| Description |
The Jewish community in Argentina has been in a state of flux ever since their arrival to Argentina in the late nineteenth century. As an ethnic minority group they have experienced a very different Argentina than the Italian or Spanish immigrants. Their past and present difficulties attest to this fact: from Argentinian workers protesting Jewish workers to being kidnapped and tortured by military personnel to having to barricade themselves in their institutions. The Jewish community has always been the one ethnic group divided from the rest of the Argentinians more than any other. Recent bombings and what seemed to be an intensified situation as a result, gave me a desire to research the situation. I knew that the best method was to put myself in the situation and identify the problem and the cause. I designed an ethnographic outline that specifically targeted the situation and possible reasons for the Jewish reality. Three months of ethnographic research in Argentina using questionnaires, interviews and observations brought me to a definitive conclusion. I found through this research that the Argentinian Jewish population had gone through various levels of segregation since their arrival, culminating in a new and very different level of segregation. The report concludes that while Occupational and Governmental segregation have always afflicted the Jews of Argentina, an individual social level of segregation has entered the mainstream of society. Not only is this type of segregation new, but is in fact a direct result of the bombings that so recently plagued the Jewish community. |
