Nuestra América

In this book the anthropologist and historian Claudio Lomnitz recounts the exile of his grandparents, from Eastern Europe to South America, and how, established in Lima in 1924, they became intensely involved in the Peruvian left-wing intellectual environment and strove to link the indigenous past with an emancipatory internationalism that included Jewish culture and thought. They were friends with José Carlos Mariátegui, arguably the most prominent radical thinker in Latin America, and corresponded with Freud and Nobel laureates Rómulo Gallegos and Gabriela Mistral. "This is the story of my family, which is also mine," says Lomnitz. Taking the figure of his grandparents as a reference, Lomnitz builds with personal memories, historical analysis and family sagas memories in which he reveals a dynamic variety of perspectives: from the Romanian ghettos and the Holocaust throughout Europe, the years in South America, the kibbutz and life in Israel and the United States, to his own childhood in Chile, California and Mexico City. A fascinating study of intersections between Jewish and Latin American culture.