Los Gauchos Judíos (1910; Translated As the Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas, 1955) Offered a Structural and Thematic Template for Works by Mactas, Alexandr, and Voloch
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CYCLING THROUGH THE PAMPAS: FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNTS OF JEWISH AGRICULTURAL COLONIZATION IN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by James A. Hussar, B.A., M.A. María Rosa Olivera-Williams, Director Graduate Program in Literature Notre Dame, Indiana March 2008 © 2008 by James A. Hussar CYCLING THROUGH THE PAMPAS: FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNTS OF JEWISH AGRICULTURAL COLONIZATION IN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL Abstract by James A. Hussar My comparative study focuses on the negotiation of national, regional, religious, and ethnic identity in the works of four Latin American Jewish authors: Argentines Alberto Gerchunoff and Rebeca Mactas, and Brazilians Frida Alexandr and Adão Voloch. Each author uses collections of independent but interrelated short stories, or short story cycles, to fictionalize his/her experiences as a child growing up in Jewish agricultural colonies in Latin America in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I reevaluate the literary legacy of Gerchunoff, the father of Jewish Latin American literature, by showing how his canonical Los gauchos judíos (1910; translated as The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas, 1955) offered a structural and thematic template for works by Mactas, Alexandr, and Voloch. This work is dedicated to my parents, Kenneth and Carolyn Hussar, who were my first— and best—teachers. It is also dedicated to my wife, Beatriz, and my sons, Gabriel and Camilo, for their love and support. ii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: LOS GAUCHOS JUDÍOS: A MODEL SHORT STORY CYCLE........... 17 1.1 What is a Short Story Cycle? ..................................................................... 17 1.2 Los gauchos judíos as a Short Story Cycle ................................................ 20 1.2.1 Unity of Setting and Narrative Voice................................................ 20 1.2.2 The Collective Protagonist................................................................ 23 1.2.3 Development of Recurring Characters and Themes ......................... 32 1.3 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 37 CHAPTER 2: BEFORE AND BEYOND LOS GAUCHOS JUDÍOS: GERCHUNOFF'S ANTECEDENTS AND HEIRS....................................................................... 39 2.1 Russian Influences: Sholem Aleichem....................................................... 39 2.2 Spanish American Influences: Horacio Quiroga and Leopoldo Lugones.. 42 2.3 Rebeca Mactas's Los judíos de Las Acacias as a Short Story Cycle.......... 47 2.4 Frida Alexandr's Filipson as a Short Story Cycle ...................................... 57 2.5 Adão Voloch's O Colono Judeu-Açu as a Short Story Cycle..................... 74 2.6 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 79 CHAPTER 3: WHICH COMES FIRST: THE GAUCHO OR THE JUDÍO? ................. 82 3.1 Gerchunoff, Jewishness, and Argentineness............................................. 88 3.1.1 Conclusions: Gerchunoff's Jewish Gaucho.................................... 105 3.2 Adão Voloch, Jewishness, and Brazilianness ......................................... 107 3.2.1 National and Regional Identity in O Colono Judeu-Açu................ 110 3.3 National Identity and Jewishness in Rebeca Mactas's Los judíos de Las Acacias and Frida Alexandr's Filipson .................................................... 126 3.3.1 Language, Assimilation, and Exclusion in Mactas's and Alexandr's Story Cycles.................................................................. 127 CHAPTER 4: YOU CAN TAKE THE JEWISH COLONIST OUT OF THE COUNTRY............................................................................................ 138 4.1 Gerchunoff's Sentimental Journey Home................................................. 139 4.2 I Left My Heart (and Soul) in Carlos Casares: Mactas and the City/Country Dichotomy........................................................................... 150 4.3 Be It Every So Humble, There's No Place Like Filipson ........................ 160 ii iiiiii 4.4 Voloch and the Dream Deferred ............................................................. 172 4.5 Conclusion............................................................................................... 176 CHAPTER 5: LAS GAUCHAS JUDÍAS: GENDER, PERSPECTIVE, AND POSITION IN FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNTS OF JEWISH AGRICULTURAL COLONIZATION.......................................................... 179 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 206 v iviv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the members of my dissertation committee, Professors María Rosa Olivera-Williams, Michael Signer, and Isabel Ferreira Gould, whose encouragement and guidance have been unwavering throughout my graduate studies. I am also grateful to Susana B. Sigwald Carioli for helping me to research archives in Carlos Casares, Argentina, and to Dr. Federico Gabriel Polak and Professor Dame Julia M. Polak for graciously answering my questions about their mother, Rebeca Mactas. v INTRODUCTION Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) once wrote that countryman and contemporary Alberto Gerchunoff (1884-1950), generally regarded as the father of Jewish Latin American literature, was "uno de los pocos lectores de Cervantes" 'one of Cervantes's few true readers' ("Borges conversa sobre Gerchunoff" 15). In other words, Borges counts Gerchunoff as one of the few readers who fully grasped the significance of Cervantes's work. One might argue that Gerchunoff, like his literary hero Cervantes, has had few true readers, especially when it comes to his canonical Los gauchos judíos (1910; second edition 1936; translated as The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas, 1955). On one hand the book, the first to tell the story of Jewish agricultural colonization in the Argentine pampas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has been rightly recognized for its role in establishing the Jewish presence in Latin America: in the words of Argentine author Bernardo Verbitsky (1907-1979), Los gauchos judíos earned Argentine Jews their citizenship papers (86). On the other hand, many critics have unfairly characterized Los gauchos judíos as an apology for the official crisol de razas, or "melting pot," ideology of the 1910 Argentine Centennial, the event for which the text was commissioned. The argument that Los gauchos judíos was a capitulatory work derives in large part from the idealistic manner in which Gerchunoff portrays the immigrant experience. 1 In the twenty-four semiautobiographical vignettes that comprise the 1910 edition of the text (two stories were added in 1936), Gerchunoff fondly recalls the four years (1891- 1895) that he spent as a child in Moisés Ville and Rajil, two farming colonies in the Entre Ríos province of Argentina that were financed by German philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1831-1896) through his Jewish Colonization Association (JCA). Founded in 1891, the JCA facilitated the relocation of thousands of Ashkenazi Jews—many of whom, like the Gerchunoffs, were fleeing the pogroms of Czarist Russia—to isolated farming communities in the Latin American pampas. Although most of the immigrants arrived to Argentina with no agricultural training, Los gauchos judíos describes their adjustment not only to farming, but also to a new language and culture, as surprisingly smooth. While Los gauchos judíos quickly established Gerchunoff as one of the most important Argentine writers of his generation, the author's rhapsodic renderings of life in the agricultural colonies did not go unchallenged by his contemporaries. In a 1910 letter, for example, Argentine author Roberto J. Payró (1867-1928) asks Gerchunoff, "[...] dónde está el descontento de Rajil? ¿Dónde el que se volvió al comercio, hastiado de la tierra fecunda?" 'Where is the discontent in Rajil? What about those who, sick and tired of the fertile fields, went back to commerce?' (241-42). Despite his criticism of Los gauchos judíos' rosiness, however, Payró lavishes Gerchunoff with praise, using such superlatives as "hermoso" 'beautiful' and "nobilísimo" 'very noble' to describe his friend's book. Later critics were not so kind. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, a generation of Jewish intellectuals, dubbed "parricides" by critic Edna Aizenberg, accused Gerchunoff 2 of sugarcoating the immigrant experience and promoting melting-potism in order to secure his position among the Argentine elite. For example, David Viñas writes, "[...] para sobrevivir en La Nación y para ser tolerado [Gerchunoff] exalta 'el crisol de razas' de la oligarquía en el mismo momento en que las bandas blancas balean judíos y obreros en Plaza Lavalle" '[...] in order to survive at La Nación [the Buenos Aires newspaper where Gerchunoff worked] and to be tolerated, [Gerchunoff] praised the oligarchy's crisol de razas ideology at a time when Jews and workers were being shot in the Plaza Lavalle' (44). Here Viñas attacks Gerchunoff's