The Torah of Che Guevara: Jewish Students and Armed Struggle in Military Brazil

Abstract

Studies of Latin American Jews under Cold War dictatorships have primarily focused on Jewish victims of dictatorial state violence. More recent scholarship, however, has offered individual case studies of Argentine Jewish activists as political actors rather than victims. Building on this newer work, this article examines the participation of Jewish high school and university students in the student movement and armed struggle against the Brazilian military regime (1964–85). Drawing on secret police records, memoirs, and oral history interviews, it explores the experiences of a dozen Jewish activists, tracing their politicization to family ties, Jewish elementary schools and summer camps, and elite public high schools. Blurring the boundaries between the "communalist" and "dispersionist" approaches to Jewish history by demonstrating how social networks established through leftist Jewish institutions had lasting impacts on ostensibly unaffiliated Jewish activists, this article offers the first extended examination of Jewish anti-dictatorship activism in the Latin American sixties.