Message #117293

[Bianca]

Miguel Bensús

(Text and photos by
Hans Ulrich Dillmann
- translated by Wolfy Becker)









                                                            Rubber Roots:


                         Jews in Iquitos, Peru are looking for ancestors - and their identity






Posted by
Wolfy Becker
on February 7th, 2007


Traveling to Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon jungle at the end of the 19th century required, above all, time. It took about eighteen days after embarking a steamship in Europe. The first stop on the South American continent was in Belén de la Pará, Brazil. There they had to board a small, double-deck steamer that took them upstream the Amazon River to a stopover in Manaus and then to Iquitos,

In contrast, the cumbersome journey from the Peruvian capital of Lima across the Andes on horseback, on foot, and then in small rowing boats lasted more than two months. Iquitos was the Peruvian center of the rubber boom at the time and attracted people in search of better life. In 1880, Alfredo Coblentz was one of the first few Jews of German descent who tried their luck as distributors for the milky juice of the rubber tree (Ficus elastica).

“The first Jews who came to Iquitos were people who had been promised a better life”, Ariel Segal says while trying to explain the motives for the long and exhausting journey from North Africa to Peru. “At the time many fled to Morocco because of a growing anti-semitism in Europe”, said the scientist based on the results of his research project on Iquitos. In his book “Jews of the Amazon. Self exiles in earthly paradise” he wrote down the story “of the forgotten Jews”.