History of the Jews in Bolivia

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2020)

Part of a series on the
History of Bolivia
Overview Pre-Columbian Bolivia 1532–1809 1809–1920 1920–1964 1964–1982 1982–present
Bolivia portal
v t e

The history of the Jews in Bolivia goes back to the colonial period of Bolivia in the 16th century.^[1] In the 19th century, Jewish merchants (both Sephardim and Ashkenazim) came to Bolivia, most of them taking local women as wives and founding families that merged into the mainstream Catholic society. This was often the case in the eastern regions of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando, where these merchants came either from Brazil or Argentina.

In the colonial period, marranos from Spain settled in the country. Some worked in the silver mines in Potosi and others were among the pioneers that helped found Santa Cruz de la Sierra in 1557. A few customs still held in the region suggest possible marrano Jewish ancestry, but the only documents which exist are from the Peruvian Inquisition.^[1]

During the 20th century, substantial Jewish settlement began in Bolivia. In 1905, a group of Russian Jews, followed by Argentines and later a few Sephardi families from Turkey and the near east, settled in Bolivia.^[1] In 1917, it was estimated that there were only 20 to 25 professing Jews living in the country. By 1933, when the Nazi era in Germany started, there were 30 Jewish families. The first large influx of Jewish immigrants was in the 1930s and there were 7,000 of them estimated at the end of 1942. During the 1940s, 2,200 Jews emigrated from Bolivia. But the ones who remained have settled their communities primarily in La Paz, but also Cochabamba, Oruro, Santa Cruz, Sucre, Tarija and Potosí. After World War II, a small number of Polish Jews came to Bolivia. By 1939, Jewish communities gained greater stability in the country.

In recent decades, the Jewish community of Bolivia has declined significantly, many of them migrating to other countries such as Israel, the United States and Argentina.^[2] The Jewish community in Bolivia has approximately 500 members with an enlarged population of 700, most of them located in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, followed by La Paz and Cochabamba, having the presence of synagogues in all these cities.^[3]