Iquitos: The Jewish Soul in the Amazon, Notes of a Voyager

Yaacov Hasson was a poet and journalist, but he is most remembered as an official of the Jewish community in Lima, Peru. Hasson was the director of the Jewish community’s Human Relations Office there, and in 1966, acting as cultural attaché of Lima’s Israeli embassy, he formed part of a delegation visiting the “forgotten” mestizo Jews of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. The delegation participated in the official founding of the Peruvian–Israel Institute there. In 1975, he became the editor of La Unión, the Jewish community magazine. In 1990, while head of the Asociación Judía del Perú, Hasson was machine-gunned by suspected Palestinian terrorists, taking eight bullets in his hand and arm. He later founded and edited the Boletín Hebraica.