Oy, My Buenos Aires: Jewish Immigrants and the Creation of Argentine National Identity

Abstract

Oy, My Buenos Aires: Jewish Immigrants and the Creation of Argentine National Identity focuses on the experiences of Jewish (Ashkenazi) immigrants in the city of Buenos Aires during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The introductory chapter describes Argentina's process of replacing its rural character with an urban cosmopolitan image and the role of immigrants (not only Jewish) in that process. In the following six chapters, Nouwen follows Jewish immigrants as they move from Eastern Europe or from Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) agricultural colonies to the city of Buenos Aires, where they engage in various occupations (chapter 2); as the immigrants learned to “deploy markers of national identity” once they had settled in the city (chapter 3); as they settled in neighborhoods and interacted with other immigrant groups (chapter 4); as they became victims and members of criminal groups and interacted with the state and city authorities (chapter 5); as they inhabited gendered spaces in the city (chapter 6); and as eight of them retell their immigrant stories (chapter 7). The conclusion reiterates the claim that by 1930 “ethnic identities were an integral part of the porteño identity” (p. 122).Oy, My Buenos Aires offers novel ways of reframing Argentine Jewish history, and it is deeply embedded in current historiographical debates regarding how to study Jews in Latin America. Previous generations of historians followed a diasporic approach, assuming an essential commonality among Jewish immigrants who moved to different parts of the globe and focusing on the ways in which this diasporic identity became manifested through the (similar) institutions they created wherever they settled. Other historians have rejected that lens and have imagined Jewish immigrants as having more in common with other immigrant groups who settled alongside them than with other Jews in different parts of the world. Dr. Nouwen joins the new generation of scholars as she demonstrates the ways in which Jewish immigrants lived and integrated themselves within a city inhabited by many different immigrant groups. This approach, other scholars and Nouwen suggest, allows us to understand the shaping of ethnic identities in conversation with the national context in which these ethnic identities took form.The study of Jews in Argentina has also problematically focused on the Jews that settled in the agricultural colonies founded by the JCA. While this was an important part of the Jewish experience in this country, it was not, by any means, the one the majority of Jews lived. Dr. Nouwen rightfully notes that these first decades of the twentieth century was a time in which Argentina moved away from a rural identity and began crafting a more modern, cosmopolitan image. It is no surprise, then, that Dr. Nouwen decided to explore Jewish life in the city and the ways in which Jews contributed to the construction of that urban identity. The book makes important methodological contributions as well. Dr. Nouwen has effectively utilized Yiddish material with an eye to understanding how Jews, in Jewish circles and with a Jewish audience in mind, understood and made sense of Argentina as well as its culture and identity markers. Her creative use of sources like advertisements, poems, and communal food menus, as well as fiction and newspaper criminal reports, highlights how important these unexplored sources are in recreating Jewish immigrants' lives in Buenos Aires. The book also incorporates a biographical approach that allows for the close exploration of how the themes Dr. Nouwen has identified among Jewish immigrants became manifested by specific individuals. Besides utilizing a variety of Yiddish sources, Dr. Nouwen has also demonstrated the ways in which fiction can be read with an eye to uncovering subjective experiences.While Dr. Nouwen claims that Jews, like other immigrants, “helped to create the new porteño strain of the Argentine national identity while maintaining their ethnic identity” (p. 2), the book's ability to follow through on this assertion is compromised by an unsatisfying discussion of identity and by not offering clear definitions of porteño identity, national identities, and how they intersected. Yet despite these shortcomings, the book contributes importantly to moving the field of Jewish Latin Americans forward. By focusing on topics not previously studied, by taking advantage of underutilized sources, and by imagining Jews not exclusively as members of Jewish institutions, the book succeeds in continuing to “normalize” Jewish Latin American history.