If you haven’t seen something before, it is new to you, no matter how old it is. That’s the thinking behind Yiddishland scheduling a Sept. 9 showing and discussion by Mark Freeman of his 1989 half-hour-long documentary, The Yidishe Gauchos, at a private residence on Mt. Soledad.
The occasion is a fundraiser for Yiddishland, which makes its headquarters in La Jolla Village. People who register prior to August 31 will pay only $20. Not only will they see the movie, they will also schmooze with Freeman who is an emeritus professor of theatre, television and film at San Diego State University, and with Prof. Alejandro Meter, a University of San Diego professor whose academic specialty is the Jewish experience in Latin America.
After August 31, the price goes up with the longer you wait, the more you pay. Between Aug. 31 and Sept. 6, the ticket costs $40; and after Sept. 6, it’s $50. Those who prefer to see the movie and hear the discussion on Zoom can do so for $10 prior to Sept. 6 and for $18 afterwards. One may register via the Yiddishland website.
The Yidishe Gauchos is an exceptionally well-edited, finely-crafted film narrated by the late, great, actor Eli Wallach (1915-2014). It incorporates historic film footage with interviews with octogenarians and septuagenarians who lived through many of the experiences described in the film. These ranged from the Russian pogroms that impelled Jewish migration to Argentina in 1890 through developments over the next 10 decades.
Aron Rais, who was 80 when the film was made, described one pogrom from which he by chance escaped: “People were being killed with knives, not bullets. It was horrible. They brought them to the cemetery, made a ditch 300 to 400 meters long and put all the bodies in.”
Initially, the Russian Jews settled in Buenos Aires, but Baron Mauricio de Hirsch (1831-1896), the founder of the famed Orient Express, created the Jewish Colonization Association, financing colonists who wanted to become farmers. University of Michigan Prof. Judith Laikin Elkin, who at the time of the documentary was president of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, said that the German Jewish baron believed “that Jews had been separated from the land for too long” and that “it was necessary for Jews to go back to the land and reestablish roots in the real world.”
Initially, gauchos who were descendants of Spanish settlers and indigenous Argentines were wary of the Jewish settlers, with misunderstandings sometimes ending in a gaucho fatally knifing a Yiddish-speaking settler. Later, however, noted Celia Jruz, 77, said “We all know each other, and we are friends. People aren’t afraid of the gauchos like before.” Leon Borodovsky, 81, agreed. Indicating a man beside him named Rodriguez, Borodovsky said, “He is part of our family. He has been with us for 60 years” and taught the Borodovsky family about living in Argentina.
The Jewish Colonization Association gave pioneers about 200 acres, a small house, a few cows and some chickens, along with a healthy mortgage that the association was very insistent be paid on time, or else the colonists would face eviction. That was bearable in good times, but when adverse weather conditions or locusts plagued the farmlands, wiping out everything, creditors including the Jewish Colonization Association were unsympathetic. Either the colonists must pay or move out.
While there were numerous Jewish farming communities in the contiguous provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Rios, and Santa Fe, the bulk of Freeman’s documentary focused on the picturesquely named Moises Ville (Moses Town), where for decades Yiddish culture flourished. “There were three Yiddish dailies, more than there were in New York at the time,” Elkin commented. “There were periodicals, literary reviews, a very, very vibrant life going on in Yiddish culture.” The Kadima was the local Yiddish theatre, often a preliminary stop for touring Yiddish actors like Maurice Schwartz before bringing a production to Buenos Aires.
Wallach noted that “Moises Ville’s two libraries had 10,000 volumes in Yiddish, Hebrew and Spanish. The Jews had a fever to read and to learn. The Jewish Colonization Association built and staffed about 70 schools. Illiteracy, which was as high as 65 percent among other immigrant groups, was virtually unknown in the Jewish colonies.”
While Yiddish learning was treasured, some Argentine customs were assimilated by the Jewish colonists. For example, the drinking of a brew made from maté was popular. The children of the colonists grew up wanting to imitate the gauchos’ sartorial style. “They had to have the right clothes and a scarf, wide pants, a hat and boots,” one woman recollected. And, “having a horse was like having a new car.”
With literacy comes knowledge, and the colonists put that maxim to work in the field of agriculture. Said Wallach: “Jews were the first to breed milk cows and create commercial dairies. They introduced new crops to Argentina. With 2 percent of the cultivated land, Jews contributed 7 percent of the total agricultural production.”
Most colonists, who needed to sell at a good price the produce of their small farms, felt that they were exploited by merchants, who wanted to buy everything cheaply. Natalio Giguer, 82, asserted that “the families of the colonies were slaves to commercial interests” at least until they formed a cooperative, of which he served as manager. He said the colonists came to understand that “the co-op was their second home.” Administrators of the Jewish Colonization Association also could be high-handed with the colonists, Giguer said.
Agreeing, Elkin said that the JCA “told them what to plant; they told them when to plant, they gave them a certain amount of assistance but no more.” Added Giguer: “The co-op fought hard to defend the colonists. I personally tried to save them from eviction, but I couldn’t.”
However tough it was for farmers in the Jewish colonies, the situation in Buenos Aires in January 1919 was far tougher. This was the time of the only recorded pogrom in the Western Hemisphere. Jews were accused of starting a general strike, which was likened to the Bolshevik, Communist tactics of the recent Russian Revolution. “Afraid that the same thing would happen here, the Silver Shirts, as they were called, all ran wild in the streets, killed a number of Jews, maimed others,” Elkin stated. “There was rape and looting and all the rest of those things.”
Freeman’s documentary portrayed happier times in the colonies including a wedding, a brit milah, and the feasts that accompanied such events. Commented Doicha Winer: “For us Jews, nothing happens without food. … For dessert, there’s strudel with nuts and honey. This is a typical wedding dessert. Not everyone knows how to make it. My grandparents and my mother made it. Now it’s my turn. I’ve already taught my daughters.”
The fortunes of the Jewish colonies started to wane, ironically as a result of the policies of the organization that had helped them to begin in the first place. The Jewish Colonization Association decided that land grants would not be made to the children of colonists (of which typically there were six or seven per family) but instead would be reserved for new immigrants. As a result, families were separated, with the grown children seeking work in the big cities and not returning to the colonies. Meanwhile, the number of immigrants dwindled with the last group of 180 families from Hitler’s Germany arriving in 1933.
Coupled with the development of big, mechanized farms with which the little farmers could not compete, towns like Moises Ville suffered huge declines in population. The synagogues, libraries, and theaters were vacated. Elkin suggested this was not necessarily a failure because many ofthe children of the farmers who moved to the cities became professionals. She likened the colonies to “cocoons from which the butterflies have fled into a very constructive, lively, intellectual life in the cities, so I regard them as very successful.”
Wallach quoted a saying of the former colonists: “We planted wheat and grew doctors.”
Today, there are a few Jews following the Jewish way of life. “Mostly they just keep an eye on things,” Wallach said. “As they say here on the pampas, ‘the eye of the owner fattens the cattle.’”
The documentary includes clips of Yiddish and Spanish songs, and, yet through some very tight editing, is able to convincingly cover a century of history in just 30 minutes.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World