Explore "Insecure Whiteness: Jews Between Civilization and Barbarism, 1880s–1940s" by Sandra McGee Deutsch on Textopian.
Argentine racial constructions of Jews were rooted in notions about immigration that surfaced in the Constitution of 1853 and surrounding debates.
Heeding liberal wishes to civilize and modernize the country by altering its population, this document affirmed that the federal government would promote European immigration. Falling short of declaring Catholicism the official religion, the Constitution declared that the federal government would support this faith, yet it also guaranteed freedom of religion for all inhabitants. In doing so, its framers were mindful of Juan Bautista Alberdi's warning: "To summon the Anglo-Saxon race and the populations of Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and to refuse them the practice of their religion, is the same as not summoning them. " Only Northern European settlers could eradicate the barbarism of the Indians and mestizos, according to Alberdi and Sarmiento, and they would never come without a guarantee of their religious rights.