Transnational Jewish Networks and the Case of Uruguay

This presentation analyzes the New York-based Anti-Defamation League’s 1980 visit to Uruguay to pressure the military to improve its human rights practices, particularly regarding the targeting of Jews.

The very nature of Uruguay’s official policy towards religion makes it a compelling case to study transnational Jewish advocacy networks. Under the presidencies of José Batlle y Ordonez (1903-1907 and 1911-1915), the State officially separated church and state. While many Latin American countries possess strong Catholic influences, Uruguay’s secular policies has meant that antisemitism often existed in coded ways, wherein government officials hid behind the nation’s legacy of official separation. During the dictatorship, Jews often received harsher treatment in prisons and were arrested at a higher level than the rest of the population, although the military denied antisemitism as a cause. Domestic Jewish groups refused to speak out against this treatment, worried that overt opposition would garner further attack on Jewish life. This abnegation left victims and victim families to appeal to Jewish groups in the Global North, who were left to navigate the complex politics of international human rights advocacy, perceived threat to local Jewish groups, and the possibilities of reform.

Centered on the unprocessed files from the ADL, this paper makes two historiographical interventions. First, much human rights scholarship on transnational Jewish activism of the Late Cold War centers on campaigns around Soviet Jewry; yet, that focus obscures the Jewish diaspora’s global work on behalf of human rights in Latin America. By focusing on Uruguay, this paper looks at how transnational Jewish networks articulated and organized on behalf of their counterparts suffering under repressive regimes. It also reexamines the official secular politics of the Uruguayan state to see how underrepresented groups navigated the dictatorship at a local and transnational level.