The Twisted Roots of Hispanic Anti-Semitism

By ILAN STAVANS

Latin America has a pattern of prejudice that is little known but increasingly worrisome

In Caracas in 2006, after the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, the most vocal anti-American leader in the Southern Hemisphere since Fidel Castro, delivered a speech against the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, anti-Semitic graffiti were scribbled on the central Sephardic synagogue. "Zionism=Terrorism," one slogan read. Another, "Jews Assassins." The periodicals Diario Vea and Temas