History of the Jews in Chile

In colonial times, the most prominent Jewish character in Chile was the surgeon Francisco Maldonado da Silva, one of the first directors of the San Juan de Dios Hospital [citation needed].

Maldonado da Silva was an Argentine Jew born in San Miguel de Tucumán into a Sephardic family from Portugal.

Like in the rest of Latin America, the original Jewish settlers did not retain their identity over the generations and were eventually assimilated into the broader majority of the Chilean Catholic society.

One of them, Manuel de Lima y Sola, was a man who became one of the founding members of the Fire Department of Valparaíso in 1851 and one of the founders of the Chilean freemasonry to create the first Masonic lodge, the "Unión Fraternal" two years later.

[10] In 2016, the Jewish Archive of Chile was founded, a collection of written and audiovisual material about Jews living in the country.