History
European-Peruvians established Iquitos as a Jesuit mission to the indigenous peoples in the 1750s. In 1864 it started to grow when the settlers created the Loreto Region and made Iquitos its capital. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic Apostolic Vicariate.
Iquitos was known for its rubber industry through the rubber boom of the 1900s (decade); it attracted thousands of immigrants from around the world, mostly young, single men who hoped to make their fortunes in rubber. The rise of the automobile and related industries had dramatically increased the worldwide demand for rubber. Some men became merchants and bankers, and made their fortunes that way. Many of the European men married indigenous women and stayed in Peru the rest of their lives, founding ethnically mixed families. The immigrants brought European clothing styles, music and other cultural elements to Iquitos.
Among the unique communities formed by the 19th-century rubber boom immigration was one of Sephardic Jews from Morocco. Many of the men married Peruvian women and made families in Iquitos. They established a synagogue and the Jewish Cemetery. By the end of the 20th century, four or five generations later, most descendants were no longer practicing Jews. In the 1990s, a descendant of a Jewish settler undertook serious study of the religion and began to revive Judaism among his family, friends, and other Sephardim descendants. After years of study, with the help of a sympathetic Conservative rabbi in Lima and another from Brooklyn, New York, eventually a few hundred people learned and practiced and converted. (Conversion was necessary as their mothers were not Jewish.) Many of the converts emigrated to Israel under its "right of return" policy.
The wealthiest Europeans built great mansions in the late 19th century, some of which survive. Casa de Fierro (Spanish for the Iron House) was designed by Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower. After rubber seeds were smuggled out of the country and began to be cultivated in quantity elsewhere, the Peruvian boom came to an end. The city is still an important trading port in the Amazon basin.
On August 13, 2012, a special plaque was placed in the plaza 28 de Julio of the city in a big ceremony to commemorate the Amazon River and rainforest as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The 21st-century-style plaque was forged alongside that of the Iguazu Falls in Munich, Germany.
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