The 1950 U.S. census has been very good to me! I have finally located my relative Gittel Ett's married name: Rothleder. As a result I have also located an indexed record on the CEMLA.com website for her arrival in Buenos Aires on the Arlanza on 22 September 1926. She traveled from Cherbourg. I have also located an indexed arrival record for someone who appears to have been her son-in-law (Izaak Feingold) who arrived in Buenos Aires on the Francesca on 4 July 1924 from Trieste.

About ten days ago I sent an email to CEMLA [base(at)CEMLA.com] asking to purchase a copy of the actual records. I have not yet heard back from them.

I also noted that there are Buenos Aires arrival and departure records on FamilySearch. I have browsed through them and do not see any arrival records for the noted ships on those dates.

Needless to say, I am very excited about my new finds but would be even more excited if I could get hold of the Argentinian records.

Two questions:

• Does anyone have a better method of contacting CEMLA?
• Does anyone know of alternative repositories for these records?

Thank you!

Emily Garber
Phoenix, AZ

The info provided by the CEMLA database was entered by volunteers from the original entry books.
As far as I know, they were not photographed or microfilmed. Besides, some entry books are lost, for instance, the one correspondng to my oen father's arrival to Buenos Aires.
So, CEMLA would eventually issue a certificate of arrival, not a copy of the records.
There are no alternative repositories for arrivals to Buenos Aires.
Hope this helps.
Alberto Guido Chester
Buenos Aires, Argentina

I try CEMLA but they do not have all the records. They told me that some were missing and some were destroyed do not remember the reason. If you find an alternative reposotries I will be glad to hear about them.

Sara Abrashkin-Rotaru

Dear Emily,

Some 15 years ago, I traced a relative who arrived by ship in BA in the 1920's. Fortunately (for me), he left the ship without permission and disappeared in BA (for a romantic reason). He was reported to the authorities by a jealous competitor and spent two weeks in jail for entering the country illegally. I was able to pick up the trail from the legal records with fantastic assistance from a member of the Argentinian genealogical society.

In your case, find out from Lloyds in London (database) for which company these vessels sailed. If it was the Dutch KNSM for instance, you stand a good chance of finding passenger lists on their site.

Regards,

Paul Koulen

I would imagine by now you may have already received an answer, but in addition to the digital images you mentioned that are located in FamilySearch, the Argentinian national archives also has digitized copies. Their collection indicates over 800 registers, so I imagine that is more than what is available on FamilySearch. 

https://atom.mininterior.gob.ar/index.php/libros-de-entrada-de-pasajeros-via-maritima

It says that you should be able to access what has been digitized thus far through their web portal, but on their website, I only see a Log in, but no way to register for an account. I've tried calling them a couple of times today with no answer. I am hoping that they have a more organized way of viewing these, than how FamilySearch currently has them.

Anyone else have any updates?
--
Martha Campbell

Try Familysearch data with the records of immigrants to the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina. For each boat that arrived to the port of Buenos Aires there was a folder that included the passenger's data and the port of departure, the captain report (how many people were born, sick or died on the trip), the doctor's report/list of sick (it is possible he went on the boat and did the sanitary inspection of the people on board?), people with documentation issues (or no documentation) and all followup documents related to each case, letters of an Argentinian consulate explaining the issues and recommendations related to passengers documentation (in one case a letter stating that Dr Plank is being sent by the city of Danzig government. to perform studies in Argentina. He was an expert in refrigeration and was going to set up industrial cooling in the slaughterhouses of Argentina in 1925). The documents of the folder are mostly in Spanish. Documents may be in the language of the port of departure or Shipping company.
Important to this site is the column about religion of the passenger. Israelita is the Argentinian word was used for Jewish and was abbreviated as Israel.
The data is not indexed but if you know the name of the boat and the arrival date you can look up the scanned documents.
You may start your search at
https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/search-results?creator=Direcci%C3%B3n%20General%20de%20Migraciones&page=1&endDate=1925-09&startDate=1925-09
and change the date to the arrival date of your particular boat.
Unfortunately some of the documents may not be legible. There is a tool built-in to make it visible, but in some cases it may not work. The carbon copies of the lists have been affected by the very humid weather of Buenos Aires.
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Angel Kosfiszer

Richardson, Texas

it’s great to have access to the records, but how can you find anybody? i have relatives who emigrated to buenos aires (and montevideo), but i don’t have even approximate dates, and definitely not the name of the ship.

....... tom klein, toronto
--

....... tom klein, toronto

Thank you to all who have responded to my post from a year ago!

Tom:

To locate indexed passenger manifests for ships that arrived in Argentina, go to the CEMLA website. You can search on a name there (apeliido means last name). Be aware that spelling does count in the search box. So, you may have to try a variety of spellings.
https://cemla.com/buscador/

Emily Garber

You may try to access and search the CEMLA.com data base with the family name of your relatives. If you find them there you will have the date and the ship name.
--

Angel Kosfiszer

Richardson, Texas

Angel Kosfiszer,

Thank you so much for identifying this newly digitized resource on FamilySearch.org. I had to browse through several pages of manifest packages from 1926, but I was able to locate the Arlanza, which arrived in Buenos Aires with Gitla Rothleder, her daughter Perla Feingold and Perla's two children. There are 48 pages in the packet (!). I have attached page 28 - showing my relatives.

This is a terrific resource!

Emily Garber

You can look up the passengers to Montevideo on familysearch easily as they are indexed but not all records have been indexed. I found my grandparents arriving in 1928.

Shosh Eizenshtein,  Toronto