The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho: Villa Clara and the Construction of Argentine Identity

Notes

161 Notes Preface 1. HistoricalCircuitoftheJewishColoniesoftheCenterofEntreRíos(see Chapter7). 2. Zeide is the Yiddish term for grandfather; bobe is the Yiddish term for grandmother. Chapter 1 1. Maurice Halbwachs (1992) is credited with contesting the notion that memory is a private activity and with generating the theoretical dialogue on the collective nature of memory (Armstrong 2000; Schneider 2000; Shackel 2001). 2. A municipio (municipality) is the smallest administrative unit in a provincia (state). Villa Clara was given this status in 1920. Because of its small population, Villa Clara is considered a municipio de segunda categoría (a second-level administrative unit); Villaguay, capital of the department, is a municipio de primera categoría (first-level administrative unit). As I initiated fieldwork in 2002, I was told by the Municipality that the population of Villa Clara was 2,794, an increase from the population of 2,358 in 1991. 3. Buenos Aires, the last province to ratify the 1853 Constitution, did not do so until 1860. 4. Alicia Bernasconi (personal communication, 2007). 5. Hides, salted beef, and tallow exports doubled between 1837 and 1852 (Rock 1985). 6. Moisesville, a colonia in the province of Santa Fé, is the first organized settlement of Jewish immigrants to Argentina. See Chapter 2 for details of its history. Chapter 2 1. Montiel is a wooded area in the center of the province. Legend had it that many gauchos had hidden there to escape military draft or other impositions of the new government. 2. The Greek word for “between the rivers” is “Mesopotamia.” The provinces located in the northeast of Argentina (Misiones, Corrientes, and Entre Ríos) are often referred to as the Argentine Mesopotamia, given their geographical location and the fertility of their soil. 3. The institutions that distributed indigenous labor to the Spaniards were encomiendas and reducciones. 4. Archaeologists and ethnologists categorize these indigenous people according to tribe: Yaros, Mbohanes, Chanaes, Guaycurúes, Timbúes, Chandules, Manchados, Martidanes , Mocoretáes, Zemaes, Zelvaiscos, Golqueraros, Tocagües, Mepenes, Curumíes, Caletenes, Guenoas, and Mbeguaes. Some analysts argue that Minuanes, Yaros, Mbohanes, and Chanaes are all Charrúas (Enciclopedia 1977). Ethnographers distinguish two ethnic groups on the province’s mainland: the Chaná-Timbús (Mocoretáes, Caletenes, Timbúes, Begúaes) on the margins of the Paraná River and the Charrúas (Guenoas, Bohanes) on the margins of the Uruguay River. The largest indigenous populations in the center of the province were the Minuanes and Charrúas. A third group (the Guaraníes) was concentrated on the province’s southern islands (Bosch: 1978). 5. Enciclopedia 1977; Pérez Colman 1937. 6. Some of these attacks were reportedly instigated by political authorities in Santa Fé, as a way to counteract the growing influence of the well-off Jesuits. The Portuguese settled in Uruguay, originally inhabited by the Charrúas, were also said to be the instigators of indigenous attacks, in support of their continued conflict with the Spanish (Pérez Colman 1937). 7. The Jesuits were powerful political stakeholders in Argentina until their 1767 expulsion from the American possessions of the Spanish Crown. 8. Large land properties for raising sheep and cows emerged as early as 1777 (Ciapuscio 1973). 9. A montaraz is a person (usually a man) wholives in isolation on mountain terrain and is uncivilized. 10. A paisano is a native of the same country, a fellow countryman/countrywoman. 11. The slave traffic was abolished in 1853. 12. The supporters of federalism in Argentina were known as federales, in opposition to the unitarios, who advocated a centralized government of Buenos Aires Province, with no participation of the other provinces in the custom tax benefits of the Buenos Aires port. 13. This event, known as Pronunciamiento or Pronouncement, took place in the central plaza of Concepción del Uruguay, Entre Ríos, in 1851. Urquiza had a long political career: he was governor of the province for three periods between 1842 and 1854 and president of the Confederación Argentina (Argentine Confederation) between 1854 and 1860. As the nation organized as a federal republic in 1860, Urquiza continued to rule the destiny of Entre Ríos, whether as governor (1860–1864 and elected for the term 1868–1870) or by exerting a major influence on elected officials. His assassination in 1870 triggered a federal intervention in the province to counteract the anarchy spread by a myriad of new caudillos roaming the land. The caudillo operating closest to contemporary Villa Clara was Polonio Velásquez. 14. The second national...