by peter johnson
Herald staff

The Jewish Gaucho has now become part of Argentine folklore, yet it has been a long, and at times, difficult path that finally led to this degree of assimilation.

By the 1870s Argentina was still in its infancy and was just emerging from decades of anarchy during which only sporadic flows of immigrants reached the country.

However, events in far-off Russia together with an immigration law passed in 1876 were to be the triggers of a large inflow of Russian and East European Jews as of the 1880s.

In Russia, the assassination of Czar Alexander II came at a time of serious economic difficulties and although historians are divided, most see the assassination as the trigger that unleashed a series of pogroms against the Jewish population, who were unfairly blamed for having taken part in the plot. A much bloodier wave of pogroms broke out in 1903-1906, leaving thousands of Jews dead and many more wounded, as the Jews took to arms to defend their families and property from the attackers, with the events in Odessa alone in 1905 leading to some 2,500 Jews being killed.

This growing pressure to emigrate coincided with Argentina’s passage of the so-called Avellaneda law of Immigration and Colonization in 1876, and, aware of the pogroms going on in Russia, with President Julio A. Roca’s designation of José M. Bustos as a special emissary to promote Jewish emigration from the Czar’s Empire, which had begun soon after the pogroms.

Although the history of the time is probably a lot more complex and intricate, these were some of the events that historians have focussed on.

In 1887, a group of delegates from affected Jewish communities, mainly Podolia and Bessarabia held a meeting in Katowice (Silesia, Poland). Facing what they perceived to be a life and death situation, they decided that the only viable solution available to them was emigration. The possible alternatives were Palestine, Africa and North America. It was known that the Baron Rothschild supported emigration to Palestine, and Eliezer Kauffman was appointed as an emissary to Paris to obtain his support for this. The plan failed, however, and no details are known except that Kauffman was put in touch with the Great Rabbi of Paris, Zadoc-Kahn, who in turn helped him contact the Alliance Israelite Universelle (1860), a Jewish organization charged with caring for all who were persecuted simply because they were Jewish. While in Paris, Kauffman found out by chance that there was an official Argentine Information Office. Although Argentina was not a very well-known country in Russia, and was not even mentioned as an alternative port of immigration at the Katowice meeting, he got in touch with Pedro Lamas and J.B. Frank, the latter a government agent in charge of the Argentine Immigration and Colonization Office. Kauffman was informed that somebody by the name of Rafael Hernández was interested in selling lands to European immigrants. Those lands were in a place called Nueva Plata, — Buenos Aires province, close to La Plata city and not far from Buenos Aires. The sale was carried out, enabling approximately one hundred and twenty Jewish families of Russian origin represented by Kauffman to move to Argentina.

To some extent this event placed Argentina firmly on the map as an alternative destination for those seeking a new home, especially as many countries at that time had closed their doors to Jewish immigrants.

On August 14, 1889, the first organized group of Russian Jews arrived in the port of Buenos Aires aboard the S.S. Weser. This was the starting point of an event that would culminate two years later in the founding of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) by the Baron Maurice de Hirsch.

According to web-based sites, @it was an institution that promoted the emigration of thousands of oppressed Jews who were living in the Russian Empire under the Czar. This institution enabled them to establish themselves in the Americas by offering them the possibility of developing agricultural settlements.”

The founding of the JCA had been preceded by the pogroms of Kyiv (1881), Balta (1882), Ekaterinoslav (1883) and the establishment of the Pale of Settlement, in the western part of Russia, where more than four million Jews were legally confined.

In 1891, the Jewish Colonization Association came to know about a group of refugees retained in Istanbul. They were en route to Palestine, and the Turkish government wouldn’t allow them to continue and they could not return. Some of them were imprisoned, and others wandered the streets begging for charity. Taking advantage of their knowledge of the local government since he was contractor of the railroad the Orient Express, the Baron was able to attain the liberation of the detainees and embarked them on a boat going to Argentina. It was a difficult trip, due to the circumstances. The JCA didn’t have places in Argentina ready for colonization and the members were not appropriately selected for their ability. One hundred and forty families and sixty single persons embarked in the S.S. Galatz at Istanbul, on November 4, 1891. From Marseilles they travelled by train to Bordeaux and there they embarked on the SS Pampa, arriving on December 16 1891 in Buenos Aires.

With a growing need to feed the urban population, most of the early settlers were provided with “land, seeds and farm tools” and sent up country, where they settled around existing villages or founded their own (Moisesville in the Province of Santa Fe). Local historians have listed the following towns where the new arrivals settled down: Basavilbaso (where the immigrants from Russia gave rise to the term of “Jewish Gauchos”), Bernasconi, Bovril, Capivara, Carlos Casares, Ceres, Clara, Colonia Dora, General Acha, General Campos, Mauricio Hirsch, Delfín Huergo, La Clarita, Las Palmeras, Moctezuma, Luis Palacios, Est. La Salada, Pueblo Arrúa, Est. Alcaraz, Rivera, Rolon, San Salvador, Smith, Ubajay, Villa Domínguez , Est. Domínguez, Moisesville and Virginia, to name the main ones.

Carlos Casares

All these colonies probably have similar rich histories, yet space restraints reduce the focus to Carlos Casares, a farming town some 400 kilometres northwest of the City of Buenos Aires, where the Russian émigrés began arriving in 1891.

According to local researcher Teresa Acedo, a total of 567 Jewish immigrants arrived in 1891 and the families were provided with plots of land of between 50 and 150 hectares on a leasehold basis, with the JCA providing the tenants with a purchase option. According to Acedo, initial land purchases for the new immigrants totalled some 24,000 hectares, an area that had risen to 44,000 hectares by 1902.

Actual population counts are sketchy in the early years as the Civil Registry in Carlos Casares only opened in 1907, and by all accounts the Jewish population in the area rose to some 1,500. Although Acedo found no evidence of discrimination in Carlos Casares itself, she points to a 1910 edition of La Nación commemorating the Centenary and in which all the immigrant communities are praised, except the Russian Jews who are described as being “unfit for farming activities and difficult to absorb.” The comment on the immigrants farming abilities may have had some truth in it as, according to Acedo, between 1930 and 1940 a rising number of these early immigrant families began renting out or selling their lands and began emigrating to the City of Buenos Aires.

Nowadays the Jewish faith is no longer practiced in Carlos Casares. The Synagogue that had been built in the surrounding village of Algarrobos was demolished in the 60s and there is little left of Algarrobos itself. Another Synagogue in the village of Moctezuma was closed in the 50s but re-opened in 1991 to mark the centenary of the first arrivals and restored and declared a national monument in 2005. The village of Smith also had its own temple, yet it ended up becoming a grain deposit and ultimately a museum.

Carlos Casares itself had three, two of which have been demolished, the remaining one (still with some of its original furniture) now used as a garage.

Only the Israeli Mutual Association still hosts some of the main Jewish celebrations such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, although ceremonies such as Kabalat Shabbat are no longer held.

Early immigrants in Carlos Casares may not have adapted to farming activities but the contribution by their descendants to the growth of a nation are well documented.

Boris Garfunkel, the owner of the BGH electrical appliances empire, the Grobocopatel family that has become one of Argentina’s leading farming tycoons, Mario Goloboff, a writer, Adolfo Gass, a Senator, all trace their origins back to those Russian immigrants.