street where the bombing occurred. “When we walked down the street, the fighting spirit rose up in me, and I said to myself, ‘How can we respond to this? Why in the world don’t I have a chorus in this moment to respond to this?’ To death, [we respond] with life. To evil, [we respond] with song.”46 Reizl’s question resonated throughout Buenos Aires in the aftermath of the attack. How can one respond to the senseless violence and destruction of the bombing? To answer that question, we can look to the social movements that are still fighting for memory and justice; the Jewish schools and clubs that continued to operate despite fears of another attack; the security measures installed and the barricades that have transformed so profoundly the landscape of the city and Jewish life within it; and the many memorials and commemorative ceremonies. They all represent attempts to grapple with the violence of the bombing and find a way to move on. Reizl chose to do so through a chorus because of her own history and training—for over twenty years, she taught music at the Zhitlovsky School (part of the ICUF), also directing a children’s chorus there as well as a chorus at the IFT Theater in Buenos Aires. Jaique Till—another founding member of the Coro Guebirtig and one of its main coordinators—also spent many years as a teacher in the ICUF schools, before they closed in the 1970s.47 In the ensuing years, the lererkes (“teachers,” in Yiddish) from these schools continued to see each other socially and later formed a group, the Grupo Encuentro (Encounter Group), which would meet once a week for cultural and political activities.48 Even before the bombing, several would gather to sing for the father of Pece Corman (another woman who was also a founding member of the Coro Guebirtig), and there they first brought up the idea of forming a chorus.49 Yet the AMIA bombing came to be the critical factor in the actual formation of this chorus. As Jaique tells it, after the bombing there was a need for Yiddishkeit, for returning to one’s roots. “It seems that all of us had the need to feel more Jewish in some way, no? As a reaction to what happened.”50 In her view, this need for Jewishness after the bombing made it an ideal time to form a Yiddish chorus; she admits that if they attempted such a thing today, it probably wouldn’t be as successful as in the wake of the bombing. Jaique then turned to Reizl with the idea of a chorus, and 241 Singing for Social Change

Reizl, of course, strongly affected by the bombing, had already been thinking the same thing. At first, about fifteen to twenty former ICUF lererkes met in Reizl’s home to sing the Yiddish songs they all remembered. Although this started as an exercise in their own personal nostalgia, as the group grew, they decided to see if perhaps others would be interested in singing in Yiddish as well. Reizl’s only condition, according to Jaique, was “If we want to make a chorus, it has to be in the ICUF, because I am part of the ICUF.”51 And so, in 1995, Jaique proposed they place an advertisement in Página/12, a progressive daily newspaper in Argentina, which called to those who would be interested in singing in Yiddish.52 About eighty people responded to the Página/12 advertisement, and together with word of mouth, the chorus soon grew to an average of 150 members. They moved from singing in Reizl’s living room to larger venues, such as the IFT Theater and the Sarmiento School.53 Eventually, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening, members of the Coro Guebirtig convened to sing Yiddish songs together in a small, nondescript building on Rocamora Street in Buenos Aires, home to the ICUF, where they still met as of the present writing. Eventually, the Coro Guebirtig grew to become a chorus of 150 members, with the majority being elderly women. As of 2004, approximately 10 to 15 percent were men, and although most members were in their seventies and eighties, about 20 percent were under the age of sixty-five, the youngest member being forty-four. In terms of national origins, almost all traced their roots to Eastern Europe, some to Poland, some to Russia. Yet while some were born in Europe, and there were also Holocaust survivors among the group, most were born in Argentina, but spoke or heard Yiddish in their homes. Finally, while many were progressive in political orientation or members of the ICUF, the chorus was a heterogeneous political space and also included members of the community who identified as Zionist, although many chose to express their Jewish identity in what they called a secular or traditionalist, as opposed to a religious, way.54 Although originating as a Yiddish chorus, over the years, they have also incorporated some Hebrew, Spanish, Ladino, and Russian songs. They performed this repertoire throughout Buenos Aires—at commemorative events, like the annual commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, at AMIA functions, at geriatric centers, at synagogues, at Jewish schools, as well as other spaces outside of the Jewish community, like Centenario Park and the Obelisk, which occupies a central place in downtown Buenos Aires (figure 10). 242 Natasha Zaretsky

figure 10. Coro performance at Obelisk, August 2003. © Photographed by Laura Ponte.

Four Women’s Stories Many of my informants joined the chorus for personal reasons—and certainly not all of them intended this as a form of activism or social change. But all did come in the wake of the bombing, in pursuit of a space where they can collectively remember and express their Jewish identity through Yiddish. Below, I will focus on four of the women in this chorus as a point of departure for exploring the chorus as a space for social change.55 Specifically, their stories present an opportunity to reflect upon how these lives and histories articulate with the larger issue of how a minority group negotiates their belonging and identity in the aftermath of violence. As such, following biographical details, I will emphasize the impact of the AMIA bombing on their lives and their participation in the Coro Guebirtig.

clara Clara Feinsod was an original founding member of the Coro Guebirtig and worked for nineteen years as a Yiddish teacher in several ICUF schools— in the Peretz School of Villa Lynch, in Sarmiento, and in Ringelblum of Patricios Park.56 243 Singing for Social Change

Clara was born in 1942 in Buenos Aires to parents who immigrated to Argentina from Poland in the early 1930s. She grew up in Villa Lynch, where her parents worked in the textile industry. Although Clara’s parents were not religious, they always respected her grandmother’s religious beliefs. Her parents sustained what she described as a cultural vision of Jewish identity, as opposed to a religious one, and throughout our interview, Clara defended the legitimacy of a Jewish identity not based in religious practice, resisting the notion that religion represented a primary way of being Jewish. Clara’s household identified as very progressive, and she remembers her family collecting money for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. She remembers her family mourning the killing of the Rosenbergs in the United States. She remembers sending financial assistance to a kibbutz of progressive Jews in Israel. She also found there to be an important link between these progressive activities and Yiddish—for she also remembers the era of workers’ strikes in Villa Lynch and noted in our interview that the first acts of the textile union were written in Yiddish because of the many workers who were Polish and Russian Jews. Indeed, Yiddish came to be an important part of Clara’s life and experience as a progressive Jew, and later, she was able to transmit the importance of Yiddish to her children. She sent them to shule (school) and made sure they learned Yiddish cultural and literary history. However, they did not grow up speaking or understanding Yiddish in the way that Clara did. Clara continued to have a progressive orientation throughout her life— working for many years in the ICUF schools as a lererke and later becoming a founding member and organizer of the Coro Guebirtig. Yet the nature of her politics did change. After Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union, she and many others learned the truth of what happened during the Communist years, including the truth of the murders of the SovietJewish writers by Stalin, and she communicated the devastation she felt in that moment. When I asked her about the AMIA bombing, Clara began speaking about Israel. She and her husband were on a trip to visit family there, and on the plane ride home, Clara was inspired by what she saw of Palestinians and Jews in schools together. Her plane arrived in Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza Airport at 7:00 a.m. on July 18, 1994—three hours before the AMIA bombing. “It was terrible for me. . . . I said, this cannot be possible when over there [in Israel] there are Palestinians and Arabs and Israelis all together. Why?

244 Natasha Zaretsky

Why? . . . I had no answer to the massacre that occurred there. And it was then that the chorus was born.” Clara was one of the first who formed this chorus—starting as a group who simply came together to remember the songs they used to sing in the shules or the songs of their parents. Later, as more people wanted to join, they moved from Reizl’s home to larger spaces, eventually moving to the ICUF itself. By singing these songs now, Clara believes that they are “slowing down” the disappearance of Yiddish as a language and that it is something that “we still carry inside of us.” Most importantly, however, for her is the cultural and ideological role she sees the chorus members playing within the community, especially in the wake of the 1990s bombings: The AMIA and the Israeli Embassy [bombings] saddened many people, and we feel that our activity shows that we are strong, that we know why we are singing and that song plays an important positive role within and outside the community. Because there are people who get to know . . . the community because we go out to the streets to sing. Furthermore, this plurality and openness (specifically, in regards to political differences within the chorus) are characteristics that Clara believes might serve as a model for others: With this chorus that a very small group of teachers created, we offer an example to the entire community, or to various communities, because we found a way to unite, rather than divide. [We are able] to see the positive of one side and the other. . . . I think the chorus opened another history in the cultural life of the Jewish community in Argentina. Despite the strong institutional connection between the Coro Guebirtig and the ICUF, many members joined simply because they wanted to sing in Yiddish and felt the need to reaffirm their Jewish identity after the AMIA bombing. Indeed, the Coro Guebirtig has become a space open to many different ideologies—many are progressive and affiliated with ICUF; others are Zionists, religious, or more conservative in their politics. Yet, this space is not always harmonious, and conflicts and differences did arise while

245 Singing for Social Change

I was there based on leadership issues (something that can occur in any group) and political differences.57 The ideological openness and plurality of the Coro Guebirtig also ex­­ tended to the songs in their repertoire (which include Hebrew songs and Spanish songs), as well as their choice to celebrate important Jewish holidays together, like Passover and Rosh Hashanah. In fact, most of their performances took place at Jewish institutions unaffiliated with the ICUF, in spaces where the ICUF previously may not have been welcome, due to its complex history with the rest of the Jewish community (related to the ICUF’s position toward Israel and their support of the Soviet Union). Despite differences among the members, and occasional conflicts, the chorus has been able to sustain itself as a 150-person group and find a way to respect each other’s differences for over ten years. In this way, one might consider the chorus and its contribution to the possibility of a more plural and inclusive space for Jews in Argentina.58

diana Diana Wang, a psychologist and author who lives in a northern suburb of Buenos Aires, joined the Coro Guebirtig after the AMIA bombing.59 Diana was born in Poland, near Kraków, in August 1945. Her parents both survived the Shoah (or Holocaust) and, following Diana’s birth, immigrated to South America in 1947 with a Paraguayan visa. After a brief detour in Uruguay, they settled in Buenos Aires to join what remained of their family. Although many of her parents’ friends were also Polish Jews, Diana did not grow up in a “Jewish environment,” as she put it, or with a strong sense of Jewish identity. Being Jewish remained a point of tension and ambivalence within her family—largely due to her parents’ desire to protect their children, in light of their experiences during the Shoah. Furthermore, everything that had to do with her parents’ past—being Jewish, their experiences in Europe, the Shoah—held no interest for Diana, and, in her words, all of it remained “latent.” The 1994 AMIA bombing became her turning point. On that day, she told me that her mother telephoned her, desperate and weeping: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for bringing you here. They have come for us again. They won’t leave us alone. They want to kill us.” Diana’s mother had brought her to Argentina to protect her from violence, to be in a place where they couldn’t be killed for being Jewish, and because of the bombing, she felt that in Argentina, that was no longer true. 246 Natasha Zaretsky

For her, the AMIA bombing resonated with her own history of anti-Jewish violence, the Shoah. After the bombing, Diana experienced a profound change in her sense of being Jewish. She started regularly attending the Monday morning protests held by Memoria Activa. She tried to learn more about her own history, and being a child of survivors of the Shoah became central to her identity. She became interested in activities related to the Shoah, such as the March of the Living, and later went on to write about survivors and lead a group of child survivors of the Holocaust and children of survivors, now united under the group Generations of the Shoah.60 Although Diana “became Jewish” in a different way after the bombing, being Jewish did not involve religious practice for her (although it did for some other Jewish-Argentines). Instead, she turned to her past, and her father’s love of Yiddish songs, as a place to explore her identity. She began to study Yiddish with a teacher, in order to be able to read a small book of songs her father used to have, songs written by Mordechai Gebirtig. When she learned that a Yiddish chorus had formed bearing the same name, she felt compelled to see it for herself. My first times there, I could barely sing. My eyes just filled up with tears, the way they are filling up now. I couldn’t believe I was there with this group of people, singing some of the songs that my dad used to sing. . . . I wasn’t familiar with everything they sang—because I didn’t go to a Jewish school. . . . But every time a song came up that was one of my dad’s songs, I couldn’t sing. I knew it from memory. . . . But I [ just] couldn’t believe that this existed outside of the world of my family. I thought it was only in my house, and all of a sudden, I had that feeling of belonging to a community that was so large. . . . There is this feeling of an invisible grid upon which one is standing, a place where one stands more comfortably [than when alone]—it’s difficult to explain. I felt more comfortable. What Diana felt upon joining the chorus—a tangible sense of belonging—hinged on her nostalgia for the Yiddish songs her father used to sing before he passed away. She was not alone—many who joined the chorus felt the same way when hearing these songs for the first time. They felt overwhelmed by hearing songs that they knew from childhood, and hearing them sung not just in their own homes but in unison, together. For Diana, then, joining the chorus became a part of a greater revitalization 247 Singing for Social Change

in her own life of being Jewish, as well as a chance to return to memories of her own childhood. Yet, can nostalgia involve more than just revisiting one’s own past?

elena Elena Pavlotzky, a dentist who lives in the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, another Jewish area of the city, is perhaps one of the youngest members of the chorus, although she did not even know of its existence until several years after the AMIA bombing.61 Elena was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1950 to a family who had originally emigrated from Poland and Russia in the early 1930s. Although she described her family as being Jewish, she said they were not religious, only celebrating Passover and Rosh Hashanah at home. Her family did speak Yiddish, but Spanish was the main language spoken in her home. The Yiddish she learned was in the Zhitlovsky School of the ICUF in Uruguay, an institution of which her parents were members. All of her Jewish friends were from the Zhitlovsky School and the ICUF, and she did not have much contact with the rest of the Jewish community in Uruguay. Elena came to live in Buenos Aires in 1993. Yet, despite her progressive orientation and her history of affiliation with the ICUF in Uruguay, she did not participate or have much contact with the ICUF in Buenos Aires and did not know anything about the chorus. One day, a friend called to invite her to listen to a Yiddish chorus perform in Centenario Park in the city: “I went to listen to them [sing] and I became so overwhelmed with emotion, I cried that entire day . . . because they were singing songs I had learned in the shule, songs my grandmother used to sing.” When the Coro Guebirtig finished their performance, she asked where they were from, and only then did she find out they belonged to the ICUF. Elena joined the chorus in 1999, even though, according to her, she has a “horrible voice” and can’t sing well at all. What moves her most about being in the chorus is the Yiddish, the songs, and the powerful emotional resonance they carry for her. Yet even when she sings to non-Jewish friends, who do not understand a word of Yiddish, Elena still believes they can feel the power and emotion of the songs—which transcend the language barrier. It seems to me that music isn’t something that travels through language. You can listen to songs and sing songs you don’t understand and you will feel the emotions just the same. I don’t know Russian 248 Natasha Zaretsky

and yet the first times we sang songs in Russian, I couldn’t sing because I would almost cry—these were songs that my grandmother Pavlotzky used to sing. . . . I was twenty-three when my grandparents died and my grandmother used to sing in Russian and for me, it was so powerful to sing “Kalinka.” . . . I was overwhelmed, I couldn’t sing, the first times in the rehearsals—it was too much. Elena was already living in Buenos Aires on the day of the AMIA bombing, a moment whose destruction and utter violence profoundly affected her. Yet, Elena’s story in the Coro Guebirtig, like many others, did not hinge on the bombing as such. For her, the Coro Guebirtig is not so much about social change in the aftermath of the bombing, or about revitalizing Yiddish more broadly in the Jewish community—instead, being in the Coro Guebirtig is more about her personal memories and finding a space where she can remember and sing those songs her family used to sing, with others feeling the same way (forming a new collectivity based on memory). And throughout her interview, she emphasized the way the power of what they do transcends language, in effect, suggesting the possibility of a space opening between Jews and non-Jews during their performances.

celina Celina Fuks, an actress and retired office worker who lives in the Once neighborhood, joined the chorus as soon as she read the 1995 advertisement in Página/12 summoning those who wanted to sing in Yiddish.62 She was born in 1929 in Buenos Aires, to parents who immigrated to Argentina from the Ukraine in the early 1920s, on the heels of the Russian Revolution. Her family did celebrate and respect the Jewish holidays, yet they were not a religious family and did not go to temple. Her parents were quite active in community life. Celina’s father worked for the ICUF, the IFT Theater, and a community library. Both of her parents also fought against Nazism and anti-Semitism during World War II and organized humanitarian aid for the Jewish victims of that war. Celina herself remembers their activism during the Spanish Civil War—even the children collected the foil from cigarette wrappings and chocolates, told they were going to be sent to Spain to make bullets. In the 1950s, Celina also recalls the division of the community, as a result of differing positions on Stalin’s murder of Jewish writers. Her father, despite his active involvement, could not tolerate that such a division had taken place and ended his community activities after that. Celina herself 249 Singing for Social Change

was sent to a Jewish school and received a Jewish education but was never affiliated with any institution, except for joining the Hebraica Club (a cultural and educational Jewish institution) as a young adult. Celina remembers the AMIA bombing very clearly—she was at the Channel 13 television station in Buenos Aires, waiting to sign some paperwork for a small role she would be playing in a soap opera. While she was waiting, someone told her a bomb had exploded in a building in the city, and when they told her it was the AMIA, she just broke down and started to cry. They [the others in the station] said to me, “What’s wrong? What, did you have relatives there?” And I said, “You also had relatives, if your relatives were passing by on that street, the same thing [would have] happened to them, no?” So then I ran out of there, took a taxi, and was desperate because my brother works in Once, my sister-inlaw works in Once . . . and I take a taxi, and . . . I get in and I was crying. The driver says to me, “What’s wrong?” I said, “Nothing— didn’t you see they put a bomb in the AMIA?” Then—the driver must have been an Evangelist because he says to me, “Oh, madam. What a shame. But,” he says, “as long as our brothers and sisters the Jews do not ask for forgiveness, these things will [continue to] happen.” . . . I was overcome by anger, and screamed, “I am getting out! I am getting out!!!”63 Despite the clear impact the AMIA bombing had on her personally, Celina did not cite it as a reason for joining the chorus. She told me she was attracted by the Yiddish and, like many others, overtaken by the emotion every time they would sing a song her father used to sing. Like so many others, she wanted to sing in Yiddish and discovered a place of belonging there.

The Coro as a Space for Social Change From the stories above, we can see the intricacies of four women’s lives and the different paths they took to join the Coro Guebirtig. They all shared a love for Yiddish and the desire to sing it in a group—to engage their memories collectively. Some, like Clara, Elena, and Celina, had a progressive upbringing and activism had always been integrated with Jewish culture in their families’ lives. The bombing also figured quite importantly in the 250 Natasha Zaretsky

decisions of Diana, Clara, and Reizl (the director) to join the chorus. Yet, Elena and Celina, despite the impact of the bombing on their lives, did not relate that experience to their decision to join the chorus. The questions that I will pursue below, based on these narratives, hinge on the possibilities of this Yiddish chorus, a nostalgic space by definition, to also be a force for social change in the aftermath of violence. I have chosen to highlight the following dimensions of that greater question: (1) Can nostalgia itself be seen as a tool of resistance? (2) What can this chorus tell us about divisions within the Jewish community, between progressive and Zionist Jews and changes in the community after the bombing?64 and, (3) What role does this chorus serve in expanding the public sphere and opening Jewish practice to the rest of society (in marked contrast to the message sent by the security barricades)?

Nostalgic Acts of Memory On most rehearsal nights I observed during my fieldwork, the Coro Guebirtig’s room in the ICUF was filled with older women, sitting elbow to elbow on white plastic chairs. On the surface, they might appear to be a group of elderly who need to find a way to spend their time, yearning to reminisce and share their memories with each other. One might be hard-pressed to discover the dimension of social change at work here. Indeed, nostalgia is often cast as something other than a constructive form of memory, as a way of escaping the present to return to a “safer” and more glorified past and relinquishing the possibility for agency or change in the present.65 But in this case, although nostalgia did motivate the majority of the members to originally join, many also did so as a way of responding to the bombing. Furthermore, their continued presence in the chorus, and its continued existence, at this writing, for over ten years, represents a form of response and resistance to the bombing’s violence directed at Jewish community life. In Diana’s case, singing in Yiddish (together with going to Memoria Activa and her activities related to the Shoah) involved choosing to be Jewish—transforming what is an identity imposed from without to something she elected to express. Although the ability to choose to “be Jewish” is certainly open to greater debate, deciding to engage in Jewish practices publicly after two anti-Jewish bombings in Buenos Aires represents a powerful form of response—whether it be through a Yiddish chorus, attending a synagogue service, or continuing to attend a Jewish school or play at a Jewish club. 251 Singing for Social Change

In effect, the Coro Guebirtig has transformed singing Yiddish songs into such everyday moments of resistance to that destruction. The members have also discovered a renewed relevance for the words sung in the ghettos during World War II, applying them to their current situations and dilemmas as Jews in Argentina.66 The work of the Coro Guebirtig, along with many programs under way in the IWO, can be seen as elements of a revitalization, albeit limited, of Yiddish in the Jewish-Argentine community.67 Instead of viewing the Coro Guebirtig as a passive exercise in nostalgia, I propose that it be considered more in the line of Leo Spitzer’s work on Bolivia, where he describes the nostalgic memory of Austrian-Jewish refugees as being a “creative tool of adjustment” and as something that can be read as a resource for survival.68 And indeed, the Coro Guebirtig has taken the members’ European-Jewish past and Yiddish language and transformed it, creatively, to adapt to their current struggles, making it a force for social change.69

Progressive Politics within the Jewish Community Nostalgia did motivate many to join the chorus—yet Reizl, as the director, did not allow this to be just a space for remembering pleasant songs, even if those songs can also be interpreted as tools for change (see above). The chorus does sing many songs that are joyful and light in tone, yet a great part of their repertoire involves songs that address progressive social issues, such as poverty, hunger, peace, and justice.70 According to Reizl, for the first four or five years of the chorus, they always began their performances with a song to remember the massacre of the AMIA bombing. However, as time went on, and the political situation in the country changed, they went on to sing songs relevant to the worsening economic and political situation of the country.71 The chorus also dedicated many of its performances to remembering violence and loss in their past—they sang at the inauguration of the newly rebuilt AMIA building in 1999; they also perform regularly at events for Shoah survivors and in honor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a commemorative activity that also figures prominently in the Jewish secular practices of ICUF members.72 Thus, in addition to the progressive orientation of some of its members (like Reizl, Jaique, Clara, Celina, and Elena), as a chorus, they were also dedicated to progressive values, issues of contemporary concern, and activism in their choice of songs and performances.73 Yet, the very nature of what it means to be progressive changed over the history of the chorus. Many of my informants used the term progresista 252 Natasha Zaretsky

(progressive) to describe themselves, linking it to ideals such as fighting against poverty and hunger, fighting for peace and justice, and for workers’ rights. However, they also use this term as a way of identifying themselves in opposition to the category sionista (Zionist), which they use to refer to the remainder of the Jewish community. The progressive/Zionist opposition of course tells a greater story of one of the main reasons for the split between the ICUF and the rest of the Jewish community in the 1950s—their position toward the State of Israel and belief that Jews should be focused on integrating into the nations in which they reside, rather than orienting themselves toward Israel.74 This tension between progressive and Zionist marked the split between the ICUF and the rest of the Jewish community in the 1950s and indicates the significant role Zionism plays in intracommunity relations for Jewish-Argentines. Despite this complex history, the Coro Guebirtig performed at the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel and has incorporated Hebrew into its repertoire—suggesting a change for many progressive members.75 In addition, the migration of some Coro Guebirtig members to Israel in response to the economic decline of the 1990s has also transformed the role of Israel in their own lives and imaginaries. Thus, the very nature of being progressive for many Coro Guebirtig members has changed over time and should not be viewed as a static category. Their progressive ideals have also led them to engage in partnerships with the rest of the Jewish community, such as the social welfare and donation programs organized by the Joint Distribution Committee. The ICUF, like many other Jewish institutions, formed part of this larger coalition, and the Coro Guebirtig regularly requested food donations at their performances.76 Despite the progressive (and formerly nonreligious) orientation of its founders and many members, they also performed at synagogues and have come to celebrate Jewish holidays in the chorus, out of respect for those members who are more religious. While this does not mean that conflicts and political tension did not also exist, the chorus has sustained itself despite these differences and found a way to tolerate and respect each other—in effect, becoming one possible model for plurality. As seen earlier, nostalgia can also be a force for social change—and indeed, there is an important element of social change at work in the Coro Guebirtig’s performances as they revitalize Yiddish and transform it to adapt to new problems and concerns. Yet, another form of social change can be seen at work within the community—through their inclusive membership (open to various political and religious leanings) and performances 253 Singing for Social Change

at Zionist (as opposed to progressive) Jewish community institutions, the chorus is also building bridges across old divides, between progressives and Zionists, both institutionally and interpersonally, thereby renegotiating Jewish belonging within the community itself.

Expanding the Public Sphere The Coro Guebirtig’s performances for Jewish audiences are one dimension of their work. Yet they are also invited to perform at non-Jewish spaces, like public schools, churches, and the Annual Music Festival at Centenario Park.77 Many of my informants described singing Yiddish to those who do not understand as perhaps being almost more valuable than singing it to those who do. Although they may not understand the words, Reizl tried to find a way to explain the meaning of each song and to include the audience. The chorus also accomplished this by including several songs in Spanish and performing traditional Argentine tangos with Yiddish lyrics, in effect, making the Yiddish recognizable. Opening Jewish practice to non-Jewish audiences and bringing Yiddish to them may be one of the most important functions of the chorus. By doing so, they began to create a dialogue with non-Jewish-Argentines as listeners, and shifted the distance between each other. In the framework of trauma and violence, the listener and the audience are critical for narrative to emerge and as an act of recognition—all necessary for someone who has lived through violence to begin reconstructing social ties.78 If we look at the Coro Guebirtig in this way, we can consider what it means for a non-Jewish audience to listen to and recognize this chorus, to listen to and recognize Yiddish songs, or Jewishness, and even if for only that moment, to include that recognition within their imaginary. Thus, like Memoria Activa blowing the shofar on Monday mornings in front of the high courts of Argentina, the Coro Guebirtig takes Jewish practice and opens it to others, introducing it to society at large and renegotiating its place in the public sphere. More broadly, their work suggests the multiple ways in which a minority group harnesses what might be a tension between their Jewish and Argentine identities as a creative tool in the aftermath of violence.

Conclusion The Coro Guebirtig represents an attempt to respond to the destruction and loss perpetuated by the 1994 bombing of the principal Jewish center 254 Natasha Zaretsky

of Buenos Aires. Their performances and the community they’ve formed invite us to consider them as both attempts to give meaning to violence and as fundamentally social acts that rebuild the public sphere and reimagine it as an open and plural space. Through their performances of Yiddish songs, the Coro Guebirtig creates an ongoing commentary about the possibility of a place for Jewish culture in Argentine society. Like Memoria Activa, they respond to the crisis of belonging that arose after the AMIA bombing. Yet not all responses from the Jewish community indicated a desire to belong in the face of the failure of the nation and certain sectors of society to accept and defend them. A counterpoint to Memoria Activa and to the Coro Guebirtig can be found in the extensive security measures and cement barricades put into place after the bombing in front of almost all Jewish institutions, with very few exceptions. These measures present a powerful commentary on the failures of the Argentine state in protecting them as citizens but also suggest that the Jewish community no longer needs the state in the same way as before (a much different response to the crisis of belonging than a demand for inclusion).79 In contrast, Memoria Activa and the Coro Guebirtig represent a model of openness and plurality.80 Although I am arguing here that the Coro Guebirtig can be viewed as a vehicle for social change, I do not mean that they could, through singing in Yiddish, accomplish the goals of justice and memory central to groups like Memoria Activa. Instead, I am suggesting that their work serves to effect social change in a different way. The openness of their performances to non-Jewish groups shifts, and perhaps opens, the boundary between Jewish and non-Jewish-Argentine, introducing Jewish culture to the rest of society and working to rebuild a plural social sphere and the fabric of the Argentine “we” threatened by the bombing. They thus respond to the crisis of belonging and represent a model for plurality threatened by the attack.81 Furthermore, the chorus members play a role in transforming the ambiguity that has historically characterized the Jewish experience in Argentina into a creative tool of adaptation—indeed, using their flexibility as citizens with multiple cultural repertoires to respond to the violence of the bombing.82 Thus, looking at their ethnicity on a spectrum, rather than as a binary, suggests that their agency in engaging these multiple repertoires of ethnicity and experience serves an important role in rebuilding their community and society in the aftermath of violence.

! 255 Singing for Social Change

The song that Reizl chose to discuss that August 2003 morning at Memoria Activa, “Mein nisht,” was being rehearsed at the time by the chorus.83 Unlike some of the more light-hearted and almost delightfully nostalgic pieces available in the songbook, this powerful song was set to an almost funereal, thundering march—a difficult piece of music to perform. Indeed, some chorus members during rehearsals complained about it and did not enjoy singing it in the same way they did some other songs. But they valued its importance, and Reizl persisted, asking them, “Who will sing this, if we don’t sing it?”84 The words of Peretz, proclaiming that there is indeed law and justice in the world, continued to bear significance for Reizl and other Jewish-Argentines, and Reizl argued, in her testimony in Memoria Activa, that they also were relevant to non-JewishArgentines in their struggle for justice. Scholars of trauma find that narrative or narration is critical after violence, because it is both an attempt to find meaning and give order to the experience and a fundamentally social act, requiring dialogue with a listener that allows one to begin reconstructing personal ties, the self, and the social sphere.85 Certainly, social movements like Memoria Activa that formed to fight for memory and justice represent such attempts to fight for justice and to imagine and rebuild a more just and fair Argentine society that includes them fully as Jews and Argentines. In a different way, the Coro Guebirtig can also be considered as an attempt at coherence in the face of the senselessness of violence and loss, as an attempt to find meaning, and to rebuild the social and renegotiate belonging and the place of the Jewish in Argentine society. Yet, despite their efforts, meaning and justice may not be attainable after all. The true perpetrators of the bombings of the 1990s, of the tortures and disappearances of the Dirty War, may never be fully brought to justice. The violence will never make sense. And the power and reach of a Yiddish song or a Yiddish chorus are, of course, limited.86 Yet, if justice and meaning are not accessible, the other function of narration and the other strategies adopted after violence— the rebuilding of the social sphere, in this case, as open and plural—may be one of the greatest contributions offered by the work of the chorus, alongside the work of other social movements formed after the bombings. When the Coro Guebirtig sings in Yiddish to a non-Jewish audience, when Reizl creates a conversation between Peretz and the Argentine government,87 perhaps for a moment, the boundary between self and other, between Jew and Argentine, might collapse or shift. This shift might then allow there to be a point of mutual identification—a moment of imagining a common “we”—that is critical to the quest for memory and justice that organizes groups like Memoria Activa and to addressing the crisis of belonging generated by the AMIA bombing. 256 Natasha Zaretsky

Acknowledgments This essay originated as a paper presented at the Latin American Jewish Studies Association Twelfth International Research Conference, “Inherited Memories: Latin American Jewish Experience across Generations,” Dart­ mouth College, 2004. It is based on seventeen months of dissertation research carried out in Buenos Aires in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004, which would not have been possible without the generous support of a Fulbright award and grants from the Princeton University Graduate School, Program in Latin American Studies, Program in Judaic Studies, and Council on Regional Studies. My thanks go to Annette Levine, Eugene Raikhel, and Oliver Schietinger for their comments, although I, of course, take full responsibility for any errors or omissions. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose suggestions were extremely useful for the development of the ideas in this essay. I am also grateful to Silvia Schenkolewski-Kroll, Alejandro Dujovne, Sandra McGee Deutsch, and Ana Weinstein for pointing me to several sources I found useful in preparing this essay. Finally, I would like to thank Reizl Sztarker, Diana Wang, Jaique Till, Clara Feinsod, Celina Fuks, Elena Pavlotzky, and Susana Grushka, and all of the members of the Coro Guebirtig for their generosity in sharing their lives with me.

Notes 1. Excerpt from Reizl Sztarker, testimony at Memoria Activa in Buenos Aires, August 25, 2003, www.memoriaactiva.com/anteriores2003.htm. In her testimony, Reizl Sztarker had translated the Yiddish into Spanish; the translation from Spanish into English is mine. 2. For a discussion of the “limits of representation,” see Saul Friedlander, ed. Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the Final Solution (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1992). For an exploration of trauma and the challenge traumatic experience poses to representation, see Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). For anthropological accounts that address the same question, see Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Carolyn Nordstrom, eds., Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 3. See Elizabeth Jelin and Susana G. Kaufman, “Layers of Memories: Twenty Years after in Argentina,” in The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, ed. T. G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 89–110; Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory, trans. Judy Rein and Marcial Godoy-Anativia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret 257 Singing for Social Change















Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds., Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 4. The three primary groups of family members of the victims existing as of this writing are Memoria Activa (Active Memory), Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas (Family Members and Friends of the Victims), and APEMIA (Association for the Clarification of the Unpunished Massacre of the AMIA Bombing). They include both family members of victims of the bombing and their supporters but have important differences when it comes to their relationship to Jewish community leaders and the state. For an overview of these differences, see Beatriz Gurevich, “After the AMIA Bombing: A Critical Analysis of Two Parallel Discourses,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory, ed. Kristin Ruggiero, 86–111 (Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 90–92. 5. Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Changing the Landscape: The Study of Argentine Jewish Women and New Historical Vistas” Jewish History 18 (2004): 49–73. 6. Ibid., 50. 7. For further details about the way in which the study of Latin American Jews might reveal broader issues of concern in Latin America, see Raanan Rein, “Introduction: New Approaches to Latin American Jewish Studies,” Jewish History 18 (2004): 1–5, esp. 4. 8. See page 129 in Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “The Population of Latin America, 1850–1930,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America. Volume IV, c. 1870–1930, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 121–52. 9. For a review of this intellectual history, see Charles A. Hale, “Political and Social Ideas in Latin America, 1870–1930,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America. Volume IV, c. 1870–1930, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 367–441. 10. See Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 146–47. For an overview of the development of immigration policy on the part of elites, see Donald S. Castro, The Development and Politics of Argentine Immigration Policy, 1852–1914: To Govern Is to Populate (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1991), and also Tulio Halperin Donghi, “¿Para qué la inmigración? Ideología y política inmigratoria y aceleración del proceso modernizador: El caso argentino, 1810–1914,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 13 (1976): 437–89. 11. See David Rock, Politics in Argentina, 1890–1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Carl Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism: Argentina and Chile, 1890–1914 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970). 12. For further information about the Semana Trágica, as well as the relationship between nationalism in Argentina and anti-Semitism, see Sandra McGee Deutsch, “The Argentine Right and the Jews, 1919–1933,” Journal of Latin American Studies 18 (1986): 113–34. For an analysis of the Semana Trágica, see also Rock, Politics in Argentina, 157–79, and Haim Avni, Argentina and the Jews: 258 Natasha Zaretsky

A History of Jewish Immigration, trans. Gila Brand (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1991), 100–101. 13. Judith Laikin Elkin, The Jews of Latin America, rev. ed. (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1998), 265–68, and Edna Aizenberg, Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires: Borges, Gerchunoff, and Argentine-Jewish Writing (Hanover and London: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2002), 252–57. 14. See Elkin, The Jews of Latin America, 254–55; Raanan Rein, “Argentine Jews and the Accusation of ‘Dual Loyalty,’ 1960–1962,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory, ed. Kristin Ruggiero (Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 86–111. 15. See Avni, Argentina and the Jews. 16. Raanan Rein, “Nationalism, Education, and Identity: Argentine Jews and Catholic Religious Instruction, 1943–1955,” in Memory, Oblivion, and Jewish Culture in Latin America, ed. Marjorie Agosín (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 163–76. 17. Elkin, The Jews of Latin America, 258. 18. See Edy Kaufman and Beatriz Cymberknopf, “La dimensión judía en la represión durante el gobierno militar en la Argentina (1976–1983),” in El antisemitismo en la Argentina, ed. Leonardo Senkman, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1989), 235–73; Elkin, The Jews of Latin America, 257–63; Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, trans. Toby Talbot (New York: Vintage Books, 1981); CONADEP, Nunca más: Informe de la comisión nacional sobre la desaparición de personas (1985; repr., Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2003), 69–75; Marisa Braylan, Daniel Feierstein, Miguel Galante, and Adrián Jmelnizky, Report on the Situation of the Jewish Detainees-Disappeared during the Genocide Perpetrated in Argentina (Buenos Aires: Social Research Center of DAIA, Argentine Jewish Community Centers Association, 2000); Javier Simonovich, “Desaparecidos y antisemitismo en la Argentina, 1976–1983. Las respuestas de la comunidad judía,” in El antisemitismo en la Argentina, ed. Leonardo Senkman, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1989), 310–28, esp. 312, 317; David Sheinin, “Deconstructing Anti-Semitism in Argentina,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory, ed. Kristin Ruggiero (Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 72–85. 19. Ignacio Klich, “Política comunitaria durante las juntas militares argentinas: La DAIA durante el proceso de reorganización nacional,” in El antisemitismo en la Argentina, ed. Leonardo Senkman, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1989), 274–309, esp. 300; Simonovich, “Desaparecidos y antisemitismo en la Argentina,” 315; Sheinin, “Deconstructing Anti-Semitism in Argentina.” 20. Simonovich, “Desaparecidos y antisemitismo en la Argentina,” 315–16. 21. Feierstein has described it as “two Argentinas,” one being pluralist and multicultural, with the other as anti-Semitic. See Ricardo Feierstein, Historia de los Judíos argentinos (1993; repr., Rosario and Buenos Aires: Ameghino Editora, 1999), 428. See also Ricardo Feierstein, La logia del umbral (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2001). 259 Singing for Social Change

22. Beatriz Gurevich, “After the AMIA Bombing: A Critical Analysis of Two Parallel Discourses,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory (Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 90. 23. For a discussion of the contrasting responses in Argentine society to the AMIA bombing, see Elkin, The Jews of Latin America, 265–68, and Aizenberg, Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires, 7–13. 24. These attacks have been attributed to the group Hezbollah by many of the organizations of family members of the victims and Jewish community leaders. However, Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for the 1994 bombing, as of this writing. See Gurevich, “After the AMIA Bombing.” 25. Ibid., 90. 26. For further discussion of the significance of Memoria Activa, see Aizenberg, Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires, 11–13. See also Annette Prekker, “Memoria y Justicia: Separate Places for Separate Spaces,” Modernity 2 (2000), www.eiu. edu/~modernity/prekker.html. 27. The final weekly Monday protest of Memoria Activa took place on December 27, 2004, although the organization continues its work in other ways. A small group of supporters also continued to convene every Monday morning in the plaza facing the high courts, to stand in memory of the victims, and did so as of this writing. This speaks to the significant social space Memoria Activa has created through its protests, in addition to the political dimension to their work. 28. For a comprehensive overview of the politics and relationship between Memoria Activa, the community leadership, and other groups of family members of the victims, see Gurevich, “After the AMIA Bombing,” 90–92 and 102. Gurevich also argues that the failure of the DAIA in this case has led to a “crisis of representation” (102) in the community, with the DAIA no longer being the only voice or representative of the community before the state. 29. See Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States, “ACHR Expresses Satisfaction at the Argentine State’s Acknowledgment of Liability in the AMIA Case,” Press release, no. 5/05 (2005), www.cidh.org/Comunicados/English/2005/5.05eng.htm. 30. This effort has also been pursued by other groups of family members of the victims, such as APEMIA (Association for the Clarification of the Unpunished Massacre of the AMIA Bombing), led by Laura Ginsberg, who has fought for the AMIA bombing to become a part of the struggles against terrorist impunity by the left-wing political groups and organizations with which she is affiliated (interviews with Laura Ginsberg held by author in Buenos Aires, July 2004, August 2006). 31. See Stephen A. Sadow, “Lamentations for the AMIA: Literary Responses to Communal Trauma,” in Memory, Oblivion, and Jewish Culture in Latin America, ed. Marjorie Agosín (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 149–62. 32. The material in this article about the Coro Guebirtig is based on seventeen months of fieldwork I conducted in Buenos Aires from 2001 to 2004. During that time, I joined the Coro Guebirtig for their weekly rehearsals; I observed their performances; I participated in their holiday parties and other social events; and I interviewed their members. 260 Natasha Zaretsky

33. In some publications, the ICUF is spelled IKUF. For instance, see Efraim Zadoff, “The Status of Yiddish in Jewish Educational Systems in Argentina and Mexico,” in Yiddish and the Left, ed. Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford, Studies in Yiddish 3, 2001), 280–98. 34. See Efraim Zadoff, Historia de la educación judía en Buenos Aires (1935–1957) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Milá, 1994), 405–16. Also see Zadoff, “The Status of Yiddish in Jewish Educational Systems,” 286, and Feierstein, Historia de los Judíos argentinos. 35. Interviews with Clara Feinsod, Jaique Till, and Susana Grushka. For more information about Jewish women, the Communist Party, and the ICUF, see McGee Deutsch, “Changing the Landscape,” 60–62. 36. See Zadoff, “The Status of Yiddish in Jewish Educational Systems,” 286, and Zadoff, Historia de la educación judía en Buenos Aires. Also, Jaique (Clara Frida Ochman de) Till, interview by author in Buenos Aires, July 30, 2003; Clara Feinsod, interview by author in Buenos Aires, August 5, 2003; Susana Grushka, interview by author in Buenos Aires, August 13, 2003; Reizl (Rosa Kafenbaum de) Sztarker, interview by author in Buenos Aires, August 11, 2003. For an overview of the ICUF in Latin America, see Dina Lida Kinoshita, “O ICUF como uma rede de intelectuais,” Revista Universum 15 (2000): 377–98. For further information on the relationship of the Communist Party in Argentina to Moscow, see Silvia Schenkolewski-Kroll, “El Partido Comunista en la Argentina ante Moscú: Deberes y realidades, 1930–1941,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe (University of Tel Aviv) 2 (1999): 91–107. 37. Zadoff, Historia de la educación judía en Buenos Aires, 405–16. 38. See Zadoff, “The Status of Yiddish in Jewish Educational Systems.” 39. See Ana E. Weinstein and Eliahu Toker, La letra ídish en tierra argentina: Biobibliografía de sus autores literarios (Buenos Aires: Editorial Milá, 2004). 40. See Zadoff, “The Status of Yiddish in Jewish Educational Systems.” 41. Ibid., 283–84. 42. Ibid., 288–89. For an analysis of one of the ICUF schools, the I. L. Peretz in Lanus, see Nerina Visacovsky, “La educación judía en Argentina, una multiplicidad de significados en movimiento. Del I.L. Peretz de Lanús a Jabad Lubavitch,” in Anuario de la sociedad argentina de historia en educación (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005), 129–70. 43. Indeed, it is interesting to note how the separation of the ICUF from the community has been reflected in the literature as well, in that there is a lack of sustained scholarship on the ICUF in the work on the Jewish-Argentine community. While this may stem from a perception of its relative significance in community life, its relative absence also supports the call to expand the frames of what is considered to be Jewish experience. Notable exceptions to this include Efraim Zadoff’s work on education noted above (Zadoff, “The Status of Yiddish in Jewish Educational Systems,” and Zadoff, Historia de la educación judía en Buenos Aires), and Silvia Schenkolewski-Kroll’s work on Jewish Communists (Schenkolewski-Kroll, “El Partido Comunista en la Argentina”). In addition, new scholarship emerging in Argentina includes the 261 Singing for Social Change

work of Alejandro Dujovne on the ICUF organization of Córdoba, Argentina (known as ACIC), see Alejandro Dujovne, “Hay que ganar la calle judía: Diáspora y política en la izquierda judía Argentina” (MA thesis, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2006). See also Ariel Swarch, “Las camaradas de la Kehilá” (paper presented at Programa Nuevas Voces para una Nueva Tribú, 10 Encuentro de Jóvenes Intelectuales, Buenos Aires, 2006), and Visacovsky, “La educación judía en Argentina.” 44. Reizl’s full Spanish name is Rosa Kafenbaum de Sztarker. Reizl is her Yiddish name and how she is known in the chorus. 45. The historian Samuel Baily suggests that in the case of Italian mutual aid societies, for instance, these ethnic institutions were mediators between immigrants and society. He concludes that they ultimately prevented the absorption of immigrants into the host society, fostering cultural pluralism. See Samuel L. Baily, “Las sociedades de ayuda mutua y el desarrollo de una comunidad italiana en Buenos Aires, 1858–1918,” Desarrollo Económico 21 (1982): 485–514. 46. Interview with Reizl Sztarker, held by author in Buenos Aires, August 11, 2003. All interviews by author were conducted in Spanish. Translations to English also by author. 47. Jaique’s full Spanish name is Clara Frida Ochman de Till. Jaique is her Yiddish name and how she was known in the chorus. 48. I have left certain Yiddish words, like “lererke,” in their original because that is how they have been used by my informants. 49. Interview with Jaique (Clara Frida Ochman de) Till, held by author in Buenos Aires, July 30, 2003. Pece Corman, according to Jaique Till, left the Coro Guebirtig in 1998 as a result of an internal conflict, taking about twenty members with her. 50. Interview with Jaique Till, held by author in Buenos Aires, July 30, 2003. 51. Ibid. See below for further discussion of the relationship between the ICUF and the Coro Guebirtig, as well as the progressive nature of the Coro Guebirtig. 52. Although she stated it was because she had found a class on Jewish literature through that newspaper, it is also an appropriate place to target progressiveminded Jews. Also, the ICUF paid for this advertisement—300 pesos at the time, which they didn’t have, according to Jaique Till, and so the link between the Coro Guebirtig and the ICUF grew. 53. Interview with Reizl Sztarker, held by author in Buenos Aires, August 11, 2003; interview with Jaique Till, held by author in Buenos Aires, July 30, 2003; interview with Clara Feinsod, held by author in Buenos Aires, August 5, 2003. 54. Some of this information derives from an unpublished survey conducted by members of the Coro Popular Judío Mordje Guebirtig in 2003 in the interests of better understanding their own composition. A total of 120 members out of the 150 responded. The remainder is based on fieldwork conducted by the author with the Coro Guebirtig in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. 55. As noted above, men do participate in this chorus (comprising 10 to 15 percent of its membership) and were also subjects of my research. However, women 262 Natasha Zaretsky

figure prominently in this space, both as members and leaders, and in this article, I have chosen to highlight their experience. For further analysis on the role of women in the Coro Guebirtig and in Memoria Activa, see Natasha Zaretsky, “Women in Between: Jewish/Argentine Social Change in the Aftermath of Violence” (paper presented at the 36th Annual Association for Jewish Studies Conference, Chicago, December 19–21, 2004). 56. This section is based on fieldwork and interviews with Clara Feinsod conducted by author in 2003. 57. One example of this occurred during a rehearsal of the Coro Guebirtig on August 12, 2002, on the anniversary of Stalin’s murder of Soviet-Jewish writers. 58. As noted, Reizl Sztarker resigned from the chorus, and new directors took her place in 2004. Although the new directors are not ICUF-istas, like Reizl, the Coro Guebirtig continues to meet in the center of the ICUF in Buenos Aires, as of this writing. 59. This section is based on fieldwork with the chorus and interviews with Diana Wang conducted by the author in 2003 (Diana Wang, interviews by author in Florida [suburb of Buenos Aires], June 6, 2003, and November 17, 2003). 60. Diana Wang, El silencio de los aparecidos: ¿Por qué a mi? Los sobrevivientes del Holocausto y sus hijos (Buenos Aires: Acervo Cultural, 1998); Diana Wang, Los niños escondidos. Del Holocausto a Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Marea Editorial, 2004). 61. This section is based on fieldwork with the chorus and an interview with Elena Pavlotzky conducted by the author in 2003, and Elena Pavlotzky, interview by author in Buenos Aires, August 9, 2003. 62. This section is based on fieldwork with the chorus and an interview with Celina Fuks (Celina Fuks, interview by author in Buenos Aires, August 20, 2003). 63. Celina’s shock at her taxi driver’s comments resonates with other informants’ encounters with what they termed a more subtle form of anti-Semitism, which they felt after the bombing. It can also be seen in comments that were reported to have been made after the bombing, such as “‘not just Jews but innocent people’ had been killed” (Elkin, The Jews of Latin America, 265). 64. The opposition between progressive and Zionist exists for those who selfidentify as progressives and often, those who were in the ICUF. For those they consider to be Zionists, for instance, this may not even operate as a central opposition or distinction in their lives. 65. For instance, see Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), as cited on page 91 of Leo Spitzer, “Back through the Future: Nostalgic Memory and Critical Memory in a Refuge from Nazism,” in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College/ University Press of New England, 1999), 87–104. 66. Although clearly, many differences exist between their experiences and that of Jews in ghettos, that is notably the metaphor and idiom in which my informants chose to understand their own experience. 263 Singing for Social Change

67. Indeed, in September 2006, a series of activities devoted to Yiddish, “Buenos Aires Yiddish,” were held in the National Library of Buenos Aires. Importantly, Yiddish also plays a role in a different segment of Jewish life in Argentina, among ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose numbers have increased with the rise of the Chabad Lubavich movement in Buenos Aires in the last decade. 68. Spitzer, “Back through the Future,” 92; also Leo Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998). 69. In Bal’s review of Spitzer’s work, she writes, “Nostalgia can also be empowering and productive if critically tempered and historically informed.” See page xi of Mieke Bal, “Introduction,” in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College/University Press of New England, 1999), vii–xvii. 70. To view the Coro Guebirtig within the larger context of Yiddish and its relationship to progressive politics for ICUF members is also interesting. See Kinoshita, “O ICUF como uma rede de intelectuais,” 389–90. 71. Interview with Reizl Sztarker, held by author in Buenos Aires, August 11, 2003. 72. For an analysis of the significance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising commemoration for the ICUF organization (known as ACIC) in Córdoba, Argentina, see Alejandro Dujovne’s presentation at the LAJSA meetings in June 2004. 73. These observations are based on eighteen months of fieldwork with the chorus, conducted from 2001 to 2004, which consisted of intensive participant-observation and in-depth life history interviews with chorus members. Since my fieldwork, the chorus has undergone several changes, including the resignation of Reizl Sztarker as its director in 2004 and what some informants have described as a greater professionalization of its musical performances. Two new directors now lead the chorus, and while some members have left, it continues to have over one hundred members and to operate from the ICUF, although it is difficult to assess what direction the chorus will take in terms of political awareness in the future. 74. See Kinoshita,“O ICUF como uma rede de intelectuais”; also Visacovsky, “La educación judía en Argentina,” 141. 75. Interview with Jaique Till, held by author in Buenos Aires, July 30, 2003. 76. Fieldnotes of author, 2003. 77. They were not able to perform in Centenario Park for the first time in 2003 for a combination of reasons: striking park workers obliged them to change locations to Rivadavia Park, and the DAIA recommended they not sing there due to the anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi activities associated with that park (fieldnotes with chorus, November 2003). 78. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History; Dori Laub, “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 57–74. 79. I should note that the Jewish community did not act entirely on its own in installing these measures. They did rely on support from North American Jewish philanthropic organizations and the State of Israel. Furthermore, the Argentine state is also present in the form of police and gendarmes stationed 264 Natasha Zaretsky

at the doors. For further analysis of the security measures installed in Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires, see Natasha Zaretsky, “Miedo y seguridad en la Buenos Aires Judía después de la AMIA,” in Miedos y memorias en las sociedades contemporáneas (Córdoba: Centro de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Comunic-arte Editorial, 2006), 46–56; Natasha Zaretsky, “Walls of Memory: Security and Violence in Jewish Buenos Aires” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, Atlanta, April 22–25, 2004). 80. I should note that this openness to non-Jews does not mean that these groups are not inflexible in other ways. 81. See also Aizenberg, Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires, 7. 82. “Flexibility” as a term for describing the way individuals adapt is borrowed from Aihwa Ong’s work on flexible citizenship and transnationalism. See Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 83. For a description of another instance when the Coro Guebirtig sang at Memoria Activa, see Annette Prekker, “Yiddish Voices Soar above the Rubble,” JUF News 30 (September 2000): 50–51. 84. From fieldnotes on a chorus rehearsal, July 2, 2003. 85. See Susan J. Brison, “Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self,” in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College/University Press of New England, 1999), 39–54; Cathy Caruth, “Introduction,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 3–12; Caruth, Unclaimed Experience; Laub, “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of Listening”; Dori Laub, “An Event without a Witness: Truth, Testimony, and Survival,” in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 75–92; Dori Laub, “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 61–75. 86. For further information about the inability of the ICUF to foster continuity across generations, see also Zadoff, Historia de la educación judía en Buenos Aires, 415–16. 87. Reizl Sztarker retired from the chorus in 2004, after I completed the majority of my fieldwork. As of this writing, the Coro Guebirtig continues to perform and rehearse with two new directors.

265 Singing for Social Change

chapter twelve

The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry !

judah m. cohen

I

begin with three examples: In 1977 several of Israel’s major recording artists banded together to create an episode of the radio show Do-re-u’mi od (Do, Re, and Who Else?) entitled “Eretz tropit yafa” (A Beautiful Tropical Land). Songwriter Ehud Manor, arranger Matti Caspi, and singer Yehudit Ravitz filled the show with songs translated into Hebrew from the Brazilian popular charts and folk repertoire; Jorge Ben (Jor)’s 1966 hit “País tropical” was given the title track. Issued as an album shortly afterward, Eretz tropit yafa sold over twenty thousand copies and has been credited as one of the major forces behind the emergence of a late 1970s “Brazilian music” craze in Israel.1 The song “Eretz tropit yafa” itself, meanwhile, became a part of Israeli and Jewish culture: it has been played frequently on the radio, choreographed as an Israeli folk dance, and taken out of context to refer to Israel itself. In the mid1990s, Pizmon, the Jewish a cappella group of Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, successfully brought it into their repertoire.2 In 1989 a group named Atraf formed in Israel, headed by Peruvianborn musicians Victor Azuz and Ruben Salamon (stage name Rubens) 266

and Israeli-born guitarist Aharoni Ben-Ari. Originally intending to hone a socially conscious commercial jazz style in the manner of Sting, the group quickly shifted emphasis to a Latin (in Israeli terms, Latin/Brazilian) sound when its first single, the Latin-tinged “Shula,” took off.3 Though one journalistic article on the group described its sound as a hybrid of numerous “influences” (standard fare for introducing new musical artists), it particularly fingered Azuz and Rubens—both seasoned musicians—as contributors of a “Latin/Brazilian taste,” probably by dint of their backgrounds.4 Over the next decade, the group released three full albums of material plus a retrospective; their recorded repertoire, which included material in the “rock” genre, hinged on the group’s Latin identity and covered everything from Hebrew versions of “La bamba,” “Guantanamera,” and works by other Latin American musicians, to a heavy-Latin reconsideration of Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine,” to explorations of ethnicity and identity in songs such as “Latini ivri latini” (Latino Hebrew Latino).5 Latin dance instructors in Israel, moreover, began using Atraf’s music for classes alongside the likes of Tito Puente and Oscar D’León.6 Around 2000, after more than a decade of activity, Atraf went dormant. In late fall 2001, after the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, a group called the Hip Hop Hoodíos formed in New York, taking as its self-described mission the reassertion of Latino-Jewish identity into a hegemonic American-Jewish culture. The Hoodíos comprised three Americans who had claimed Latino backgrounds: Joshua Norek, a future law student who had worked for a couple years with a multinational recording company in Buenos Aires, claimed Colombian-Jewish descent and performed under the stage name Josue Noriega; Abraham Velez, a Wesleyan University graduate who had family roots in Puerto Rico; and drummer Federico Fong, whose public status of “honorary Jew” came through his participation in the group and his Jewish sister-in-law. Sporting machismo-heavy songs in an Alterlatino style, and stereotype-subverting Jewish imagery, the group became known for such selections as “Dicks and Noses” (“You like our dicks and you like our noses / You see a Jewish guy and you forget where your clothes is / Venga mami, take a little sip from my ladle / Take you back to my room and you can play with my dreidel”), a radical recasting of Flory Jagoda’s reconstructed Hanukkah song “Ocho kandelikas,”7 and an alternate chronicle of Jewish-Latin American history entitled “1492” (“Well here’s some words that’ll hit you with a thud / Millions of Latinos, they got Jewish blood”). The Hoodíos’ independently marketed 2002 extended-play recording Raza hoodía (the “Jewish Race,” roughly translated) sold over five 267 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

thousand copies. Their January 2005 album, Agua pa’ la gente, incorporated a Puerto Rican flag on the cover and included as guests members of the Latin alternative music groups Jaguares and Orixa, as well as downtown Jewish trumpeter and Klezmatics member Frank London. Norek, meanwhile, completed his law school training, and when not performing with the Hoodíos, served as a major voice and promoter in the American Alterlatino scene.8 These three examples, which portray only part of a much larger if scat­­tered phenomenon, seem to turn on its head the concept of ethnicity described in this book.9 While each artist credits parts of Latin America as a basis for their ethnic sounds or representations, they all make their homes in Israel and the United States (but then, so do many of the contributors to this volume). The musical languages these artists use address contexts that promote the image of Judeo- or Israelo-Latinidad in markets where such perceptions indicate difference, and sometimes exoticism. In the United States, moreover, the use of Latino rap to address broader issues of Jewish identity invites a further level of dissonance and curiosity, novelty, and marketability (the Hoodíos, for instance, headlined New York City’s Salute to Israel Parade in 2005). What’s more, these three examples also treat the question of diaspora in a manner that reverses conventional ways of thinking about Latin American Jewry: placing Latin America at the center of a diaspora, as an exporter of culture and ethnicity that rejuvenates forms of Jewish expression rather than attenuates them. I present these examples as a complement to the case studies outlined in this volume, in the hope that they help broaden the discussion of Latin American-Jewish ethnicity laid out by Lesser and Rein. Even as such musical activities take place outside Latin America, artists such as Fortuna are exploring their own ideas of Jewish heritage within Argentina and Brazil by trolling an iconic Sephardic repertoire, while Shimon Lavie and the Coro Judío Popular Mordje Guebirtig (as Zaretsky points out) use Yiddish and Eastern European ethnic markers as the basis for their sonic explorations and declarations of Jewishness.10 Juxtaposed, all these performers bring up several important points about the questions of ethnicity: First, the concept of ethnicity is a slippery, slithery form of identification, which people can treat as either fixed or constantly in flux depending upon the situation. Second, a sense of Judeolatinidad not only exists outside of Latin America, but also can be seen as dialoging with the forms of ethnicity produced in Latin America—even to the point of challenging and negotiating geographically based senses of identity. And last, ethnicity itself can be a 268 Judah M. Cohen

major factor in creating a sense of communal depth and heritage; while memory is an important part of much writing on Latin America, it’s also only one route toward achieving a sense of identity. Thus, it’s possible to ask the question: Just what does it mean to hold or negotiate an ethnic identity in the vast and complex variety of contexts in which Latin America and Judaism intersect? What can we see as ethnicity, what as nationality? What as race, what as stereotype, and what as culture? Moreover, asking the question of whether each of these case studies offers qualitative forms of Latin American–Jewish ethnicity might perhaps be less important than asking what is at stake in doing so.

Approaches to Jewish-Latin American Ethnicity As Lesser and Rein state in their introduction, the structure of the “old” ethnic studies takes its cue from deeply held notions of Latin Americanness combined with Israel’s equally strong historical/social science paradigm focusing almost obsessively around its own “ethnic” communities. Fre­ quently, the differences between communities have, at their basis, a temporal quality: despite compound migrations, researchers and politicians alike tend to group both Jews and “Latin Americans” according to some place of origin: Morocco, Yemen, Bukhara, and so forth in the former case; and Italy, Japan, and so on in the latter case. Both attempts at categorization, moreover, appeared initially to be conducted with at least some eye to social engineering. Israel funded scholarly work on its ethnic groups in large part to figure out how best to make them useful components of a broader Israeli society.11 Latin American discussions of ethnicity, meanwhile, can themselves be seen as descended from positivism; while the concept may well have become a thing of the past, the academic terms in which proponents couched its different formulations still appear freely in political and social discourse. In contrast, American and European Jewish studies in the 1990s and 2000s tend to skirt the term and concept of ethnicity in favor of “identity” and “culture” among Jewish populations. Key theoretical texts such as Biale, Galchinsky, and Heschel’s 1997 edited collection Insider/Outsider only give ethnicity a passing glance, and American-Jewish ethnographic works from the late 1980s onward slowly move away from the concept, becoming increasingly uncomfortable in the context of hegemonizing ethnic studies agendas.12 Jews and ethnicity have come together somewhat more effectively in recent studies of Eastern Europe, where organizational schemas of communal populations continue to hold a significant status in government 269 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

and academic affairs. The tendency for recent studies of American and European populations to seek alternate routes for exploring how Judaism manifests itself, however, provides a powerful indication of “ethnicity’s” own ethnocentric leanings. The elephant in this book thus becomes the question, what makes ethnicity? I pose this question not only for broad, majesterial escapism, but also for the sake of critique, of trying to gain a better insight into the motivations for using the “Jewish” card within Latin American society and culture. Ethnicity itself, after all, changes in both concept and meaning depending upon how scholars approach and contextualize it, as these essays show. For the most part, the authors here rarely even imply the problematic means for constructing even a baseline concept of “Judaism.” Rather, they generally move straight to explorations of Judaism’s less centrally located discourses in order to spur fruitful discussion: whether tied to a sense of Japaneseness, as Lesser points out; equated with progressive ideologies, as Sitman describes; or profiled in passing in nationalized musical styles, as Zivin discusses. In all cases, the Jew is simply there, floating in the ether, ready for inclusion (or, gemologically, as an inclusion) in the political, social, cultural, rhetorical, or historical fabric of an argument—whether by forces present in each scholar’s period and place of study, or by the academic demands placed on them today. Even the nomenclature associated with Jews in Latin America produces multiple layers of linguistic and ethnic meaning. At several different points in time, according to the scholarship, Jews received and created for themselves “code word” designations, funneling their identities through specific national group labels: whether “Portuguese” in seventeenth-century Dutch colonial lands, “Polacos” among pimps and prostitutes at the turn of the twentieth century, “Rusos” in early twentieth-century civic and political life, or “Turcos” to describe a subgroup of their own. Aside from raising the standard methodological problems of coordinating labels with ancestry, such designations offer important chains of reference that speak as much to not identifying Jews openly as to pinpointing them implicitly. For Moya, whose exhaustive searches and compelling interpretations shed light on the activities of Jews within the anarchist movements of Buenos Aires, a deep nuancing of the “Ruso” label has the potential to open the door into understanding who was and who was not Jewish in these groups—designations that help gauge a Jewish “presence” in terms of immigration, socialization, and activism. But Moya starts, justifiably, with an assumption that Jews must exist qua Jews in order for the investigation to bear fruit. Would the search have 270 Judah M. Cohen

changed if, instead of trying to find and magnify Jews, Moya explored the rhetorical approaches toward indicating Jews in these contexts? Or, to take this argument to absurdity, but with a point: What does it matter that a person whose last name ends in -sky, who comes from Russia, who lives in the “Jewish” area of town, and whose parents identify as Jews may or may not be “Jewish” himself? What if, after all this evidence, a document arises, written in this person’s hand, disavowing any association with Judaism? How might it be possible to interpret this denial/assertion of identity? And what does this situation say about the thresholds for Jewish ethnicity? Such moments, or their inverse (i.e., individuals without accepted “Jew­ ish” characteristics asserting their Jewishness), have occurred with some frequency in the landscape of Latin American and Caribbean Jewish history. Inquisitional records work on the principle of implication (whether or not divisive or unfair), forcing modern researchers seeking to identify Jews during this period to combine faithfully researched corroborating evidence with a good dose of faith and mutual agreement. In my own work on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, I documented a longtime member of the synagogue who entered into a spat with the congregation’s board over taxes in the early 1860s; he ended the argument by declaring himself a Unitarian—a designation the island government tacitly accepted over the synagogue’s protests.13 Likewise worthy of inclusion is the modern emergence of crypto-Jews/anusim throughout the Americas: many of whom, in the absence of a documented family background, rely on their own senses of identity and communality, scholarly recontextualization of their symbols, and support of sympathetic religious leaders to access Jewish identification. Combine the above instances with the low correlation between anti-Jewish rhetoric and anti-Jewish attacks in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American history, and the divide between the physical Jew and the imagined Jew becomes an important point of consideration. Where, then, does the designation of Judaism end and the physical presence of the Jew begin? The open-endedness of this issue makes it particularly rich: proposed schemas can change depending upon the individual(s) examined, community discourses, government politics, scholarly orientation, expected audience, and many other factors (including, frankly, the time of day). Moya, Lesser, Sitman, Guy, and others in this volume take pains to incorporate alternate or competing viewpoints of Jewish ethnicity in their work, and they do so with great sensitivity. Yet throughout, a temptation remains to fall back on preconceived notions of what the Jew is or does, if only to promote a sense of unity within the collected evidence; thus the physical Jew and the metaphysical Jew 271 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

remain neatly bound together. Moving beyond, and starting with the uneasy postulate that it may be easier to discuss a Jew than to assume what defines one, will continue to broaden the scope of Jewish studies within the Latin American context. Explorations of ethnicity also promote patterns of expectation among those writing histories, leading to narratives that can be misleading, or only partially understood. As Cytrynowicz astutely and often humorously describes, for example, the seemingly lachrymose 1990s accounts of the Jews in Brazil under Vargas during the darkest years of European-Jewish history wither easily upon perusal of the documentary evidence. Instead, a witty game of ethnic snakes and ladders emerges, with recognized Jewishness and Zionism sliding along a political knife’s edge through rhetorical and linguistic shifts—technically satisfying a succession of government nationalizing decrees. As an organizing factor for making such adjustments, ethnicity gains status as a display of power, attained through successful dialogue with the ruling forces and constant attempts to create the framework for moving to a higher, more amenable ground. Especially at a time when similar attempts at morphing Judaism from outside the country often failed to unlock the country’s borders, such ethnic negotiation inside Brazil communicated security rather than vulnerability, even for refugees whose German/Austrian nationalities proved a disadvantage. From the perspective of the 1990s, however, the same Jewish identification empowered a different view: namely the narrative of a shameful antiSemitic Brazilian past. While these two uses of ethnicity could hardly be more different, they nonetheless highlight a similar rhetorical strategy for self-identified “insiders” to communicate with those who place themselves outside the circle of Judaism, whether in the political, communal, or academic arenas. As the significant number of essays in Latin American studies covering the European Nazi period show, moreover, the ethnic contrasts invoked during these eras have come to serve a paradigmatic role in illustrating more broadly the negotiations of the Jewish/non-Jewish line—both back then and in our own studies today. Yet Jews are not the only ones who have to negotiate such Judaized ethnic borders. Israel Levis, the fictional Cuban Zarzuela composer who inhabits Oscar Hijuelos’s novel A Simple Habana Melody, brings up still other issues of nation and narration that bridge to Aizenberg’s contribution.14 A devout Catholic with an exuberant, stout figure, Levis eventually flees Cuba’s increasingly oppressive Machado government for occupied Paris, where he becomes involved with a Jewish woman; while Levis eventually provides 272 Judah M. Cohen

the woman with the means to escape the oncoming Nazi threat, however, he is himself apprehended and imprisoned in Buchenwald because of his “Jewish” name and circumcision. After the war, Levis returns to a retiring existence in Havana, slowly fading out while merely implying his internment experiences through a changed character and a rising sense of worldweariness.15 Hijuelos’s somewhat incongruous inclusion of Holocaust memory in his novel—based, notably, on the real life experiences of Cuban composer Moisés Simons—offers an intriguing site for exploring Jewish ethnic identification, as well as an interesting thematic association with Uruguay’s decision to inscribe Holocaust memory into its own landscape.16 Both Aizenberg and Hijuelos explore a sense of imposed Jewishness that in the end serves as an escape valve for crises of conscience. For Uruguay and Montevideo, as Aizenberg describes, this imposition appears to pave the way for a more intense form of national public soul-searching, offering a subtext for memorializing and facing the locally oppressive era to come. Hijuelos, in contrast, leaves any overt Jewish identification for Levis in Europe; yet, writing in 2002, he also returns Levis to Cuba with a psychological profile strikingly similar to those of Holocaust survivors seared into perceptions of postwar Jewish identity.17 Neither one of these cases actually needs physical beings to invoke Jewishness: rather, Jewishness here becomes almost pure metaphor, yet one that deeply and (from the authors’/creators’ perspectives) intentionally impacts the personal and national identity narratives of others. In essence, Jewishness takes a role as a facilitating ethnicity, its other­ness employed as an instrument of contrast and surrogacy in addressing the dominant culture’s concerns. Aizenberg’s account also offers a peek into the vast and mostly unexplored possibilities for exploring Jewish-Latin American ethnicity outside the standard methodologies of verbal and written documents. Of all forms of creative production, all of which hold deep implications for understanding ideas of ethnic production, only literature (including poetry, fiction, and autobiography) has really gained a foothold in the field thus far. Individual scholars have made inroads into foodways, film, visual art, dance, and music, though much of that work has received little attention, been subsumed into larger and broader studies, been written by the artists or creators themselves as companion-style pieces to their own work, or been excluded from central discussions through weak excuses about how such analyses can only be done by “specialists.”18 (I ask the reader if I, a trained musicologist, would be able to recuse myself from exploring history or literature as easily.) Zivin and Zaretsky, thankfully, make inroads into the 273 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

musical aspects of Jewish-Latin American identity by asking what it means for people to use sound to perform Jewishness—both as portrayed within the soundscapes of non-Jews (Zivin) and within self-described Jews’ own public musical productions (Zaretsky). Technically, neither essay actually incorporates the music into its central analysis, making each example at best illuminating but incomplete. Nonetheless, each plays at the discursive borders of sound, laying a bold framework for exploring ethnicity through media that have always accompanied the other activities mentioned throughout the book, but have all too frequently been hidden from view. We must remember that history has a soundtrack; it has images; it has gestures and foodways and crafts. And fortunately, Jewish-Latin American life is one of those areas where mediation (i.e., media) can successfully be made a part of the story—photography had been around since the 1840s; moving pictures came into the region in the 1890s; and a recording industry was beginning to flourish by the mid-1900s—if only those who write on it will allow themselves the option.19 Admittedly, attempting to do so requires scholars to develop techniques for contextualizing recordings, recipes, artwork, and other nonstandard materials into their purviews and involves developing a few more tools for understanding and analyzing those materials (perhaps, as is happening, through collaborations with those who are skilled experts). Yet just as Lesser, in his contribution to this volume, urges scholars not to isolate Judaism within the context of the ethnic spectrum in Latin America, so would I urge scholars in this field not to limit their studies to written documents and interviews—particularly when the world in which the documents’ creators lived was, like today’s, a multisensory one. Lesser’s urgings to avoid too narrow a lens when exploring Jewish-Latin American ethnicity also opens up an interesting perspective on gender issues. On one hand, as Deutsch points out, the presence of women has been sorely lacking in historical discussions of Judeolatinidad, with coverage limited largely to prostitution. A look at the ethnographic literature on Jewish-Latin Americans, however, as well as the gender makeup of scholars studying Jewish life in Latin America, offers a significantly different picture—and Latin American studies more generally has become an important area for those wishing to study gender, sexuality, or other subaltern studies. How, then, to bring an ever present yet neglected population back into balance in Jewish-Latin American historical studies? Deutsch, Guy, and Sitman (more obliquely) attempt different strategies corresponding to now classic methods for bringing women into the narrative. Deutsch 274 Judah M. Cohen

attempts to reclaim spaces for women’s roles in Jewish-Latin American society as a counterbalance to the male discourses already established. Guy and Sitman, meanwhile, incorporate the actions of women into their broader discussions, pointing out to a greater or lesser extent the significance of doing so. Deutsch’s approach has been employed throughout the academic landscape to add new voices to the discourse, particularly when establishing ethnic studies within the American university system: by consciously asserting undescribed realms of female activity as a critique of the extant literature, such works tend to aim to tip the scales the other way in order to effect a sort of equilibrium. With this approach, however, also comes the standard danger that the resultant claiming of male versus female domains may become overly competitive and artificial. Guy’s and Sitman’s approaches, which effectively rewrite the literature with less fanfare, present a somewhat subtler method that focuses more on the subjects covered than the role and place of women per se. Both provide valuable perspectives in pointing to new areas of discussion and deepening the discussion that already exists. At the same time, gender described in this fashion presents a challenging dimension to the question of ethnicity: How does gender effect identification within the context of the family, the community, and the organization? What does it mean when men and women who claim to be part of the same community produce different images of “Jewishness”? And, as such scholars as Lynn Davidman, Shelly Tenenbaum, and Susan Starr Sered in the Jewish realm, and Michelle Rosaldo, Louise Lamphere, and Micaela di Leonardo in the broader realm, have pointed out, how can we look at “Jewish” ethnicity when such ethnic identity is often constructed based on gender?20 There is much to be done here. Deutsch’s contribution also points out the significance of exploring ethnicity as the borderland between two mutually identified groupings of people. Zivin appears to see this approach as well, through the elegant construction she calls “the scene of the transaction.” Setting aside the negative connotations she offers to accompany this idea, the rhetorical space Zivin details also involves an important sense of exchange that requires crossing from one grouping to another and the concomitant assumptions, behaviors, and reactions that result. Here, whether in the imagination or in what the imaginary perceives to be real, both sides must claim to know the other in order to describe the other. Thus is ethnicity negotiated. While Zivin focuses on fictional situations, actual exchanges could offer significant opportunity as well, since they likewise require an intimate knowledge of ethnic difference to effect. 275 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

Last, these essays illustrate the significantly divergent roles different research methods offer in generating ideas about ethnic identity. Thus far, as in other fields, the subfield of Jewish-Latin American studies faces the challenge of bringing together several theoretical languages. Researchers trained in historical methods most often rely on the collection and interpretation of documents in order to ground and construct their arguments; always attempting to put together pieces of a puzzle, historians frequently view the very concept of ethnicity as a contemporary challenge posed to recast and revise previous interpretations—or simply to provide new perspectives. Researchers trained in social science methods tend to specialize in obtaining their data in the “present” (i.e., whenever the ethnographer conducts research) through interactions with a chosen population. Focusing on observed or self-reported behavior, social science scholars tend even to see recollections of memory (through interviews and similar instruments) as contingent cultural performances reflecting currently held values at least as much as actual history; to anthropologists, sociologists, and folklorists, moreover, questions of identity, culture, race, and ethnicity have served as generative issues constantly reshaping the field and its discourses. Such prioritization sometimes places history as a secondary concern within social science and often leads to intimate discussions of the way people fit into and generate their senses of self—including distilling and questioning the very documentary bases used for historical research and narrative. Similar questions face literary scholars, though mainly as focused around a limited population of considerable local and international significance (i.e., writers). As Aizenberg’s entry shows, however, such methods can move easily from actual text to metaphorical text (such as a Holocaust memorial), thanks in part to a flexible and theory-heavy supporting literature. Creative artists, meanwhile, may use historical and ethnographic methods for conducting research but tend to frame their projects as vessels for deep reflection, personal expression, and meaningful commentary. Particularly in Latin American studies, these different methodologies hardly exist exclusively of one another: Ruth Behar, to name but one example, has approached her topic as anthropologist, poet, novelist, and documentary filmmaker. Nonetheless, the founding of the field as a largely historical (and to some extent literary) pursuit still creates tension, particularly along the lines of ethnic identity. Methodological differences have created passionate controversies surrounding the research on crypto-Jewish communities, for instance, with historians and ethnographers accusing each other of misrepresentation based on inadequate, uninformed, or irresponsible means of investigation.21 Such 276 Judah M. Cohen

concerns come up in this collection as well, though mainly through exclusion. Although ethnographic approaches have become increasingly well represented in Jewish-Latin-American-centered dissertations, for example, with the exception of Zaretsky’s essay there is little such engagement here. Bringing the field to examine ethnicity within Jewish-Latin American studies thus requires more than just incorporating a different supporting literature and asking different questions: it also means actively acknowledging other disciplinary approaches to the same topic and engaging with scholars trained in those approaches—even if doing so may first seem to threaten or water down the scholarship that already exists. Only through such (sometimes contentious) dialogue and trust can a truly fitting literature on JewishLatin American ethnicity gain strong foundations, using all the tools that could befit the richness of Judeolatinidad itself. Ethnicity, then, appears to fall into two major themes in these essays: First, as an imposed “groupness” (arbitrarily) applied by politicians, organizations, and scholars to highlight certain behaviors, define borders between one collective and the next, provide sensible limits to research topics, and fit into disciplinary frameworks. Yet (and second), ethnicity comes also from within, a self-defined commodity that not only shapes individuals’ identities, but also serves as a guide for navigating the situations and decisions they face in their everyday lives. In both these themes, however, and following from anthropologist Walter Zenner, ethnicity also is a point of meeting or agreement between peoples as they struggle to maintain a sense of equilibrium in the unstable, ever changing, dynamic world around them.22 At those meeting points ethnicity exists at its most pragmatic: operating across the most feasible, useful, or significant channels of discourse at any given time.

The Futures of Jewish-Latin American Ethnicity This fine collection of essays, then, represents a good first step into exploring the breadth and depth of Judeolatinidad in its many manifestations. How can future studies continue expanding and challenging the theoretical base forged here? I close with a few central questions. Jewish discussions in Latin America appear to start with a central reality—that a group of people exists that can reliably be called “Jewish.” What would happen, however, if an author reversed the argument? What if a discussion started by determining the margins of Judaism, exploring the liminal border regions where the non-Jew ends and the Jew begins? Such an 277 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

approach would hardly win adherents from scholars who see studies of Jews as an affirmation of and contribution to Jewish survival and continuity. Upon closer inspection, after all, the very idea of exploring Judaism inward from its margins tends to highlight the vulnerability of such endeavors, leading to profiles of ethnically slippery figures and communities that can contradict nearly every supposedly concrete indicator of Jewish tradition (see, for example, Ariel Segal Freilich’s dissertation on the “Mestizo Jews” of Iquitos, Peru).23 What we see in most studies associated with JewishLatin Americans, as here, are the “centers”; for can we truly call the margins Jewish studies? Yet a willingness to troll the borders of Judaism will likely reveal the most interesting, and most telling, sites of negotiation for Jewish ethnicity. Without constantly challenging the boundaries of what can be called Jewish—and, in conjunction with Jewishness, what we call Latin Americanness—scholarship neglects some of the most fundamental questions about Jewish identity. And complacency and ethnicity hardly make compatible bedfellows. The issue here is hardly simple. As much as researchers want to place neat boundaries around the groups they study, they also must recognize and discuss the messiness with which they make those borders. All too frequently such struggles, while a crucial part of the research process, never make it to print: instead, they become a kind of badge of familiarity, rarely exposed to academic scrutiny. In matters of ethnicity, however, such decisions can become central to the project at hand. Minority groups are constantly aiming to redefine themselves as situations change; likewise the forces in power are always in the process of redefining how these groups should be defined and how they should function in relation to the cultures around them. Academics and their work, whether published in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, contribute to these dialogues. Being more forthright about how they define their subjects should bring scholars into fruitful dialogue not just about what Jews did, but about how those Jews came to exist in the public eye in the first place. Commendably, this volume begins to allow such issues to come to the surface, but there is much more to do. While these essays, and the field in general, provide a surfeit of information on political leftist and secularist movements, they also highlight a broader neglect in the literature of studies on Jewish-Latin American religious life (Shari Seider’s study on Haredi Jews in Buenos Aires is one notable exception).24 Such topic choices likely reflect the preferences of researchers—and the trends of Latin American studies more broadly— rather than a lack of material. Yet the paucity of religiously framed studies 278 Judah M. Cohen

leaves a gaping lacuna in a particularly crucial area of Jewish ethnic life and discourse. How have institutions such as Marshall Meyer’s Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano recast the relationship between religion and ethnicity in Latin America (and the United States)? What does it mean for a Liberal congregation in San Jose, Costa Rica, to sing American liturgical composer Debbie Friedman’s prayer of healing—in English—at its Friday night services?25 Admittedly, religious studies always face the possibility of becoming overly insular in their agendas and advocacy, and studies of particularly tightly knit religious organizations and communities bring up their own potentially thorny ethical issues. Nonetheless, as studies in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere amply show, the realm of religious belief and practice plays an important role in Jewish life, culture, and ethnic identity—even more so in a region that for years used religion as a factor for ethnic division and regulation. Also missing here are studies of smaller Jewish populations. Even as Lesser and Rein encourage researchers to explore outside of the major, recognized Jewish centers of Latin America in the introduction, no scholar in this collection takes up that mantle. Aside from the obvious consideration that large communities tend to be the first to appear on the demographic radar, there may also be a connection with the largely history-oriented methodology (a tendency also found in Jewish studies) that has dominated studies in this field. Historians, particularly of religious or ethnic subpopulations, frequently focus their attention on sites with the largest numbers of such groups as areas where the most evidence and diversity exist, perhaps with the expectation that the most significant insights can be gained by de facto focusing on those places that have the most people. Small communities frequently receive attention as little more than allegories of larger populations, unless they have the privilege of serving as home communities to specific writers or scholars (such as Santiago, Chile, to Marjorie Agosín). Thus, Argentina, Brazil, and to a lesser extent Mexico and Uruguay (Argentina’s immunocompromised little sister, as Aizenberg notes) receive the lion’s share of scholarly attention—which all too often leads researchers to impose the “models” of Jewish identity or ethnicity they derive from such work onto Latin America in general.26 From an ethnographic perspective, which frequently gauges a community’s significance less on size than on theoretical interest, smaller groups gain particular attention, especially with matters of ethnicity on the table. Larger minority populations can band together, stabilize their identities to a certain extent, and negotiate concepts of what “Jews” do with those outside 279 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

the Jewish circle. Without such a critical mass, where assertions of identity become significantly more tenuous, the negotiations of ethnicity might be especially lively and interesting. Such places can reveal a completely different dynamic between Jew and other, one that might contradict the processes described in a larger community or illuminate processes of identity assertion that are less noticeable in more numerous populations. Such has been the case in my own work in the U.S. Virgin Islands, studying a Jewish community on the island of St. Thomas that likely did not exceed six hundred souls until the 1960s. By the 1920s, when fewer than fifty Jews lived on the island, a number of the Jewish girls, seeing few other options, married non-Jewish men. Despite both public and limited scholarly suggestions that such instances of “intermarriage” would hold ominous signs for Jewish life on the island, just the opposite happened. The men became active participants in the synagogue; the children of the couples received upbringings as identifying Jews; and the congregation maintained its numbers until a new raft of American Jews began settling on the island in the 1950s. As of early 2006, moreover, the congregation’s president was a fifth-generation St. Thomian, from a family that had served as a pillar of the congregation for over 120 years—and she represented the third generation of intermarried women in her family. It would be no exaggeration, then, to view intermarriage as a possible strategy for ethnic survival on St. Thomas, offering a fresh interpretation of a paradigm viewed negatively when examined on a larger scale. Smaller populations can thus offer surprising and valuable insights into the meaning and variable nature of ethnic labels, histories, identities, and ideologies. My final concern brings up the issue of borders and movement, and it occurs on two fronts. First, how can we explore Jewish-Latin American ethnicity from a diasporic perspective, taking into account the tensions inherent in stitching together identities cultivated in several sites and political experiences over time? Most of the portrayals of “Jewish communities” described in these essays actually focus on populations that had themselves recently moved, whether from Russia, the JCA colonies, or another Latin American country, and after the events described, many of the Jews discussed would move on to the United States, Israel, or other locations. (Memoirs by Ilan Stavans and Ariel Dorfman, as well as several JewishLatin American novels, have brought the issue of multilocale identity to the forefront; yet the personal experiences and emotions described in these works have not yet found their way into broader academic discussions of Jewish-Latin American ethnicity.)27 Israelis, meanwhile, have viewed Latin 280 Judah M. Cohen

America as a site for their post–army service Wanderjahr (it has become common to travel following mandatory military service) for decades. How can the theoretical concerns associated with these forms of transit incorporate themselves into future studies of ethnicity in the region? Second is the classic disciplinary problem: where are Caribbean studies in all this? Although the Caribbean often appears in the same rubric as Latin America, scholars tend to see the region (especially the non-Spanishspeaking islands) as a completely different polity. To an extent, these scholars have a point. And yet . . . Latin America does not end at its physical borders. Rather, the defined borders serve as moments of transition, and at those borders some of the most interesting and compelling cases of Judeolatinidad call out. How do we deal with the shifting Jewish population that oscillated between recently liberated Venezuela and Dutch Curaçao in the first half of the nineteenth century? What happened to the Jews from St. Thomas who left to make their home in Panama between 1870 and 1910? And how does the recently established Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean affect the ethnic identity of Jews in each location?28 Little sparks of connection come together occasionally, through the inclusion of an essay on Martinique in Kristin Ruggiero’s edited volume or Bernardini and Fiering’s considerable inclusion of the Caribbean in the context of sixteenth- through eighteenth-century European expansion to the Western hemisphere.29 But more needs to be done to continue these conversations and incorporate the Caribbean as more than a token within an already complex and multivalent disciplinary rubric. I introduce these issues as a challenge, both to the scholars included here, and to those scholars approaching issues of ethnic Jewish identity in Latin America in the future. This volume breathes life into a beautifully complex, deeply nuanced area that thrives on its own complexity, variety, inner contradictions, and ever changing frames of reference. Yet the essays here only scratch the surface: vast areas still remain to explore in understanding, and mediating, the processes by which Judaism can appear in Latin American life.

281 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

Notes 1. Ehud Manor, Matti Caspi, et al., Eretz tropit yafa—Shirim mi Brazil/pais tropical—Songs from Brazil, compact disc (NMC 82756–2, 1992/1989/1978); “Israeli Fills a Need for Songs of Spain,” New York Times, February 8, 1984, C17. Notably, Caspi released a follow-up album in 1983 called Eretz tropit mishaga’at (A Crazy Tropical Land), which included “Eretz tropit yafa” as the final selection. “Brazilian music,” in this context, came to include any musical sounds indexing Latin America. 2. Pizmon, Pizmon 3: Greensleeves, compact disc (1996). 3. Pamela Kidron, “Songs of Social Woes,” Jerusalem Post, July 21, 1989, 9. Kidron’s article highlights what appears to be an early performance of the group by citing the lyrics from songs about unemployment and exploited Arab labor. “Atraf,” derived from a Hebrew word for insanity, claimed it performed what it called “rock shafui” or “sane rock music.” 4. David Brinn, “Atraf: Not Too Fast,” Jerusalem Post Entertainment Magazine, January 11, 1991, 3. Significantly, Rubens (according to his brother) had moved to Israel in 1965, at around the age of twelve, www.salamon.net/salamon.htm (accessed January 6, 2006). 5. Atraf 2: The First Album (NMC 1009–2, 1990); Conga (NMC 20032–2, 1992); Latini ivri latini (Hed Artzi 15778, 1995); Atraf: The Collection (NMC 20273–2, 1997). 6. Penny Starr, “Dancing the Night Away: Salsa and Ballet. Latin Beat That Tempts Israeli Feet,” Jerusalem Post, November 13, 1992, 3B. 7. “Ocho kandelikas,” Jagoda’s recent composition in a Sephardic song “style,” had become nearly ubiquitous in American Hanukkah songbooks by the early 2000s. For more on this song, see “La nona kanta” hosted by Sara Ivry, December 10, 2007, www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=747 (accessed January 1, 2008). 8. Hip Hop Hoodíos, Raza hoodía EP (2002); Hip Hop Hoodíos, Agua pa’ la gente (Jazzheads Records, 2005); Hip Hop Hoodíos website: www.hoodios. com; Bob Grossweiner and Jane Cohen, “Industry Profile: Josh Norek,” Celebrity Access Industry Profiles, July 5, 2002, www.celebrityaccess.com/ news/profile.html?id=99 (accessed January 23, 2006). 9. Among many other examples, one can cite the impact Rabbis Marshall Meyer, Marcelo Bronstein, and J. Rolando Matalon have had on New York City’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, which a number of congregants have attributed to the qualities of especially the latter two rabbis’ South American backgrounds (see, for example, Ayala Fader, “The Language of Spirituality: A Study of Religious Semiotics at B’nai Jeshurun Synagogue in NYC” [paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Toronto, 2007]; Fader’s paper reflects conversations I have had with Mark Kligman, Fader’s research collaborator on the B’nai Jeshurun project); or Argentinean cantor and scholar Ramón Tasat’s efforts to promote Sephardic music in the United States; or the work of Uruguay-born ethnomusicologist Edwin Seroussi, Mizimrat Qedem: The Life and Music of R. Isaac Algazi from Turkey (Jerusalem: Renanot, 1989). Josh Kun has also covered the issue of Latin music in the Catskills during the 1950s (Josh Kun, “Bagels, Bongos, 282 Judah M. Cohen















and Yiddishe Mambos, or the Other History of Jews in America,” Shofar 23, no. 4 [Summer 2005]: 50–68). These examples only provide a glimpse into the extent to which such discussions have taken place in Israeli and American-Jewish society. 10. See hrmusic.com/discos/fdisc.html (accessed January 28, 2006); Shimon Lavie, Festa judaica (MCD World, 2000). 11. See, for example, Moshe Shokeid, “Max Gluckman and the Making of Israeli Anthropology,” Ethnos 69, no. 3 (2004): 363–86. 12. David Biale, Michael Galchinsky, and Susannah Heschel, eds., Insider/ Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 13. Judah M. Cohen, Through the Sands of Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 105–6. 14. I acknowledge here Sander Gilman’s analysis of A Simple Habana Melody, which while similar in content moves in a different and decidedly more physically centered direction. Sander Gilman, “‘We’re Not Jews’: Imagining Jewish History and Jewish Bodies in Contemporary Multicultural Literature,” Modern Judaism 23, no. 2 (2003): 147–50. 15. Oscar Hijuelos, A Simple Habana Melody: From When the World Was Good (New York: HarperCollins, 2002). 16. “A Simple Habana Melody,” Oscar Hijuelos interview with Ray Suarez, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, August 29, 2002, transcript at www.pbs.org/ newshour/conversation/july-dec02/hijuelos_8–29.html (accessed January 6, 2006). 17. See, for example, Alan Mintz, “From Silence to Salience,” in The Americanization of the Holocaust (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 3–35; Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). 18. Adriana Brodsky, “Tasting Food, Tasting Identity: Sephardic Women and the Domestic Aspects of Nationalism, Ethnicity and Gender” (paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Chicago, 2004); Ilene Goldman, “To Be(come) Jewish and Argentine: Cinematic Views of a Changing Nation,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe 10, no. 2 (1999): 151–57; Ruth Behar, “While Waiting for the Ferry to Cuba: Afterthoughts about Adio Kerida,” Michigan Quarterly Review 41, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 651–67; Raquel Partnoy, “Surviving Genocide,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Kristin Ruggiero (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 209–33; Julie Taylor, Paper Tangos (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). See also Zachary M. Baker, “Jevel Katz, Bard of Moisesville” (paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Washington, D.C., 2005). 19. Michael Chanan, “Cinema in Latin America,” in The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 427–35; Pekka Gronow and Ilpo Saunio, An International History of the Recording Industry, trans. Christopher Moseley (New York: Cassell, 1998), 30–31. 283 The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry

20. Lynn Davidman and Shelley Tenenbaum, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); Susan Starr Sered, “‘She Perceives Her Work to Be Rewarding’: Jewish Women in a CrossCultural Perspective,” in Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies, ed. Lynn Davidman and Shelley Tenenbaum (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 169–90; Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture, and Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974); Micaela di Leonardo, ed., Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), especially the introduction: 1–48. 21. The most vivid of these exchanges, in written form, takes up nearly the entire issue of Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 18, nos. 1–2 (1996); many books and articles have been written since, generally elaborating on the arguments presented in this source. 22. Walter Zenner, ed., Persistence and Flexibility: Anthropological Perspectives on the American Jewish Experience (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 39. 23. Ariel Segal Freilich, “Self-Exiled in Earthly Paradise: One Hundred Years of Solitude for the ‘Jewish Mestizos’ of Iquitos, 1890–1990” (PhD diss., University of Miami, 1997). 24. Shari Rose Seider, “Looking Forward to the Past: The Ultra-Orthodox Community of Buenos Aires, Argentina” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1999). 25. Personal observation, Temple B’nai Israel, San Jose, Costa Rica, Friday, April 19, 2002. 26. Lee Shai Weissbach has compellingly pointed out similar issues in his work on small Jewish populations in the United States in his important study Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). 27. Ilan Stavans, On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (New York: Viking, 2001); Ariel Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). 28. See www.ujcl.org. 29. William F. S. Miles, “Caribbean Hybridity and the Jews of Martinique,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Kristin Ruggiero (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 139–62; Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering, eds., The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001). See also Oscar Lansen, “Victimas de las circunstancias: Judíos, súbditos enemigos in las Antillas Holandesas, 1938–1947,” in Entre la aceptación y el rechazo: América Latina y los refugiados Judíos del Nazismo, ed. Avraham Milgram (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003).

284 Judah M. Cohen

Editors and Contributors

Editors Jeffrey Lesser is Winship Distinguished Research Professor of the Human­ ities and director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. He is the author of, most recently, A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese-Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980 (2007), as well as two prizewinning books, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (1999), and Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (1994). Raanan Rein is professor of Latin American and Spanish History and vice rector of Tel Aviv University. He is the editor of the journal Estudios Inter­ disciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe. Rein’s many publications include The Franco-Perón Alliance: Relations between Spain and Argentina, 1946–1955 (1993), Argentina, Israel and the Jews: Perón, the Eichmann Capture and After (2003), and In the Shadow of Perón: Juan Atilio Bramuglia and the Second Line of Argentina’s Populist Movement (2008).

Contributors Edna Aizenberg is professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Marymount Manhattan College of New York. She has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and the Jewish Theological Seminary where she inaugurated courses on Latin American Jewish literature. Her numerous publications have focused on contemporary Latin American literature as well as African narrative and postcolonial criticism. She is a specialist on Borges and one of the pioneers in the field of Latin American Jewish studies. Her books include Borges and His Successors (1990), Borges, el tejedor del Aleph y otros ensayos (1997), and Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires: Borges, Gerchunoff and Argentine-Jewish Writing (2002). Judah M. Cohen is the Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture and assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Folklore and Ethnomusicology 285

at Indiana University. He is the author of Through the Sands of Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (2004), and the forthcoming The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor: Musical Authority, Cultural Investment, as well as several articles on music in Jewish life. Roney Cytrynowicz, has a PhD from the Department of History at the Universidade de São Paulo. He is the director of Editora Narrativa Um— Projetos e Pesquisas de História and head of the document section of the Arquivo Histórico Judaico Brasileiro. He is the author of Guerra sem guerra. A mobilização e o cotidiano em São Paulo durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial (2000), and Memória da barbárie. A história do genocídio dos Judeus na Segunda Guerra Mundial (1990). Sandra McGee Deutsch is a professor of History at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is the author of Counterrevolution in Argentina, 1900–1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (1984), and Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939 (1999). She also has coedited a collection on Argentine rightist movements and authored articles on gender and women in Latin America. Her current project is a history of Argentine-Jewish women. Donna J. Guy is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the Ohio State University. She is the author of Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina. Her current project, Performing Charity, Creating Rights in Argentina (forthcoming), examines the role of female philanthropists and feminists in the formation of child welfare policies in Argentina. José C. Moya is professor of History at UCLA and Barnard College, Columbia University, and director of the Barnard Forum on Migration and of Columbia’s Institute of Latin American Studies. His book Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (1998) received five awards, and the journal Historical Methods published a forum on its theoretical and methodological contributions to the field of migration studies. Moya has been a Burkhardt Fellow in Italy, a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina on three occasions, and has taught at the University of Paris VII. Rosalie Sitman is a researcher at the Institute for Latin American History and Culture and coordinator of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages 286 Editors and Contributors

at Tel Aviv University. She is coeditor of Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe and has published numerous articles on Argentine cultural history. She is the author of Victoria Ocampo y Sur: Entre Europa y América (2003), and coeditor, with Raanan Rein, of El primer Peronismo: De regreso a los comienzos (2005). Natasha Zaretsky is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University and teaches in the Department of Anthropology. The title of her doctoral dissertation was “Walls of Memory: Violence, Belonging, and Citizenship in Jewish Buenos Aires.” Zaretsky is the author of several forthcoming articles based on her research on memory, violence, and social change in the Jewish community of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Erin Graff Zivin is assistant professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on literary representations of “Jews” and “Jewishness” in the Hispanic world. Her book The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of “Jewishness” in the Latin American Imaginary is about to be published. She has published articles in the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana, Modern Jewish Studies, and La Jornada Literaria.

287 Editors and Contributors

Index

Peronism; Tragic Week; World War II; Zionism Artigas, José, 215–16, 217–18 Ashkenazic Jews: as an ethnic group, 10, 34, 56, 58, 162, 168, 180, 181n4; as different from Sephardic Jews, 5, 77, 168–69, 170, 191, 199; community organizations, 189, 191, 240; research focus on, 5, 34; women organizations, 167–68, 169, 176, 180 Atraf, 266–67, 282n3

Ação Integralista Brasileira, 91, 92 affiliated Jews, 19; limits of (Jewish affiliation), 19; myths about, 5, 25; research focus on, 10, 25, 31–32, 180; unaffiliated, 25, 31–32, 39n32, 239, 250. See also Jewishness, criteria for determining Africanness, 50; African descent, 14, 18, 50, 124; Afro-Brazilian, 45–46, 48, 114; blackness, 23, 41–42, 43, 48, 51, 92, 113–14 Alberdi, Juan Bautista, 8, 234 Alberti, Rafael, 142, 145–46, 147 AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina), 27, 239, 240, 242; bombing, 212, 219, 231–65 anarchism, 55–88, 165, 172, 175, 270 anti-Semitism/anti-Jewish, 19, 33, 271; overemphasis of, 2–5, 8, 27, 32; in Argentina, 6, 13, 61, 65, 133, 135–36, 150, 234–37, 246–47, 250; in Argentina, overemphasis of, 12, 70, 73, 162, 164, 180, 194, 202; in Argentina, redefining of, 55, 73, 75, 78, 79, 201–2; in Argentina, struggle against, 62, 136, 139–40, 148, 150, 151, 153n7, 173, 249, 251–52, 255, 263n63; in Brazil, 17, 19, 91–93, 97, 101, 103nn2–3, 103n7, 272; in Brazil, overemphasis of, 39n37, 90, 92–94, 98, 101–2; in Brazil, struggle against, 98; in Europe, 62, 81n7, 95, 110, 148; propaganda, 12–13, 135, 139, 144, 147, 159n72, 235; in Uruguay, 216, 218, 225. See also Fascism/ anti-Fascism; Junta de la Victoria; pogroms; Tragic Week Argentina, 2–4, 5, 6–13, 27, 30, 31, 55–88, 132–60, 161–86, 187–206, 231–65, 270–71. See also anti-Semitism/ anti-Jewish; detained/disappeared; education; Fascism/anti-Fascism; Jewishness; Nationalist(s);

Barroso, Gustavo, 92, 103n7 Benjamin, Walter, 111–12, 116, 128n21, 223 Borges, Jorge Luis, 30, 106, 107, 139, 141, 148, 156n28, 159n71, 159n75 Brazil, 13–19, 39n37, 41–54, 89–105, 106–31, 272. See also anti-Semitism/ anti-Jewish, in Brazil; education, Brazilian Jewish; Estado Novo; Fascism/anti-Fascism, in Brazil; Jewishness, and nation; Nationalist(s), Brazil; World War II, Brazil; Zionism, in Brazil Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 46, 49 Caribbean, 23, 271, 281 Catholic Church/Catholicism: as part of the elite, 13, 134, 135, 202; as rightwing, 133, 137, 140, 144, 147, 150–51, 153nn6–8, 154n13, 158n64, 160n82; as the majority religion, 23, 48, 163, 235; as xenophobic, 11, 12, 52n1, 134; charity work, 165, 180, 188, 192, 193, 194, 204n16; expectation of conversion, 9, 193; openness toward nonCatholics, 9, 32, 140–41, 142–43, 176, 229n32, 272 Chacel, Rosa, 142, 149 Charrúa Indians, 215, 216, 221 Chinatown, San Francisco, 44 288

CIP (Congregação Israelita Paulista), 100–101 Communism/Communist, 12, 86n63, 136, 138, 144, 147, 165, 180; participation of Jews, 9, 69, 139, 164, 179, 244. See also Communist Party; Fascism/anti-Fascism; Socialism/ Socialist Communist Party, 97, 174, 184n46; anti-Fascist, 137, 145, 175–76, 177; Di idische froi, 173; ICUF (Idischer Cultur Farband), 172–73, 184n42, 239–42, 243–46, 248, 249, 251, 252–53, 261n33, 261n36, 261n41, 261n43, 262n52, 263n64, 264n70, 264n72, 265n86; participation of Jews, 162, 172–74, 180, 239, 248, 261n35, 261n43; women, 162, 164–65, 172–74, 179–80, 244–46, 248–53. See also Communism/ Communist; Fascism/anti-Fascism; Socialism/Socialist conversos/Marranos/New Christians/ crypto-Jews, 10, 14, 46, 49, 126, 271, 276 Coro Judío Popular Mordje Guebirtig, 233, 268 Criterio, 133, 135, 137, 138, 150, 155n20 DAIA (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas), 235–36, 239, 240, 260n28, 264n77 democracy/liberal democrats, 20, 137, 140, 213; anti-Conservatism, 133, 135, 137, 149, 150; anti-Peronism, 174, 175, 177–78, 179; Argentina, 13, 73, 133, 136, 138, 139, 142, 143, 144, 164, 175, 180; Uruguay, 214, 218–20, 225, 226 deportations, 59–60, 63, 64, 74, 85n53 detained/disappeared: Argentina, 227n8, 232, 235, 237, 256; Uruguay, 213, 214, 218, 222, 224, 225, 226, 229n32 Diaspora/s, (research on), 1, 5, 23–40, 42, 79, 268, 280. See also respective communities; homeland discourse/s: anarchist, 63; anti-Fascist, 134, 138, 143, 148; anti-Semitic/racist, 13, 19, 32–33, 91–92, 93–94, 110, 114, 133; competing, 4, 45, 50, 90, 96–97, 101, 120, 121, 123–25, 269,

270, 271, 275–77, 279; nativist, 73; of the elite, 17, 42–43, 91, 95 Dreyfus affair, 61–62, 84n33 Dumbrowski, Saul, 44 education, 9; Argentinean Catholic, 154n13, 192, 194, 235; Argentinean Jewish, 108, 235, 239–40, 241, 243–44, 250, 261n43; Argentinean Jewish orphans, 187, 192, 193–94, 195–96, 200, 201; Argentinean Jewish women, 162–66, 172–73, 179, 187, 188, 193–94, 195–96, 197, 201; as social indicator, 43, 169; Brazilian Jewish, 16, 89, 90, 92, 95–98, 104n14; pluralist state, 9, 89, 145, 164, 177, 254; sectarian schools, 46, 64, 173; Uruguay, 248. See also women, as teachers Eichmann, Adolf, 6, 235 elites, 137; Argentinean social, 9, 11, 61, 77, 162, 192, 193, 234, 258n10; Brazilian social, 17, 42, 48, 49, 50, 92, 93, 102, 113–14, 117, 122–24; Jewish, 190, 193–94, 200, 202 Eretz tropit yafa, 266, 282n1 Estado Novo, 89–105 ethnic borders/criteria: academic scrutiny of, 23, 107, 268–70; crossing, 2, 71, 126, 255, 267–68; exceptionalism, 30, 38n29, 74–76, 101, 162, 164, 180, 184n41; pragmatic, 45, 46, 268; problem in defining, 19, 25, 269 (see also under Jewishness). See also ethnicity; identity; Jewishness ethnicity, 23–40, 266–84; and social engineering, 9, 18, 117, 163, 169–71, 220–21, 269, 278; as a contested category, 1–2, 4, 24–26, 33–34, 41–54, 79–80, 162, 180; defined from outside, 13, 24, 33, 49, 55, 74, 79–80, 92, 106–31, 165, 192–93, 277 (see also stereotypes); defined from within, 5, 10, 169, 171–72, 238, 267–68, 277 (see also under Jewishness); jokes about, 44, 267–68; myths about, 5, 12, 19, 32–33, 46–48, 50, 80, 101 (see also race, racial democracy); semantic strategies of, 90, 93, 96–102, 193, 268, 272; xenophobia, 4, 9, 11, 12, 13, 61, 89, 96–97, 101–2, 135, 151, 218 (see

289 Index

also anti-Semitism/anti-Jewish). See also Ashkenazic Jews; ethnic borders/criteria; identity; Jewishness; Sephardic Jews eugenics, 49, 124, 131n64–65. See also ethnicity, and social engineering exiles: anarchists, 63, 64; Jewish, 110; Spanish Republican, 11, 133, 134, 137, 141, 145–46, 149, 156n42, 178. See also deportations; Montevideo, as a place of exile Fabregat, Enrique Rodríguez, 219 Fascism/anti-Fascism: in Argentina, 134, 135–40, 143–51, 152n4, 159n71, 173, 175, 179, 180; in Brazil, 89–92; Uruguay, 216. See also Junta de la Victoria; Nazi/Nazism; Spain Fondane, Benjamin, 137, 146, 149, 154n18 forced baptism, 192 foundlings, 194, 195 France: as a liberal model, 9, 61; cultural influence, 58, 122, 128n19, 129n43, 147, 176; immigrants from, 57, 60, 83, 88n90; intellectuals, 46, 62, 70, 81n5, 133, 137, 142, 146, 157n44, 159n71, 160n85; international relations, 12, 69, 74, 143; occupied by Germany, 145, 146, 149; position on refugees, 12, 141, 143 Franceschi, Gustavo, 136, 137–38, 139, 155n20 Franco(ist): anti-Franco, 134, 138, 139, 141, 147, 149, 150, 178; fleeing from, 11, 144; support in Argentina, 135, 137–38, 139, 149, 150, 156n31, 156n42. See also Fascism/anti-Fascism, Spain Frank, Waldo, 136–37, 147–48, 154n16 Freund, Gisèle, 146 Freyre, Gilberto, 113, 117 Fujimori, Alberto, 33 Fukuhara, Hachiro, 47 gender, 71–72, 81n2, 84n47, 133, 168, 177, 180, 242; absence from ethnicity studies, 33, 161–63, 165–67, 180, 188, 274–75; as negotiated within societies, 114, 164, 166–67, 179, 194, 195. See also Ashkenazic Jews, women organizations; Communist Party,

women; education, Argentinean Jewish women; Junta de la Victoria; philanthropy, female; prostitution; Sephardic Jews, women; women Herzl, Theodor, 8 Hijuelos, Oscar, 272–73 Hip Hop Hoodíos, 267–68 Hirsch, Maurice de, 8, 15, 163 Hispanophile, 133, 134, 151 Hollywood, 33 Holocaust: commemoration, 149, 207–14, 216, 218, 220, 222–26, 227n8, 247, 251, 252, 273, 276; denial, 19; escape from, 12, 92; survival, 98, 162, 242, 246–47 homeland, 169; Diasporic, 8, 24, 267–69; imagined, 13, 30–31, 143, 184n41. See also Diaspora/s Hourani, Albert, 42 humanism/humanist, 133, 142, 144, 151, 190–91 identity, 121–22, 268–69, 278; constructing national, 2, 42, 89–105, 106–31, 135, 137, 216–18, 226, 236; hybridity, 29, 37n20, 107, 108, 114, 116, 117, 121, 122, 125, 212, 213, 267; hyphenated identity, 10, 24–25, 43, 102, 108, 267–69, 276, 280; negotiating, 1, 268–69, 272, 275, 278, 279–80; negotiating, in Argentina, 233, 236, 243, 254, 256; negotiating, in Brazil, 45, 90–91, 93, 108, 110, 114, 120, 125. See also ethnic borders/criteria; ethnicity; Jewishness IFT (Idische Folks Teater), 172–73, 241, 242, 249 immigration/immigrants, 1, 5, 25–26, 29, 30, 32, 41–42, 45, 110; to Argentina, 75, 77–80, 133–37, 139, 148–49, 187, 196, 197–98, 234–35, 262n45; to Argentina, Jews, 8–13, 56–58, 61, 65, 68, 71, 74, 162–63, 169, 172, 190–92, 198, 201–2, 239–40, 270; to Brazil, 49–50, 90–93, 95–96, 115; to Brazil, Asian, 48; to Brazil, German, 93; to Brazil, Japanese, 46, 47, 90–91, 93; to Brazil, Jews, 14–19, 90–92, 100, 101, 114, 125–26; from Latin America,

290 Index

10, 19–20, 20, 67, 253, 268; to Uruguay, 219–20, 222 Inquisition, 14, 46, 126, 212, 271 intellectuals: and ethnicity, 26, 28, 42, 46, 50, 76, 107, 113, 120, 189; and xenophobia, 9, 17, 42, 234, 258n9; political activism, 8, 132–60, 173, 175, 176, 226 Internet sites, 20, 44 Israel/is, 10, 19–20, 65, 171, 201–2; dialog with, 30–31, 32, 168, 179, 213, 222–23, 239–40, 244–45, 253, 266–67, 268, 280–81; affecting political stands of the community, 4–5, 6, 12, 13, 98, 108, 170, 196, 200, 201, 213, 219, 231–32, 235, 236; ethnically egocentric, 24, 26–27, 28, 30–31, 269. See also Zionism IWO/YIVO (Jewish Research Institute, Yiddisher Wissenschaftlekher Institut), 240, 252 Jewish agricultural colonies/settlements, 1, 8, 280; Argentina, 10–11, 57, 66; Argentine women in, 163–67, 168, 175, 179, 189; Brazil, 15 Jewish colonies. See Jewish agricultural colonies/settlements Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), 280; Argentina, 11, 66, 163, 166–67, 168, 179; Brazil, 15. See also agricultural colonies/settlements Jewish community: in Buenos Aires, 2, 6–13, 55–88, 132–60, 165, 167–71, 187–206, 231–65; in Montevideo, 218–19, 221, 224; in São Paulo, 16–17, 46, 89–105 (see also São Paulo) Jewish community organizations, 25, 30, 66, 89–105, 161, 166, 169–71, 187–207, 218–19, 239, 246, 253–54. See also respective organizations; affiliated Jews Jewishness, 23–40, 266–84; affirming, 13, 20, 98, 101, 192, 225, 232, 238–39, 241, 247, 251, 255, 267–68; and Argentina, 8, 9, 10, 79–80, 176, 189–90, 193–94, 231–40, 244–45, 253–56; and nation, 30–31, 110, 167, 171, 266–67; Brazil, 91–102, 114, 115, 122; criteria for determining, 25, 32, 248, 249–50, 268–69, 271,

275; explorations at the borders of Jewish identity, 32, 107–8, 119, 126, 254, 255, 277–78; meaning of, 28, 111–12, 126, 270; physical embodiment, 2–4, 218, 222, 225, 232, 238–39, 241–43, 254, 267; portrayed in sound, 239, 241, 245, 247, 254, 268; portrayed within literature, 106–31, 272–73; religion as determining, 10, 19, 25, 32, 44, 119, 172, 192, 195, 201, 242, 244; Uruguay, 212, 222, 225; Yiddish culture as determining, 239–40, 244–45, 247. See also Ashkenazic Jews; ethnic borders/criteria; ethnicity; identity; Sephardic Jews Jews: as Arabs, 34, 42, 44, 45, 46, 50; as Chinese, 44, 52n8; as European, 45, 46; as Indians, 46–47, 50; as Japanese, 42, 44–45, 48–51, 270; as Korean, 44–45, 48, 49, 50. See also anti-Semitism/anti-Jewish; Ashkenazic Jews; ethnicity; identity, hyphenated identity; Jewishness; prostitution, and Jews; Sephardic Jews; stereotypes Jorge, Salomão, 46 Judaizantes, 139 Junta de la Victoria, 144–45, 161–62, 175–79, 180 Justo, Agustín, P., 137, 138 Kahn, Máximo José, 148–149, 160n78 Kent, Victoria, 149, 160n82 King Solomon, 46 Koyama, Rokuro, 47 Lacalle, Luis Alberto, 208, 218–20, 221, 222, 224 Lafer, Celso, 33 Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA), 28–29, 36n14 “latinidade,” 46 Ludmer, Josefina, 107, 111, 112–13, 120, 124, 128n25 Malamud, Samuel, 98 Maritain, Jacques, 133, 138, 140, 155n20 marriage, 43, 194; endogamy, 193, 195; exogamy, 10, 14, 19, 31, 32, 280 mate, 1–2, 208, 210, 212, 225

291 Index

Mediterranean, 34, 162, 168–72, 179 Memoria Activa, 231–34, 237–39, 247, 251, 254–56, 258n4, 260nn26–28, 262n55 memorials, 207–30, 239, 241, 243, 273, 276 memory, 276; historical memory, 1, 34, 90, 101, 161–62, 201, 212–30, 272–73; Jewish, 27, 32, 212, 226, 243–52, 255–56; national memory, 208, 212, 231–34, 236–39, 241 (see also identity, constructing national) Menem, Carlos Saúl, 33 methodology, 5, 29–34, 269–70; alternative sources, 273–74, 276–77; oral history, 161–62, 181n2, 218–19, 243–50, 276 Middle East: and Latin American ethnicity, 5, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 26, 28, 32–33, 34, 43, 49, 50; and the Arab-Israeli conflict, 19, 237; Jews from, 5, 34, 56, 162, 168 minorities, 5, 19, 33; and majority society, 20, 24, 48, 75, 80, 102, 152n2, 221; in Argentina, 9, 13, 75, 80, 134, 152n2, 243, 254; in Brazil, 48, 90–91, 92, 93, 96, 99, 102; in research, 5, 24, 26, 28–30, 33, 42, 45–46, 52n8, 90–91, 278, 279; in Uruguay, 221 modernity, 17; Argentina, 8, 62, 234; Brazil, 14, 108–12, 119–25, 129nn43–44; Uruguay, 220, 224 Moisesville, 11, 15 Montevideo, 170, 248, 273; as a place of exile, 63, 64, 74, 84n40; memorials in, 207–8, 212–16, 219, 221, 222–23, 225, 229n23 mulatas/mulatos, 49, 113–16 music, 20, 32, 215, 266–70, 273–74, 282n1, 282n3, 282n7, 282n9; Argentina, 66, 81n3, 166, 178, 231–65; Brazil, 53n20, 94, 98, 108, 113–17, 127n2; Latin American influence in Israel, 266–67, 282n1, 282n3. See also Noel Rosa; samba narration, 274, 276; Argentinean political, 174, 180, 251, 274; as a therapeutic strategy, 254, 256; literary, 121–22, 123–24; of “Jewishness,” 110,

112, 272–73; Uruguayan Holocaust, 212–14, 221, 225; Uruguayan political, 220–21 Nationalist(s), 108; Argentina, 9, 11, 13, 55, 79, 80, 133, 134–35, 136, 138–40, 142–43, 144, 148, 150–51, 174, 175, 177, 179, 180, 234; Brazil, 16, 17, 89–105, 114; Uruguay, 217–18 Nazi/Nazism, 110; “hiding” in Latin America, 2, 6, 12, 264n77; influence on right-wing discourse, 12, 17, 90, 91, 101, 135, 144, 147, 235; protest against, 138–40, 144, 147–48, 149, 159n72, 175–78, 212, 249; refuge from, 32, 92, 100, 144, 146, 162, 272; remembrance, 212–13, 223, 273 neighborhoods, ethnic, 13, 45, 46, 59, 85n56, 91, 93, 107; Belgrano, 170; Bom Retiro, 45, 48; Caxias do Sul, 45; Flores, 197; Gramado, 45; La Boca, 65; Lapa, 94, 104n14; Liberdade, 45; Once, 61, 65, 66, 71, 240, 249, 250; Palermo, 190; La Paternal, 172; Plaza Lavalle, 64, 65, 68, 83n18, 231, 232, 239; Villa Crespo, 172, 248; Villa Domínguez, Entre Ríos, 165, 166, 167, 176; Villa Lynch, 172, 243–44 Nikkei, 34, 44, 47 Ocampo, Victoria, 132–34, 137, 138–39, 141–43, 144–47, 150–51, 152n1, 154n14, 157n47, 159n69, 160n84 orphanages, 170, 187–97, 200, 201, 204n16–17 Ortiz, Roberto, 142, 156n42, 157n44 Parnasianists, 124 Peri Rossi, Cristina, 215–16, 217 Perón, Eva, 174, 188, 197 Perón, Juan Domingo, 12, 39n38, 148, 149, 174, 176, 178–79, 188, 200, 201–2 Peronism: and anti-Semites, 12, 196, 201–2; and left-wing organizations, 174, 188; protest against, 140, 160n84, 177, 178; social activities, 165, 174, 179, 196–97, 200–201 philanthropy, 8, 15, 163; female, 162, 163, 165–66, 167, 169–71, 179, 180, 187–206

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pogroms, 7, 10, 62, 234 popular culture, 20, 53n20, 90, 106–31, 252, 272–73; My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 50; telenovelas, 20, 45, 250. See also music; samba populism, 12, 55. See also Juan Domingo Perón; Getúlio Vargas Progressivism: as a political movement, 9, 66, 139, 142, 164, 174; as opposed to Zionism, 251–53; in Jewish society, 172, 199, 239, 242, 244, 245, 248, 250–51, 252–54, 262n52, 263n64, 264n70, 270 prostitution, 129n43; and anarchism, 58–61, 72; and Jews, 49, 109–12, 118–25, 270; japonesinhas, 49; Madame Pommery, 118–25, 130n57; polacas, 49; research focus on, 33, 107, 274. See also white slavery public spaces, 45, 135, 160n82, 122, 177, 194, 214, 217, 226, 278; Jewishness in Argentina, 120, 76, 165, 179, 201–2, 235, 236, 237–38, 251, 254–55, 273, 274; Jewishness in Brazil, 17, 42–43, 91, 98, 119; Jewishness in Uruguay, 212, 218, 221, 225. See also Jewishness, physical embodiment race, 32, 45, 269, 276; in Brazilian discourse, 19, 42–45, 101, 113–14, 117, 122, 123–24, 128n32; Jews as, 17, 42, 44, 62, 73, 107, 156n28, 267; racial democracy, 19, 101; racism, 138–39, 140, 222, 234 religion (religious life), 19; Catholic/ non-Catholic, 23, 135, 138, 235; exclusion from Latin-American studies, 278–79; Jewish religious life, 89, 94–97, 100, 194, 195; persecution, 14, 62, 97, 160n77; visibility of Jewish (in the dominant society), 1–2, 62, 187, 232, 238. See also Jewishness, religion as determining Revista do Brasil, 120 Rosa, Noel, 108, 109, 111, 112–17, 125; “Quem dá mais?,” 108, 112–17, 128n10 Salgado, Plínio, 92 samba, 108, 109, 111, 113–17, 125. See also music; Noel Rosa

Santiago, Silviano, 117 São Paulo, 45, 47, 48, 50, 89–105, 120, 122–25. See also Jewish community, in São Paulo Sarmiento, Domingo F., 153n10, 164 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 147, 150 Semana de Arte Moderna, 119 Sephardic Jews, 52n1, 83n19, 162–63, 168–72, 180, 191–93, 199, 200, 220, 269; and Zionism, 169, 179; immigration to Latin America, 10, 12, 57, 126, 162; lack of research on, 5, 34, 40n41, 41, 203n1; music, 268, 282n7, 282n9; women, 162–63, 168–72, 179–80 sex trafficking. See prostitution; white slavery Simons, Moisés, 273 Socialism/Socialist, 70, 137, 139, 144; and Jews, 57, 66, 68, 70, 71, 76, 85n58, 164–65, 172–80, 239, 278; as a foreign import, 59, 78, 82n11, 97, 234. See also Communism/Communist; Communist Party; Fascism/antiFascism; Progressivism Sociedade Genealogica Judaica do Brasil, 46 Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres, 42, 52n4 Spain, 66–67, 72, 88n87; and Jews, 5, 52n1, 192–93; colonial period, 9; immigration from, 11, 12, 31, 65, 75, 163; Republic(an), 134, 145–46, 149, 150, 157n45, 178; Spanish Civil War, 133, 135–43, 154n19, 156n31, 156n42, 157n45, 164, 173, 175, 179, 244, 249. See also exiles, Spanish Republican St. Thomas, 271 Stereotypes, 33, 45–46, 49, 55–56, 73–80, 81nn1–3, 95, 108–9, 110–17, 121, 234, 267, 269; of Jews as capitalists, 55, 95, 109–13, 116–17, 121; of Jews as radicals, 55, 73–76; positive side of, 33, 45–46, 49, 220. See also antiSemitism/anti-Jewish, propaganda; ethnicity, defined from outside SUR 123–60; grupo, 132–35, 151 Symbolists(ism), 108–10, 112–14, 124, 129n44, 214, 218, 222 synagogues, 1, 32, 271, 280, 282n9; Argentina, 10, 62, 169, 180, 188,

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195, 200, 235, 240, 242, 249, 251, 253; Brazil, 16, 90, 93, 94, 96, 100, 104n14. See also religion (religious life) Tácito, Hilário (José Maria Toledo Malta), 108, 109, 111, 119–22, 124–25, 130n45, 131n58; Madame Pommery, 108, 118–25, 130n47, 130n51, 130n57, 131n59, 131n61, 131n67 Tedeschi, Giuliana, 149 Toller, Ernst, 139–40 totalitarian(ism), 91, 135, 139, 144, 146, 148, 153n10, 213 Tragic Week, 7, 75, 87n85, 235, 258n12 transnational/ism, 13, 24, 30, 67, 265n82 UNESCO, 43 Uruguay, 170, 207–30, 273. See also Montevideo Vargas, Getúlio, 89, 92, 94, 95–96, 101, 103n2, 114, 125, 272 Vasco da Gama, 115 violence, 90, 93, 254; against Jews, 13, 19, 235, 241, 246, 249; by police 62, 63, 68–69; by working class, 60–61, 62, 69–72, 74, 85n51, 88n87. See also pogroms; Tragic Week welfare state, 174, 187, 188, 194, 197, 202 Western (Wailing) Wall (Ha-Kotel Ha-Maaravi), 218, 222–23 whiteness, 41, 43, 51, 114 white slavery, 58–60, 118, 120, 203n4. See also prostitution women, 33, 132–60, 161–86, 187–206; and anti-Fascism, 161 (see also Junta de la Victoria); and health care, 165, 166, 194, 198; and labor, 163–65,

188, 190–93, 195–96; and memory, 242, 243–50; and Zionism, 167–68, 169–72, 201; as teachers, 97, 164–65, 168 (see also education, Argentinean Jewish women); in agricultural colonies, 163–67. See also Ashkenazic Jews, women organizations; Communist Party, women; philanthropy, female; prostitution; Sephardic Jews, women World War II, 213; Argentina, 10, 12, 133–34, 136, 143–50, 161, 162, 170, 175–79, 196; Brazil, 90–91, 93, 101. See also Fascism/anti-Fascism; Holocaust xenophobia, 4, 9, 11, 61, 89, 96, 97, 101–2, 134, 135, 151, 218 Yiddish, 29, 91, 94–95, 99, 162, 170, 172–73, 182n9, 189, 195, 197–98, 231–65; and anarchism, 56, 65, 67–68, 70, 81n6, 82n10, 85n58, 87n85 Zionism, 5, 19–20, 27, 28, 30–31, 272; Amigas Sefaradíes de la Histadrut, 171; in Argentina, 9, 13, 66, 162, 163, 167–68, 169–72, 179–80, 201, 242, 245, 251; in Argentina, Jewish antiZionists, 239, 246, 253–54, 263n64; in Brazil, 19, 97–99; Centro Sionista Sefaradí, 170, 171–72; Comisión de Señoritas del KKL, 170; Consejo Central de Damas Sefaradíes, 171; Gran Baile de la Colectividad Sefaradí, 171; OSFA (Organización Sionista Femenina Argentina), 167–68, 170–72. See also Israel/is Zorrilla de San Martín, 216–18

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