Sephardic Jews of Venezuela: Coro and Caracas

Venezuela’s Sephardi history is really the story of Curaçao reaching across the water.

The historic Sephardi community was at Coro, on the coast opposite Curaçao, founded from the 1820s by Curaçaoan Jews who were themselves Amsterdam Portuguese Jews one or two generations back.

Coro was the first Jewish community on the South American mainland after independence, and its cemetery is often called the oldest Jewish cemetery in continuous use in the Americas. But it was short-lived as an organised community. Anti-Jewish riots in 1855 drove the Jews back to Curaçao, and although some returned, the community faded.

Do Venezuelan Jews today descend from Coro?

Mostly not, and this is the most important thing on the page.

The modern community is a separate, twentieth-century immigration. This page therefore holds two unconnected stories.

The historic Coro community — Curaçaoan Sephardim of the 1820s to 1850s — is the richer genealogical seam and the one tied to the other Caribbean pages on this site.

The modern community of Caracas and Maracaibo is Moroccan, Levantine and European, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The famous unbroken link is the link to Curaçao, not a continuous line from Coro to the present.

What Venezuela means here

For the historic community, Coro: capital of Falcón state, on the Caribbean coast only about seventy kilometres from Curaçao, and the natural mainland partner of the island’s trade.

For the modern community, Caracas above all, holding more than half the country’s Jews, and the oil city of Maracaibo, with a smaller community at San Cristóbal.

The closeness of Coro to Curaçao is the whole point. The two were a single commercial and family world, and Coro’s Jews kept their Dutch nationality and their Curaçao ties throughout, which is why the Dutch government intervened so forcefully on their behalf in 1855.

The political frame matters for the records. Venezuela’s 1830 constitution initially restricted Jews, barring interior settlement and, in one article, their worship and cemeteries. The congress modified this in 1830 and granted full religious freedom in 1834, allowing synagogues and cemeteries as allowed in Coro. So the Coro community lived under a Venezuela that was formally tolerant but locally uneven: protected by law and by Curaçao, but exposed to local hostility.

Where they came from

From Curaçao, and behind Curaçao from Amsterdam and the Portuguese Jewish diaspora.

Individual Curaçaoan Jews settled at Coro from as early as 1797, when Samuel Pereira Brandao renounced his Dutch nationality to become a Venezuelan citizen.

A little before 1825 the Venezuelan government actively invited the Jews of Curaçao to settle at Coro, guaranteeing protection and religious liberty. They came not as refugees but as merchants and shippers bringing capital, credit and Curaçao trade connections.

The recurring family names are the Curaçao Sephardi names: Senior, Maduro, Curiel, Lopez Henriquez, Namias de Crasto, De Lima, De Sola, Jesurun, Alvares Correa, Abenatar, Delvalle, Pereira and Hoheb. The Senior family is so central that it has its own book-length study, Blanca de Lima’s Los Senior de Coro.

How they made a living

Trade. They were the commercial engine of Coro.

The Coro Jews handled the greatest part of the port’s customs revenue, some 60,000 to 70,000 Venezuelan dollars a year by 1848. They ran the import-export trade with Curaçao, and financed the local government, repeatedly lending it large sums to maintain the garrison.

The Venezuelan government appointed the Curaçaoan Jew David Hoheb mayor of Coro in recognition of the community’s economic weight.

This very prominence — wealthy, foreign, and the government’s creditors — made them a target when politics turned.

What happened at Coro in 1855?

Through 1854 the military commandant, General Falcón, pressed the Jews for ever more loans. When they finally refused a further loan — Jeudah Senior had lent 500 pesos on 31 December 1854 despite earlier loans going unpaid — local resentment was stoked into violence.

In early February 1855 inflammatory pamphlets, La Mano de Dios, El Pueblo y los Judios and A los Judios, incited the populace against the Jews.

On the night of 4 February 1855 some thirty armed men, mostly discharged soldiers, fired on Jewish homes, sacked the businesses of Jeudah Senior and Samuel Levy Maduro Jr., desecrated the cemetery, and demanded the Jews’ expulsion, shouting death to the Jews and life to their money.

The community fled. 160 refugees reached Curaçao on 13 February 1855.

The aftermath is well documented and genealogically valuable. In Curaçao the refugees recorded a formal protest before a notary, signed by the heads of the Coro firms — effectively a named list of the entire merchant community.

The Dutch government demanded and eventually secured an indemnity of 200,000 florins from Venezuela, refusing, as it had against Spain and Portugal in the seventeenth century, to distinguish Christian from Jewish Dutch subjects: a Dutch subject is a Dutch subject. Coro’s governor and judge were dismissed.

In 1858 many refugees returned to Coro, accompanied by Rabbi Chumaceiro of Curaçao.

Where they went

Back to Curaçao, and then dispersed.

The 1855 riots broke the community. Though some returned in 1858, Coro never recovered its former standing, and its Jews gradually assimilated or moved on, to Curaçao, to other Venezuelan cities, and into the general population.

This is why Venezuelan Jews today rarely trace to Coro: the line largely runs back into Curaçao rather than forward into modern Venezuela.

Coro’s Sephardim, being few and often marrying out — there was no synagogue, and services were held in private homes such as that of A. M. Senior — left descendants who are as often Catholic Venezuelans of Jewish descent as members of the Jewish community.

The modern community

The Jewish community of Venezuela today, numbering in the low tens of thousands at its twentieth-century peak and now much reduced by emigration amid the country’s crisis, is a separate, later formation.

It has two main strands: Sephardim from Morocco, many by way of the Amazon and the Caribbean, and from the Levant; and Ashkenazim from Europe, especially refugees of the 1930s and 1940s.

It is centred on Caracas and Maracaibo. The Museo Sefardí de Caracas curates the Sephardi heritage. This community is not descended from Coro, though it honours the Coro story as the country’s Jewish origin point.

The Coro cemetery

With no synagogue built — the community worshipped in private homes to avoid offending Catholic sensibilities — the cemetery is the heart of the Coro record.

Established in the 1830s, it is often described as the oldest Jewish cemetery in continuous use in South America, and is a Venezuelan national monument.

It was desecrated in the 1855 riots but survives, and its inscriptions, carrying the Curaçao-derived family names, are the primary genealogical source for the historic community. A JewishGen collection indexes Coro records, some 292 entries.

Records

The Coro community is documented through Curaçao and Dutch colonial records as much as Venezuelan ones, because its Jews were Dutch subjects and because the 1855 events were handled as a Dutch-Venezuelan diplomatic matter.

Start here

Isaac and Suzanne Emmanuel’s History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles (1970) carries the fullest primary account of the Coro community and the 1855 riots, including the named notarial protest of the refugees.

Because the Coro Jews were Curaçaoan, the Curaçao community and colonial records, and the Dutch archives in The Hague, document them directly.

The Curaçao circumcision and marriage registers, and the travelling mohel Moises Frois Ricardo’s journal — which records circumcisions at Coro, Maracaibo, Barcelona, Caracas, La Guaira and Puerto Cabello in the 1850s and 1860s — tie Coro individuals into the wider Curaçao record.

Venezuelan scholarship and records

The Venezuelan Sephardi scholarship is strong. Isidoro Aizenberg’s La Comunidad Judia de Coro, 1824–1900 is the standard history. Jacob Carciente’s La Comunidad Judia de Venezuela and Presencia Sefardi en la historia de Venezuela, and the collective Los Sefardies: Vinculo entre Curazao y Venezuela, cover the wider story. Blanca de Lima’s Los Senior de Coro is a deep family study.

Local records survive in Coro, at the Biblioteca Oscar Beaujón and the Fundación Los Senior de Coro, and Venezuelan civil and notarial records carry the community.

What has and hasn’t been researched

The Coro community is well served by scholarship for its size; the connective genealogy is where the work remains.

The Coro community and the 1855 riots are well documented. Emmanuel, Aizenberg and de Lima give a strong, named foundation.
The Curaçao link, family by family. Every Coro line runs back to Curaçao, and matching Coro individuals to the Curaçao registers is the single most productive task.
The descendants who stayed. Tracing the Coro Sephardim who assimilated into Catholic Venezuela, as opposed to those who returned to Curaçao, is largely undone, and is a matter of documented descent rather than assumption.
The modern community is under-documented genealogically in English, and its origins abroad are traceable but rarely traced.

Organisations and repositories

Asociación Israelita de Venezuela, Unión Israelita de Caracas, and the Confederación de Asociaciones Israelitas de Venezuela. [LINK NEEDED]

Museo Sefardí de Caracas. [LINK NEEDED]

The Coro Jewish cemetery, a national monument, and in Coro the Biblioteca Oscar Beaujón and the Fundación Los Senior de Coro.

For the Curaçao end of any Coro line: the Mongui Maduro Library and Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, Willemstad, and the Dutch National Archives, The Hague, holding the 1855 diplomatic file and colonial records.

JewishGen, for the Coro records collection; the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati.

Help us find records

We are looking for:

Transcriptions and images of the Coro Jewish cemetery inscriptions
The 1855 notarial protest and indemnity file naming the Coro merchant families
Records matching Coro individuals to the Curaçao community registers
Documentary evidence for families who remained in Venezuela and assimilated, as opposed to returning to Curaçao
Registers of the modern Caracas and Maracaibo communities, and their origins in Morocco, the Levant and Europe
Venezuelan civil and notarial records naming individual Coro Jewish merchants

If you hold any of this, or know where it is, please email [email protected].

Research services

Venezuelan research divides in two. A historic Coro line is traced through the Curaçao records and the Emmanuel and Aizenberg scholarship, in Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Hebrew, and almost always runs back to Curaçao and thence to Amsterdam. A modern line is traced through Venezuelan civil and community records, and back to Morocco, the Levant or Europe. Knowing which story a family belongs to is the first step. If you would like help, you can hire a Sephardic genealogist.

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