The acronym means " Argentine Israelite Mutual Association " and it is as close to Argentine Jews as it is to any other person of the religion who may occasionally be in the country. In this sense, as often happens with many institutions of Hebrew origin, the AMIA welcomes the members of this community from a wide variety of proposals for help and social support.
In the late 19th century, the international Jewish community began promoting a new political movement to return the people of Israel to their original territory. This movement is known as Zionism. In this context, an association was founded in Argentina, the AMIA.
Those who promoted the birth of AMIA were part of the Jews of Ashkenazi origin, a branch of Judaism with its own traditions and a language, Yiddish.
One of the first actions that took place was the creation of a cemetery to bury the deceased Jews according to the religious precepts that mark the tradition of the Torah. In fact, the first name of the entity was "Jevrá Kedusha", which in Hebrew means burial or honorable burial.
At the same time, the members of this association promoted all kinds of cultural and educational activities with the aim of consolidating their values in Argentine society. Similarly, AMIA members promoted social programs to help the most disadvantaged Jewish community, especially immigrants from Eastern Europe.
In the summer of 1994, the centenary of its foundation was commemorated and the headquarters of the AMIA were commemorated on July 18. In this attack, which was caused by the explosion of a car bomb that was parked at the entrance of the institution, 85 people died, most of them Jews and other employees who were in the place working or passers-by who passed by one of the most dynamic areas of the city of Buenos Aires.
For years, the judicial investigation of what happened was paralyzed, but in 2001 the case was reopened and finally the Argentine justice blamed the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah as the maximum responsible for the attack and the Iranian government was considered as the promoter of the terrorist action. However, since then there has been no final trial and the attack on the AMIA headquarters has been involved in all kinds of controversies, debates and mysteries (the death in 2015 of the prosecutor who was going to present new evidence, problems with the extradition of some of the accused, the accusation of impartiality to the first judge who took the case and a long list of anomalous situations).
