The Jewish presence in Bolivia dates back to the period of Spanish conquest and colonization that started in the early the 16th century, when it became one of the primary destinations for Spanish Jews who had formally converted to Christianity, and became known as Marranos.

With the mining boom of the sixteenth century, a number of Marranos settled in Potosí. They soon achieved economic success in mining and commerce and were persecuted by the newly imported Inquisition; as well as by local authorities in Potosi and neighboring La Paz, who accused them of converting locals to Judaism. As a result, most families of Jewish origin moved to Santa Cruz, at the time a remote and isolated settlement, where the Inquisition was less active.

In 1905, a small number of Russian Jews settled in Bolivia, followed by a group of Argentinian Jews. In 1917, it was estimated that there were only between 20 and 25 practicing Jews living in the country, and in 1933, at the outset of Nazi rule in Germany, there were 30 Jewish families in Bolivia.

While there was only a handful of practicing Jews in Bolivia in the 1930s, the rise of Nazism in Germany led to significant growth in the Bolivian Jewish community, which was bolstered by an influx of 12,000 German Jewish immigrants. Moritz (Mauricio) Hochschild, one of the principal Bolivian mining industrialists, is credited with enabling some 9,000 German Jews to find refuge in Bolivia. However, most of these newcomers did not stay in Bolivia, with many moving on to Argentina, Chile, the United States, and Uruguay. Bolivia primarily served as a transit route rather than a final destination.

The European Jewish refugees who stayed in Bolivia settled in La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Santa Cruz, Sucre (Chuquisaca), Tarija and Potosí. They were augmented by another, post-war, wave of Polish immigrants. By the late 1940s there were around 5,000 Jews living in Bolivia. The vast majority of them have since emigrated.