Ecuador’s Jewish story has two chapters. In the colonial period, conversos of Spanish and Portuguese origin, some of them secretly Jewish, settled in the Andean towns of the Audiencia of Quito, far from the Inquisition’s courts; their descendants became Catholic, though some families in the south, around Loja and Cuenca, keep memories of that ancestry. In the 20th century a new community, mostly Ashkenazi refugees from Nazi Europe, formed in Quito and Guayaquil. Today Ecuador has a few hundred Jews. See also Bnei Anusim and Western Sephardim.
Conversos in the colonial Andes
In the 16th and 17th centuries, New Christians of Jewish descent reached the Viceroyalty of Peru, which included the Audiencia of Quito. Many arrived during the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns (1580–1640), when Portuguese conversos could move more freely within the Spanish empire. The Inquisition tribunal for the region sat in Lima, and conversos accused of practicing Judaism were tried there, above all in the 1630s. Some settled in remote towns such as Loja, Zaruma and Cuenca, where Inquisition oversight was weaker.
Memory and ancestry in southern Ecuador
Families in Loja and its region preserve traditions of converso descent, and local historians and genealogists have worked to document them. Most of these customs survive only as family memory, and claims about specific surnames or foods are hard to prove. Loja province also has one of the world’s largest groups of people with Laron syndrome, a rare inherited growth disorder; researchers have linked these families to converso settlers of the colonial era, and the group has been studied for its unusual resistance to cancer and diabetes.
The 20th-century community
- Early century. Only four Jewish families were recognized in Ecuador in 1904, and a 1917 count found 14 Jews.
- Refugees. About 2,700 Jews reached Ecuador between 1933 and 1943, most of them from Germany and Central Europe. In 1939 Ecuador accepted 165 refugees from the ship Koenigstein after other South American countries turned them away, but its policy also hardened: a 1938 decree ordered Jews not working in agriculture or industry to leave.
- Institutions. The Asociación de Beneficencia Israelita, founded in 1938, became the community’s central body. Around 1950 the community reached its peak of about 4,000, mostly in Quito, with smaller groups in Guayaquil, Ambato, Riobamba and Cuenca.
- Decline. Many families later moved to Israel, the United States and other Latin American countries.
The community today
About 290 Jews live in Ecuador, most of them in Quito, where the community keeps a synagogue and the Colegio Experimental Alberto Einstein, a school founded in 1973 that teaches Jewish and non-Jewish students. Interest in converso ancestry has grown in Loja and elsewhere, as it has across Latin America.
Notable people
- Benno Weiser Varon 1913–2010 · Czernowitz Journalist in Quito who joined Israel’s diplomatic service and served as an ambassador in Latin America; author of the memoir Professions of a Lucky Jew.
- Moselio Schaechter b. 1928 · Milan Microbiologist who grew up in Ecuador; known for his work on bacterial growth.
Sources and further reading
- “History of the Jews in Ecuador”, Wikipedia.
- “Sephardic Bnei Anusim”, Wikipedia.
Revised October 2026 to correct errors in an earlier version of this page.
