Jews of Latin America: From Conversos to Community

A Hidden History

The Jewish story in Latin America begins with a secret. In 1492, the same year Columbus sailed for the New World, Spain expelled its Jews — a community that had flourished on the Iberian Peninsula for over a thousand years. Tens of thousands of Jews were forced to choose: convert to Christianity, leave, or die. Those who converted — the conversos — lived under constant suspicion from the Inquisition, which hunted for any sign of secret Jewish practice.

Some conversos sailed with the earliest expeditions to the Americas, hoping that an ocean between themselves and the Inquisition might be enough. It was not. The Inquisition followed them to Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. But so did the stubborn, dangerous persistence of Jewish identity — hidden in family customs, whispered prayers, and Friday-night candles whose origins no one was supposed to ask about.

Five centuries later, Latin America is home to some of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the diaspora. Their story is one of layers — converso origins, waves of immigration, cultural creativity, political upheaval, and a resilience that has kept Jewish life thriving from Patagonia to Mexico City.

The Converso Roots

The first Jews in Latin America were not officially Jews at all. They were conversos — outwardly Christian, secretly clinging to whatever fragments of Judaism they could preserve. In colonial Mexico (New Spain), Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, converso families maintained hidden practices: lighting candles on Friday evenings, avoiding pork, fasting on certain days, and burying their dead in ways that followed Jewish custom.

The Inquisition was active in the colonies. Autos-da-fe — public ceremonies in which accused heretics were punished — took place in Lima, Mexico City, and Cartagena. Conversos found guilty of “Judaizing” could be imprisoned, tortured, or burned at the stake. The most famous case was that of Luis de Carvajal the Younger, a devout crypto-Jew in Mexico who was burned by the Inquisition in 1596 along with members of his family.

Despite the danger, converso communities persisted for centuries. Today, scholars and genealogists are discovering that converso heritage is far more widespread than previously believed. Across Latin America — in northeastern Brazil, in rural New Mexico, in the highlands of Colombia — families are uncovering Jewish roots that were hidden for generations.

The Great Migrations

The modern Jewish communities of Latin America were largely built by immigrants who arrived between the 1880s and the 1940s. They came in waves, driven by persecution in Europe and drawn by the promise (not always fulfilled) of opportunity in the Americas.

Argentina: The Largest Community

Argentina became home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America — and, for a time, one of the largest in the world. Jewish immigration began in earnest in 1889, when the first group of Eastern European Jews settled in agricultural colonies funded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a philanthropist who envisioned Jewish farmers on the Argentine pampas.

The “Jewish gauchos” — as they came to be called, after Alberto Gerchunoff’s 1910 book Los Gauchos Judios — farmed in the provinces of Entre Rios and Santa Fe. The experiment was only partially successful, and many settlers eventually moved to Buenos Aires, where they joined a rapidly growing urban Jewish community.

By the mid-twentieth century, Buenos Aires had a Jewish community of 250,000 or more. It was a center of Yiddish culture, political activism (both Zionist and socialist), and Jewish education. The Yiddish theater scene in Buenos Aires rivaled New York. Jewish newspapers flourished. Neighborhoods like Once and Villa Crespo became identified with Jewish life.

Argentine Jewry also faced dark chapters. During the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, Jewish Argentines were disproportionately represented among the “disappeared” — the estimated 30,000 people kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the regime. Some prisoners reported being singled out for antisemitic abuse.

Brazil

Brazil’s Jewish community — the second largest in Latin America — has roots in the colonial period. In fact, the first synagogue in the Americas was established in Recife, Brazil, by Sephardic Jews in 1636 during the period of Dutch control. When Portugal recaptured Recife in 1654, the Jews fled — some to Amsterdam, others to New Amsterdam (later New York), founding what would become the first Jewish community in North America.

Modern Brazilian Jewry was built by immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and North Africa who arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro became the major centers. Brazilian Jews have been prominent in commerce, academia, the arts, and politics.

Mexico, Chile, and Beyond

Mexico’s Jewish community of 40,000-50,000 is concentrated in Mexico City and is notable for its strong communal institutions. The community is unusually diverse, including Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Syrian Jewish subgroups, each with its own synagogues, schools, and social clubs.

Chile’s Jewish community, centered in Santiago, was built largely by Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe and has produced prominent figures in business, politics, and culture.

Smaller but significant communities exist in Uruguay (Montevideo), Colombia (Bogota, Barranquilla), Venezuela (Caracas), and Panama — each with its own history, institutions, and character.

The AMIA Bombing

On July 18, 1994, at 9:53 AM, a van packed with explosives detonated outside the AMIA (Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina) building in Buenos Aires — the central institution of Argentine Jewish life. The blast killed 85 people and injured more than 300. It leveled the building and devastated the surrounding block.

The AMIA bombing was the deadliest attack on a Jewish institution outside Israel since World War II. It came just two years after the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires had been bombed in 1992, killing 29 people.

The investigation has been plagued by cover-ups, corruption, and political interference. Iranian officials and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah have been widely implicated, but no one has been convicted. In 2015, Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor investigating the bombing, was found dead in his apartment the night before he was to present evidence implicating senior Argentine government officials in a cover-up. His death was ruled a suicide, though many believe he was murdered.

For Argentine Jews, the AMIA bombing is a wound that has never healed — not only because of the lives lost, but because of the ongoing failure of justice.

Jewish Life Today

Latin American Jewish communities today face challenges familiar to diaspora communities worldwide: assimilation, emigration, and demographic decline. Many young Jews have left for Israel or the United States, seeking economic opportunity or escaping political instability.

Yet the communities that remain are vibrant. Jewish day schools in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, and Mexico City educate thousands of students. Cultural festivals celebrate Jewish music, film, and literature. Synagogues serve communities ranging from ultra-Orthodox to Reform.

One of the most remarkable recent developments is the converso awakening. Across Latin America, people are discovering Jewish ancestry — sometimes through genealogical research, sometimes through DNA testing, sometimes through family traditions that suddenly make sense. In cities from Recife to Medellin to San Antonio, groups of people with converso backgrounds are studying Judaism, some formally converting, and reconnecting with a heritage that was stolen from their ancestors five centuries ago.

The Jewish story in Latin America is far from over. It is, in fact, entering a new chapter — one shaped by memory, rediscovery, and the persistent, improbable survival of identity across oceans and centuries.