Acknowledgments Introduction
Part I Relocation in the Nazi Years
1 Simultaneity of Past and Present in Mexico
Ruth Schwertfeger
2 Counter discourse in Argentina: Victoria Ocampo and SUR’s
Attitude toward the Jews during World War II
Rosalie Sitman
3 Imagining Otherness: The Jewish Question in Brazil, 1930–1940
Jeffrey Lesser
Part II Constructing Memory
4 Argentine Jews and the Accusation of “Dual Loyalty,” 1960–1962
Raanan Rein
5 Deconstructing Anti-Semitism in Argentina
David Sheinin
6 After the AMIA Bombing: A Critical Analysis of Two Parallel
Discourses
Beatriz Gurevich
Part III Identity and Hybridity
7 Identity and Memories of Cuban Jews
Robert M. Levine
8 While Waiting for the Ferry to Cuba: Afterthoughts about
Adio Kerida
Ruth Behar
9 Caribbean Hybridity and the Jews of Martinique
William F. S. Miles
10 Mexico: The Rise and Fall of Yiddish
Ilán Stavans
Part IV Poeticizing, Painting, Writing
the Pain
11 Traces of Memory
Marjorie Agosín
12 Surviving Genocide
Raquel Partnoy
13 Poetry as a Strategy for Resistance in the Holocaust and
the Southern Cone Genocides
Alicia Partnoy
Notes on Contributors
Index
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“In this unusual collection, poets rub shoulders with historians, a painter evokes memories that memory strives to forget, and researchers cut through the cant of politicians and the obfuscation of official records to get to the root of the disasters that have overtaken Jews in Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Editor Kristin Ruggiero brings together thirteen insightful interpreters of the Latin American Jewish experience – historians, sociologists and artists who re-create the particular Fragments they have lived. Whether writing as an émigré returning to Cuba, a Mexican savoring his Yiddish legacy, or a desaparecida surviving in an Argentine prison by reciting poetry to herself, each memoirist presents fresh and original ideas. Individual essays, grounded in significant historical research, reorient our thinking about racial identity in Brazil and the forces behind terrorist bombings in Buenos Aires. To a remarkable degree, the writers succeed in conveying the quality of their experience, its distinctive coloration and aroma and historical weight. Drawing the link between Nazism and the policies of Latin American dictators, the essays make plain and undeniable the hostile context for Jewish life on that continent. Dimensions of the pain caused by oppression are expressed in poetry, through ellipsis, con cariño, with love. These Fragments of Memory – of alienation, identity, and resistance – contribute significantly toward a phantom reconstruction of the multifaceted Latin American Jewish experience.” Judith Laikin Elkin, University of Michigan; a Founder of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association
“Editor Kristin Ruggiero has assembled thirteen essays by keen
interpreters of the Jewish experience in Latin America, furthering
the interdisciplinary exploration of four prominent themes in the
history of the respective Jewries: memory, identity, anti-Semitism,
and violence. The contributors’ disciplines include history,
anthropology, literature, sociology, and art, which underscores the
multifaceted ways of describing Jewish life in Latin America. …These
fragments of memory are a significant contribution to our understanding
of Latin American Jewish life.” American Historical Review
“Kristin Ruggiero has assembled
a stellar cast of multinational and multidisciplinary scholars and
artists that imparts this book both depth and variety. Geographically,
the chapters range from Mexico and tropical Caribbean islands to
temperate South America and its large Jewish communities. Topically,
the volume tackles a multiplicity of contradictory forces and trends:
anti-Semitism and Judeophilia; cultural hybridity and separation;
terrorism (of various ideological hues) and communal self-defense;
collective memory and amnesia. Epistemologically and aesthetically,
the essays range from the intellectual impartiality and keenness
of first-rate scholarly analysis to the poignant poetics of personal
testimonials. The volume’s documentary base extends from diplomatic
dispatches and a legendary literary magazine to oral interviews
and the diary of a polyglot grandmother. The result is a broad and
vivid portrayal of the Jewish presence in Latin America.”
José C. Moya, UCLA, Department of History; Chair, Latin American
Studies Program
“Most welcome because it complements other sources on
the Jewish experience elsewhere (Levy and Weingrod 2005). The thirteen
contributions focus on the twentieth century precisely because the
authors emphasize the memories of individuals and their communities
to uncover and recover the Jewish experience. In her Introduction,
Ruggiero suggests that four themes – memory, identity, anti-Semitism,
and violence – have dominated the Jewish experience in Latin
America… This interdisciplinary collection explores and celebrates
individual lives and collective Jewishness. One cannot depart the
pages of this volume without a deep sense of connecting with a culture
committed to survival, even through genocide and holocaust. This
is not a volume of numbing statistics and dry rhetoric; it is a
book of passionate commitment to portraying the Jewish presence
in twentieth-century Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe
“This set of thirteen essays … provides ample evidence
that there was not one common Jewish experience. Immigrants were
neither cut from the same cloth nor did they leave their homelands
for the same reasons. Their motivations for leaving shaped them
as much as the challenges they faced in their new homes. As these
essays make clear, some countries were unexpectedly welcoming, while
in others, the reception was decidedly more ambivalent.” The
Americas
“This book is an important contribution to an ongoing
scholarly and artistic effort to excavate, document and communicate
the multifarious diasporic experience of Jews in Latin America during
the twentieth century. …Thematically, the contributions concentrate
on the collective and individual struggles of Jews to deal with
their experiences of discrimination and violence under anti-Semitic
and dictatorial regimes. The goal that is set for the book by the
editor Kristin Ruggiero is mostly a descriptive one: ‘to uncover
and recover another story and history of the fragments of the Jewish
experience’. Yet the book does more than the piecemeal collection
of ‘fragments’. Essays here depict and probe the very
processes of fragmentation which characterize the experiences of
Jews in the Diaspora, as well as their attempts to retain and narrate
these experiences.” European Review of Latin American
and Caribbean Studies |
