History of the Jews in Latin America and the Caribbean
In addition, there were unorganized communities of Jews in Spanish and Portuguese territories where the Inquisition was active, including Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Peru.
Portuguese traders and smugglers in the Virreinato del Río de la Plata were considered by many to be crypto-Jewish, but no community emerged after Argentina achieved independence.
By the end of the century in Argentina, as in America, many Jewish immigrants were coming from Eastern Europe (mainly Russia and Poland) fleeing Tsarist persecution.
Between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews now live in Argentina, the vast majority of whom reside in the cities of Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba, Mendoza, La Plata and San Miguel de Tucumán.
In 1656, following the Portuguese reconquest of Brazil, Jews left for the Caribbean islands and New Amsterdam under Dutch rule; the latter was taken over by the English in 1664 and was renamed as New York City.
This was in response to anti-immigration legislation and immigration quotas passed by the United States, Argentina, Canada and South Africa, persisting even after the crisis of Jews under the Third Reich became clear.
Lastly, the Jews in Brazil developed strong support structures and economic opportunities, which attracted Eastern European and Polish Jewish immigration.
Mario Kreutzberger, otherwise known as "Don Francisco" and host of Sábado Gigante, the longest-running TV show in the world, is a Chilean Jew of German origin.
Other Chilean Jews who have achieved recognition in arts and culture include Alejandro Jodorowsky, now established in France and best known internationally for his literary and filmic work.
Other Alberto Capua, Giorgio Ottolenghi, Aldo Mugla, Francisco Breth, Hans Herman, Leopold Levy, Paul Engel, Marco Turkel, Henry Fente, Benno Weiser, Otto Glass, Egon Fellig, and Karl Kohn.
Vera Kohn was a psychologist and teacher, tasks that at mid-century were not of interest of Ecuadorian women who used to live in their homes given away, devoid of intellectual curiosity and only care about social life.
The company appointed David Nassy, a Brazilian refugee, patron of an exclusive Jewish settlement on the western side of the island of Cayenne, an area called Remire or Irmire.
From 1658 to 1659, Paulo Jacomo Pinto began negotiating with the Dutch authorities in Amsterdam to allow a group of Jews from Livorno, Italy to settle in the Americas.
In 2014, numerous members of the communities Lev Tahor and Toiras Jesed, who practice a particularly austere form of Orthodox Judaism, began settling in the village of San Juan La Laguna.
In the late eighteenth century at the time of the French Revolution, the free people of color pressed for more rights in Saint-Domingue, and a slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture broke out in 1791 in the North of the island.
[citation needed] Through the years of warfare, many people of the Jewish community were among the whites killed; some Jews were expelled when the slaves and free blacks took power and instituted restrictions on foreign businessmen.
[citation needed] Haiti achieved independence in 1804 but was not recognized by other nations for some time and struggled economically, based on a peasant culture producing coffee as a commodity crop.
A second large wave of immigration occurred as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, leading many Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Morocco, and parts of France to flee.
Based in Cancún, they reached out to the whole Quintana Roo and Mexican Caribbean including Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Isla Mujeres and Mérida.
Beginning in 1983, the Reagan administration in the U.S. made a concerted effort to increase domestic support for funding the Contras by persuading American Jews that the Sandinista government was antisemitic.
[42][43] According to Contra leader Edgar Chamorro, CIA officers told him of this plan in a 1983 meeting, justifying it with the antisemitic argument that Jews controlled the media and winning them over would be key to a public relations success.
His paternal grandfather, Ysaque Abenazar, was an influential member of the Jewish community of Segovia, who later converted to Catholicism and adopted the name Diego Arias Dávila.
Although his religious beliefs remain uncertain, it is established that he protected Judeo-Conversos from persecution led by Franciscan friar Juan de Quevedo.
During this period, Portuguese Crypto-Jews, who were better organized and had more resources, managed to establish a house of prayer on Calafates Street, located behind the old cathedral of Panama la Vieja.
Thanks to their proficiency in languages such as German, Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and Papiamento, they played a crucial role as intermediaries and translators, facilitating communication between the local population and foreigners arriving in or passing through the region.
[60] Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish) mainly from nearby islands such as Curaçao, St. Thomas and Jamaica, and Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe began arriving in Panama in large quantities until the mid-nineteenth century, attracted by economic incentives such as bi-oceanic railway construction and the California gold rush.
And Ashkenazi (Judeo-German) Jews began arriving in significant numbers in Panama in the mid-19th century, attracted by economic opportunities such as the construction of the interoceanic railroad and the California Gold Rush.
[63] In the late 1800s during the Spanish–American War many Jewish American servicemen gathered together with local Puerto Rican Jews at the Old Telegraph building in Ponce to hold religious services.
During the Inquisition in Portugal and Spain around 1500, many Jews fled to the Netherlands and the Dutch colonies to escape social discrimination and inquisitorial persecution, sometimes including torture and condemnation to the stake.
[70] In 1940, the Central Israelite Committee of Uruguay was founded, uniting the different Jewish communities that had been formed based on the place of origin of the Jews who arrived in the country.
