Jeffrey Lesser

Challenging Particularity: Jews as a Lens on Latin American Ethnicity

Scholarly interest in Jews as a subject of Latin American Studies has grown markedly in the last two decades, especially when compared to research on other Latin Americans who trace their ancestry to the Middle East, Asia or Eastern Europe. In this context, we propose the use of the term ‘Jewish-Latin American’, rather than ‘Latin American Jewry’, in order to shift the dominant paradigm about ethnicity in Latin America by returning the ‘nation’ to a prominent position at a moment when the ‘trans-nation’, or perhaps no nation at all, is often an unquestioned assumption. After analyzing the historiography of the Jewish presence in Latin America as a means of understanding the state of the ‘field’, we advance a series of propositions that might be useful to all students of ethnicity in the region, particularly to scholars working on minorities whose ancestors were characterized religiously as non-Catholic.

(Re) Creating Ethnicity: Middle Eastern Immigration to Brazil

There once was a group of peddlers who sold their wares in the interior of Espirito Santos, going from place to place by mule. One of the peddlers was named Aziz and his wife, Marat, was considered the leader of the women who stayed behind as the men went out to sell their goods. These women went out every day to wash clothes in a place called the “Turkish bath” (bacia das turcas). Over time, the town that grew up around the place where the women washed their clothes came to be called Marataize in honor of the wife (Marat) of Aziz. In Brazil hyphenated identities are very real in spite of the fact that elite culture aggressively rejects such social constructions. Thus, while there are no linguistic categories that acknowledge hyphenated ethnicity (a third generation Brazilian of Japanese descent remains “Japanese” while a fourth generation Brazilian of Lebanese descent may become a “turco,” an “arabe,” a “sirio” or a “sirio-libanese”), in fact immigrant communities aggressively tried to negotiate a status that allowed for both Brazilian nationality and ethnic difference. Immigrant groups in Brazil often did this by claiming a more “original” or “authentic” Brazilianess than members of the European descended elite, often via active constructions of social myths specific to the Brazilian milieu (see “The Legend of the Town of Marataize” above). This is possible since immigrant ethnicity is not some “immutable primordial indentit(ies)” but rather, as Anthony Cohen and others have suggested, a self-conscious and symbolic means by which boundaries were built.

Um Brasil melhor

Many countries in the Americas describe themselves as “nations of immigrants.” In the United States, the myth of the “promised land” suggests that foreigners better themselves upon arrival because the nation is intrinsically great. In Brazil, however, the relationship between immigration and national identity is different. Many intellectuals, politicians, and cultural and economic leaders saw (and see) immigrants as improving an imperfect nation that has been tainted by the history of Portuguese colonialism and African slavery. As a result, immigrants were often hailed as saviors because they modified and improved Brazil, not because they were improved by Brazil. This “improvement” took place through absorption, mixture and with the use of increasingly flexible racial and ethnic categories.

‘Jews are Turks who sell on credit’: Elite images of Arabs and Jews in Brazil

This contribution explores the Brazilian elite notion that Jews and Arabs are members of a single ‘race’. This linkage was one component of an attempt to create a western European‐like Brazilian national identity yet the contradiction between the economic benefits derived from immigrants and elite concerns about colour, religion, and national origin made Arabs and Jews a focus of comment among intellectuals. In spite of finding themselves the targets of prejudice, both groups entered Brazil in significant numbers in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, helping to create exactly the multi‐ethnic society elites hoped to prevent.

Das Transkulturelle im Ethnischen finden. Grenzverschiebungen arabischer und jüdischer Ethnizität in Brasilien

That Arabs and Jews are part of a single group transcending religion and region of origin is surprising at first glance. Yet in Brazil there is a deep and well developed popular and elite conception of Jews and Arabs as one „people“ with a set of common characteristics, who are a single people more similar than different. This chapter treats categories like „immigrant“ and „foreigner“ as imbued with positive national identity characteristics that naturalize some Brazilians via their foreignness. It analyzes why Arabs and Jews (along with Japanese) are often glossed as the „best“ Brazilians because of their immigrant status.

A Reflection on Foreignness and the Construction of Brazilian National Identities

A pesquisa sobre brasileiros de ascendência imigrantista ajuda-nos a entender questões amplas de raça e etnicidade. Ao dizer isso, eu tomo uma posição diferente da maioria das pesquisas onde os brasileiros nessa categoria são definidos como não normativos. A abordagem tradicional vem do uso linguístico no Brasil das categorias “imigrante” ou “estrangeiro” como ancestral ou herdado, como uma definição que pode ser aplicada mesmo para brasileiros nativos. Esse artigo, porém, muda o paradigma por não criar uma categoria única para pessoas nascidas no Brasil e pessoas nascidas fora do país. Fazendo essa distinção, posso analisar como e porque pessoas se representam e são vistos como “imigrantes” ou “estrangeiros” numa maneira situacional. Assim podemos lembrar que cidadãos brasileiros, independente da linguagem associada à sua descendência, são brasileiros.

Bad land, popular rebellion and ethnic survival: Jewish farmers in southern Brazil, 1904–25

The roots of how Brazils twentieth century ‘Jewish Question’ unfolded can be found in a group of planned farming colonies that the Jewish Colonization Association established in southern Brazil beginning in 1904. While the number of East European Jews who populated the colonies was relatively small, the mere existence of the colonies challenged traditional images of Jews as exclusively and insidiously oriented toward finance and capital in urban areas. Furthermore, the colonists, by acculturating to life in Brazil but refusing to assimilate, formed an immigrant community committed to its own ethnic survival while defying notions that Jews were uninterested in becoming citizens of Brazil.