Memory,Oblivion,andJewishCultureinLatinAmerica THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK emory, blivion, andewishulture in atin merica edited by marjorie agosín University of Texas Press austin Copyright © 2005 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2005 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Memory, oblivion, and Jewish culture in Latin America / edited by Marjorie Agosín— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-292-70643-x (cloth:alk.paper)— isbn 0-292-70667-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Jews—Latin America—History. 2. Sephardim—Latin America— History. 3. Jews—Latin America—Social life and customs. 4. Jews— Latin America—Personal narratives. 5. Jews—Latin America—Social conditions. 6. Latin America—Ethnic relations. I. Agosín, Marjorie. f1419.j4m46 2005 980'.004924—dc22 2004025995 To the memory of the Jewish-Spanish communities that were exiled from Spain and traveled to the New World with their hopes and their songs. To my grandmother, Josefina Agosín Halpern, whoalwayswonderediflifewasgoodorbadfortheJews. And to Luisa Smirnoff, who believed in hope. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ontents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi section i. SephardiminOurMemory 1 reyes coll-tellechea, Remembering Sepharad 3 angelina muñiz huberman, The Sephardic Legacy 15 section ii. Journeys 31 david brailovsky, Tuesday Is a Good Day 33 murray baumgarten, My Panama 47 sandra mcgee deutsch, A Journey through My Life and Latin American Jewish Studies 61 section iii. The Paradox of Communities 75 graeme s. mount, Chile and the Nazis 77 diana anhalt, ‘‘Are You Sure They’re Really Jewish?’’ A Selective History of Mexico City’s Beth Israel Community Center 91 adina cimet, Dancing around the Political Divide: Between the ‘‘Legal’’ and the ‘‘Regal’’ in the Mexican Jewish Community 101 viii } Memory,Oblivion,andJewishCultureinLatinAmerica section iv. ALiteratureofTransformation 113 naomi lindstrom, The Heterogeneous Jewish Wit of Margo Glantz 115 rhonda dahl buchanan, Preserving the Family Album in Letargo by Perla Suez 131 section v. Culture, History, and Representation 147 stephen a. sadow, Lamentations for the AMIA: Literary Responses to Communal Trauma 149 raanan rein, Nationalism, Education, and Identity: Argentine Jews and Catholic Religious Instruction, 1943–1955 163 darrell b. lockhart,FromGauchos judíos to Ídishe mames posmodernas: Popular Jewish Culture in Buenos Aires 177 david william foster, Gabriel Valansi: Neoliberal Nights in Buenos Aires 207 ruth behar,WhileWaitingfortheFerrytoCuba: Afterthoughts about Adio Kerida 221 La menora de la alegría 235 Index 239 cknowledgments During the past two decades, an extensive corpus of literature and visual expression devoted to Jewish life in the Americas has been an essen- tial component of research and reflection. The Jews in Latin America are no longer an ‘‘invisible minority’’ thanks to the courage and commitment of scholars, writers, and artists who have incorporated Jewish life into their work as well as their private lives. I thank each of them for inspiring me to follow in their footsteps. This collection encompasses the discoveries and revelations of others as we venture together in this important and too often neglected history of the Americas. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues who are also friends and people of great integrity. In these politically charged times that have pro- voked increased intolerance to otherness and in the face of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States, the willingness of my dear friends to listen and support me is especially gratifying. It is impos- sible to thank them all, but I would like to name a few: Adina Cimet, Betty Jean Craige, Celeste K. Cooperman, Bapsi Sidwa, Paul Roth, Silvia Berger, Rabbi Donald Weiss, Laura and Paul Nakazawa, Ruth Behar, Isabel Bor- land, Emma Sepúlveda, Barbara Mujica, and Rebecca Leavitt. I also thank my family for the love and support that they have always given me: my two children, Joseph and Sonia, whose joy and hope allow me to believe in the world; my husband, who has always provided calm- ness and love; my parents, who are the tree of my life that sustains me and gives me roots. I am grateful for their presence in my life. I thank Theresa May for her constant belief in my work, and Lynne Chapman and Sheila Berg for helping me through the final stages of this project. My former student, Monica Bruno, who is now a translator and x } Memory,Oblivion,andJewishCultureinLatinAmerica editor extraordinaire, deserves more than an acknowledgment. Her su- perb work reflects her commitment to excellence and sensitivity of spirit. Iamdeeplygratefultoher. marjorie agosín ntroduction I grew up inValparaíso, Chile, the port city towhich most of my family emigrated from eastern Europe and Russia and where my family has lived for four generations; they married, had children, and helped build the first Jewish community there, beginning with a school and a burial society. But most of all, they created a sense of home and permanence in this very impermanent world, especially for Jews. It was in my earliest years that I developed a passion to tell stories and to listen to others weave their tales. We used to gather at the table, and the after-dinner conversation would revolve around magnificent and fantastic journeys, some historically accurate and others wildly imaginative. The delicate balance between truth and imagination was rarely maintained, but what really mattered were the stories and the gatherings at which they were heard. It started first in the 1920s with a benevolent patriarch, Joseph Hal- pern, who fell in love with a cabaret dancer in Vienna. This dangerous alliance, according to my great-grandmother Helena, allowed Joseph to undertake perhaps the most important and adventurous journey of his life, which would lead him to the safety of Chile. After looking at an old map, Joseph decided to disembark at the end of the world—Valpa- raíso, Chile. My maternal great-grandmother, Helena, and her handsome son, Mauricio, arrived in Chile from Vienna in 1939. Mauricio grew up to be a magnate and married into the Chilean aristocracy, the Montecinos, con- verts who continue to hide their Jewish roots. My paternal grandparents came from Odessa, walked to Istanbul, and set sail from Marseilles to the port of Valparaíso. My great-grandmother Sonia truly understood the meaning of impermanence and uncertain journeys. But all of my grand- xii } Introduction parents used to have suitcases packed and ready, and when news came, they would ask themselves if this was good or bad for the Jews. I have come to believe that some things are good and some are bad for the Jews as well as for everyone else. These stories, told around the dinner table throughout my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, became symbolic of our identity. The gene- alogies of our voyages and the passion to tell them in a way made all of us sophisticated storytellers who told stories to save our memories and to reaffirm the power of our shared humanity through words. Judaism meant not only belonging to a religion but also to an intense culture of vibrant voices, despite the countless times these voices were silenced, sometimes forever, because they were Jewish. At home, many people visited us: Russian Jews who taught us how to make borscht; ele- gant eastern Europeans who made blue cabbage, which they told me was a magical food. I was taught the culture of the Sephardim, from their burre- kas, songs brought from ancient Sepharad, modern-day Spain, that spoke of nostalgic love and a fervent longing to return. I remember whistling the song ‘‘Adio Kerida’’ on my way to school. It is a melodic and nostalgic song about unrequited love and loss. I have come to realize that this song also evokes the loss of a country and the pain of displacement, like Ruth Behar’s film on Cuban Jewry that is dis- cussed in this collection. Her film bears the same name as the nostalgic song that I used to whistle. In making this film, Behar returns to an almost imagined land, the land of childhood, and reclaims the losses that are also journeys symbolic of those who died in the Diaspora. This volume bears the passion of storytelling from the diverse Jew- ish communities of the Americas. It presents both the collective history of Jewish life in the Americas and stories of personal voyages of immigra- tion and fortitude. It speaks about how a daughter of Holocaust survivors overheard in Buenos Aires that the Holocaust never took place and about a film by a Cuban American anthropologist-poet-filmmaker that records the memories of others living in Cuba and at the same time allows the filmmaker to take ownership of her own memories. There are essays on Jewish humor in Latin America and how this hu- mor has amalgamated histories of the past and present. And there are serious concerns as well: the presence of the Nazis in southern Chile, the persecution of Jews during the military dictatorships in Argentina, and the divided Jewish community in Chile over the controversial figure of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Many Jews left the country during the presidency of Salvador Allende and returned during the dictatorship of marjorie agosín { xiii Pinochet because they felt safe under his government. And yet another wave of migrations and immigrations took place when Pinochet came to power, when members of the Jewish community feared persecution under fascist rule. It is my hope that Memory,Oblivion,andJewishCultureinLatin America will enable an engagement with this Jewish Latin American cul- ture—that it will bring understanding of its roots, its shortcomings, and its accomplishments and occasion an examination of this dual sense of belonging to the People of the Book and to society at large.