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

By the mid-twentieth century, Eastern European Jews had become one of Argentina's largest minorities. Some represented a wave of immigration begun two generations before; many settled in the province of Entre Ríos and founded an agricultural colony. Taking its title from the resulting hybrid of acculturation, The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho examines the lives of these settlers, who represented a merger between native cowboy identities and homeland memories. The arrival of these immigrants in what would be the village of Villa Clara coincided with the nation's new sense of liberated nationhood. In a meticulous rendition of Villa Clara's social history, Judith Freidenberg interweaves ethnographic and historical information to understand the saga of European immigrants drawn by Argentine open-door policies in the nineteenth century and its impact on the current transformation of immigration into multicultural discourses in the twenty-first century. Using Villa Clara as a case study, Freidenberg demonstrates the broad power of political processes in the construction of ethnic, class, and national identities. The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho draws on life histories, archives, material culture, and performances of heritage to enhance our understanding of a singular population--and to transform our approach to social memory itself.

Author: Judith Noemí Freidenberg
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 12/01/2009
Pages: 206
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.48d
ISBN: 9780292725690

About the Author
JUDITH NOEMÍ FREIDENBERG is an Argentine-born Associate Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Anthropology at the University of Maryland. Her previous books include Growing Old in El Barrio, Memorias de Villa Clara, and The Anthropology of Low Income Urban Enclaves: The Case of East Harlem.