The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas , and: Cláper (review)

Abstract

Claper, by Alicia FreilichTo most Americans the republics south of the Rio Grande are the stuff of benign neglect. Only the occasional sweep of illegal aliens, the momentary drug bust, the quick vacation on some tropical beach may briefly lift our eyelids as we tsk-tsk our bemusement at those underdeveloped folk. Generally, we don't really care. The world conducts its serious economic and cultural business in New York, or London, or Tokyo, or Singapore. Who cares about a bunch of vilde chayes on the pampa plains? Where are the pampas, anyway?I use vilde chayes intentionally, since Jews are by and large no better informed than their fellow Americans. The Jewish world runs on a U.S.-Israel axis, with Europe included because it's where our grandparents came from and where the Holocaust occurred. But Latin America? Ah, yes, what about those Nazis in Argentina?Happily, change is in the air. Academe, at least, has discovered not only that there are Jews in Latin America, but that they are vibrant, creative, with something to say to other Jews and culture-makers. In departments of history, sociology, cultural studies, and Latin American and Brazilian literatures a new discipline is emerging: Latin American Jewish Studies. (Jewish Studies has been slow to recognize the newcomer.) A confluence of fortunate -- and less fortunate -- circumstances has put LAJS on the map, with literature often leading the way.Why now? Writers in Latin America are today asserting their Jewishness, however problematically. This wasn't always so. Until recently, Latin American Jewish intellectuals were often immigrants outside the mainstream or native-born Jews whose concerns had little or nothing to do with Judaism. Argentina's Alberto Gerchunoff was an early exception; that is why his book has been reprinted.Harsh dictatorships in the seventies served as a painful impetus for change. Young Latin American Jews identified with progressive and democratic forces found themselves under a double siege -- as Argentines, Chileans, Brazilians, or Uruguayans, and as Jews. Repression and exile led many to reconsider their Jewishness as a paradigm of suffering and resistance and as a source of cultural memory and pride. The result was an outpouring of Latin American Jewish creativity: organizations, journals, conferences, publishing houses, fiction, critical works. Democracy's return intensified the awakening.The Jerusalem-based Association of Jewish Writers in Spanish and Portuguese currently serves as the intellectual address for a network of authors living in Latin America, Spain, France, Israel, and the United States. It publishes Noaj, an important literary journal whose name echoes with biblical intimations of catastrophe, survival, and rebirth. The association has sponsored heady writers' symposia in Buenos Aires, S...o Paulo, Miami, and Jerusalem, and calmer scholarly events with AMILAT, the Israeli Society for Latin American Jewish Studies.In Buenos Aires, Argentine-Jewish intellectuals are spearheading the publication of novels, story collections, and anthologies. They are reediting books by previous generations of Latin-American Jewish authors who wrote in Yiddish, Portuguese, and Spanish, creating their ancestors even as they look to the future. Marcos Aguinis, Ricardo Feierstein, Gererdo Mario Goloboff, Alicia Steimberg, and Elihau Toker are some of those identified with the new activism, which has spilled over into Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela.A corresponding surge of interest has overtaken the North, spurred by the decadeold Latin American Jewish Studies Association. LAJSA members are teaching courses in Latin American Jewish history and literature at major U.S. universities, correcting the prejudiced, homogenizing picture of "Latin Americanness." (Are Freilich, Gerchunoff, or Aizenberg Hispanic names? …