Movements Before 1930
by Sophie Elsner

Jorge Luis Borges aptly wrote: “The Argentines are Italians who speak Spanish, educated by the British, who want to be French.”[1] In this amalgamation of European cultures, where do the tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants to Argentina fit in?

From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, six million people flowed into Argentina.[2]  In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the foreign-born population outnumbered native Argentines. On the eve of the First World War, Buenos Aires was the second largest city on the Atlantic seaboard after New York.[3]

Total Net Immigration to Argentina Compared to Jewish Net Immigration. Ricardo Feierstein, Historia de los judíos argentinos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta Argentina SAIC, 1993), 399.

Along with masses of Spaniards and Italians arrived Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman empire, and the Mediterranean.[4] Historian Ricardo Feierstein described the early period of Jewish immigration to Argentina, from 1880 to 1920, as a “downpour.”  Compared to other Latin American destinations, Jews came to Argentina relatively early, with entries peaking in the years just following the First World War.  In contrast, Jews did not move to Brazil in large numbers until the mid-1920s, and they did not migrate to Bolivia or the Dominican Republic until the late 1930s.[5]  The Jews who went to Buenos Aires and the Argentine interior between 1880 and 1920 formed the first sizable Jewish presence in Latin America.

In this period, however, Jews did not form a solid ethnic or religious community.  Between 1880 and 1920, the Jewish community was largely decentralized; many of the Jews were secular and did not congregate around a synagogue.[6]  They connected instead through language, traditions, and political beliefs.

Many of the Jews arriving in this period already held left-leaning worldviews that manifested through political activism. In Argentina, Jews encountered a politically heated climate in which the working classes had mobilized in support of anarchism and socialism.  Some Jews participated in anarchist movements, the most popular ideology among the masses in Argentina between 1905 and 1915.  A major anarchist daily newspaper in Buenos Aires, La Protesta, included a Yiddish supplement in its issues during 1908.[7]  But Jews participated in even larger numbers in communist, socialist, and Zionist organizations. In 1906 a group founded the first Jewish union, and one year later established the Organización de Trabajadores Socialistas Demócraticos Judíos (Organization of Jewish Socialist Democratic Workers), which voted to align themselves with the Bundist movement, a Jewish sector of socialism.  This group formed teaching institutions for youth, providing a secular education in a Jewish social environment.[8]  Organizations also sponsored cultural activities, which gave new immigrants an opportunity for socialization and “a measure of companionship and social support.”[9]

Figure 2: European Immigration to Argentina by Country of Origin. Ricardo Feierstein, Historia de los judíos argentinos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta Argentina SAIC, 1993), 67.

In expressing political viewpoints against the status quo, Jews risked their personal safety and possibilities for smooth integration into society.  After emigrating, many Russian Jews followed coverage of the events in their homeland, and those who were communists celebrated the Bolshevik successes of the 1917 Russian Revolution. [10]  Argentine nationalists accused Jews of engaging in communist conspiracies on the basis of their expressed internationalist, leftist sentiments.

Other Jews in both Buenos Aires and the interior created communities without engaging in politics. In 1889 the SS Weser arrived, carrying 820 Russian Jews who established a religious agricultural society in the interior.  To maintain accustomed levels of observance in their new home they brought Torah scrolls, religious texts, ritual slaughterers, teachers, and a rabbi.[11]  Other Orthodox communities formed in Buenos Aires, creating a yeshiva to serve as a center for Jewish education and joining the international Hassidic Chabad Lubavich movement to set up places for prayer and social interaction. In 1921 a group formed to provide kosher food for religious immigrants, offering a formal institution to preserve this religious practice.[12]

The new immigrants fell into different classes within Argentine society, holding a variety of jobs.  Eastern European Jews opened wholesale stores for furniture, clothes and carpets.  Some were peddlers with small-scale operations.  Others were artisans, carpenters, bricklayers, watchmakers, shoemakers, restaurant owners, and seamstresses. A small number of Jews came from wealthier parts of Western France and Germany and worked for European companies, founding the Jewish aristocracy of Buenos Aires.[13]

In spite of the many occupations and traditions that Jews maintained, to the non-Jewish community they appeared a solidified, homogenous group. Residential concentration[14] – to the extent of isolation – helped define the Jewish community.  Arriving eastern European Jews knew where to go to find others who shared their traditions and past experiences. As Jews assimilated more into the economic market and social life of the city, they moved farther from these ethnic hubs.  By the 1930s, fewer than two decades later, arriving central European Jews chose to settle in other, more prosperous neighborhoods.  Though the Jewish community remained distinct from Christian society, its high residential cohesion did not last.

An Immigration Ripple

After World War I, Argentina’s open-door immigration policy, intact for more than half a century, began to close.[15] Immigrants were no longer needed as they had been before 1914.  They and their children provided sufficient manpower for the country, especially after the war. This abundance of labor had caused a subsequent industrial crisis.  The country lacked the capital to expand its industry, and thus it no longer demanded such a large labor force. Thousands of people found themselves without work.[16]  The rumors of unemployment spread to Europe and the notion of immigrating to Argentina lost some appeal.

In spite of the shortage of employment opportunities and weak hopes of economic betterment, some immigrants continued to arrive, not only from the Middle East and Eastern Europe but also in Central Europe, where post-war problems were leading to the emigration of many Jews.  The international Jewish organization HICEM started in 1927 with the aim of “investigating new countries as targets for Jewish immigration, rendering assistance to emigrants in their home countries and en route, and helping them settle down in their new countries.”[17]  HICEM supported multiple immigration efforts to Argentina, although with some difficulty along the way.  President Marcelo T. Alvear imposed new mechanisms for control over who could enter the country, requiring more documentation from the country of origin.[18]  The conservative regimes of the 1920s put up administrative barriers for those entering and for their relatives and friends trying to bring them to Argentina.[19]  For emigrants leaving war-torn areas or escaping persecution in their homelands, obtaining the proper documentation made entry nearly impossible.  Despite the restrictions and ominous economic conditions, HICEM and other Jewish organizations continued to aid immigrants in bringing their families to Argentina.[20]  Jewish individuals and institutions were not yet prepared to give up on their hopes of immigration.