Chapter Two
Nationalism, Nativism, and Restriction

The late 1920s were among the most tumultuous in Brazilian history. The coffee economy—based in São Paulo—declined as states out of the political mainstream began to grow in financial strength. President Washington Luís, a representative of São Paulo's large landowners, came under increasing fire from regional elites allied with the revolutionary military officers (tenentes ) whose army revolt had been aborted in mid-decade. The presidential campaign that began in 1929 reflected these problems, creating bitter political infighting. The race pitted São Paulo State president Júlio Prestes, Luís's hand-picked successor and a representative of the coffee-based oligarchy, against Rio Grande do Sul's Getúlio Vargas, the candidate of the Liberal Alliance, a front that represented a number of not always compatible groups. These included those whose economic power was not based on coffee production and who looked to the state to modernize Brazil's economy, stridently anticommunist nationalists whose primary concern was the maintenance of order among the rural and urban working classes, and an emerging middle class that had become increasingly disenfranchised by the central government's continued favoritism toward the owners of large coffee plantations.^[1]

In the midst of the violence-marred electioneering two economic crises hit Brazil, increasing already high political and social tensions. For the third year in a row a bumper crop of coffee forced prices to sink rapidly. The decline was aggravated when the New York Stock Exchange crashed at the end of October, and by December coffee prices

were half of what they had been eleven months earlier.^[2] It was in the midst of this failing economy that the election took place on March 1, 1930. Prestes was declared the winner by about 250,000 of the 1,750,000 votes cast, but the outcome, and the precipitous drop in Brazil's export earnings, encouraged supporters of the Liberal Alliance to challenge Prestes's victory amid accusations of widespread fraud. Brazil was rife with rumors about the possibility of a revolution in the months following the election. In early October, Vargas proclaimed the vote fraudulent and troops in Rio Grande do Sul began their revolt, led by a group of tenentes that included Pedro Aurélio Góis Monteiro and Oswaldo Aranha, both of whom would become important federal political leaders. The following day Congress, at the request of President Washington Luís, declared a state of siege. The Revolution of 1930 had begun.

By mid-October much of Brazil's military had revolted against the central government. On October 24, the few top-ranking generals who still supported Luís demanded his resignation and overthrew the federal government. A few days later Luis resigned, preventing the inauguration of Prestes. On October 27 Oswaldo Aranha entered the federal capital of Rio de Janeiro at the head of three thousand troops. That same day the ruling junta made it clear that Getúlio Vargas would be the new head of state, and popular demonstrations in Rio called for Vargas's assumption of the presidency. On November 4, the generals made Vargas "provisional president" of a "provisional government," thus ending the Revolution of 1930.^[3]

Vargas's appointment was a watershed in Brazilian political history. By shifting the focus of the central government and the groups that it represented, the new regime changed some of the ways in which Brazilian politics worked. One area where this was especially noticeable was in the attitude toward immigrants, including Jews. After 1930 the government and its supporters increasingly used the discussion of immigration to express nationalist and nativist positions. The nationalist-authoritarians in the new regime were attracted to certain racist forms of national regeneration popular in Europe at the time and thus had ideological reasons for limiting foreign entry.^[4] These leanings dovetailed with the attitudes of a small but growing urban middle class, most noticeably in Rio de Janeiro but to some extent in Brazil's other large cities as well, that desired economic and social mobility without immigrant competition. Thus, as urban unemployment grew in the early 1930s, immigrants, many of whom had worked extremely hard

to become moderately successful, became easy scapegoats. It took only a few years for political attacks on foreigners to be transformed into policies based on the commonly held notion that "one of the causes of unemployment is found in the free entry of foreigners . . . [who] frequently contribute to an increase in economic disorder and social insecurity."^[5] Anti-immigrant rhetoric was aimed at those immigrants who might settle in urban areas and whose occupations revolved around the distribution, and not the production, of important goods.

It was in this highly charged atmosphere that Brazilian politicians shifted their discourse on immigration and immigrants in dramatic ways between 1930 and 1935. Nationalism would transform old ideas about the "whitening" of Brazil into federal policies aimed at "Brazil-ianization." This would eventually lead to a full-blown anti-foreigner movement among many federal and state officials. At its start, however, nativist movements targeted only groups that, while not banned from entering Brazil, did not fit "European" ideals. Since Europe was not seen as a geographical space but rather as a social construct that included notions of color and religion, the many Jews entering Brazil from Europe were seen as part of a "non-European" group. The anti-immigrant rhetoric so prevalent in the cities, however, was not absolute. Indeed, the image of immigrants as a positive force for development continued among many large landowners who remained committed to non-Brazilian labor. As anti-immigrant sentiment became a key to election in urban areas, local representatives of the rural elite balked. Whatever political cachet nativism had, it was of only moderate concern to fazendeiros worried about maintaining their social status, harvesting their crops, and rounding up their cattle.

The positions in the immigration battle were plainly staked out, although not always clearly articulated. Large landowners and their representatives wanted to guarantee the continued entry of agricultural workers. Many urban politicians, on the other hand, argued that most immigrants should be banned, especially those who did not fit into the "European" category. The Vargas regime was squarely in the middle, encouraging the tension between competing political forces as a means of enhancing and consolidating its own power. This placed Jewish immigrants and refugees in a particularly precarious position. Beginning in the 1920s, Jewish immigrants to Brazil rarely came from rural areas and, as nonfarmers, had no support from large landowners. Urban nativists, generally at odds with the fazendeiros over immigration policy, also viewed Jews negatively, considering them an insidious nonwhite

race whose racial differences were dangerously indistinguishable. The undesirability of Jews became one of the few areas of agreement among urban and rural politicians.

The growth of nativism in Brazil forced the federal government to reevaluate its traditional encouragement of immigration. This was reinforced by political changes in Europe, where many ills were being blamed on minority groups. Brazil's long tradition of European-influenced racialist thought provided the xenophobic rhetoric with which to target groups like immigrant Jews who entered in growing numbers and often settled in urban areas.^[6] Jews posed a particular challenge to nativists interested in whitening Brazil through European immigration; they were considered racially distinct yet insidious since they were able to pass physically as part of the majority. Worse still, Jews seemed to insult nativists by not pressing their physical advantage and choosing to maintain their culture by dressing and worshiping differently.

The complex emotions that the growth of Jewish immigration created played directly into the hands of important state and federal politicians and intellectuals eager to establish their nativist credentials. The most significant shift in the discourse regarding Jewish immigrants was the transformation of religion into a racial category and the use of new kinds of language to relate amorphous anti-immigrant sentiment to widely accepted anti-Jewish notions.^[7] Influential thinkers like the conservative social critic Francisco José Oliveira Vianna, a historian and professor at the Law Faculty in Rio de Janeiro, were attracted to European racists like Gobineau whose writings could also be used to justify the establishment of a strong central state.^[8] Vianna, who was described as a mulatto by his contemporaries, classified Jews as non-Europeans, using the accepted semantic code to suggest that they were nonwhites—important in a nation where "whitening" was the code word nationalists traditionally attached to policies intended to remake Brazil in Europe's image.^[9] Anti-Jewish sentiment was also implicit in intellectual support of "Aryanization," and in Raça e assimilação (1932) Vianna openly mimicked European racists by applauding the "new Aryan centers" of southern Brazil.^[10] He even used a survey of the ethnic composition of New London, Connecticut, by Connecticut College professor Bessie Bloom Wessel as evidence for his claim that "the Jewish group is unassimilable," a conclusion not suggested by Wessel herself.^[11]

Vianna was not the only intellectual who claimed that by limiting immigration, or stopping it altogether, Brazilian society would reproduce itself from within and bring white European elements to the fore.

Renato Kehl, founder of the Boletim de Eugenia (Bulletin of Eugenics), sympathized with the German "race hygiene" movement directed primarily against Jews and claimed that the Central Brazilian Commission of Eugenics was modeled on the German Society for Race Hygiene.^[12] At the First Brazilian Eugenics Congress, held in 1929, a group including Congressman A. J. de Azevedo Amaral, the clinician (and later federal deputy) Antônio Xavier de Oliveira, and Miguel Couto, the president of the National Academy of Medicine and later a member of the 1933-34 Constitutional Assembly, proposed that Brazil should restrict the entry of non-Europeans, a motion that was only narrowly defeated. Although important academics like the geneticist Octâvio Domingues and the Franz Boas-trained anthropologist Edgar Roquette-Pinto opposed the outright racism of many in the eugenics movement, the regular arrival of "non-European" immigrant groups like Jews fueled the negative judgments of Brazil's racial and ethnic heterogeneity and made "assimilation" a widely discussed topic. Yet the implication that assimilation could take place only by restricting entry to "European" immigrants shows that many intellectuals believed that Brazilian society was too culturally weak to assimilate all people. Rather, given the fine line that Brazil walked, only ethnically and racially "pure" immigrants could melt into the pot without contaminating it.

With already an established presence in Brazil, Jews, along with the Japanese, became the most important target of nativists.^[13] The Japanese, however, had two important defenders: large landowners, who desired the presumed agricultural orientation of most Japanese immigrants; and the federal government, which realized that the economic, political, and military might of Japan demanded respect. Targeting Jewish immigration, on the other hand, was comparatively safe and easy. European Jewish immigrants had little international diplomatic support and, in the 1920s, rarely played the agricultural roles demanded of immigrants. This allowed politicians who represented powerful landowners to participate in the anti-immigrant movement without fear of arousing the wrath of their sponsors. At the same time, Jews made up an increasing percentage of the expanding Eastern European migratory stream, representing almost 42 percent of all Poles who immigrated to Brazil between 1926 and 1937 and a remarkable 77.7 percent of those who did so between 1931 and 1935.^[14] Brazilian nativism and Jewish immigration were growing, ready to collide in the near future.

Early Anti-Immigrant Legislation and Changes in Relief Plans

Attacks on immigration were an integral part of the provisional government's agenda. Just forty-five days after the coup, broad new legislation limited the entrance of third-class passengers, all of whom were to be considered immigrants regardless of their true travel purposes.^[15] Those traveling in "immigrant class" were to be denied entry unless they were (a) already resident; (b) a farmer with special permission from a state ministry of agriculture or the federal Ministry of Labor, Industry, and Commerce and with an affidavit of support from an already resident family; or (c) an agricultural immigrant family brought over by an approved company or association (of which the Jewish Colonization Association was one).^[16]

Three aspects of the new legislation deserve particular attention. The first was the reworking of the 1924 law that used the class of passage to define one's status as tourist or immigrant. The linkage of passage class with social status suggests a connection of immigration to poverty, and one later Vargas-era analyst worried that restrictions on immigrant visas for third-class passengers would diminish the number of skilled workers entering Brazil, thus hindering economic development.^[17] A second aspect of the 1930 immigration legislation involved money. Poor immigrants were officially considered undesirable since all needed to show proof of possession of at least "two or three contos" per person (215 to 320 U.S. dollars)^[18] The third innovation mandated in 1930 came with the creation of cartas de chamada. Chamadas , as they were generally known, were official forms that allowed those resident in Brazil to "call" their relatives by providing them with an affidavit of support. The chamada system functioned to increase the bureaucratic hurdles that residents of Brazil would have to negotiate in order to bring in relatives. The actual forms first had to be approved by the police in the city where an immigrant's sponsor lived. This was not an easy task, and Jewish residents of Brazil frequently complained about "the difficulties experienced at the Police Office in the Capital in making chamadas. "^[19] The approved form would then be legalized by the Immigration Department of the Ministry of Labor, Industry, and Commerce. Only with the legalized chamada could a resident purchase a prepaid ticket for a foreigner. By the time a prepaid ticket had been sent, both the local police and the federal government had a file of specific information about who was entering and for what reasons.

The new immigration requirements at first had the desired effects: Jewish immigration was reduced by almost 45 percent and general immigration by even more.^[20] By making foreign entry increasingly difficult, immigration to Brazil was cut by more than half between 1930 and 1931, and remained below the mark for 1930 until 1951. Yet Jewish immigration, in spite of growing complaints from Brazil's overseas representatives, never fell as much as general immigration, and recovered to a much higher level. Whereas general entry between 1931 and 1945 never reached the mark set in 1930, Jewish immigration frequently hovered near, and occasionally exceeded, its 1930 figure and made up an increasingly large percent of all immigration to Brazil.

Given the barriers, why did Jewish entry rise so much after 19327 The most important reason was that the new restrictions did not dis-

courage desperate Jews from going to Brazil but rather motivated them to work within the system more efficiently. Jewish relief agencies redoubled their efforts to teach residents how to "call" their relatives legally, and the ICA increasingly functioned as a despachante in order to help resident immigrants cut bureaucratic red tape.^[21] Furthermore, Jewish leaders succeeded in countering prevailing attitudes about immigrants among influential politicians. A few months after the Revolution of 1930, for example, the ICA's Isaiah Raffalovich convinced Minister of Labor Lindolfo Collor to recognize the Jewish Colonization Association as an accredited immigration company.^[22] Raffalovich was equally successful at the Foreign Ministry, and consuls in Paris, Warsaw, Galatz, Madrid, and Lisbon were told that "you can put visas in the passports of colonists or their families that present cartas de chamada of the JCA."^[23]

The federal accreditation of the ICA was only one step in bringing immigrants to Brazil under the new restrictions. Raffalovich, who cut an imposing figure with his distinguished goatee, mustache, and riveting eyes, also successfully worked with local officials. When federally funded free passages for immigrants in transit to the interior of Brazil were cut, he convinced Rio Grande do Sul officials to pick up the tab.^[24] In another instance he was introduced to the governor of Pará, a state with a third-generation Jewish community of two hundred families of mainly North African origin. This led to "an invitation to the ICA to take up activities in the State of Pará [that] the Government will do all in its power to help."^[25] The outline of the plan, which never came to fruition, was presented to the editors of Pará's two major newspapers, the chief of police, and the "cream of Jewish and non-Jewish society" at a large banquet. "Newcomers from Central and Eastern Europe" believed Raffalovich "with a little capital and business acumen would be able to find a fruitful field for their energies."^[26]

Between 1931 and 1932 there was a rise in Jewish entrances in spite of the extension of the 1930 legislation for a second year. In 1932 a record number of prepaid passages were purchased by Jews and sent to relatives in Europe.^[27] The Jewish Society for the Protection and Aid of Immigrants "EZRA" of São Paulo, for example, aided 242 legal resident aliens to call 526 European family members in 1932 alone.^[28] This group and others worked together to convince passenger shipping companies to allow local outlets to sell prepaid tickets at reduced prices when they were unable to fill ships. In 1932 the ICA purchased almost 150 of these reduced-price tickets, and many individuals did the same.^[29] Within two years of the establishment of the new laws, the

annual Jewish immigration rate once again reached more than three thousand.

Anti-Immigrant Influences in the Diplomatic Corps, 1930-1934

The rise in Jewish immigration during a period when entry was supposed to be reduced led to intense discussion in the high echelons of Brazil's diplomatic corps; the ambassadors, consuls, attachés, and legation and mission heads. These individuals represented Brazil's most important overseas decision makers, and it was their images of Jews and Jewish immigration that decision makers in Rio de Janeiro evaluated when constructing policy. Every important diplomat posted in a European country with a large Jewish population commented regularly throughout the 1930s and 1940s on Jewish immigration. Although a few took humanitarian positions or argued that Jewish refugees could help Brazil develop economically, the overwhelming majority were opposed to the unrestricted entry of Jews. As the numbers of Jews requesting visas increased, diplomats abroad were transformed from promoters of Brazil's economic expansion to protectors of Brazilian society. Indeed, the prevention of foreigners' entry was deemed so important that one of the first tasks that Vargas gave to the diplomatic corps was the enforcement of the aforementioned decree limiting the entry of third-class passengers.^[30]

Approximately twenty Brazilian diplomats, most at the ambassador or consul-general level, actively argued against giving visas to Jews. All had advanced their careers most markedly after Vargas had taken power, and a number had been promoted to the ambassador or consul-general level within a year of the establishment of the Estado Novo.^[31] Like foreign ministers Afrânio de Mello Franco (1930-1933), José Carlos de Macedo Soares (1934-1937), and Oswaldo Aranha (1938-1945), almost all had received their diplomas in social and legal science (Ciências Jurídicas e Sociais) from one of Brazil's prestigious law schools, over half in Rio de Janeiro. It was in this setting, where professors such as Oliveira Vianna imbued students with the spirit of scientific racists like Le Bon, Gobineau, and Chamberlain, that diplomats began to form a notion of immigration as a social issue and Jews as an undesirable component of Brazilian society.^[32]

These high-level diplomats played a key role in the debate over Jewish immigration, which they saw primarily as a social issue. They ar-

gued that Jewish immigrants would lead Brazil to racial, cultural, and political ruin, and correspondence from those in the Foreign Service generally portrayed every Jewish immigrant as a potential subversive.^[33] Of course, some Jewish immigrants to Brazil were communists, but many in intellectual and political circles played on traditional anti-Semitic notions by assuming that all Jews were engaged in communist activity. A well-printed 1931 pamphlet whose publication was authorized by São Paulo's Delegate of Social Order, O comunismo e sua nefasta propaganda , claimed that among the most active European communists operating in Brazil, "almost all are Jews."^[34] What made such statements perniciously anti-Semitic was the generalization from the particular—that a sizable minority from Eastern Europe were socialists or bundists—to the group—that all Jews, by virtue of a biological defect, were prone to upset the status quo.^[35] Readers of such pamphlets were not simply meant to understand that, statistically speaking, many communists happened to be Jews; they were meant to infer that all Jews were communists and therefore dangerous.

The shift from inclusionary toward exclusionist attitudes toward all immigrants was reflected throughout the entire overseas network of consulates and embassies. Finding immigrants useful to Brazil's agricultural growth was no longer the priority. Rather, a variety of undesirable immigrant groups were to be identified and kept away. Constant ideological reinforcement from influential Brazilians pushed policymakers in Rio to refine immigration restrictions further. Nabuco Gouvêa, a diplomat in Bucharest, where a few hundred Jews who met all the published immigration regulations were given visas each year, complained in all his yearly reports from 1931 to 1934 that Jews were "the worst possible" immigrants.^[36] The commercial attaché in Alexandria, Egypt, believed that anti-foreigner movements in the Turkish empire would have ruinous effects on Brazil. Seven or eight thousand Armenians, so it seems, had been expelled from Turkey in 1930 and were buying Brazilian immigrant visas from local travel agents. In and of itself the arrival of such a large group of Armenians would be "a great calamity."^[37] What made it even worse, according to the diplomat, was that the Armenians would add to the number of undesirable Syrians and Jews already in Brazil: "From year to year, unfortunately, there is a growing emigration of Syrians and Jews to Brazil and if the Armenian is added to this, we can proudly say that we are populating Brazil and forming our race with all that is the most repugnant in the universe."^[38]

Brazil's policy toward potential South Asian immigrants was a fur-

ther signal of the renewed desire for ethnic purity among diplomats. In early August 1930, Bhagwan Singh, the manager of the Indo-Brazilian Association of Calcutta, began investigating the possibility of sending five hundred rural laborers to Brazil.^[39] The Revolution of 1930 was still three months in the future, and such a group neatly fit Brazil's stated development plans at the time. Realizing this, Brazil's consul general in Calcutta felt comfortable in declaring "that this Consulate has no objection what so ever regarding the Indian emigrant who may desire to leave for Brazil."^[40] Singh correctly perceived this as an endorsement of the Indo-Brazilian Association as an officially approved immigration company as legislated by the 1924 immigration law.^[41] Over the next eighteen months the Indo-Brazilian Association worked at attracting Indian immigrants for the voyage to Brazil, apparently never realizing the changes in policy that had taken place following the Revolution of 1930.

As final preparations were made, the company discovered that it no longer had the support or authorization of the Brazilian government. The National Population Department, attached to the Ministry of Labor, Industry, and Commerce, had the final authority over immigration and declared that it" . . . has always been opposed to the Hindu immigrant . . . [who] is undesirable . . . because of his physical incapacity, as well as other defects, that make assimilation difficult, or perhaps impossible."^[42] In the space of just a year and a half the primary condition immigrants needed to satisfy had changed. Rural laborers were still needed, but only if they could assimilate into European Brazilian society.

The Foreign Ministry informed all Brazilian consulates of the prohibition of Indian immigration. Even so, the Indo-Brazilian Association, now renamed the Indo-South American Travellers Aid Society, cynically (or perhaps ignorantly) continued promoting the opportunities available and collecting registration fees from people wishing to immigrate.^[43] When Bombay's Indian Daily Mail suggested that Indians resident in South Africa would be welcomed in Brazil, the diplomatic corps quickly set out to squelch the idea.^[44] Manoel A. de Heredia, Brazil's consul general in Bombay, termed the idea "absurd" and published official responses in a number of newspapers, noting that "since 1930 all emigration [of Indians] to Brazil has been forbidden until December 31 [1933]."^[45] Murillo M. de Souza, Brazil's consul in Calcutta, was furious that the group was collecting money and demanded that "you immediately stop this sort of procedure otherwise I shall be compelled to

bring it to the notice of the Indian Government."^[46] In fact de Souza had already used diplomatic channels to complain about the "shady purpose" the Indo-South American Travellers Aid Society served. Furthermore, knowing that the unwritten aspects of immigration legislation were as important as the written ones, de Souza told the foreign secretary to the government of India that "by a decree 19.482 of the 12th December 1930, the Brazilian Government had prohibited all immigration."^[47] The decree did restrict the entry of foreigners but did not prohibit immigration outright, and even a reserved circular denying consuls the right to give visas was never meant to stop the flow entirely.^[48]

The European Influence

The rise of totalitarianism in Europe also contributed to the transformation of Brazil's intellectual discourse and policies on immigration. Many Brazilian political figures and intellectuals were attracted to German national socialism and the fascist movements in Italy, Portugal, and Spain—nations that, like Brazil, had been damaged by the world depression. They wondered if the democratic system, and the dissent and differences that flourished within it, were the cause of social unrest and economic difficulty. By assuming the chancellorship of Germany in 1933, Adolf Hitler provided a new, antidemocratic, political model for industrializing societies. Hitler justified his authoritarian methods with a rhetoric that blamed Jews for Germany's ills; following the German lead, many influential Brazilians started making the "Jewish Question" a regular part of their public and political discourse.

Nazism and fascism inspired numerous Brazilian nationalist movements. All had anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner ideologies, and most included an explicit anti-Jewish component. The Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres was one of the most potent. Named in memory of Alberto Torres (1865-1917), a Brazilian economic and cultural nationalist who had proposed that "immigrants and foreign minorities" were one factor causing Brazil's dissolution, the society was formed in Rio de Janeiro in 1932 by fifty intellectuals, diplomats, politicians, and tenentes closely tied to the Vargas regime, including Plínio Salgado, Juarez Távora, and Nicolau José Debané^[49] One aim of the "Friends" was to lobby against the immigration of "unassimilable" ethnic elements like Jews and the Japanese.^[50] Such ideas were promoted by the Vargas regime, which also used the language of assimilation, and the

group continually emitted "attacks on the Japanese, the League of Nations, or most any other non-nationalistic element which at the time may figure in the news."^[51] Former foreign minister Felix Pacheco, owner and editor in chief of Rio de Janeiro's widely read and influential Jornal do Comércio , offered space in his newspaper to the "Friends" and provided extensive coverage of conferences the group held on immigration. These conferences, because of the coverage and the social and political prominence of participants, helped the "Friends" garner an importance that exceeded their numbers. The nativist thrust of the group was quite sophisticated and its anti-Semitism was often masked with nonracist rhetoric. No one could prove, argued "Friend" Nicolau Debané, author of numerous nationalist tracts and a former career diplomat who had served in Egypt and the Soviet Union, that "the Semitic race is inferior to the Aryan." Rather, "the Jews have not lost their character [as a] privileged race" and thus could never assimilate into Catholic Brazil.^[52] Felix Pacheco often claimed with no irony that he was not anti-Semitic even while pointing out to foreign diplomats that "we cannot possibly have any place for [Jews] here."^[53] Such feelings could be found throughout the Vargas regime. When Morris Melvin Wagner of Sacramento, California, proposed to create a "Hebrew Republic" in southern Brazil, it was rejected out of hand as "not worth considering" by the National Population Department (DNP), the agency in charge of colonization.^[54]

The Nazi boycott of Jewish enterprises, and later banning of Jews from the civil service and government in the first six months of 1933, received some approval among Brazilian nativists. They also adopted the Nazi technique of dehumanizing Jews, often referring to Jews as "elements" rather than people. The Aão Integralista Brasileira (AIB) was the largest organized group with a clear anti-Semitic agenda. The AIB was fascist in orientation, with popular roots among the middle classes, the armed forces, many of Italian and German descent in southern Brazil, and a few very wealthy industrialists. Yet the intellectual roots of Integralism were not popular; rather, they sprang from Brazil's prestigious law faculties, where Integralists, like many of the diplomats in charge of making and implementing immigration policy, frequently linked communism and "international Jewish finance" in their manifestos.^[55] The first public meeting of the Integralists was held on January 3, 1933, just three days after Hitler's election; its leadership included members of the traditional oligarchy, monarchists, and nationalist gaúchos .^[56] The AIB, partly funded by the German embassy in Rio and,

clandestinely, by the Italian government, had a corporatist economic and political ideology that was antiliberal, anticapitalist and anticommunist.^[57] Although ideologically based upon Portuguese and Italian Fascism, the Integralistas were attracted to the trappings of Nazism—the salutes, symbols, and goose steps.^[58] These embellishments helped to encourage the latent anti-Semitic component in Brazilian fascism. By early 1934 Integralism was no longer a regional phenomenon but claimed 180,000 adherents throughout the country.^[59]

One important goal of the Integralistas was to combat "secret societies" linked to Judaism.^[60] This echoed claims made by the European theorists, who reworked traditional anti-Semitic arguments that the Russian and French Revolutions were financed by "international Jewish capital."^[61] To Integralistas, opposition groups were interchangeably and indiscriminately "Jews," "Bolsheviks," or "liberals."^[62] One of the movement's founders and the head of the AIB's Department of Doctrine, the São Paulo Law School-trained jurist Miguel Reale, changed the title of his book O operario e o integralismo (The worker and integralism) to O capitalismo internacional (International capitalism) to suggest that a "physiognomy of capitalism" was linked to "foreign" German Jewish businesspeople.^[63] This played on notions that Jews were members of a race that had physically distinct characteristics, thus transforming capitalism from an economic act to a racial characteristic.

One of the strengths of Integralism was its capacity to create widespread negative images of its opponents. This was done through ninety Integralist newspapers, led by Rio de Janeiro's A Ofensiva and São Paulo's A Aão . One of the critical actors in the Integralist anti-Jewish media campaign was Gustavo Barroso, a historian, a former federal deputy from Ceará, and three-time president (1931, 1932, 1950) of the Academy of Letters, Brazil's most prestigious intellectual and academic organization. Barroso was also an open admirer of Hitler and Nazism, leading Buenos Aires's pro-Nazi Deutsche La Plata Zeitung to call him the "Führer of Integralism."^[64] Barroso had been educated at the Rio de Janeiro Law School, where he had developed his notion that capitalism was the same as communism and both were equal to Judaism.^[65] All of Barroso's seventeen books on Integralism were anti-Semitic, and seven specifically charged that an international Jewish conspiracy existed. He also translated anti-Semitic works into Portuguese, and in early 1933 he published the first of many Portuguese editions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , a book circulated throughout the Americas that claimed to expose an alleged Jewish conspiracy to dominate the

world.^[66] The Integralist press widely reported Gustavo Barroso's anti-Semitic campaign, which took facts and molded them into larger fictions. Barroso attacked Congressman Horacio Lafer and other Jewish entrepreneurs in A sinagoga paulista (The Paulista synagogue) and was only rarely held accountable for his lies.^[67] Other works assaulted an alleged "world Jewish capitalist conspiracy" and attacked U.S. liberalism from an anti-Semitic perspective. Hitting closer to home, Rio's few Jewish prostitutes and pimps were portrayed as the majority of those involved in vice.^[68] By the mid-1930s, a number of anti-Semitic titles were easily available in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre, including Henry Ford's The International Jew and Barroso's Brasil, colônia de banqueiros , a publication recommended to cadets in the national Escola Militar by General José Meira de Vasconcelos, a contributor to the Integralist weekly A Ofensiva .^[69] It is no surprise that some observers wondered if "the most serious anti-Semitic agitation [in South America] was found in Brazil."^[70]

The linkage of Brazil's precarious financial situation with an international Jewish capitalist conspiracy was not the exclusive ground of the Integralists. After the prices of Brazilian export products like coffee fell in 1935, the National Liberation Alliance (ANL), the mass movement created by the then illegal Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), argued that all foreign firms should be immediately nationalized. Anti-Semites in the ANL often connected these firms, and economic imperialism in general, to Judaism. João Alberto Lins de Barros, one of the tenentes of 1930 and an important adviser to Getúlio Vargas, for example, complained that Brazil did not have "the courage to break with international Judaism" and "Jewish bankers."^[71] Jews, so it seemed, had few friends among Brazilian political activists.

The Jewish Community Strikes Back

Brazil's Jewish community reacted quickly to the rise in anti-Semitism in the early 1930s.^[72] Pamphlets circulated among Rio's Jews suggested that it was time to defend "the legitimate interests of the Jewish Collective of Brazil," and in late March 1933, the Jewish Colonization Association's Isaiah Raffalovich organized a protest in Rio de Janeiro "against the tyrannical treatment of German Jews." The march, according to the rabbi, was peaceful. Even so, the police waded into the crowd, where they waged "a brutal aggression against the defenseless Jewish population," eventually wrecking homes in the area, attacking Jews in local cafes, and finally violating a nearby synagogue.^[73]

Raffalovich immediately complained to the Minister of Justice, who launched an internal investigation.^[74] This was headed by Federal Police Chief Filinto Müller, a Vargas confidant and ex-tenente from Mato Grosso, whose feared Political and Social Police (and undercover Serviço Secreto de Investigações—the S-2) answered only to Vargas.^[75] Muller's influence was felt even by high-ranking members of the government like Ambassador to the United States Oswaldo Aranha, who complained to Vargas that police agents were regularly opening his correspondence.^[76] Muller, a Brazilian of German descent, was a notorious Third Reich admirer and was closely tied to both the German embassy and the Integralist Party. Not surprisingly, his official report was at odds with Raffalovich's claims.^[77] The problem, according to the police, was that many marchers were "well-known communists" (although none were so well known that they were mentioned by name) whose extremist ideas led to "confusion and disorder."^[78] Fortunately, according to the police, they were able to apprehend those creating the disorder without entering into homes, cafes, or the synagogue. Regardless of the truthfulness of the police statement, another protest against "Hitlerist atrocities" scheduled for July 1933 was prohibited under pressure from the German embassy. In this case, according to Raffalovich, even antigovernment Rio newspapers "were afraid to make mention of what [had] taken place.^[79]

With public protests banned, Jewish leaders took a personal approach. In October 1934, Raffalovich met with Integralist chief Plínio Salgado and received his assurance that the Integralists "would leave the Jewish question out of the program."^[80] When an Integralist parade in São Paulo was attacked by communists, however, it "produced a fury against Jews, who of course are [considered] by anti-Semites the progenitors of Communism."^[81] This produced widespread concern in the Jewish community, and some wealthy Jews even supplied funds to the Integralists in order to secure "an agreement to eliminate most of the anti-Semitic material from the party publications."^[82] The AIB gladly took the money but persisted with its anti-Jewish propaganda.

There were also direct attacks on anti-Semitism by non-Jews. In 1933 Carlos Lacerda and a number of other intellectuals walked out of a meeting of Pró-Arte, an artistic exchange association funded by the German embassy, when the Nazis in the organization announced a plan to expel Jewish members.^[83] The well-known author Antônio Baptista Pereira attacked anti-Jewish movements in O Brasil e o anti-semitismo (1934), finding some support in intellectual circles. Azevedo Amaral's review of this book in Samuel Wainer's Revista Brasileira , for example,

denounced anti-Semitism in Brazil and elsewhere.^[84] In Questão judaica, questão social (1933), the sociologist José Pérez rejected the idea that the "traditional tolerance of the country [would prevent] explosions from hateful anti-Semites." Pérez saw a link between nationalism and the new intellectuals who had risen to power with Vargas, claiming that "the new sociologists of the pátria amada [had] cried hysterically 'KILL THE JEWS'" during an academic conference.^[85] A compilation in defense of Jews entitled Por que ser anti-semita?: Um inquérito entre intellectuaes brasileiros (Why be an anti-Semite?: An inquiry among Brazilian intellectuals) was produced in 1933 by another group of intellectuals.^[86] This collection of articles, so it appeared, had come directly from thinkers troubled by the incompatibility between Nazi Aryan theory and Brazil's racially and ethnically mixed society. Although all the articles were genuine, the work was secretly organized by Raffalovich and funded by the Jewish Colonization Association. The book, which ranged from academic explanations to outright polemics, seems to have had little impact.

The language used in Por que ser anti-semita? by the Brazilian non-Jewish intellectuals in defense of Jews is worth examining. Jews were considered a distinct racial and national group and were always distinguished from "Germans" or "Brazilians." The preface clearly notes the differences: "here [in Brazil] Jews and Germans live alike—and all, Semites and Aryans, live well or badly, but live . . . and work and produce with us."^[87] Some writers used traditional stereotypes of Jews even while defending them. A description of an anti-Nazi meeting included the following: "the most prestigious Jews of Paris—bankers, lawyers, writers, industrialists . . . like silver fish in the breast of the equatorial ocean."^[88] This usage of anti-Semitic images suggests that many educated Brazilians, including those who defined themselves as liberal, were unable to overcome cultural stereotypes. Those in favor of Jewish immigration could never create a discourse much different from that of anti-Semites.

Ironically, the Jewish community was aided in its fight against anti-Semitism by the growing entry after 1932 of German, Austrian, and Italian Jewish refugees whose bourgeois background was less easily categorized as undesirable, in spite of their settlement in urban areas. Although politicians attacked Eastern European Jews as an integral component of post-1930 Brazilian nativism, the newcomers from Central Europe were highly acculturated, spoke languages common to non-Jewish immigrant communities in Brazil, and were moderate or conserva-

tive politically. They were also highly educated and skilled, and often arrived with some capital. As the non-Jewish Herbert V. Levy, at the time a young journalist (and later a federal deputy from São Paulo and director general of the Gazeta Mercantil ), argued in his Problemas actuaes da economia brasileira (1934), Germany's "anti-Semitic campaign offers [Brazil] the opportunity to receive . . . the best in the arts, in the sciences, in economics, in letters [and] in all areas of cultural activity . . . [German Jews] are of undeniable value to progress and cultural development."^[89]

In order to emphasize their similarities to other already resident groups, many Central European Jews actively disassociated themselves from what they considered the culturally inferior established Eastern European community.^[90] This, they believed, would prevent them from being categorized in negative ways by nativists who attacked Jewish peddling and communal solidarity. Central European refugees were, in fact, part of the industrial European culture that many middle- and upper-class Brazilians wished to emulate. German Jewish organizations emphasized the teaching of Portuguese, something even the nativists had trouble criticizing. German Jews also created institutions specifically aimed at promoting German social and cultural life, and even among refugees there was rarely a declining attachment to German high culture.^[91] A German Jewish refugee from Berlin who helped found the Brazilian-Jewish Cultural and Beneficent Society (SIBRA) of Porto Alegre also translated Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse for Livraria do Globo, a large publishing house and bookstore whose titles included a great deal of Brazilian and European anti-Semitic material.^[92]

The "Jewish Question" became increasingly complicated as large numbers of Central European refugees entered Brazil. A number of influential Brazilians, without abandoning restrictions, now began to simultaneously support continued or expanded Jewish immigration. None, however, proposed a completely open policy based on humanitarian principles. Rather, like some Nazi policies in which certain Jews were allowed to maintain their positions as long as they remained economically "useful," some diplomats and journalists argued that only wealthy or skilled refugees should be permitted to enter. Rio de Janeiro's well-established Correio da Manhã editorialized in favor of an increased Jewish presence, noting that "the great exodus of Jewish workers from Germany . . . would bring all their technical, industrial and principally agricultural skills."^[93] Ildefonso Falcão, the Brazilian consul in Cologne, Germany, approached Foreign Minister Afrânio de Mello

Franco confidentially about the possibilities of giving immigrant visas to Germans "of the Semitic race who [formerly] occupied public positions or were in the liberal professions."^[94] In addition to their skills, thought Falcão, Jews would "bring part of their capital because of a special concession made by the German government." Falcão did not reach his conclusion without a push; the Jewish directors of some of Germany's largest industries, including Schürman and Tietz A.G. (furniture manufacturers) and the Ludolph Marx Group, had come to the consul with formal proposals to establish similar firms in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.^[95]

The negatives attached to all potential Jewish immigrants, in spite of the benefits they might bring to Brazil, led Falcão to hedge his positive assessment of the situation. In his letter to Foreign Minister Mello Franco, Falcão suggested: "It is possible that I am wrong [in my assessment] and in that case Your Excellency should tell me."^[96] Mello Franco, however, was even more unsure than Falcão about the wisdom of promoting Jewish immigration in a political climate so heavily imbued with nativism and anti-Semitism. He simply sent Falcão's letter on to the Minister of Labor, Industry, and Commerce, Joaquim Pedro Salgado Filho, before responding to his consul in Cologne.^[97]

Although no clear policy existed with regard to the immigration of members of the Jewish bourgeoisie, Mello Franco was certain that there were no obstacles to the entrance of Jews who were "rural workers with a definite destination."^[98] Jewish organizations found "a very liberal attitude in favor of Jewish refugees," and in 1933 over three hundred refugees were granted special permission to enter Brazil.^[99] Jews not destined to toil on the land, however, posed a problem, although no specific restrictions against their entry existed. Itamaraty cautiously instructed a government business representative in Poland about the policy on visas for nonagricultural workers: "it has become vital that the formalities are followed . . . for the entry of immigrants in the country."^[100] In other words, the lax attitude that Brazil's overseas representatives often took in granting immigrant visas was not acceptable for Jews who were not farmers.

With diplomats carefully following the rules, refugees without families already resident in Brazil found themselves in a difficult position. In December 1933, Rabbi Raffalovich attempted to convince Labor Minister Salgado Filho, who had previously been open to Jewish immigration, to continue to make exceptions for Jews. The rabbi was well prepared for the meeting: he brought letters of support from the director

general of the Labor Department and from the minister of agriculture. He even invited Congressman Horacio Lafer, a Jewish friend of Salgado Filho, to attend. The meeting was a failure. Salgado Filho's power had been eclipsed by nativists, and he "would not hear of making an exception in our case. [Because of the] overpopulation of all larger cities and the insufficiency of employment he cannot allow immigration . . . to hurt the native."^[101] According to Salgado Filho only new agricultural colonies could create spaces for Jewish immigrants without family members in Brazil.^[102]

Nativism and the Constitution of 1934

Immigration and assimilation featured prominently in the debates on a new constitution that began in 1933. Simple laws and decrees no longer seemed sufficient, and politicians agreed that immigration restriction needed to have the force of constitutional law. Brazil's constitutional delegates hoped to model their new immigration policy on the United States National Origins Acts, a document that "left a conviction in various quarters [in the United States] that the chief purpose . . . was to keep out Jews."^[103] Although rarely mentioned as such in the debates, delegates regularly alluded to Jews. The deputy from Ceará, Antônio Xavier de Oliveira, worried that Brazil "should not be the promised land of Israel."^[104] São Paulo's representative, Jorge Americano, was less concerned. He believed that "Jewish blood" could be found in everyone and suggested that worrying about it was useless.^[105] Pedro Aurélio de Góis Monteiro, another delegate and one of the leaders of the Revolution of 1930, argued that "it is an error to presume that immigration brings civilization." According to Góis Monteiro, "disparate and nonassimilable races" should be excluded.^[106] Others complained of those who "only go to the state capital cities to form neighborhoods of disorder and crime," a claim often directed at those who lived in Bom Retiro (São Paulo), Praça Onze (Rio de Janeiro), and Born Fim (Porto Alegre), all traditional immigrant areas where Jews concentrated.^[107] New Brazilian legislation, insisted Xavier de Oliveira, had to limit entry "to those elements judged preferable, the civilized whites of Central and Northern Europe."^[108] Oliveira's rejection of Eastern European Jewish immigrants neatly combined notions of race, ethnicity, and geography. Generalized nativism had been transformed into specific anti-Semitism.

The discussion of the new Brazilian constitution came during a pe-

riod of relatively open political debate in Brazil.^[109] This made nativism a public issue of which anti-Semitism was one important component. Afonso Arinos de Mello Franco, a prominent and well-respected intellectual and journalist who in 1933 directed the two most influential newspapers in the state of Minas Gerais, attacked Jews in Preparação ao nacionalismo , published in 1934 by the highly regarded Civilização Brasileira.^[110] In it he cited anti-Semitic works including Hitler's Mein Kampf (the original German version) and the Gustavo Barroso-translated version of Henry Ford's The International Jew . This racist literature was used to support Arinos's claim that "Jewish internationalists" were responsible for everything from "the German Revolution" to the French Revolution, which Arinos (like many Nazi theorists and the Integralist Barroso) claimed was inspired by "Jews" such as Danton ("David"), Robespierre ("Rubin"), and Rousseau.^[111] Arinos also argued that Jews, because of the "special formation of the Hebraic psychology," were natural communists who caused the Russian Revolution.^[112] Arinos castigated non-Jewish Brazilians such as Solidônio Leite, whose essay on the importance of Jews in colonial Brazil had appeared in the aforementioned Por que ser anti-semita? , while glorifying such Nazi favorites as the Portuguese anti-Semite Mario Saa.^[113]

Nativism sold newspapers, and the debate over the new constitution gave politicians concerned about the preservation of what they termed the Brazilian "race" growing access to the press. Fidelis Reis, a longtime deputy who more than a decade earlier had tried to ban Asian and Jewish immigrants, now received more publicity for his bigotry.^[114] Rio de Janeiro's frequently anti-Vargas A Nação entered the fray arguing that the nativist Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres "is just what we need."^[115] Another powerful carioca (the term for residents of Rio de Janeiro) paper, the Correio da Manhã , agreed and opined that Brazil could not be "the great melting pot for the fusion and reform of all the world as the Jewish writer Zegwill [suggests]."^[116] Federal decision makers found these articles useful for suggesting that their anti-Jewish policies had widespread support.^[117] A special subfile of nativist newspaper clippings was even kept in Itamaraty's Jewish immigration files.

The constitution of 1934 simultaneously reflected the desires of Brazil's urban middle and working classes as it attempted to appeal to those groups.^[118] It guaranteed free elections while centralizing and expanding the government's social and economic roles. The constitution's clear nativism also expressed the growing xenophobia that had overtaken urban Brazil.^[119] An annual quota of 2 percent of the number from each

nation who had arrived in the previous fifty years was fixed, and farmers were given preferential treatment.^[120] The national government now had total authority over immigration, and the constitution suggested "the possibility of prohibition, total, or in relation to origin," of immigrants in order "to guarantee the ethnic integration and physical and civic capacity of the immigrant."^[121] All licensed businesses needed a majority of native-born Brazilians on their boards of directors.^[122] Liberal professions were restricted to Brazilian citizens or those who had been naturalized and had served in the Brazilian armed forces. The rejection of professional diplomas granted by foreign educational institutions left many immigrants in the liberal professions unable to work legally without a degree from a Brazilian university.^[123] Ten German Jewish physicians went to Brazil in 1933 after receiving assurances that they could practice after passing language and Brazilian history examinations, as well as some medical courses. All entered the University of Rio de Janeiro as students in 1933, but new restrictions a year later forced them out since they were not native born.^[124]

Exclusionist sentiment had wide support in urban areas. Although relatively small, it was the middle class that seemed to hold the political balance, and with both extremes of the political spectrum blaming immigrants for Brazil's troubles, exclusion was widely appealing.^[125] Those with university educations (doctors, lawyers, engineers) believed restriction was the best way to secure their social and economic status. For professionals struggling to find jobs or clients, foreign-trained professionals and urban workers were perceived as threatening. Nativism had become more than a key to election in many urban districts; it had become a generally agreed-upon position. However useful in capturing political allegiances, nativism also had a downside. The new immigration restrictions made it increasingly difficult to satisfy industry's demands for skilled immigrant labor. Furthermore, nativists were angered that restrictive policies did not close the ports entirely.

These contradictions led to an increasingly open discussion of the "Jewish Question" among Brazilian intellectuals and urban politicians. Júlio de Revorêdo of São Paulo's Department of Labor was commissioned by the agricultural secretary of the state of Minas Gerais to do a study of immigration. In his manuscript, which was financially supported by the Government Printing Office and published under the title Immigraão , Revoró do argued that Jews should be prohibited from entering Brazil because they were not open to assimilation given "the propaganda of the rabbis against Jewish integration."^[126] Oliveira Vianna

hypothesized that while Spanish and Portuguese immigrants were highly assimilable and could easily be submerged and help improve the "Brazilian race," the Jewish "miscegenation co-efficient is equal to zero."^[127] Some even claimed knowledge of "the presence and activity of . . . Jewish political and religious societ[ies] in Brazil [involved in] politics, espionage, [and] crimes."^[128]

Early International Pressure: the League of Nations and the Mcdonald Mission

Brazil has always been a country of exceptions, especially when it comes to policy enforcement. This, in the 1930s, was the result of the fact that many petty public officials were willing to be bribed in order not to enforce rules while those in the higher echelons consciously wrote policies that were open to wide interpretation. A single policy, then, could be pointed at as political evidence of the simultaneous dominance of contradictory ideologies. New immigration restrictions thus did not prevent Jews from entering Brazil, and when the League of Nations in 1933 appointed James G. McDonald, a diplomat from the United States whose salary and budget were funded primarily by a group of Jewish organizations, as High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany, he focused much of his energy on Brazil.^[129] The League of Nations's attempt to convince Brazil to accept German Jewish refugees is important for a number of reasons. In spite of the general failure of the mission, it cemented Brazil's image among North Americans and Europeans as flexible on the refugee question, an image that informed relations with the United States and England for the next decade. The failure also made clear the depth of anti-Jewish sentiment among Brazilian federal decision makers in the mid-1930s. Finally, it was High Commissioner McDonald who helped create the philo-Semitic discourse based around Jewish economic desirability that eventually influenced the Brazilian policies allowing thousands of refugees to enter the country.

The High Commission began its work in the midst of a growing undercurrent of anti-Jewish sentiment in Brazil in 1933 and 1934. By associating Jews with all plans for refugee relief, even ones that did not include Jews, nativists were able to give the impression that Brazil was being overrun with objectionable immigrants. Such was the case when the League of Nations suggested that Brazil accept a large group of Christian Assyrians whose claims to autonomy were not sustainable

after the end of the British mandate in Iraq.^[130] To combat the plan successfully, nativists realized, they could not simply attack Assyrians, a group unknown to most Brazilians. Rather, more familiar images were needed to engender a negative reaction.^[131] To Costa Rego, an anti-Semitic Catholic monsignor writing for Rio's Correio da Manhã , Assyrians were bad but German Jews were "in certain respects even worse."^[132] In an editorial published by Rio's always supportive Jornal do Comércio , the Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres tried hard to find a common ground between nationalist and nativist sentiments by linking immigration to war. Assyrians were like Jews, asserted the group, a military enemy that would culturally defeat Brazil if allowed to penetrate its borders.

The threat that hovers over Brazil of an invasion of the inhabitants of Iraq, which England wished to place in Paraná, was a signal of alarm that awakened our people and warned them against certain currents of immigration that have been coming our way. We refer in particular to the Japanese and the Jews, who for good reasons are undesirable immigrants rejected today by all nations that are in need of foreign labor.

Now the Jews: Although not fit for the racial formation of Brazil, they continue to disembark at Brazilian ports, filling our cities with parasites, intermediaries, secondhand buyers, installment peddlers, and dishonest elements in commercial circles. . . . Let us have sufficient courage to repel the Japanese, the Jews, and other undesirable elements and say audibly that we only want to have European immigrants who are suitable for the building of our country.^[133]

Brazil's deputies rejected the League of Nations plan. This was, at least in part, a result of the influence of Raúl de Paula, secretary of the Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres and a member of a federal commission on immigration appointed by the minister of labor.^[134] Rio's Folha da Manhã publicly thanked nativist groups for stopping the entry of Assyrians.^[135] Rio's Diário da Tarde complimented the "patriotic attitude of Getúlio Vargas who vetoed the lamentable initiative."^[136] Nativism had won out over humanitarianism.

The antirefugee climate was exaggerated by the resentment the League of Nations had created with its Assyrian proposal. This made James McDonald's mission to Brazil nearly impossible. Even so, McDonald believed Brazil was an excellent place to relocate refugees, and he proposed with no irony that Brazil had an opportunity "of helping [itself] as well as helping to solve the problem of refugees from Germany."^[137] Economic strength, claimed McDonald, resulted from immigrant populations, and the commissioner played on stereotypes of Jew-

ish business acumen when he commented that "the stupidity of the German policy had driven [out] . . . her best brains and most enterprising minds . . . [T]he admission of refugees from Germany with specific capacities . . . would help [Latin American nations] to develop a more diversified national economy."^[138] McDonald emphasized that current immigration policies needed to change. Brazil, along with Argentina, was asked to consider the admission of eighty to one hundred refugee families a month, and Uruguay twenty to thirty, for a trial period of six months.

In his initial investigations McDonald appears to have made three serious errors. The first was a failure to recognize that many Brazilian policymakers were nativists and anti-Semites. Second, McDonald never appreciated the serious splits between the state and federal governments over immigration. Although encouraged that Rio de Janeiro was "as full of lobbyists from various states working for Japanese agricultural immigration as Washington is of arms lobbyists during the discussion of a naval bill," the commissioner focused much of his energy on state and local officials, who had little influence over federal immigration policy.^[139]

Finally, McDonald was naively optimistic that pro-immigrant sentiment outside of urban areas included Jewish refugees.^[140] When São Paulo officials noted that their state "could absorb 100,000 new workers in the coffee and cotton fazendas " and others in Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Sul spoke of their "imperative need for new workers and [their] determination to overcome the opposition of the 'politicians,'" they were not referring to Jewish professionals, small traders, craftsmen, or minor officials and clerks never previously employed in agriculture or as manual workers.^[141] A proposal drawn up in 1935 by the Land, Colonization, and Immigration Directorate (DTCI) of São Paulo's Secretary of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce aimed at reducing the numbers of immigrants entering from countries like Poland that had both large numbers of Jews and low indices of agricultural settlement.^[142] Similarly, José Antôio Flores da Cunha, military governor of Rio Grande do Sul and an adversary of Vargas, was not thinking of petit bourgeois immigrants when he "showed considerable impatience with the attitude of such nationalists as the Minister of Labour" and suggested that refugees go to Uruguay and "then come over land to Rio Grande do Sul, with no attention paid to constitutional restrictions that should never have been adopted."^[143]

In spite of the negative reaction to previous League of Nations pro-

posals, McDonald decided to target Brazil on his four-month survey trip to South America in 1935. The specific aim was to find places for twenty-six thousand refugees who had left Germany after 1933 and had resettled temporarily in other European countries.^[144] The High Commission planned to resettle five thousand refugees (70 percent were Jews) during 1935. McDonald thought twenty-five hundred might be sent to Latin America even though passage there cost twice as much as to the United States or Palestine. He believed mistakenly that there would be no new German refugees after 1935 and that if Latin America absorbed those not settled in Palestine, North America, or Europe, the problem would be solved. The estimate was incorrect: the complete evacuation of German Jewry became necessary after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. McDonald was accompanied by a longtime associate active in international affairs, Dr. Samuel Guy Inman, a North American academic who specialized in Latin America. McDonald believed Inman was "the best informed North American on the peoples and problems of South America," and Inman hoped that his "personal acquaintanceships might enable us to accomplish more than ordinary diplomatic approaches."^[145] Inman, however, was more realistic than McDonald. He considered the trip "more or less a gamble, with the present extreme nationalistic spirit."^[146]

The McDonald Mission concentrated its efforts on Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Each had substantial Jewish populations, established refugee support organizations, and, in the High Commissioner's view, a willingness to take refugees. McDonald believed that Brazil and Argentina presented the best economic opportunities for the refugees and that his guarantee that visas would be given only to "intellectuals" would lead to a relaxation of quota restrictions. This idea was encouraged by Oswaldo Aranha, Brazilian ambassador to the United States, after In-man emphasized that only a "limited number of carefully picked people, who would contribute to Brazilian life as they thoroughly identified themselves with your civilization," would be sent.^[147] Aranha sent personal letters of introduction to government officials whom "it might be to our advantage to consult," including President Getúlio Vargas.^[148]

Before McDonald even set foot in Rio, the nativist press began inflaming public and political sentiment, again using a coded anti-Semitic language that never actually mentioned the word Jews or Jewish . Rio's Diáirio de Notícias sent a collective shiver down carioca spines with its headline "The Germans Expelled from Germany Will Come to Brazil— The Next Trip of the High Commissioner Is to Brazil."^[149] McDonald

"had been warned repeatedly by immigration experts . . . that these restrictions, administrative, legal, and in Brazil also constitutional, could not be overcome," but he appeared to have been surprised by the intense anti-Jewish immigration sentiment among federal bureaucrats.^[150]

With issues of assimilation and ethnic purity very much a part of the national discourse on immigration, McDonald should have realized that the door might be closed to most refugees. Even so he remained optimistic and continued to see Brazil as flexible in taking refugees because there, more than in any other Latin American nation, McDonald and Inman met with the government's highest representatives. Vargas and most ranking government officials discussed refugees with the two, who for almost two months "continued uninterruptedly our assaults on the Brazilian authorities."^[151] This suggests that Vargas hoped to defuse international pressure by giving the impression that he would consider exceptions to Brazilian policy. McDonald was impressed with the treatment he received. After meeting with Francisco Campos, a legal scholar and politician from Minas Gerais who had founded a neofascist "black shirt" movement in Minas Gerais in 1931 and had become Brazil's first minister of education in the same year and a special consultant to President Vargas in 1933, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, private secretary to the minister of education, McDonald commented on "how civilized these Brazilians really are as compared with so many of our cold, perfunctory Anglo-Saxon officials!"^[152] The apparent friendliness did not fool the experienced Inman. He complained that "Brazilian officials have a technique in handling foreign commissions which consists of receiving them cordially with the hope that they will not be in the country more than two or three weeks. After he has gone away, charmed by his reception, nothing is done."^[153] Always claiming an "unfailing willingness to participate in any great humanitarian movement," members of the regime rarely did anything concrete for refugees.^[154]

Inman and McDonald met with everyone who might help their cause. A discussion with Sebastião Cardinal Leme of Rio de Janeiro, a close friend of Vargas who often dined alone with the president, regarding Catholic refugees from Germany led to the government's rapid approval of visas for this group.^[155] Sir Henry Lynch, the London Rothschild Group's representative in Rio and a confidant of Vargas and other Brazilian officials, on the other hand, "emphasized the difficulty of getting around the constitution and the . . . emphasis on agricultural immigrants."^[156] U.S., French, and British diplomatic representatives were cordial but extremely pessimistic about the Jewish refugee matter.^[157] Even relief representatives were "close competitor[s] with the

diplomats for the prize in unmitigated pessimism."^[158] A British diplomat emphasized that the Brazilian government was interested only in farmers and asked McDonald if he "could describe [the refugees] as such, or even as being prepared to work on the land."^[159] Since relief groups directed most Jewish farmers to Palestine, McDonald could only "stress the humanitarian issue and also the fact that refugees who had [already] entered Brazil . . . had shown themselves excellent citizens devoid of the communist taint which the press were inclined to attribute to fleers from Herr Hitler's wrath."^[160] This humanitarian approach was not particularly successful, but Inman and McDonald continued to present Jewish refugees as exceptional since "unless the case could be made on the broad basis of humanity which might justify opening the doors to these victims of persecution, as it were on extraconstitutional grounds, I feared that we would probably be defeated."^[161]

McDonald remained optimistic. Brazil's size and industrial plans led him to wonder "why . . . should there not be a Jewish community here . . . at least several times larger than [the one] in Argentina."^[162] This view was encouraged by Aranha's support and Vargas's desire to give an impression of openness. An invitation for Inman and McDonald to meet the president in the summer capital of Petrópolis arrived and Vargas tried to charm the two diplomats, although McDonald hoped that an offhand comment that "my grandfather must have come from Ireland . . . was not meant to be uncomplimentary."^[163] Vargas responded with apparent enthusiasm to McDonald's request for a special arrangement that would permit 500 Jews or 125 Jewish families a month to enter Brazil.^[164] He promised "that he would speak to the Minister of Labor the next day . . . and ask for him to fix a quota"; McDonald and Inman left Petrópolis feeling confident.^[165]

Getúlio Vargas was adept at promoting false hopes among international observers, a strategy he would use to deal with the refugee issue until he left power in 1945. McDonald, however, did not know this and decided to rally British support so that Vargas would be encouraged to pursue the plan.^[166] The English, however, were not interested, in spite of their own desire to insure that Jewish refugees would not settle in England, a point that they wanted kept quiet.^[167] Since the British government "would not be prepared to admit quantities of refugees either to this country or to the Crown colonies, we are not in a good position to urge other Governments to do so."^[168] Fear of international embarrassment led the British to withhold support, and McDonald realized that no one really wanted refugees.

British support probably would not have mattered. Meeting with

Agamemnon Magalhães, a nativist who replaced the generally amenable Salgado Filho as Minister of Labor, Industry, and Commerce, two days after leaving Petrópolis, McDonald and Inman were told categorically that the German quota was 3,080 and that only 10 percent of this number could be Jews even if they were farmers.^[169] Inman was infuriated. He privately wrote that Magalhães "is entirely wrong in saying that. No law has been passed interpreting the Constitution and these figures are not legally fixed."^[170] Since Vargas often interpreted the constitution as he wished until specific laws were passed, some hope still remained. Magalhães, however, would be of no help; he refused to discuss circumventing the 2 percent quota, since, according to McDonald, he was "a new man from the North and intensely politically minded."^[171] If any exceptions were made, Magalhães is reported to have told the two, "I would at once be attacked by the Friends of Alberto Torres and following such an attack I would have to stand an interpellation in the Chamber."^[172]

Agamemnon Magalhães's lack of interest was a major defeat but was not surprising considering the general anti-immigrant sentiment in Brazil.^[173] A Jornal do Comércio headline screamed "Itamaraty against the National Interest" when plans to accept refugees surfaced.^[174] Raúl de Paula, a member of the Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres, quit the Ministry of Labor Commission on Immigration in disgust, wanting "to be free in my actions . . . to continue [my] campaign against Japanese and Jews [who are] undesirable elements for our racial mixture."^[175] Sebastião Sampaio, former consul general in New York (and later consul general in Prague), feared that the entrance of German Jews would hurt negotiations with the Nazis for a new commercial treaty.^[176] Others in the government rejected the plan despite the High Commissioner's guarantee that "no Communists or other radicals interested to carry on their political activities" would be included among the refugees.^[177] Only the foreign minister, the lawyer and industrialist Macedo Soares, "was unqualifiedly in favor of our proposal," and promised to urge Vargas to accept it.^[178]

Macedo Soares lacked influence even among the diplomatic corps he ostensibly commanded. Brazil's delegate in Bucharest argued against giving visas to Jews who "frequently expressed subversive ideas," something the "excellent Romanian Christian farmers" did not.^[179] A member of the embassy staff in London had a similar opinion, telling Macedo Soares that Jews were dangerous "communist propagandists" and that they were transferring money to Brazil to help pay "for [com-

munist] propaganda and the other necessities of the Communist Party."^[180] The problem could be solved, said the diplomat, only if the issuance of the visas was contingent upon the embassy's receiving assurance that the money was coming from "authentic" sources. Such attitudes were frequently expressed by those within the regime, and the weak Macedo Soares had little choice but to follow suit.

The only way to get visas for significant numbers of German Jewish refugees, McDonald and Inman realized, was through a legal or technical formula. It was Ideolo Vaz de Mello, head of the Passport Division and a member of an interdepartmental committee on immigration, who came up with a plan that Inman termed "a brilliant idea": the creation of a quota for "stateless" individuals. The stateless had no legally defined nationality and could not enter under a national quota. Ex-quota entries might thus be a technical way of solving the problem within the confines of the law. Vaz de Mello was a gaúcho who had previously lobbied for the entrance of large numbers of Japanese laborers, and he enthusiastically agreed to help McDonald compose a plan that would be acceptable to both Labor and Foreign Affairs, arguing that "the policy embodied in the Constitution . . . is absurd, all the more because of Brazil's obvious need for European blood to strengthen the population here, which is so largely Negro or Indian."^[181]

Vaz de Mello's plan, like a previous one he had concocted that classified only those above fourteen years of age as immigrants, fell apart when Magalhães insisted that stateless visas be given only to farmers and that any of these refugees who moved to urban areas would be deported.^[182] Since the High Commission had neither the resources, the authorization, nor the refugees to set up Jewish agricultural colonies, this demand could not be met. McDonald next suggested that he would guarantee employment for refugees prior to arrival in Brazil. This proposal, however, never reached the minister of labor because of objections ranging from the lack of an ICA-sponsored agricultural project to the minister's insistence that he would read only plans presented personally. Magalhães always seemed to be out of Rio de Janeiro, and McDonald was no doubt discouraged when, after waiting for the minister to return, he was told to relax and "bring [himself] into close communion with nature."^[183]

Only the Jewish Colonization Association, which had abandoned the colonization ideal in Brazil almost two decades earlier, continued to fantasize about the "very great possibilities in the immense Brazilian Republic."^[184] Louis Oungre, general director of the ICA, was in Brazil

when Vaz de Mello made his suggestion about creating a stateless quota that would allow Jews to settle in new farming colonies, but he would not make any commitments without the permission of the ICA directorate. The ICA, however, never formulated a colonization plan, angering many in Brazil's Jewish community. Not realizing that Jewish farmers usually went to Palestine and were not among the refugees coming to Brazil from Germany, resident Jews angrily attacked the ICA and Oungre in a public meeting. Dr. Moses Rabinovitch of Rio's Brazilian Jewish Association complained that the Jewish community was "indignant" and that the ICA should "recognize the bright future that a formidable and essential agricultural immigration of Jews would have in Brazil."^[185] The lack of support did not stop new colonization plans from being hatched. In April 1935, the Center for the Promotion of Jewish Agriculture was formed with the express aim of settling Jewish farmers in rural zones near large cities.^[186] Its main achievement was to put further pressure on the ICA, which, in 1936, finally set up a new Jewish farming colony near Rio. (See chapter 3.)

McDonald and Inman's hard work did bring about some results. In 1935 a plan to bring Jewish academics dismissed by the German government to Brazil was launched with some success. Alberto Bueno Neto, secretary of agriculture of the State of São Paulo, for example, regularly contracted foreign scientists at great expense to help with São Paulo's agricultural problems. When he learned that German Jewish specialists in agriculture, plant disease, and soil analysis were available "for the salary of a Brazilian professor or scientist," he was ecstatic and "practically guaranteed employment."^[187] Inman remained concerned that such hirings would be waylaid by immigration restrictions but believed that "state authorities in São Paulo evidently believe that they are strong enough to force the central government to do whatever seems necessary to meet the immigration demands of the state which pays most of the federal bills."^[188] Federal Minister of Agriculture Odilón Duarte Braga, although showing more restraint, was also enthusiastic about hiring German professors since "he hoped that the specialists would be satisfied with seemingly low salaries."^[189] Eleven different academic institutions throughout Brazil desired displaced German scholars, including the world-renowned Butantã and Oswaldo Cruz institutes.^[190] An old friend of Inman's, Anisio S. Teixeira, Rio de Janeiro's reformist secretary of education and Brazil's leading educator following completion of a master's degree at Columbia University Teachers College under the guidance of John Dewey, authorized the establishment

of a new university in the city and suggested that refugees might be contracted there. The rector, Afrânio Peixoto, a regular on the Rio social circuit and "a scientist with an international reputation who loves to make whoopee," had publicly defended Jews in the aforementioned Por que ser anti-semita? and hired refugees for about half of the twenty new teaching positions.^[191] At the recently established University of São Paulo, however, a stated desire to fill positions in chemistry and natural history with "Germans being expelled from their country by Hitlerism" did not translate into the hiring of more than a few Jews.^[192]

The small victories never added up to much. In late 1935 Teixeira, Peixoto, and other reformers who opposed religious training in public schools, including Heitor Villa-Lobos, were fired following a series of anti-Vargas insurrections that took place throughout Brazil. Teixeira sought exile in France, where he became a founder of UNESCO, and was replaced by Francisco Campos, who promised to create an educational system for the "traditional, humanistic and Christian Brazil" by ridding the system of bolshevik tendencies.^[193] Yet again, the anti-Jewish codes were clear in the reference to communism and the assertion that Brazil was monolithically Christian, and the Integralists leaped to support the changes.^[194] Not surprisingly, Brazil steadfastly refused to admit large numbers of refugees, and a lack of international support for the High Commission for Refugees meant that few German Jews entered Brazil under League of Nations auspices. The many disappointments, and a growing realization that humanitarianism had little influence in international politics, led McDonald to resign in December 1935. The High Commissioner left his post embittered, believing that "considerations of diplomatic correctness must yield to those of common humanity" but knowing that this would never be the case.^[195]

German Jewish Images of Brazil

Restrictive legislation, nativism, and lack of support were not the only impediments to Jewish migration to Brazil. Another obstruction came from German Jews who wondered if Brazil might be less a place of refuge and more one of trouble and misery. According to popular wisdom Brazil lacked educational facilities and was believed to be a land of revolution and dictatorship.^[196] White-collar refugees were afraid they would be forced to become day laborers and would not have the opportunity to purchase land or homes. This image of Brazil had been in the making for some time. A 1928 conference on refugees held in Buenos

Aires had portrayed Brazil specifically, and Latin America generally, as a blue-collar region unattractive for German Jewish merchants, businesspeople, and academics. According to Haim Avni, the Korrespondenzblatt of Berlin's Central Office for Jewish Emigration frequently warned German Jewry about the dangers of migration to South America.^[197] The portrayal was so negative that between 1933 and 1936, when emigration from Germany was highest, Jews generally went to the United States, Canada, Palestine, or Argentina rather than Brazil. It was only when the Nuremberg Laws took effect and it became increasingly difficult for Jews to enter preferred nations of destination that German Jews began coming in greater numbers to Brazil. (See appendix 8.)

The most frightening vision of Brazil was produced by Dr. Arthur Ruppin, a German Jew who visited South America to examine its potential for German Jewish resettlement in late 1935. Ruppin, a committed Zionist and later the first professor of Jewish Sociology at the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), published his report in the Hebrew press in Palestine, in five articles in Berlin's Jüdische Rundschau , in London's Jewish Chronicle , and later as a book.^[198] The potential for German Jewish life in Brazil, according to Ruppin, was low. Eastern European Jews had succeeded because they worked as "salesmen on the installment system [who] go from house to house like peddlers in order to find customers, and it seems that the German Jews cannot very well compete in that respect with the East European Jews."^[199] The two thousand German Jews who had immigrated to Brazil before October 1935 were having trouble getting the jobs they desired. The "immigrants were ignorant of the needs of the country and belong mostly to the commercial class. While skilled workers and artisans found remunerative work very quickly, this was much more difficult for the business people, who had at first to content themselves with subordinate and poorly paid positions."^[200] Ruppin failed to mention that German Jews often refused to accept help from relief organizations operated by Eastern Europeans. In 1935, for example, only 494 of the 835 German Jewish refugees who migrated to Brazil went to the local HICEM for help, even though the organization was finding jobs for about 75 percent of those who needed them.^[201] Regardless of their reasons, as late as 1935 German Jewry found little reason to leave for Brazil.

Brazilian law did make it difficult for German Jews in the liberal professions. Those with European professional degrees were not allowed to practice, and one immigrant aid group reported that the test to legalize a foreign medical degree was so difficult that "none—except

a single dentist—is so far known to have passed."^[202] Many German Jewish physicians were unable to obtain licenses and turned to other professions. Others affiliated with Brazilians in order to work officially in unrestricted areas of medicine while unofficially (and illegally) continuing their practices on the side. Evidence of this is found in the Crônica Israelita , published by the Jewish Congregation of São Paulo (CIP), which was filled with advertisements for medical services by Central European Jewish immigrant practitioners.^[203] Yet extralegal jobs were limited, and according to Ruppin, "even in the event of relaxations in the legal immigration restrictions in the near future the economic prospects for German Jews, unless they have a capital of at least £1,000, are limited."^[204]

Arthur Ruppin believed that Brazil would never accept more than the 835 German Jews it had in 1934. He was wrong: by 1936 twice that number had entered, representing a growing percentage of all Jewish immigrants to Brazil. (See table 2.2.) Many who arrived before 1936 were young people, single or recently married, who later "called" their

parents and relatives to Brazil via the chamada system. The majority of German Jews settled in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre. Some, however, went to unexpected locations like the town of Rolândia, in the northern part of the state of Paraná, where ten of the sixty German families who immigrated after 1933 were Jewish.^[205]

Exceptions

In spite of the quotas set out by the 1934 constitution, Jews continued to enter Brazil in significant numbers. Although almost half of those entering between 1933 and 1936 were Poles, the numbers of Germans had grown substantially.^[206] Another trend also became apparent; even though most Eastern European Jews entered through Santos, an overwhelming percentage of German Jews disembarked in Rio de Janeiro.^[207] This shows the force of the 1930 immigration laws, which made immigration difficult for nonfarmers who had no relatives in Brazil. Many Eastern European Jews had settled in São Paulo before 1930 and later called their relatives to that state. German Jews, on the other hand, began arriving after 1930 and often had no resident family. They entered through the traditional port for unaffiliated immigrants who knew nothing of Brazil except the name of its capital.

The relatively high number of Jewish entrances after 1934 is surprising given Brazil's increasingly restrictive policies. These laws, however, were often loosely interpreted, and sometimes ignored altogether. One month after the restrictions took effect in 1934, for example, three hundred Jews, the majority of them refugees in Holland, Belgium, and

France, were allowed to enter Brazil under old immigration laws.^[208] Isaiah Raffalovich secured visas for three hundred others whose "unhindered debarkation is authorized by the Government as a favor." He also convinced the Brazilian government to extend by six months the old immigration rules for Jewish refugees still in Europe.^[209]

The exceptions made for Jews caused confusion throughout the governmental infrastructure. The consul general in Amsterdam, for example, refused to issue visas without specific orders from Rio de Janeiro, while his counterpart in Antwerp would issue them with authorization from Luis Martins de Souza Dantas, the Brazilian ambassador in Paris.^[210] Souza Dantas, a diplomat educated in Rio de Janeiro's Faculty of Juridical and Social Sciences who had spent most of his career in Europe, had been appointed ambassador to France in 1922 and gave special treatment to Jews even as restrictions were tightened. In both 1924 and 1926 he had served as Brazil's representative to the League of Nations, and his humanitarian approach to refugee issues was well-known to Jewish groups.^[211] Yet lower-level diplomats were often confused by the contradictions between policy, rhetoric, and practice. Inconsistency also reinforced a bureaucratic problem: immigration policy-making was in the hands of the Ministry of Labor, while implementation was under the control of both the Colonization Department (which reported to the Ministry of Labor) and Itamaraty.

The complexity of the issue became clear in 1934 when Souza Dantas met with James McDonald and Louis Oungre to discuss a request to bring six hundred German Jewish immigrants per month, for six months, to Brazil. These immigrants were not eligible to enter under the quota system, and McDonald fell back on stereotypes of Jewish wealth to make his case. Jewish refugees, he promised, "bring a considerable amount of capital, [and are] destined to run commercial, industrial and agricultural firms of enormous capacity that will be capable of furnishing work for the immigrants and [Brazilian] workers."^[212] A simple yes or no answer was expected to the request. Souza Dantas, however, sent the request to Rio, where the director general of the Colonization Department, although unclear regarding the exact policy, expressed his conviction that requests to bring large groups of Jews into Brazil had to be approved by Labor. If the "Minister of Labor [did] not find the introduction of these workers into Brazil inconvenient," it was then necessary to get the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before any visas could actually be distributed.^[213] When the request arrived at Itamaraty it moved up the chain of command and was dis-

missed. Before it reached the foreign minister himself, Itamaraty bureaucrats underlined certain critical words so that their superiors would instantly know where to place the document. These words were, in order, Jewish Colonization Association, immigrants , and Jews . It is no surprise that the request was never approved.

As Jewish entry increased in the early 1930s, Brazilian nativists increasingly focused their anger. Even so, the negative images tended to be based on stereotypes of Eastern European Jewry. As attacks on Jewish entry became commonplace, and even attracted the notice of foreign observers, a new wave of Central European Jewry began to enter Brazil.^[214] Policymakers were confused by this new group, who seemed not to fit the traditional image of Jews. Even so, the old image still predominated and there were growing indications that the Vargas regime was going to satisfy nativist sentiment by enacting a specific anti-Jewish immigration policy. Thus the debate over the "Jewish Question" shifted into the realm of policy as Brazil followed the restrictionist path that other American republics had embarked on a decade earlier. The movement to restrict immigration to those judged racially assimilable made it clear that the undesirables were no longer welcome in Brazil.

Colonists in the Jewish Colonization Association's "Colony Philipson" 
(Rio Grande do Sul, 1922). Courtesy of the Archives of the 
Instituto Cultural Judaico Marc Chagall, Porto Alegre.

Abraham Slavutsky, a Ukrainian Jewish Immigrant, with children and 
employees in his Porto Alegre furniture shop. (Porto Alegre, 1928-1929.) 
Courtesy of the Archives of the Instituto Cultural 
Judaico Marc Chagall, Porto Alegre.

Directors and students in the "Renascena" Jewish 
School of São Paulo (São Paulo, 1933).

The Jouchelevich family in front of their home on the Jewish Colonization 
Association's "Colony Baronesa Clara" (Rio Grande do Sul, 1938). Courtesy 
of the Archives of the Instituto Cultural Judaico Marc Chagall, Porto Alegre.

A Yiddish theater production in São Paulo's 
Municipal Theater (São Paulo, 1940s).

A Jewish religious holiday celebration. (São Paulo, 1940s.)