ARGENTINE JEWISH FARMERS ON THE SCREEN IVÁN CHERJOVSKY ABSTRACT agricultural colonies, within three decades Taking a historical approach, this arti- the country went from being a net import- cle explores a series of films depicting life er of grain and flour to figuring as one of in Jewish agricultural colonies established the major worldwide exporters of those in Argentina between 1889 and 1936. Most goods (Djenderedjian 129). of these works were documentaries, al- Agricultural settlements possessed though some fictions did make it to the great importance not only for the Argen- screen. For Jewish citizens of Argenti- tine economy and society in general, but na, the past and present existence of the also for the self-image of those born and farming settlements turned out to be an bred in the colonies. Nonetheless, the saga efficient vehicle for presenting themselves of the European immigrant farmers has to the State and civil society as authentic almost never been brought to the screen. Argentines. As a result, the Jewish gau- Films about rural life have focused on dis- chos (the farming settlements’ dwellers) tinctly social and political themes. These were present as protagonists in mass cul- include: conflicts among farmers, railroad ture productions. The philological explo- companies, and great exporting concerns ration on films and documentaries gives (Kilómetro 111, dir. Mario Soffici, 1938); back a rich, composite depiction of the the exploitation of day laborers who har- overall production on the Jewish colonies vest mate in the province of Misiones (Pri- and shows the shift from initial hostility to sioneros de la tierra, dir. Soffici, 1939; Dark present support by sectors of society and River [Las aguas bajan turbias], dir. Hugo governmental organs. del Carril, 1952); the difficulty of achieving land ownership (La tierra será nuestra, dir. Ignacio Tankel, 1949); and the struggles of cotton pickers in the El Chaco region INTRODUCTION1 (Esta tierra es mía, dir. del Carril, 1961). If Agricultural settlements on the pam- we consider the importance of the Western pas played a major role in the process of genre in the U.S., the near-neglect of the economic transformation undergone by immigrant farmer theme is doubly curi- Argentina between the second half of the ous, since from the outset Argentine cin- nineteenth century and the first third of ema has sought at once to imitate and dif- the twentieth. The modernization pursued ferentiate itself from Hollywood, creating by the governing liberal party was kick- a kind of alternative modernism (Karush started by the 1876 Law of Immigration 69-73). The agricultural colonies planted in and Colonization, which opened the doors indigenously populated areas could well to millions of foreigners, mostly Europe- have been transformed into a local version an.2 Thanks to this broad development of of the Far West. Volume 38, Nos. 2 & 3 18 Post Script There are a few exceptions to this rule. in Argentina reached its highest point, Two were the lavishly produced films, numbering around 35,000 and represent- with top-notch casting. The 1949 Argen- ing more than 10% of Argentine Jewry. tine-Chilean co-production Esperanza (dir. Francisco Mugica and Eduardo Boneo) de- picted the difficult beginnings of a group EWISH OLONIES of Swiss, French, and Italian families who J C settled in the Esperanza Colony, founded IN FICTION FILM in 1856 in Santa Fe province.3 Maybe the By the time Jewish Gauchos debuted, commercial failure of this undertaking there existed several Argentine mass-dis- discouraged other directors of the time tribution films with significant Jewish from approaching the agricultural-col- characters. They had forerunners in saine- ony theme. Nonetheless, two and a half tes, a popular theatrical genre that often in- decades later, a second adventurer, Juan cluded immigrants of diverse background. José Jusid, invested great time and mon- The films, of course, included negative ste- ey in a picture called Jewish Gauchos ([Los reotypes, but Jews were mostly presented gauchos judíos], 1975). This was a musical as benign creatures integrating into Ar- based on the homonymous volume of tales gentine society at large. One example: the from 1910, devoted to the specifically Jew- characters played by Adolfo Stray in three ish agricultural settlements established in films—Fúlmine (the film’s name is that of its Argentina; the book’s author, Alberto Ger- protagonist; dir. Luis Bayón Herrera, 1949), chunoff, became quite celebrated and the Ésta es mi vida (dir. Román Viñoly Barre- text a classic of Argentine literature. to, 1952), and La niña del gato (dir. Barreto, For Jewish citizens of Argentina, the 1953)—are immigrants, obviously Jewish past and present existence of the agricul- because of their Yiddish accent. They earn tural colonies turned out to be a perfect ve- their living in commerce and finance but hicle for presenting themselves to the State not in an archetypally exploitative way. and civil society as authentic Argentines. Moreover, the directors chose an actor The hard work and high productivity of both well known to the Jewish communi- the agriculturalists proved Jews could cast ty and recognized as a Jew by Argentine off money lending and trade and embody movies audiences in general. two key elements of Argentine identity: the Native-born children of immigrants figure of the gaucho Argentine( natives of appear a bit later on the screen. Ellos nos mixed Spanish and indigenous extraction hicieron así (dir. Soffici, 1952), Quinto año celebrated as an ideal at the very time the nacional (dir. Rodolfo Blasco, 1961), Dar real roaming cowmen were being dis- la cara (dir. José Martínez Suárez, 1962), placed) and the self-image of the country and The Terrace ([La terraza], dir. Leopoldo as the “breadbasket of the world” (though Torre Nilsson, 1963) present positive Jew- its role as grain exporter was already in de- ish characters and portray conflicts in the cline by the 1930s).4 Argentine educational system. The pres- Jews had begun arriving in the Ar- ence of Jews among the students serves to gentine countryside at the end of the nine- denounce anti-Semitism in universities. teenth century, mostly to populate settle- Perhaps the sole movie with an ambiguous ments created by the Jewish Colonization treatment of Jews was Ragged Football ([Pelo- Association, often referred to by its acro- ta de trapo], dir. Leopoldo Torres Ríos, 1948), nym JCA, a philanthropic enterprise es- which portrays a shady Jewish trader. His tablished in 1891 by the Jewish Franco-Bel- unwillingness to integrate into society is gian railroad magnate Baron Maurice de shown by his refusal to let his native-born Hirsch. Due to this immigration, between son join neighborhood boys in a game of 1920 and 1940, the rural Jewish population soccer—the Argentine national passion.5 Volume 38, Nos. 2 & 3 19 Post Script Probably the first reference to Argen- poldo Torre Nilsson and with Emilio, Ma- tine-Jewish farming in a fiction film occurs rio, and Norberto Kaminsky, family own- in Con gusto a rabia (dir. Fernando Ayala, ers of an important national record label: 1965). In that work, anti-Semitic national- Microfón Argentina. The fact that a key ists set off a noise bomb in a theater during filmmaker in Argentine cinema, such as a show celebrating the seventy-fifth anni- Torre Nilsson, was interested in coproduc- versary of Jewish agricultural settlements ing a version of the well-known collection in the country. They detonate the device, of stories Los gauchos judíos was perhaps shower the theater with pamphlets, and dictated by ideological factors, and not call for Jewish traitors to leave the country. just artistic and financial concerns, since However, once initial fear has subsided Torre Nilsson’s convictions were decidedly in the theater, a young woman returns to liberal (Ciria 47-48). Likewise, La terraza, a the stage to continue singing “Hava Nag- movie by Torre Nilsson mentioned before, ila,” (a traditional Israeli folk song of joy) denounced anti-Semitism rampant among while the audience claps along. This short the far-right-wing youth of the Buenos Ai- sequence, in a film denouncing national- res upper crust.7 ist groups, shows Jews not only as peace- Following a suggestion by the Kamin- ful citizens celebrating the anniversary of sky family, the production team decided to their belonging to the Argentine landscape turn the picture into a musical along the but also as resilient people capable of over- lines of Fiddler on the Roof (dir. Norman coming great adversity.6 Jewison, USA, 1971), the Oscar-winning film of the Broadway version of stories by classic Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. In this way, the Argentine audience would EWISH AUCHOS J G , associate the film with a blockbuster that BROADWAY STYLE had also portrayed Eastern European Jews The already-mentioned Jewish Gauchos fleeing persecution. It was hoped that the was the first Argentine film totally devot- Broadwayification of Jewish Gauchos would ed to Jewish life in the country. As noted, help recoup the large sum—a half-million it was an expensive, star-studded produc- dollars—that the film cost, by boosting tion. In a personal interview by the author the box-office receipts with sales of a long of this article, director Juan José Jusid recounted how he came upon the idea of making the movie. He wished to foreground the contribution of immi- grants to the moderniza- tion of Argentina, since the official version of his- tory taught by schools in the 1970s was centered on the 1810 revolution against Spain, the independence achieved in 1816, and the great deeds of 19th-centu- ry national heroes (Cher- jovsky 257). To finance the project, Jusid teamed up A Jewish wedding.