Anti-Semitism Stirs in Latin America

Besides its grim toll in human misery and ever more bitter divisions, the war in Gaza has awakened the sleeping monster of anti-Semitism in Europe. I would not say the same for Latin America, though there are signs that the beast is perhaps stirring.

Some Latin American governments have signaled their dissatisfaction with Israel’s actions. Chile and Brazil have recalled their ambassadors, Fidel Castro has accused the Israelis of genocide, and governments favorably disposed to Venezuela’s populist revolution have all publicly condemned Israel for the war.

While such political rejection is not anti-Semitic, something new is emerging in Spanish-language social media, mostly among young people, where condemnation of Israel is often accompanied by anti-Semitic diatribes. Latin America is not particularly anti-Semitic, but there is a danger it may become so.

In 1938, Jorge Luis Borges described Argentine anti-Semitism as “facsimile” anti-Semitism, based on European models. This had been true for decades, not only in Argentina but elsewhere in Latin America, where anti-Semitism was based on two imported hatreds: the ancient anti-Judaism of the Spanish Catholic tradition and the modern European racism of the 19th and 20th centuries. In recent years, however, such feelings have been heightened by a third influence — the Israeli Palestinian conflict — and developed into a new, unexpected prejudice: an anti-Semitism of the left.

From the earliest days of the Conquest in the 16th century until the middle of the 17th century, waves of Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal arrived in the New World. Since Judaism and Islam were banned on the Iberian Peninsula after its reconquest by Christian armies, these immigrants were known as “conversos,” or converts, who often masked their continued practice of Judaism and thus were called “marranos,” or secret Jews.

The scholar Jonathan Israel has described this early migration to the New World and its effects. These educated exiles established an impressive financial and commercial net that spanned continents. But when they were cut down in the 17th century by the Inquisition, these generations vanished from popular memory, leaving only a few cultural traces, like the many largely Portuguese Jewish names that are scattered across Latin America. Perhaps because of their rapid disappearance into the general population, no native variety of anti-Semitism toward them ever developed.

In Spain, the story is somewhat different. There were Jews in Spain before the birth of Christ and, though they were officially expelled in 1492, their presence had been so vital to the country that it continued to impress itself on Spain right down to the present. The old anti-Judaism is still alive in daily speech, in popular legend and among influential sectors of public opinion, but its positive counterpart is no less alive in a cult of respect for the heritage of the Sephardim (the ancient Spanish Jewish community) and a liberal tradition of interest in Jewish traditions.

At the end of the 19th century, the countries of post-independence Latin America received new waves of Jewish migrants. Many fled persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe, and most headed for Argentina.

When anti-Semitism energized by Nazism arose in Europe, thousands of Polish Jews (among them my parents and grandparents) came to Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. There they encountered, as across most of Latin America, a general tolerance toward Jews — though Argentina was a somewhat more complicated case.

Then came World War II and the heyday of Nazi propaganda. When the war broke out, part of the Latin American press, a segment of public opinion and a number of intellectuals, politicians and businessmen on the right sympathized with the Axis, fueled in part by anti-Americanism and the negative trait of admiration for the political strongman. Anti-Semitic literature was widely circulated(such as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and “Mein Kampf”), along with locally generated anti-Semitic articles, pamphlets and cartoons. Of particular importance in Mexico was the journal Timón, funded by the German Embassy and directed by José Vasconcelos, a prominent Mexican writer and philosopher.

After the war, spreading knowledge of the Holocaust and the growing prestige of Israel encouraged a rather halcyon period for Latin American Jews. But then Juan Perón welcomed Nazis fleeing a defeated Germany, allowing them to make a dark, racist mark on Argentine society.

In 1976, during a chaotic period in Argentina, the military seized power and began a savage regime of torture and murder of leftists and liberals. As depicted in Jacobo Timerman’s “Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number,” Argentine anti-Semitism — especially strong among the traditional land-owning and military elite, as well as the Catholic Church — created a situation where Jews who fell into the hands of the junta were treated, as was the case of Timerman, with Nazi-style anti-Semitism. Most striking is Timerman’s description of an hours-long session of electric torture where no questions were asked, only shouts of “Jew, Jew!” — and his memory of torture in a room with a picture of Hitler on the wall.

The terror ended with the fall of the regime in 1983, but in 1994 an attack by Hezbollah (apparently supported by Iran with local collusion) on the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires killed 85 people. It was the second anti-Jewish terrorist act in Buenos Aires in two years. The ongoing unrest in the Middle East had disastrously touched Latin America’s Jewish community. And the understandable anger with the Israeli occupation of the territories suddenly mushroomed into a movement that became an anti-Semitism of the left that was especially strong in university circles.

Two other factors also influenced attitudes toward Jews in Latin America: the anti-Semitic element (strongly pro-Palestinian) that was introduced into “Chavismo” in Venezuela, and the growth of social networks, where all the commonplaces of right-wing anti-Semitism can be found, often sanctioned by professors on the left.

The bombardment of Gaza has greatly intensified these reactions. A just solution in the Middle East could reduce anti-Semitism not only in Latin America but the entire world. The prospects are not heartening but perhaps possible. For now, each country must debate its own reactions to this problem — as must local Jewish communities, which should participate freely in such discussions in a critical as well as autocritical spirit.

Enrique Krauze is a historian, editor of the literary magazine Letras Libres, and author of “Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America.” This article was translated by Hank Heifetz from the Spanish.