History of the Jews in Latin America
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The history of the Jewish people in the Americas dates back to Christopher Columbus and his first cross-Atlantic voyage on August 3, 1492, when he left Spain and eventually "discovered" the New World. His date of departure was also the day on which the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon decreed that the Jews of Spain either had to convert to Catholicism, depart from the country, or face death for defiance of the Monarch.
There were at least seven Jews (either crypto-Jews, Marranos, or sincere Jewish converts to Catholicism) who sailed with Columbus in his first voyage including Rodrigo de Triana, who was the first to sight land (Columbus later assumed credit for this), Maestre Bernal, who served as the expedition's physician, and Luis De Torres, the interpreter, who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, which it was believed would be useful in the Orient - their intended destination.
In the coming years, Jews settled in the new Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Caribbean, where they believed that they would be safe from the Inquisition. Some took part in the conquest of the "New World," and Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes a number of executions of soldiers in Hernán Cortés's forces during the conquest of Mexico because they were Jews.
Nevertheless, several Jewish communities in the Caribbean, Central, and South America flourished, particularly in those areas under Dutch and English control. By the sixteenth century, fully functioning Jewish communities had organized in Brazil, Suriname, Curaçao, Jamaica, and Barbados. In addition, there were unorganized communities of Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese territories, where the Inquisition was active, including Cuba and Mexico, however, these Jews generally concealed their identity from the authorities.
By the mid-seventeenth century, the largest Jewish communities in the Western Hemisphere were located in Suriname and Brazil.
Today, Latin American Jewry is composed of more than 400,000 people and the community is headed for institutional professionalization.[citation needed]
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[edit] Argentina
Jews fleeing the Inquisition settled in Argentina, but assimilated into the Argentine society. Portuguese traders and smugglers in the Virreinato del Río de la Plata were widely considered Jews but no organized community emerged after independence. After 1810, Jews, especially Jews from France, began to settle in Argentina in the mid-19th century. In the late 1800s, just as they did in the United States, many Jews arrived from Eastern Europe, fleeing persecution; they were called "Rusos" (Russians).
Today, around 395,000 Jews live in Argentina, mostly in Buenos Aires, comprising the third largest Jewish community in the Americas, after that of the United States and Canada. They are legally granted the two days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the first two and last two days of Passover as legal holidays.
[edit] Brazil
Jews settled early in Brazil, especially when it was under Dutch rule, setting up a synagogue in Recife - the first synagogue in the Americas - as early as 1636. Most of these Jews had fled Spain and Portugal to the religious freedom of the Netherlands during the re-establishment of the Inquisition in first Portugal, Spain, and again Portugal.
Jews resettled in Brazil in the 1800s after independence, and immigration rose throughout the 19th and early 20th century. In the late 1880s, members of the Zionism movement considered settling many Jews in Brazil to escape Russian pogroms, but strict immigration laws and political strife led to this plan being abandoned.
The Census of 2000 lists approximately 87,000 people who follow Judaism[1] (estimates put the Jewish population at as high as 150,000[2]). Brazilian Jews play an active role in politics, sports, academia, trade and industry, and are overall well integrated in all spheres of Brazilian life. The majority of Brazilian Jews live in the state of São Paulo but there are also sizeable communities in Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and Paraná.
[edit] Chile
Jews have achieved prominent positions in the Chilean government and other realms of influence, and have played a key part in the founding of the country, both before and after its independence in 1813. Approximately 12,500 of Chile's 15,000 Jews today reside in the capital of Santiago. Other smaller communities exist in Vina Del Mar (Valparaiso), Concepcion, Temuco, and Valdivia. A group of Indians in the south, the Iglesia Israelita, observe many Jewish customs and consider themselves to be Jewish as well.
[edit] Dominican Republic
Sephardic Jewish Merchants arrived in southern Hispanola during the 16th and 17th Centuries, fleeing the outcome of the Spanish Inquisition. Over the centuries, many Jews and their descendants assimilated into the general population, although many of the countries Jews still retain elements of the Sephardic culture of their ancestors.
Sosua, meanwhile, is a small town close to the Haitian border was founded by Ashkenazic Jews fleeing the rising Nazi regime of the 1930s. Rafael Trujillo, the country's dictator, welcomed many Jewish refugees to his island less mainly for their skills than for religious persecution, and a with a hidden motive on his part to improve what he regarded as the "inferior" racial stock of Dominicans with the blood of white settlers. Present-day Sosua still possesses a synagogue and a museum of Jewish history. Descendants of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews can still be found in many other villages and towns on the north of the island close to Sosua.
[edit] Costa Rica
The first Jews in Costa Rica were probably conversos, who arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 19th century Sephardic merchants from Curaçao, Jamaica, Panama and the Caribbean followed. They mostly lived in Central Valley and were soon assimilated into the country's general society and eventually gave up Judaism altogether. A third wave of Jewish immigrants came before World War I and especially in the 1930s as Ashkenazi Jews fled a Europe threatened by Nazi Germany. Most of these immigrants came from the Polish town Żelechów. The term Polacos, which was originally a slur referring to these immigrants, has come to mean salesman in colloquial Costa Rican Spanish. The country's first synagogue, the Orthodox Shaarei Zion was built in 1933 in the capital San José. Along with a wave of nationalism, there was also some anti-Semitism in Costa Rica in the 1940s, but the co-existence between the Jews and the Catholic majority has only led to few problems. Recently there has been a fourth wave of Jewish immigration consisting primarily of American and Israeli expatriates retiring or doing business in the country. The Jewish community now conists of 2,500 to 3,000 people, most of them living in the capital.[3]
[edit] Mexico
Due to the strong Catholic presence in Mexico, few Jews migrated there until the late 1800s. Then, a number of German Jews settled in Mexico as a result of invitations from Maximilian of Mexico settled in the country, followed by a wave of Ashkenazic Jews fleeing Russia. A second large wave of immigration occurred as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, leading many Sephardic Jews to flee. Finally, a wave of immigrants fled the increasing Nazi persecutions in Europe.
Today, there are between 40,000 and 50,000 Mexican Jews. There are several sectors in the Jewish community in Mexico. The biggest of which are the Ashkenazi Community (descended from Central and Eastern Europe), the Maguén David and Monte Sinai Communities (descended from Syrian immigrants) and the Sepharadic Community (primarily descended from Turkish immigrants).
[edit] Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is currently home to the largest Jewish community in the Caribbean, around 3,000 Jews, supporting three synagogues in the capital city of San Juan: one each Reform, Conservative, and Chabad. Jews were prohibited from settling in Puerto Rico through much of its history. Many European Jews came after World War II, but the majority of the current population are descendants of Jews(Jewban) who fled from Cuba (once home to 15,000 Jews) after Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution in 1959. But in the late 1800s during the Spanish-American War many American Jews servicemen gathered together with local Puerto Rican Jews at the Old Telegraph building in Ponce to hold religious services. Many of those Puerto Rican Jews were descendants of migrants from France, Netherlands, Saint-Barthélemy and Curaçao. Many of the surnames that are found in Puerto RIco from these migrants include Bravo, Beauchamp, Duprey, Morenu, Ledeé, Leduc, and Levy.
Like many former Spanish colonies founded soon after the Spanish Inquisition, there is some population of Puerto Ricans who are crypto-Jews (some prefer to be called anusim, or coerced), descendants of forcibly converted Jews. Some of these maintain elements of Jewish tradition, although they themselves are Christian; this includes some members of families with last names like Gómez, Méndez, Rodríguez, Cardoso and Aguilar.
[edit] Venezuela
The history of Venezuelan Jewry most likely began in the middle of the 17th century, when some records suggest that groups of marranos lived in Caracas and Maracaibo.
At the turn of the 19th century, Venezuela and Colombia were fighting against their Spanish colonizers in wars of independence. Simon Bolivar, Venezuela's liberator, found refuge and material support for his army in the homes of Jews from Curaçao.
According to a national census taken at the end of the 19th century, 247 Jews lived in Venezuela as citizens in 1891. In 1907, the Israelite Beneficial Society, which became the Israelite Society of Venezuela in 1919, was created as an organization to bring all the Jews who were scattered through various cities and towns throughout the country together.
By 1943, nearly 600 German Jews had entered the country, with several hundred more becoming citizens after World War II. By 1950, the community had grown to around 6,000 people, even in the face of immigration restrictions.
Currently, there are more than 35,000 Jews living in Venezuela, with more than half living in the capital Caracas. Venezuelan Jewry is split equally between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. All but one of the country's 15 synagogues are Orthodox. The majority of Venezuela's Jews are members of the middle and upper classes.
[edit] Current Jewish populations
| Rank (Worldwide) |
Country | Jewish Population |
% of Jews |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Argentina | 395,379 | 1% |
| 11 | Brazil | 2000s: 200,000 1950s1: 95,125 |
0.1% |
| 15 | Mexico | 53,101 | 0.05% |
| 18 | Venezuela | 35,375 | 0.10% |
| 20 | Uruguay | 30,743 | 0.9% |
| 24 | Chile | 20,900 | 0.1% |
| 31 | Panama | 10,029 | 0.3% |
| 44 | Colombia | 3,436 | 0.008% |
| 47 | Peru | 2,792 | 0.01% |
| 48 | Costa Rica | 2,409 | 0.06% |
| N/A | Dominican Republic | 250 | 0.003% |
| N/A | Suriname | 200 | 0.05% |
1 Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro; v. 74. Rio de Janeiro: Departamento de Imprensa Nacional, 1953.
[edit] References
- ^ Censo Demográfico - 2000 : Características Gerais da População: Resultados da Amostra, Tabela 1.3.1 - Populaçăo residente, por sexo e situaçăo do domicílio, segundo a religiăo - Brasil: http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2000/populacao/religiao_Censo2000.pdf
- ^ The Virtual Jewish History Tour, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Brazil.html
- ^ Perman, Stacy: The Jewish Traveler: Costa Rica in Hadassah Magazine December 2006. Accessed December 29, 2006.
