Latin American Jewish Studies

The presentation of a comprehensive selection of academic texts in the field of Latin American Jewish studies, such as the one we develop here, requires considering a series of analytical challenges. The first one is epistemological in nature: when referring to a topic as “Latin American” it is not always kept in mind that this adjective comprises many countries, with very different histories and realities. Although there are historical, cultural, and linguistic common grounds that bring most of the countries in the region together, the differences between them are substantial. Only by contrasting this region with others, and through analytical or political enunciation, is it possible to construct it as a single unit. The same is true for Jewish history in the region. Although we can identify common elements that define a unique context for the development of Jewish life in Latin America, such as the historically most widespread religion—Catholicism—and the dominant languages and cultural backgrounds—Spanish and Portuguese—there are many particularities that differentiate historical experiences. The differences in size, degree of institutional development, and social and cultural visibility of the Jewish populations in the Latin American countries, present a second challenge for the current selection. Although we aimed to offer a balanced bibliographical overview of the region, the fact that Argentina, with the largest Jewish community, followed by Brazil and Mexico, has received much more attention from scholars, led us to an unavoidable bias imbalance. Finally, this selection faces a third challenge related to the publishing languages. This is directly associated with the places of academic production. In the cases in which we selected a Spanish or Portuguese-language book or article, we attempted to include the English version. However, most of the references are published only in Spanish or Portuguese. This piece begins with references that address the development of the Latin American Jewish studies field, and continues with the following topics: Converts and crypto-Jews in colonial America; immigration; the formation of communities and the dynamics of integration; Jewish political trends and Jewish participation in national politics; culture and art; Spanish and Portuguese-language literature, which includes an entry on Yiddish literature; women, prostitution, and gender; religion; anti-Semitism; Nazism and the Holocaust; the two bomb attacks in Argentina (Embassy of Israel in 1992 and the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina in 1994); and finally, the repressive actions of military dictatorships.