Andinia Plan

The Andinia Plan (Spanish: Plan Andinia) is an antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging a coordinated Jewish or Israeli project to establish a sovereign Jewish state in Patagonia, in southern Argentina and Chile. Historical scholarship treats the alleged territorial project as a conspiracist narrative, rather than an established plan. Historian Ernesto Bohoslavsky traces its origins to nationalist and neo-Nazi circles associated with Adolf Eichmann's sons after Eichmann's capture in 1960. Walter Beveraggi Allende subsequently circulated an anonymous pamphlet among Argentine military officers in 1971, helping disseminate the allegation. The narrative has served as anti-Jewish propaganda in far-right circles.

Jewish immigration and organized agricultural settlement in Argentina have a documented history. Maurice de Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonisation Association in 1891, and its Argentine colonies provided an agricultural livelihood for Jewish immigrants facing economic hardship, legal restrictions and persecution in Europe. Bohoslavsky describes how proponents of the Andinia narrative subsequently recast the association as the supposed nucleus of a future Jewish government.

Contemporary Jewish community life in Patagonia includes local religious and communal institutions. In April 2022, the Jewish community of San Martín de los Andes, which had held gatherings since 1995, held a pre-inauguration ceremony for a synagogue and established links with AMIA for communal support. In May 2026, the municipality of Comodoro Rivadavia reported that officials and AMIA chief rabbi Eliahu Hamra had agreed on lines of action to decentralize AMIA's activities into Patagonia and discussed a joint agenda concerning remembrance, inclusion and community development.

Israeli tourism and business activity in Patagonia have also been documented. Reporting in 2015 described young Israelis visiting the region after completing military service, and AFP reported an Israeli-owned hostel catering to Israeli tourists in Lago Puelo. The Andinia allegation has resurfaced in connection with hostility towards Israeli tourists; in 2026, EFE Verifica found no evidence for a purported government project to settle 300,000 Israeli refugees in Patagonia.

Argentina's National Rural Lands Registry reported in its August 2025 update that foreign ownership exceeded 15% of rural land in more than thirty departments nationwide. Law 26,737, enacted in 2011, set that ceiling at national and subnational levels and preserved previously acquired rights. Javier Milei's government provided for its repeal in Article 154 of DNU 70/2023; on 29 September 2026, the Supreme Court overturned the lower-court judgment blocking that provision for lack of standing, without deciding its constitutional validity, restoring the effect of the repeal according to legal reporting.

Under Milei, Argentina and Israel have expanded bilateral cooperation. In February 2026, the countries signed a tourism memorandum covering travel, services and investment opportunities. In April, Milei and Benjamin Netanyahu launched the Isaac Accords, a framework for cooperation with partners in the Western Hemisphere on security, technology and trade.

Historical origins and misuse

The "Andinia Plan" conspiracy theory relies on the retroactive distortion of late 19th and early 20th-century Jewish and Zionist history in Argentina. Conspiracists have misappropriated historical events, such as state-sanctioned agricultural migration, to falsely construct a narrative of clandestine territorial ambition.

In the late 19th century, the Argentine government, under the Roca administration, encouraged European immigration to facilitate national development. During this period, the Jewish Colonisation Association, sponsored by Maurice de Hirsch and Rabbi Zadoc Kahn, established agricultural settlements to support Jews fleeing persecution. While these projects were authorized by the Argentine state and focused on agrarian settlement, modern antisemitic narratives incorrectly characterize them as the initial stage of a "state-building" project.

The actual Jewish settlement effort in Argentina, largely centered in the Entre Ríos Province, integrated into the regional economy alongside other European immigrant groups. This history of legitimate settlement is frequently exploited by proponents of the Andinia theory to provide a veneer of historical "plausibility" to the claim that a modern, aggressive territorial conspiracy exists.

Conspiracy theory

The extreme right-wing had a strong foothold in the Argentine military, mostly through the teachings of Jordán Bruno Genta. In these circles, the Andinia Plan was sometimes assumed to be a fact, even though the Zionist movement had abandoned all plans related to Argentina decades earlier, and Argentine Jewish institutions (headed by Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas) were recognized by (and conversant with) all Argentine governments, including military juntas.

Later versions of the Plan, as published in Argentine Neo-Nazi media in the 1970s by Walter Beveraggi Allende, involved an alleged Israeli plan to conquer parts of Patagonia in Argentina's south, and declare a Jewish state.

During the 1976–1983 dictatorship, some Jewish prisoners of the armed forces, notably Jacobo Timerman, were tortured for information about the Andinia plan, and were asked to provide details regarding the alleged preparations of the Israel Defense Forces for the invasion of Patagonia.

Timerman recalled details of the interrogation about the Plan Andinia – and his response to the absurdity of such a concept – in Preso Sin Nombre, Celda Sin Número (Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number).

21st century

In the 21st century, conspiracy theorists have exploited the high volume of Israeli tourists in Patagonia to manufacture evidence for the plan. Following a 2011 intentional fire caused by an Israeli in Torres del Paine National Park, some local politicians and media figures falsely alleged a connection to the Andinia Plan, a claim condemned by the Anti-Defamation League. The 2026 Patagonia wildfires reignited the Andinia Plan conspiracy, with proponents falsely accusing Israeli tourists of intentionally starting the blazes.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Bohoslavsky, Ernesto (2008). "Contra la Patagonia Judía. La familia Eichmann y losnacionalistas Argentinos y Chilenos frente al plan Andina (de 1960 a nuestros días)". Cuadernos Judaicos (in Spanish) (25): 223–248. doi:10.5354/0718-8749.2008.25631.
  2. 1 2 "El Plan Andinia, una teoría descabellada". La Nación (in Spanish). 22 January 2015.
  3. ↑ Levin, Yehuda Julio (2016). "Introducción". Las primeras poblaciones agrícolas judías en la Argentina (1896–1914): Crisis y expansión de las colonias fundadas por The Jewish Colonization Association (in Spanish). Teseo. ISBN 9789877231182.
  4. ↑ García Pastormerlo, Paz (9 April 2022). ""Es un sueño": la historia de la colectividad patagónica que logró abrir su propia sinagoga". La Nación (in Spanish).
  5. ↑ "Macharashvili recibió al Gran Rabino Eliahu Hamra para profundizar la agenda de trabajo conjunta de la AMIA" (in Spanish). Municipality of Comodoro Rivadavia. 26 May 2026.
  6. ↑ Maradona, Soledad (22 January 2015). "Violento ataque antisemita en un hostel de Lago Puelo, en Chubut". La Nación (in Spanish).
  7. ↑ AFP (21 January 2015). "Argentina hostel hit by anti-Semitic attack". The Times of Israel.
  8. ↑ Álvarez, David (8 May 2026). "Nada prueba que exista un proyecto para crear un barrio privado para 300.000 "refugiados israelíes" en la Patagonia argentina". EFE Verifica (in Spanish).
  9. ↑ "Extranjerización por departamento" (in Spanish). National Rural Lands Registry. August 2025. Retrieved 5 October 2026.
  10. ↑ "Texto actualizado — Ley 26737" (in Spanish). Government of Argentina. Retrieved 5 October 2026.
  11. ↑ "La Corte Suprema revocó el fallo que había declarado inconstitucional el DNU que derogó la Ley de Tierras". Palabras del Derecho (in Spanish). 29 September 2026.
  12. ↑ Marina, Rosario (30 September 2026). "Qué se sabe sobre la derogación de la Ley de Tierras y el fallo de la Corte Suprema". Chequeado (in Spanish).
  13. ↑ "Argentina e Israel firmaron un Memorándum de Entendimiento en materia de turismo" (in Spanish). Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship. Retrieved 26 October 2026.
  14. ↑ Berman, Lazar; ToI Staff; AFP (19 April 2026). "Milei, Netanyahu announce Tel Aviv-Buenos Aires flights, ink strategic Isaac Accords". The Times of Israel.
  15. ↑ Calabrese, Frank J. (1994). The Palestine legacy: a politico-legal history, 1917–1990. UNIFO Publishers. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-89111-031-6.
  16. ↑ Rein, Raanan; Davidi, Efraim (2010). "Exile of the World". Jewish Social Studies. 16 (3): 4. doi:10.2979/jewisocistud.16.3.1. S2CID 159797082. Timerman stressed that the issue of his Judaism came up repeatedly during every interrogation, which included questions about Israeli schemes to send military forces to Argentina in order to implement the 'Andinia Plan', an apocryphal Zionist conspiracy to occupy a broad section of the Patagonian provinces in southern Argentina and establish a second Jewish state there.
  17. ↑ Timerman 1981, pp. 29–30.
  18. 1 2 Timerman 1981, pp. 73–74.
  19. ↑ "Conaf confirma que mayoría de expulsiones de Torres del Paine corresponden a turistas israelíes". www.duna.cl.
  20. ↑ "T13 | Tele 13". www.t13.cl. 4 August 2015.
  21. ↑ "El israelí que causó el incendio en Torres del Paine paga 7.530 € para no ser juzgado | Noticias | elmundo.es". www.elmundo.es.
  22. ↑ "ADL Outraged by Anti-Semitic Conspiracies Circulating in Connection with Tragic Fire in Chilean Patagonia". Anti-Defamation League. 5 January 2012. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  23. ↑ Mendez Shiff, Pablo (13 January 2026). "In Argentina, a Decades-old Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Has Been Reignited by Patagonia's Wildfires". Haaretz. Retrieved 11 February 2026.
  24. ↑ Lidor, Canaan (14 January 2026). "Argentine pundit apologizes for linking fires to Israelis". JNS. Retrieved 6 June 2026.