3,500 Jewish Colonist Families Firmly Established on Jca Colonies in Argentine

The work accomplished by the Jewish Colonization Association in Argentine is reviewed in a report published by the Argentine branch, on the occasion of the recently celebrated 50th anniversary of the foundation of the JCA. The report was made public here today by Louis Oungre, general manager of the organization.

“After fifty years of activity in Argentine,” the report says, “it can be assured that the ideals of the founder of the Jewish Colonization Association have not been defrauded, seeing that there are nearly 3,500 colonist families firmly established, many of whom are Argentine born, sons and grandsons of the first settlers. However, it is comprehensible that complete success has not always crowned the efforts made by the Association.

“As occurs with agriculturists of all nationalities, there have sometimes been desertions, either for family reasons (illness, abandonment of families, etc.), or because an unexpected increase in land values has tempted some to mortgage their property and attempt some other kind of enterprise with the capital so realized. Sometimes the colonists also became discouraged by a succession of bad harvests and looked for other fields of action, but in this case they have not always been lost to agriculture, and today several hundred Jewish agriculturists, ex-colonists of the Association or sons of colonists, have settled in the centres of Medanos and Villalongs (Province of Buenos Aires), Villa Alba (Pampa), General Roca (Rio Negro), General Pinedo and Charata (Chaco).

“As regards the sons of present colonists, although some of them sometimes abandon their father’s farm in order to dedicate themselves to other activities, the majority of them continue exercising their profession of agriculturists,” the report points out. “The program which the Jewish Colonization Association set itself and which it has succeeded in carrying out, has been the settling of a chosen element and their eventual conversion into good Argentine agriculturists. For this reason this Institution is encouraged to continue its work, expanding and perfecting it in the light of experience gained, without departing from its fundamental principals and from its policy which up to now have assured its success.”