ABSTRACT
In the 1930s, Argentine anti-Semitism changed in two significant respects. The traditional form brought from Europe had denounced or persecuted Jews because of their purported predilections for, or mythic identification with, specific behaviour—they were believed to be well-poisoners or Christ-killers, monopolists or usurers or white-slavers, socialists, anarchists or Bolsheviks. The immediate origins of the Argentine counterrevolutionary movements of the 1930s lay in the bitter labor strife that convulsed Argentina at the end of World War I. Until the 1930s, nativism had been a lesser component of antiradicalism. Foreigners were less feared qua foreigners than qua radicals. During the world economic crisis, however, both the demand for and the supply of migratory laborers dried up temporarily; when it became clear that the harvest could be gotten in without them, restrictions began to be imposed on the free international flow of labor.
