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

Chapter Two. Entre R

13 Chapter Two Entre Ríos, Mi País Immigrants Becoming Argentine in a Province Throughoutthelasthalf-century,hundredsofthousandsof[people of] diverse origin have settled on the 75,759 square kilometers of the provinceofEntreRíos:Italianswhobringfromtheirnativevillages the geometric notion of the furrow and who trace, as in a drawing, the ridge between two furrows; Andalusians who spread their song while they keep vigilance over the plough; Galicians whose coarse features on their Celtic faces resemble the contours of the clod they punish with the spade; Basques possessing a hard disposition but a soft heart; Germans who replicate with their gentle method and their inalterable sanity the old farm from the Rhine; Slavs, eyes lost in the horizon, who travel on flat carriages; Jews overwhelmed with antiquity whose flowering wheat Jehovah blesses during the Sabbath siesta as in the Jordan valley. They mix in those 75,759 square kilometers with the criollo mass under a favorable sky from one border to the other and integrate that mix of heterogeneous elements to make up the social and moral family and the uniform look of the Entrerriano man. There is an Entrerriano man . . . The son of the German, the Russian, or the Hebrew already has in his facial features something of the native of Montiel1 . . . At the same time, one can find people with rigorous indigenous features. (Gerchunoff 1973: 39–41) 14 The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho To understand the social history of Villa Clara in the province of Entre Ríos, we need to cast a wider net, including the history of European immigration. Despite the enormous geographical distance from their countries of origin, newcomers grounded their linked histories of emigration and immigration in the province, adopting the region of settlement as if it were the country of destination . Nobody painted this phenomenon better than Alberto Gerchunoff, who coined the phrases “Jewish gauchos” to refer to the Jewish immigrants’ symbiotic relationship with the indigenous rural population in Argentina and “Entre Ríos, mi país [my country]” as emblematic of the European immigrants’ rapid assimilation to and identification with the province’s local culture. Entre Rios and the Imagined Argentine Nation Geographically, Entre Ríos is a provincia, the smallest political jurisdiction in the Argentine nation. Located in the country’s northeast, it is nested between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, which explains the literal meaning of its name in Spanish, “between the rivers.”2 It borders on the provincias of Corrientes to the north, Buenos Aires to the south, and Santa Fé to the west and with the country of Uruguay to the east. Asapoliticalunit,EntreRíosplayedamajorroleinfourmajornation-building processes in Argentina: subduing indigenous populations, framing political consensus about the nation, favoring European immigration, and promoting the settlement of immigrants in agricultural colonias. Given its proximity to the major harbor in Buenos Aires and its fertile land, it fit the national project of the newnation.ItwastothisregionthatmanyEuropeanimmigrants,thirstyforfreedom from religious, economic, and political oppression, would come. Together with the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fé, Entre Ríos attracted the transatlantic immigrants who would help develop agriculture in Argentina between 1869 and 1914. The liberal administrators of the mid-nineteenth century lured them to the nation to comply with their dream to diversify both ethnic stock and the economy. The European immigrants arriving in Entre Ríos imagined the province as a nurturing country—and nurturing it was, but only toward the white European immigrants, not toward its indigenous populations. Subduing the Indigenous Populations Between the arrival of the Spaniards and of the newest immigrants, Argentina ’s history of civil wars and inequities had systematically destroyed the native inhabitants of Entre Ríos. Conquistador Hernando Arias de Saavedra was said to have been the first to arrive in Entre Ríos in 1607, in search of a trade ’ Immigrants Becoming Argentine in a Province 15 route to link the city of Santa Fé, the province of Corrientes, and the powerful Jesuit-controlled mission complex in Asunción, Paraguay. Military service and self-interest triggered his travels and his capacity to recruit soldiers, who were attracted to service by the Spanish Crown’s established practice of distributing land to members of military expeditions and colonial administrators in recognition of their labors. In fact, the large cattle ranches (estancias), the basis of the local economy, had resulted primarily from monarchic legislation that authorized land concessions (concesiones). Cattle raising became an investment with...