‘Serve the nation, kill a Jew’ graffitied on prominent Buenos Aires monument
Antisemitic slogan, which has long history on Argentina’s far right, written on monument to independence hero Simon Bolivar days after Oct. 7 anniversary
JTA — An antisemitic slogan with a long history in Argentina was discovered graffitied onto a monument in a Buenos Aires park on Wednesday, unnerving local Jews.
The graffiti, reading “Serve the nation, kill a Jew,” was inked onto a column of a monument to Simon Bolivar, historically considered “the Liberator” of South America, in Parque Rivadavia in the Argentine capital. A Jewish star stood in for the final word of the slogan.
Argentina’s leading Jewish organization, known as DAIA, filed an official complaint, and the municipality swiftly cleaned up the graffiti in the afternoon, shortly after it was discovered.
DAIA condemned the “serious antisemitic graffiti” and said it was one of more than 500 antisemitic incidents the organization had recorded this year, amid a spike following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Argentina has a Jewish population of nearly 200,000, the largest in Latin America. The vast majority live in the Buenos Aires area.
“Today Parque Rivadavia woke up like this,” Federico Ballan, the president of the district that includes the park, wrote on social media as he shared a picture of the graffiti.
La DAIA manifiesta su preocupación frente a la aparición de una grave pintada antisemita en el monumento a Simón Bolivar, ubicado en el Parque Rivadavia de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.
La entidad presentó la denuncia en el Ministerio Público Fiscal de la Ciudad con el objetivo de… pic.twitter.com/UxJN6HlE0l
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) October 9, 2024
“We are already working to clean it up. The complaint has already been filed and we are going to do everything in our power to identify these criminals,” Ballan said.
A close variant of the phrase has a long history on the country’s far right. The Nationalist Liberation Alliance, a World War II-era Argentine movement affiliated with the Nazis, used the phrase, and it was later employed by Tacura, a fascist movement that was active in Argentina in the decades following the war.
It has appeared more recently as well. A decade ago, residents in the town of General Paz received tax bills with the phrase written on them. The city official responsible for the printing was ultimately sentenced to a suspended jail term and was ordered to apologize and learn about the Holocaust.
The graffiti was discovered the same week that Jews in Buenos Aires marked the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel last year. An event organized by the country’s largest Jewish organizations drew 15,000 attendees, according to the country’s Israeli embassy.
There was a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstration in the city the same day.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.