DELEANEY, J. (1997) - National Identity, Nationhood and Immigration in Argentina

7/28/2019 DELEANEY, J. (1997) - National Identity, Nationhood and Immigration in Argentina

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NATIONAL IDENTITY, NATIONHOOD,

AND IMMIGRATION IN ARGENTINA: 1810-19301

DeLaney, J. (1997), National Identity, Nationhood and Immigration in

Argentina: 1810-1930, Standford Electronic Humanities Review, vol. 5, n.

2.

In recent years, some of the most interesting literature on immigration has

focused on the relationship between national identity and attitudes toward

immigrants in the host society.2 How members of the receiving countryconstrue nationhoodhow they imagine what nations are and what holds them

togethershapes how they understand the role of immigrants in the national

community. By establishing the criteria for membership, the definition of a

nations identity inevitably defines who can belong to the national community,

on what terms, and what meanings are attached to belonging. Such questions

lie at the very heart of how different societies receive immigrants and treat

minority communities within their boundaries.William Rogers Brubakers recent comparative study Citizenship and

Nationhood in France and Germanyis particularly helpful in elucidating the links

between national self-understanding and attitudes toward the immigrant.

Contrasting Frances traditionally open citizenship policies with Germanys

highly restrictive naturalization laws, Brubaker traces the roots of these

differences to distinctive understandings of the nation. Within the French

tradition, according to Brubaker, the nation is understood in predominantly

political terms. That is, it is conceived as an association of citizens who

voluntarily embrace a common political creed and participate in a wider French

culture. "Frenchness," he notes, "is acquired, not inherited."3 In Germany, in

contrast, the nation is conceived as an ethnocultural community, bound by

blood ties rather than by common political traditions. At a certain level,

Germanness is based on descent rather than voluntary participation, and is

inherited rather than acquired. Both models of nationhood invest immigrants
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with certain roles. The French model views immigrants as individuals who will,

almost inevitably, accept French political and cultural traditions and seek to

become naturalized. In Germany, in contrast, immigrants of non-Germanic

descent are not expected to seek naturalization, since their ancestry bars them

from membership in the larger ethnocultural body.While the histories of both the French and German ideals of nationhood have

proved more complicated than this dichotomous schema suggests, Brubakers

models provide historians with a useful tool for understanding the links between

national identity and views of the immigrant. This essay draws upon his insights

in examining the relationship between changing ideas about nationhood and

changes in attitude toward the immigrant in Argentina during the period 1810

1930.4It charts a shift, occurring at the turn of the century, not only in the way

significant numbers of Argentines began to think about the content of their own

national culture and traditions, but also in their more general understanding of

what it meant to be a nation. During much of the nineteenth century, educated

Argentinesinspired by Frances examplehad understood their nation to be a

political association open to all who embraced a common political creed and

worked for the welfare of the nation. By the opening decades of the twentiethcentury, however, a significant group of young intellectuals, known in Argentine

historiography as cultural nationalists, began to espouse a vision of the nation

that more closely resembled the ethnocultural conception of nationality common

to Germany.Although the members of this movement were limited to a small core of young

intellectuals, cultural nationalists proved influential because they most forcefully

articulated ideas that were already gaining currency among educated

Argentines. In such diverse publications as the mainstream paper La Nacin

and cultural journals such as Ideas, Nosotros, Hebe, Sagitario, Estudios,

Renacimiento, Verbum, Valoraciones, Revista argentina de ciencias politicas,

El monitor de la educacin, and Revista de filosofa, contributors warned of the

dangers of cosmopolitanism and discussed the need to defend la raza

argentina from the threat posed by massive European immigration. Fears about

the loss of national identity and the idea that Argentines formed a distinctive
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ethnocultural group threatened by foreign influences were constant and

pervasive themes of the cultural debates of the period.This shift in how growing numbers of educated Argentines understood

nationality inevitably brought with it new attitudes toward the immigrant. At first

blush, the implications seem obvious. When nationality is conflated with

ethnicity, all voluntaristic elements disappear, and membership in the national

community is a question of descent rather than assent or territorial residence.

Within this understanding of nationhood, people cannot choose or acquire their

nationality: one either is or is not an Italian, Spaniard, or Croat. Individuals who

reside within national borders, but who belong to other ethnic groups, can

perhaps be tolerated, but can never be full-fledged members of the nation.The Argentine case, however, represents an interesting contrast. Instead of

serving as a means of excluding the immigrant from the national community,

Argentine cultural nationalism had a strong integrationist thrust. In Argentina,

the emergence of an ethnocultural understanding of nationhood coincided with,

and indeed was in large part precipitated by, a massive influx of European

immigrants. While deploring the newcomers as a threat to the collective

Argentine race or personality, cultural nationalists and their sympathizers

accepted, albeit at timed begrudgingly, that immigration was inevitable and

believed that the incoming masses should be assimilated or "Argentinized" as

completely as possible. For these individualsand herein lies much of their

messages appealcultural nationalism represented a means of integrating the

immigrant into the national community without disrupting existing political

practices or social hierarchies. What cultural nationalism offered Argentines was

a nation-building project based on the evolution of a putative Argentine race,

rather than on political participation and the civic incorporation of immigrants.5The essay is organized as follows. The first part looks at nineteenth- century

understandings of nationality in Argentina. Focusing on the thought of

prominent intellectuals and political leaders, it examines how the view of

Argentina as a political association meshed with Romantic notions of national

character to shape the nations notoriously liberal immigration and naturalization


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policies. Section II traces the emergence of early twentieth-century cultural

nationalism, looking at ways in which massive immigration and the waning

interest in democratic ideals transformed traditional views of the immigrant. This

section also discusses how cultural nationalists attempted to square ethnic

understandings of Argentine nationality with the very real need to incorporate

the immigrant, and considers the political implications of the ethnocultural vision

of Argentine nationhood. A final section extends the discussion of cultural

nationalisms political implications by looking at the ideas of the movements

harshest critics: the leaders of the Argentine Socialist Party. Articulating an

alternative vision of the nationone that harkened back to nineteenth-century

understandingsArgentine socialists challenged both the assumptions

underlying cultural nationalism and what they viewed as the movements

inherently anti-democratic thrust.NATIONHOOD AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NINETEENTH

CENTURYIf the leaders of Argentinas independence movement could somehow have

been transported to the early twentieth century, they undoubtedly would havebeen bewildered by the manifestos of their descendants. The cultural

nationalists view of the Argentine nation as a unique ethnocultural community

was strikingly at odds with the ideas that informed the 1810 revolutionary

project. Inspired by the example of the French Revolution, Argentine

revolutionaries believed modern nations were first and foremost political

associations, created by individuals who were joined by a shared political vision,

rather than a common language, religion, or other ethnic traits.6 In breaking

with Spain, they invoked not the claims of any pre-existing "historicocultural

nation" suppressed by a colonial power, but the right to establish a new nation

based on the principles of equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty.7As

revolutionary leader Mariano Moreno optimistically proclaimed, "The world has

seldom seen a setting like ours in which a constitution can be modeled that will

give happiness to the people."8Integral to the idea of Argentina as a political entity was the concept of volitional
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allegiance. While membership in the national community was, for practical

reasons, granted to all individuals born within the national territory, it was also

open to those who demonstrated loyalty to the nation and its principles.9

Despite the revolutionaries understandable suspicion of native Spaniards, the

idea that being an Argentine was a choice or act of will rather than a set of

ascriptive traits was well accepted. From the earliest years of the Republic,

foreign-born males were encouragedand indeed pressuredto declare their

allegiance to the new nation. Naturalization requirements were minimal, and

these newly minted citizens enjoyed the same rights as the native-born.10Early immigration policy further reflected the founders vision of Argentineness

as a matter of choice rather than an immutable condition. An official decree,

published in 1812, offered the governmentsimmediate protection to individuals and their families from all nations who wish

to establish their domicile in the territory of the State, assuring them the full

enjoyment of the rights of man in society, insofar as they do not disturb the

public tranquillity and they respect the laws of the country.11

Indeed, Argentinas early leadership did more than simply open the nation to

immigrants. Anxious to settle the vast interior, these leaders believed increasing

the population was one of the new nations most urgent tasks and actively

sought to attract European immigrants.12Yet the vision of Argentina as a nation comprised of individuals "from all

nations" who couldand were expected tonaturalize, was not free of

ambiguities. Despite the universalism implicit in this understanding of

nationality, the idea that nations possess distinctive characters and that their

people have different propensities quickly seeped into discourse about

immigration. In his 1818 diplomatic mission to Europe, independence leader

Bernardino Rivadavia described immigration as themost efficient, and perhaps the only, means of destroying the degrading
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Spanish habits and the fatal gradation of castes, in order to create a

homogenous, industrious and moral population, [which is] the only solid base

for Equality, Liberty and consequently, the Prosperity of a nation.13

The most desirable immigrant, he and his fellow revolutionaries argued, came

from Protestant Europe, for they believed the people of these countries

possessed the qualities necessary for constructing a prosperous, democratic

nation guided by Enlightenment principles.14The idea of national character and the belief that members of different nations

were stamped with distinctive characteristics gained force in later decades, as

the following generation of Argentines grappled with, and attempted to explain,

the failure of Enlightenment ideas to take hold. In 1829, universal suffrage

brought to power the infamous caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, who established

one of Latin Americas most enduring and brutal dictatorships. Seeking to

understand Rosas continued popularity among the lower classes, progressive

intellectualsmany of whom spent the Rosas years in exiledrew inspiration

from German Romanticism with its emphasis on immutable national character

and distinctive national destinies.15As Domingo F. Sarmiento, one of the

foremost members of this generation put it, "We ... began to learn something of

national inclinations, customs, and races, and of historical antecedents."16The liberal project had sputtered, these thinkers argued, because revolutionary

leaders had underestimated the continued strength of the Spanish colonial

legacy.17 Criticizing their predecessors belief that they could create a newnation ex nihlo, members of the Generation of 1837 argued that the Argentine

people, the raw material of the nation, had in a sense already existed before the

war of independence, having been formed (or deformed) during the long years

of colonial rule. Unfortunately for progressives, the character of this people was

fundamentally Spanish: prone to violence, despotism, and religious fanaticism,

and thus resistant to the Enlightenment ideals the founding fathers had so

cherished. Argentine geography, Sarmiento believed, had only exacerbated
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these negative tendencies. The harsh conditions of the vast, empty pampas,

combined with Spanish proclivities, had created a national type and a style of

life whose principal characteristics were impulsiveness, violence, and sloth.18What might be called the discovery of an Argentine race or character rooted in

history and shaped by geography, religion, and even language had several

implications.19 First, according to the members of this generation, expunging

the Hispanic legacy entailed much more than simply imposing liberal

democratic institutions on a backward society. It required, instead, a

hardheaded assessment of the Argentine character and a willingness to

abandon abstract principles in favor of more realistic policies.20 Romantic

notions about national character thus provided Argentine intellectuals with a

way to justify a retreat from the goal of participatory democracy.21The belief

that the Argentine people were fundamentally unsuited to be participating

citizens led intellectuals such as Juan Bautista Alberdi to argue for an

evolutionary model of Argentine politics. According to Alberdi, whose famous

Bases y puntos de partida para la organizacin poltica de la Repblica

Argentina [Bases and Points of Departure for the Political Organization of the

Argentine Republic] provided a blueprint for the Argentine Constitution of 1853,Argentina must first pass through what he called the "possible republic": a

period characterized by limited suffrage and rule by a progressive but

essentially authoritarian state. Only later, once Argentina developed social and

economic structures comparable to those of Western Europe, would the

possible republic give way to the "true republic," i.e., a fully functioning

democracy.22But while their analysis of Argentine ills drew heavily from Romantic concepts of

national character, how members of this generation understood what modern

nations were, or should be, remained firmly rooted in the French tradition. In

direct contrast to the Romantic view of nations as ethnocultural communities

existing prior to and independently of political institutions, these thinkers held

fast to the conviction that true nations must, as much as possible, approximate

the model of nationhood that had emerged from the French Revolution.23 In

other words, the modern nation was, in their view, a political association based
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on citizenship rather than an ethnocultural community based on putative ethnic

traits. Thus constructing the Argentine nation, they believed, was not a matter of

fortifying Argentine culture, religion, language, or traditions, or of cultivating a

mythic pastfar from it. Rather, since this past was seen as an obstacle to

nation building, creating the nation consisted of instilling in the Argentine people

a common set of political beliefs that would bind them together.24What, then, was the role of immigration in this project to transform Argentina

into a modern nation of citizens? Quite simply, the Generation of 1837 saw

European immigration as the cornerstone upon which the new Argentina would

be built. Like Rivadavia before them, these intellectuals viewed Northern

European immigration as the remedy for Argentinas economic and political ills.

Accordingly, Alberdi believed, the government should encourage the

immigration of Anglo-Saxons in order to "fit the population to the political system

we have proclaimed." Anglo-Saxons, he proclaimed, "are identified with the

steamship, with commerce, and with liberty, and it will be impossible to

establish these things among us without the active cooperation of that

progressive and cultivated race." Spanish immigrants, in contrast, were

unwelcome and would only compound Argentinas difficulties. Stridently anti-Spanish, Alberdi argued that Spaniards were "incapable of establishing a

republic," either here in America or there in Spain.25It is worth remembering here that the term "race" as used in this context was

cultural and historical, rather than biological.26 Spaniards and Britons were

different, these individuals believed, not because of inherited or genetic qualities

(scientific racism had yet to have an impact in Argentina), but because they

belonged to different cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions. While birth

determined key aspects of the individuals personalitythe individual was

inevitably shaped by the national group into which he or she was born

nineteenth-century intellectuals remained optimistic that native Argentines could

acquire, through simple contact or more formal education, the desired Anglo-

Saxon traits. Thus liberal reformers such as Alberdi and Sarmiento desired

Anglo-Saxon immigration not to improve the genetic stock of the national

population, but to help transform the work habits and customs of this native


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population.27The related beliefs that Argentina should strive to construct a nation of citizens

based upon Republican principles and that Northern European immigration

would play a key role in bringing about this transformation did not last. The

closing decades of the nineteenth century witnessed two transitions, one

demographic and the other political, that changed both how educated

Argentines viewed the immigrant and how they understood the Argentine

nation. The first change, somewhat paradoxically, was the onset of massive

immigration. Despite the pro-immigration attitudes of the Generation of 1837,

(which came to power after the defeat of Rosas in 1852), few Europeans found

Argentina an attractive destination. After 1880, however, circumstances

changed. New political stability, technological advances, the end of the Indian

wars, and surging European demand for imported food combined to unleash an

export boom of remarkable intensity and duration. With this new prosperity,

what had been a modest trickle of immigrants became a cascade. Between

1857, when immigration statistics were first recorded, and 1916, over 2.5 million

immigrants permanently settled in Argentina.28Significantly, however, the vast

majority of these immigrants came not from the Protestant nations of NorthernEurope, but from Italy and Spain.Contrary to the Generation of 1837s expectations, native Argentines received

these immigrants with great ambivalence and even hostility. Indeed, this period

witnessed a growing wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that intensified with the

turn of the century. As will be discussed below, the reasons for this hostility

varied, but what is important to note here is that most fin-de-sicle critics of

immigration were unconcerned by the fact that these newcomers were not the

Northern Europeans mid-nineteenth-century reformers had desired.29The second important transition of the period informing this loss of enthusiasm

for Northern European immigrants was the weakening of the democratic ideal.

By the end of the century, very few Argentine leaders promoted the notion that

Argentines should strive to construct a nation of citizens along the lines of the

French Republican model.30 Inspired by European positivism, Argentine


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political elites embraced the ideal of "scientific politics," meaning that national

leaders should eschew abstract political principles in order to develop, through

observation and experimentation, policies and institutions in tune with the

peculiarities of their societies.31In practice, this meant the establishment of a

political system that was democratic in name only. From 1880 to 1916,

Argentina was ruled by the authoritarian Autonomous National Party or P.A.N.,

a party that controlled elections through patronage, intimidation, and fraud, and

dedicated itself to the twin goals of "order and progress."Argentina under the P.A.N. sounds much like Alberdis possible republic, and

indeed in Argentina the segue from mid-nineteenth-century liberalism to fin-de-

sicle positivism was unusually smooth. As No Jitrik has noted, the positivist

Generation of 1880 was the "organic realization" of the previous generation.32

There were, however, some important differences. Unlike the Generation of

1837s view that the Argentine national character would eventually evolve to the

point where leaders could establish a state based on Republican principles, the

positivist vision of Argentinas future was drained of democratic possibilities.

Arguing that the state should administer rather than govern, positivist-inspired

leaders such as P.A.N. founder Julio Roca envisioned a state run by anenlightened elite whose citizens would contribute to the general welfare but

without challenging established political practices.The anti-democratic character of the Argentine state seems not to have

bothered most immigrants. The popular stereotype of the immigrant as coming

to "hacer la Amrica" (i.e., coming for the sole purpose of making a fortune),

was to a large extent accurate. Economically, immigrants proved quite

successful, inserting themselves in a position above the unskilled Argentine

masses but below the traditional landed elite. There, they formed both the core

of Argentinas urban working class and the emerging middle or entrepreneurial

class.33But while active in the economic sphere, few immigrants demonstrated

any inclination to integrate politically. Naturalization rates were extremely low:

during this period, only two to three percent of all immigrants to Argentina

became citizens.34


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The withering of the democratic ideal under the positivist regime, coupled with

the immigrants reluctance to naturalize, explains why Argentine political leaders

no longer viewed the immigrant as the essential element in the project of

transforming Argentina into a nation of participating citizens. But since

immigrants tendency to shun formal political participation dovetailed so well

with the P.A.N.s authoritarian vision, what accounts for the wave of anti-

immigrant sentiment sweeping Argentina at the turn of the century? What type

of menace did immigrants represent?One fear frequently expressed in the anti-immigrant literature of the period was

that of social upheaval.35Immigrants formed the core of Argentinas new urban

working class and played key roles in the anarchist and syndicalist movements

that began to organize by the 1890s. An alarmed national elite blamed this new

militancy on foreign agitators whose "imported ideologies" had no place in

Argentina. Legislative efforts to remedy the situation resulted in the infamous

Residence Law of 1902 and the 1910 Law of Social Defense, which allowed the

executive branch to deport undesirable foreigners.Another source of anti-immigrant sentiment was concern over the presumed

problem of racial degeneration, which itself was tied to anxiety over the social

question.36In Argentina, as in the rest of Latin American, the final decades of

the nineteenth century witnessed a growing interest in racialist theories as a

way of understanding the continents backwardness vis--vis Europe. Scientific

racism had special poignancy in countries such as Mexico and Brazil, with large

indigenous and African American populations, but Argentine intellectuals and

leaders across the political spectrum also embraced the goal of social reform

through racial improvement. Immigration policy, many believed, would be the

key means of achieving that goal.37Fears about immigrants as avatars of radical, foreign ideologies and as carriers

of racially inferior genes were a large part of the anti-immigrant sentiment

sweeping Argentina during the turn of the century. But another elementand

from my reading of the evidence, the most important onefueling this new anti-

immigrant sentiment was the fear that the immigrant was undermining Argentine


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nationality.THE RISE OF CULTURAL NATIONALISM AND THE IDEA OF AN

ARGENTINE RACEAs noted above, one of the central preoccupations among elites of this period

was the threat of excessive cosmopolitanism and the weakening of Argentine

nationality due to massive immigration. In voicing these concerns, critics of the

immigrant often used the language of scientific racism, but with a very different

understanding of race. Writer Arturo OConnor provides a good example. In an

essay published in Ideas, a literary magazine widely identified with the new

generation of cultural nationalists, OConnor mourns the loss of "the Argentine

race," which was "disappearing under the influx of immigrants." "Race," he

continues, "is nationality," and determines (or carries along with it) our

distinctive "political evolution, sociability, religion, philosophy, science, art,

morality, history and traditions."38 OConnor goes on to describe how alien

values of materialism have replaced the traditional spirituality of the Argentine

people. In a similar vein, Manuel Glvez, one of key proponents of Argentine

cultural nationalism and a co-founder of Ideas, urged his fellow Argentines toreturn to their Spanish roots in their struggle against cosmopolitanism. Calling

Spain the "ancestral dwelling [solar] of the race," Glvez proclaimed it time to

"feel ourselves [to be] Americans and in the ultimate term, Spaniards, given that

this is the race to which we belong."39Even intellectuals who believed that Glvez and others exaggerated the threat

of cosmopolitanism often adopted the idiom of cultural nationalism. In his review

of El solar de la raza in the progressive literary journal Nosotros, Alvaro Melin

Lafinur noted approvingly the new tendency among writers to promote ideals

that would unify Argentines and promote a collective sense of an Argentine

nationality. These efforts stemmed, he continued, from the very real need to

"define our character and to affirm ourselves as a racial entity."40The term "race" in this context clearly carried a very different meaning than that

intended by turn-of-the-century adherents of scientific racism. Cultural


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nationalists, like their nineteenth-century predecessors, understood race to be

cultural and historical rather than biological. For these individuals the term

denoted a people bound together by common historical memory, language,

shared mental and emotional traits, andin the case of Glvezreligion, and

had nothing to do with the emerging science of genetics and heredity. Ricardo

Rojas, who along with Glvez is considered one of the founding fathers of

Argentine cultural nationalism, made this difference explicit when he

proclaimed:I use the term race not in the sense used by materialistic anthropologists, but

in the old, romantic sense [having to do with] collective personality, historical

group, cultural consciousness. Given this idealistic criterion, racial entities defy

objective definitions [and can only be grasped] ... through intuition.41

The distance between the nineteenth-century vision of the immigrant as a

source of democratic values and the early twentieth-century view of the

immigrant as an agent of national dissolution was great indeed. But clearly what

had changed was not simply the assessment of the immigrant, but the

underlying understanding of what nations were and what held them together. As

noted above, nineteenth-century leaders, while believing that the peoples of

different nations possessed distinctive cultural traits and propensities, did not

see culture, language, religion, or common ancestry as the very basis of

nationhood. European immigrants were welcomed precisely because they

supposedly embodied the qualities deemed necessary to construct a modern

nation, i.e., a nation of participating citizens bound by their common belief in a

political creed. The Romantic vision of the nation embraced by early twentieth-

century Argentine cultural nationalists, in contrast, was completely devoid of any

reference to political institutions or practices.42These thinkers considered the

nation to be a prepolitical essence, or in the words of Glvez, to possess a

"historic personality" or psychological structure based on an "irreducible

nucleus."43 Rojas espoused the same view when he noted that the older

countries of Europe, such as Germany, France, Italy, and England, each


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possessed a "spiritual nucleus" that was the consequence of a "homogeneous

race" emerging from the "remote past." These nations, he believed, "preexisted

spiritually" in the sense that the "people [pueblo] had formed before the

[political] nation had been established."44As will be discussed below, this

detachment of nationality from political institutions or practices would have

important implications for how early twentieth-century Argentines viewed the

immigrant.From where did this new way of imagining the nation come? Highly influential,

of course, were European intellectual currents. As noted earlier, the Romantic

understanding of the nation as an ethnocultural community was first elaborated

in early nineteenth-century Germany. It was not until the closing decades of the

century, however, that this vision of nationhood swept the rest of Europe.

Blending with elements of Darwinism,45German idealism helped produce what

Eric Hobsbawm has described as the second great wave of nationalism.46

Latin American intellectuals proved receptive to these currents. Romantic

idealism, in the words of David Brading, "seeped into the Hispanic world in the

1880s, gathered force at the turn of the century, and flowed at high tide after the

First World War."47In Argentina, intellectuals cited as influences French writersHipolyte-Adolphe Taine, Ernest Renan, Maurice Barrs, Charles Maurras, and

Len Daudet, as well as Germans J.G. Fichte, Friedrich Schiller, J. W. Goethe,

and Friedrich Nietzsche. Very often, however, the ideas of these thinkers came

to Argentines filtered through the writings of the Spanish Generation of 1898,

Angel Ganivet, Miguel Unamuno, and Ramiro de Maeztu, whose writings

expressed the need to recover Spains unique traditions and to bring about the

rebirth of the national soul.48

The new idealism and the concern with national character appeared in

Argentina (and in Hispanic America as a whole) under the guise of the literary

movement known as modernismo. Spearheaded by Nicaraguan poet Rubn

Daro and Uruguayan essayist Jos Enrique Rod, both of whom visited

Argentina for extended periods, this movement knitted together a rejection of

positivism and materialism with the Romantic quest for Latin American cultural

autonomy and authenticity.49 In his extraordinarily influential essay Ariel,


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published in 1900, Rod proclaimed the primacy of intuition over the senses

and juxtaposed the supposedly idealistic, aesthetically-inclined Latin race with

the utilitarianism and materialism he believed characterized the Anglo-Saxon

race of the United States. Rods celebration of the Latin spirit, and his belief

that ethnicity provided the basis of solidarity and identity, is made clear in his

statement that "we Latin Americans have an inheritance, a great ethnic tradition

to maintain." A decade later he went on to identify the "idea and sentiment of

the race" with the "communal sense of ancestry."50While outside intellectual currents clearly inspired early twentieth-century

Argentine intellectuals to reimagine what it meant to be a nation, it is also true

that concrete circumstances helped nourish this new understanding of

nationality. The mere presence of so many immigrants, most speaking foreign

tongues, wearing unusual clothes, eating different foods, and engaging in all

sorts of novel (and threatening) behavior such as labor organizing, brought

large numbers of native Argentines face-to-face with the "other," encouraging

them to think about national differences in terms of ethnicity. Modernity itself

played a part, as native Argentines often blamed the immigrant for what were in

fact changes more generally associated with modernization.51 Complaintsabout the new materialism, excessive individualism, and the loss of traditional

Argentine virtues such as honesty, desinters [selflessness], and spirituality

abounded. Against the inevitable centrifugal forces of modernity and the

increasing complexity of everyday life, the ideal of the nation as a cohesive,

homogenous community bound together by history, shared values, and

traditions exercised enormous appeal.Another source of the ethnocultural vision of the nations appeal was the

increasing anxiety over the weakening of old social and political hierarchies.

Elites of the period frequently complained that the lower classes were no longer

sufficiently deferential. In many ways, everyday experience and personal

anecdote reinforced the more abstract fear that working-class militancy had

gotten out of hand. Contributing to this fear about the impending collapse of the

old order was the desire, by a faction of the elite, to push the stalled project of

democratization forward. As early as 1890, a segment of the elite, led first by
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Leandro Alem and later by his nephew Hiplito Yrigoyen, rejected the P.A.N.s

fraudulent practices and called for honest elections. Organized as the Unin

Cvica Radical (U.C.R.), this party constantly agitated for reforms.52Finally in

1914, President Roque Senz Pena, himself a member of the P.A.N., bowed to

pressure and sponsored legislation that made voting both secret and mandatory

for all Argentine citizens. The reforms were effective. In 1916, the U.C.R. gained

control of the presidency which it held until a military coup in 1930.For those Argentines who feared democratization and doubted the U.C.R.s

ability to maintain order, the ethnocultural vision of nationality was

understandably attractive for two related reasons. First, in contrast to the

French model of nationhood, which conceives of the nation as a political

association formed by individuals who share equally in the rights and

obligations of citizenship, the ideal of the nation as an ethnocultural community

can easily tolerate internal hierarchies. As M. Rainer Lepsius has argued, the

model of the ethnocultural nation "is not the basis of pressure for an equal life

situation ... [since] the idea of historical uniqueness of a people is completely

consistent with the differential qualifications of members of the people."53Put

another way, because the very identity of nations modeled along the lines ofpost- Revolutionary France rests, in part, on the ideal of equality, these nations

must to some degree promote egalitarianism. But for nations whose identity

rests on their supposedly unique ethnic characteristics, there is no reason why

social and political hierarchies cannot remain intact.Second, within the ethnocultural understanding of nationhood, the rights of the

individual are seen as secondary to those of the collective. The nation,

according to this model, is not formed by the conscious acts of individuals, but

instead emerges organically over time, unaided by human agency. As such, it

stands above the individual, enjoying a higher status. When the interests of

individuals conflict with those of the nation, the rights of the former are easily

subordinated to the collective interests of the nation.54Thus Manuel Glvez,

who feared that Argentinas Catholic character was being undermined by

Protestant organizations such as the Salvation Army, urged that "apostles of

foreign religions" be expelled, despite constitutional guarantees to the contrary.


17/47

"The Constitution," he proclaimed, "is unquestionably a respectable document,

but nationality should take precedence over the Constitution; the salvation of

the nation requires the violation of the Constitution."55Glvezs intemperate comments, besides highlighting some of the political

implications of the ethnocultural understanding of nationality, bring us to the

obvious problem of the immigrant. If, during the early decades of the twentieth

century, growing numbers of native Argentines began to understand their nation

as a unique ethnocultural community and saw Argentines as forming a

distinctive race, what role did they envision for the millions of immigrants

flooding onto their shores? Could the immigrant become a member of the

Argentine race, and if so, how was this to be accomplished?Common sense tells us that in societies formed by immigration, ethnicity cannot

possibly provide the basis of national identity. Countries such as the United

States must by necessity define nationality in political terms. That is,

membership in the national community cannot depend on the individuals

origins or ethnic qualities, but on his or her willingness to embrace a political

creed and the principles of citizenship. In situations where ethnicity does form

the basis of a nations identity and large-scale immigration occurs, the

immigrant populationas is the case in Germanydoes not enjoy full

membership in the national community. But Argentina, where the idea of the

nation as a ethnocultural community gained force at precisely the moment when

the country was experiencing massive immigration, represents a unique case.

As argued above, in Argentina the ethnocultural vision of the nation, rather than

providing a rationale for marginalizing the immigrant (as occurred in Germany),

served as a means to integrate the foreigner.How was this possible? The key lay in the widely accepted view that in

Argentina a new race was forming, one that would represent an amalgam of the

diverse racial groups that currently coexisted within national borders. Although

some pessimists such as Arturo OConnor saw the immigrant as the destroyer

of the putative Argentine race, much more common was the more optimistic

view that the newcomers would be a part of a new, emerging race.


18/47

Let us listen to the voices of the period. "What we are seeing now," according to

Dr. Salvador Debenedetti, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires,

... is the soul of the future race, characterized by common aspirations, and

shaping itself [plasmandose] slowly and locally under the influence of the social

medium and the environment. Such manifestations are clear symptoms of a

nationality [already] defined or about to become defined....56

Juan Mas y Pi, a well-known writer and critic, proclaimed that "Argentina has

been, and continues to be, a country of great ethnic confusion, [an] enormous

conglomerate of all the races and castes...." From this "confused

conglomeration," he believed, "a great race ... would inevitably emerge."57And

in the words of the poet Almafuerte:The future great soul ... will appear ... when the mind of the new race in

gestation has formed, when the beautiful blond beast that Nietzsche speaks of

has been formed formed from this current Babel, [that will occur] thanks to the

fusion of the bloodlines, the atavisms, the degenerations, the histories, the

diverse origins that now clash ... and repel each other.... [The present situation]

is a frightful hurley-burley that will endure for ... generations until it constitutes

an organism [with a] clearly drawn body [and an] obvious, characteristic

race....58

The emerging raza argentina, then, would include rather than exclude the

immigrant.DEFINING THE ARGENTINE RACEThe idea of Argentina as a race-in-formation had widespread appeal because it

provided a framework for visualizing how to integrate the immigrant into the

national community. But these optimistic proclamations, inclusive though they

might be, tell us nothing about what role the immigrant would have in shaping


19/47

this new race. Like the term "nation" itself, the idea of Argentines as a race-in-

formation was an empty screen upon which any number of images could be

projected. Far from having a definitive shape or character, this notion formed an

arena of contestation in which some of the liveliest intellects of the period would

clashed.How individual thinkers defined the putatively emerging race and what qualities

they privilegedshared descent, language, religion, personality traitsvaried

enormously. How would this race form? Would it be a spontaneous process

occurring naturally over time? Or would it be guided by a native elite who would

determine what was and was not authentically Argentine? At stake here, of

course, was the question of who in Argentina would wield cultural authority.

Also, what was the role of descent? Could the foreign-born become real

Argentines, or could only their offspring born on national soil become real

Argentines? How acquirable were the traits that marked one as a true

Argentine? Were these traits acquirable by all or limited only to those of a

certain ancestry?

A brief comparison of how Rojas and Glvez approached these questions is

illustrative. Of the two thinkers, the latter had the more restrictive notion of the

developing Argentine race. According to Glvez, the Argentine race was

fundamentally Latin, and within the greater racial grouping of Latins, Spanish.

Echoing Rod, Glvez argued that Latins constituted a unique race, sharing the

special traits of spirituality, warmth, and creativity that other races lacked.59In

contrast to the Uruguayan thinker, however, Glvez believed the special

characteristics of Latins were inextricably bound to Catholicism, arguing that

"[r]eligion, like language, is one of the essential fundamentals in which resides

nationality."60In keeping with his vision of Argentina as a fundamentally Hispanic nation

whose identity was intimately bound to Catholicism, it is not surprising that

Glvez believed immigrants from Latin countries (and especially Spain) were

most desirable. Noting approvingly that the great majority of Argentinas

immigrants came from Spain and Italy, Glvez argued that these newcomers
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brought with them the "providential and invisible mission to conserve the

qualities of latinidad in the mixture of peoples [that had come to Argentina] and

to guarantee, in the amalgam of so many metals, the pure gold of latinidad."61

Despite the massive influx of immigrants from all parts, Argentina was and

would remain a Latin, and especially a Hispanic, nation.Glvezs vision of the emerging Argentine race, whose character is preserved

because of the sheer number of Latins entering the country, seems to privilege

heredity or common descent as the basis of nationality.62 Yet elsewhere he

appears to indicate that the qualities distinguishing one people from another can

both be acquired and lost. He complains, for example, that immigrants (and

here he fails to distinguish between Latin and non-Latin immigrants) had come

to Argentina only in search of wealth, thereby introducing natives to a "new

concept of life" and "infecting" them with the vice of materialism.63The obverse side of this fear that Argentines could become denationalized by

contact with alien values is that immigrants could themselves be transformed

and thus nationalized. Despite his suggestion, noted above, that individuals who

promoted the spread of Protestantism should be deported, Glvez does at

times indicate that it is indeed possible for the immigranteven the non-Latin,

non-Catholic immigrantto become a true Argentine. This occurred, he

believed, through a mysterious process of transubstantiation when the foreigner

"submerges" his soul in the "vastness of the national soul, and his heart pulses

to the rhythm of the national sentiment" [se templa en al pauta del sentimiento

nacional].64 Glvezs deep friendship with fellow writer Alberto Gerchunoff, a

Russian-born Jew, is also revealing. Lauding his friend as one of the great

"attractions" of his generation and Gerchunoffs book, Los gauchos judios [The

Jewish Gauchos], as "one of the most beautiful of our narrative literature,"

Glvez apparently believed that even foreign-born Jews could become real

Argentines.65By comparison, Rojass vision of the emerging Argentine race was more

expansive. Whereas Glvez defined the Argentine race as essentially Hispanic

and one whose special character was intimately bound to Catholicism, Rojas


21/47

argued that Spain had provided only one element, albeit an important one, in

the emerging new Argentine race.66One of the few thinkers of the period to

acknowledge the pre-Columbian past, Rojas believed the evolving Argentine

race would result from the fertile coupling of both indigenous and European

elements.67 This new civilization, which Rojas termed "Eurindia," would be

completely unique and of "transcendental importance for humanity."68When describing how this felicitous blend of the foreign and the native would

occur, Rojas thought takes on a decidedly mystical cast. Each nations territory,

he believed, possessed spiritual forces that, emanating from the soil, stamped

the territorys inhabitants with a particular set of mental characte ristics and thus

gave the nation its distinctive personality or character.69 In Argentina, Rojas

argued, these telluric forces also had a unifying function, serving to transform or

nationalize the millions of foreigners who continued to pour onto national

shores. The rural interior, then, would serve as the "crucible" of the national

race, "molding men into a race, and transforming this race until it was a true

nationality."70Whatever we may think of Rojas fanciful vision (which raised the eyebrows of

more than a few of his contemporaries), it is important to appreciate his mystical

musings for what they are: an attempt to reconcile the contradictions between

the ethnocultural understanding of nationality he embraced and the realities of

early twentieth-century Argentina. By arguing that the telluric forces of the

Argentine soil would impose a common mental or spiritual matrix on the

newcomers, Rojas is able to stretch the parameters of the ethnic vision of

nationality to make it capacious enough to accommodate the immigrant. Thus,

while he agreed with other cultural nationalists that the current wave of

immigrants had taxed the countrys capacity to absorb or transform them, Rojas

continued to argue that the "cosmopolitan immigration" was a "key part of the

ethnic development of our nationality."71It would be erroneous, however, to conclude that Rojas more inclusive vision of

the emerging Argentine race provided the immigrant with a greater role in

shaping the character of that race. Closer inspection of his understanding of the


22/47

raza argentina reveals that his view is more similar to Glvezs than this brief

comparison suggests. While Rojas believed that the emerging Argentine race

would be a mixture of diverse European and native elements, it is clear he also

believed the foreigners contribution to this developing national personality

should be tightly supervised.Rojas well-known activities in the realm of education amply reflect this

conviction. In his 1909 work, La restauracin nacionalista (a project financed by

the Ministry of Education), Rojas proclaimed the need to transform the nations

schools into the "hearth of citizenship."72 Chastising past governments for

blindly following foreign educational models, Rojas called for a complete

reorganization of the national school curriculum. This new curriculum should

focus on Argentine history, the Spanish language, Argentine literature,

Argentine geography, and moral instruction, and should seek to inculcate in all

immigrant children a love for the nation and an understanding of Argentine

traditions. The public schools, Rojas believed, should be instrumental in the

effort to "define the national conscience" and bring about a "real and fecund

patriotism."73In other words, the emergence of the new Argentine race, while

gradual, would not and should not be allowed to occur naturally. Rather, tosafeguard authentic Argentine values and traditions, the artistic and intellectual

elite, i.e., individuals such as Rojas, should direct and shape the personality of

this emerging race.74Differences over the content of the emerging national race or personality are

also evident in the growing debate over the national language. Central to the

Romantic understanding of the nation was the belief that language was an

integral part of nationality, a view widely embraced by early twentieth-century

Argentine intellectuals.75 Language within the Romatic tradition served to

identify and unify members of the national "race" or community, to differentiate

them from nonmembers, and to express and record the historical memory of the

community. But while many intellectuals of the period embraced the

identification of language and nationality, it posed certain problems. To be a real

nation did Argentina need its own national language, or was Spanish the true

national language? The dilemma for cultural nationalists and their sympathizers


23/47

was not merely theoretical, for many feared that Argentine Spanish was indeed

changing. During the early years of the century, two distinct jergas or jargons,

both associated with the working-class immigrant population, emerged in

Buenos Aires. Lunfardo, an urban street slang with heavy Italian influence, and

cocoliche, a kind of gaucho-talk associated with popular theater that featured

dramatic comedies about rural life, were very much in vogue among the

immigrant working class. While a few intellectuals applauded these new jargons

as evidence that Argentina was at last developing its own language (and thus

its own distinctive national personality), others ardently defended pure

Spanish.76Sparking the language/nationality controversy was the 1900 publication of

visiting Frenchman Luciano Abeilles Idioma nacional de los argentinos. Abeille,

clearly steeped in the ethnocultural nationalism sweeping Europe, saw

language as the expression of the national soul and argued that nations lacking

their own language were incomplete.77Fortunately, he proclaimed approvingly,

Argentina was in the process of developing a distinctive language. "In the

Argentine Republic," Abeille argued, "a new race is forming. Consequently the

Spanish language will evolve until it forms a new language."78 CriticizingArgentine schools for teaching "pure Castilian" devoid of local phrases or

neologisms, he warned that this effort to inhibit the evolution of Argentinas

national language would "perturb the national soul that is reflected in that

language."79Abeilles book provoked an immediate response. Ernesto Quesada, a prominent

intellectual famous for his monumental tomes on history and culture, soundly

rejected Abeilles argument that a new Argentine language was developing,

while at the same time embracing the French writers premise that language

was constitutive of nationality. Calling language the "depository of the [national]

spirit, race and genius," he argued that Argentinas educated classes had a duty

to preserve Spanish in its pure form, which was genuinely Argentine.80Writing

later but expressing the same sentiment, playwright Enrique Garca Velloso

argued, "we are never more Argentine than when we speak and write Spanish


24/47

correctly."81Glvez and Rojas, not surprisingly, weighed in on behalf of the purists. Ever the

Hispanicist, Glvez impatiently dismissed the idea that Argentina would, or

should, develop its own language. "The enmity against pure Spanish," he

contended, "is something which [is] more a defensive attitude stemming from

youthful ignorance than a true sentiment." Lunfardo, he maintained, was a weak

and unstable dialect destined to fade. More importantly, it was the educated

upper class, especially writers and teachers, who set the standards for the

national language. Since these individuals spoke pure Spanish, the rest of the

nation should, too.82Rojas agreed, and decried the "alarming problems" cosmopolitanism posed for

Argentine Spanish.83 Attacking Abeilles theories as "unscientific and

encouraging the most barbaric and vain inclinations of creole (i.e., native)

ingoism,"84 Rojas argued that the Spanish language represented the

"synthesis of our national personality and race [and was part of] the collective

memory of tradition and culture."85Accordingly, he believed Argentines should

strive to keep their Spanish as pure as possible.86At the same time, however,

Rojas was careful to reject the view that all immigrants represented a threat to

Argentine Spanish. In his response to an encuesta or survey on the language

question published in the progressive newspaper Crtica, he noted that children

of immigrants easily learned to speak Spanish correctly. Indeed, he went on to

argue, many fine writers were first-generation Argentines.87Yet the growing debate over language did produce some dissenting voices, as

several intellectuals concerned about cultivating what was original and authentic

in Argentine culture embraced Abeilles work. Responding directly to Quesadas

attack on the French writer, elite writer Francisco Soto y Calvo chastised his

fellow intellectuals for their rigidity. In the past, Soto y Calvo maintained, the

great majority of Argentine writers had produced works that "could just as well

have been written in Paris as in Buenos Aires."88Such similarities meant not

that Argentines were on par with the rest of the world, but that they were mere

imitators, and pale ones at that. The incorporation of popular expressions into
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25/47

the emerging national literature would lend it originality and color. While

acknowledging that lunfardo did not fully express the Argentine spirit, Soto y

Calvo argued that this jargon represented an important stage in the

development of a new national language. Regarding the evolution of this

language, he proclaimed that Argentine writers should welcome these

modifications instead of combating them. "We complain," he wrote, "about how

we are forming a nation without character, [yet] we are wasting ... [the very

qualities] which could give us that character." This new jargon, Soto y Calvo

continued, "is more genuinely Argentine, and as such gives us more honor, than

that which we [the elite writers] bring from abroad and learn like parrots."89Also supporting Abeilles thesis was a respondent to the Crtica survey, writing

under the English pseudonym "Last Reason" and identified only as a master of

creole theater. Embracing the ethnolinguistic nationalism then in vogue, "Last

Reason" maintained that the formation of a distinctive language was central to

the nations emerging identity. Without this new language, the writer contended,

"Buenos Aires would be merely a cosmopolitan, European city that lacked its

own personality." What now seemed a crude slang, he believed, would form the

basis of a new and ultimately rich national language. Attacking the elitism of"doctors"90 who worried about the vulgarity of this new language, he

proclaimed:[So you think] the language we use is barbaric and phonetically incorrect? I

agree ... the kid is so ugly its difficult to kiss him. Nonetheless, the baby is

ours.... But take note: one day the kid will grow and be beautiful, he will be a

man.... [O]ne day he will enter into the history of nations through the front door,

speaking in a loud voice a language which is beautiful, graphic, musical and

vibrant.... [T]his language will be the product of that rude and bastard dialect

which today burns the lips of the doctors.... [T]omorrow it will be the powerful

clarion that shouts to the decrepit and worm-eaten nations, the coming of a

great and glorious nation.91


26/47

Elite playwright and novelist Jos Antonio Saldas also supported the notion of

a new language. Co-founder of Crtica, Saldas argued that such a language

was becoming more and more necessary due to the greater diffusion of new

expressions into everyday speech. Moreover, like "Last Reason," he believed

the people themselves would produce it. "The national language," he claimed,

"like theater, like industry and all that is authentically ours, is rapidly forming

with the irrepressible contribution of popular [i.e., immigrant] expression."

Accusing those Argentines who opposed the formation of a national language of

being overly rigid, Saldas believed this new language would develop despite

their disapproval. "The people themselves," he argued, "needing to express

themselves fully and spontaneously, will, little by little, create and enrich this

new language."92Abeilles defenders represent an interesting twist to the early twentieth-century

debates over the Argentine national character. Like the advocates of pure

Spanish, they accepted the Romantic ideal of the nation as a distinctive people

evolving over time, marked by a common set of mental and emotional qualities,

and whose language somehow expressed or reflected the national soul. But

clearly this latter vision of the Argentine race or nation had a more popular, pro-immigrant tincture. In contrast to purists such as Glvez and Rojaswho,

despite their talk of Argentines as an emerging racebelieved immigrants must

conform to a pre-existing Argentine identity, intellectuals such as Soto y Calvo,

Saldas, and "Last Reason" argued the immigrant would help shape the

character of the new race. In their view, Argentine identity was still fluid, and it

would be the contribution of working-class immigrants that would provide the

Argentine personality with its distinctive qualities.

The vision of Argentines as an emerging race, then, was in many ways a

neutral construct, lending itself to a variety of ways of imagining the Argentine

nation and the role of the immigrant within it. Regardless of whether it reflected

elitist or populist tendencies, it provided a way of envisioning the integration of

the immigrant into the national community. But despite this virtue, the limitations

of this vision should not be overlooked. What is absent, of course, is any

reference to the political integration of the immigrant. Missing from these


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debates over the immigrants role in the emerging Argentine race is any

expression of concern over the newcomers failure to naturalize.The peculiarity of this understanding of the process of Argentinization, and the

vision of the nation that gave rise to it, is clear when we compare how the

Argentine Socialist Party (PS) viewed the problem of the immigrant. In contrast

to cultural nationalists who remained indifferent to the idea of transforming

immigrants into participating citizens, the socialists were energetic advocates of

naturalization. The need to enlarge their electoral base was undoubtedly an

important motive, but so was their belief that nationality entailed some sort of

participation in, and contribution to, the political and economic destiny of the

nation.Founded in 1894, the party sought to establish itself as the representative of

Argentinas growing working class. Headed by Juan B. Justo, a first-generation

Argentine and a physician drawn to socialism through his work with the poor,

the PS pursued a reformist rather than a revolutionary strategy. While

advocating the eventual socialization of the Argentine economy, Justo was also

a committed democrat and believed that socialism could be achieved in

Argentina through gradual legislative reform. Under his leadership, socialist

candidates vigorously sought elective office, and by 1916 the PS had become

Argentinas second-most powerful political party.Socialists attacked the cultural nationalists both for the content of their ideas

and their motives. Justo, for example, rejected as "mystical" the very idea that

nations were "rigorously delimited entities," with distinctive personalities and

destinies.93 While acknowledging that nations were indeed distinctive due to

their different degrees of development, the PS embraced the Enlightenment

notion that human beings were fundamentally similar and equal. Nations

should, Justo argued, be evaluated and ranked not according to inherent

qualities such as race or ethnicity, but according to thevital energy of the population as indicated by the rate of population growth, the

infant mortality rate ... the literacy rate, in the level of freedom of thought, in the

extension of political rights of the inhabitants and the level participation in the


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electoral process.94

Attacking the motives of the cultural nationalists, fellow socialist Augusto Bunge

ridiculed the notion of racial or ethnic differences as a "sophistry dreamed up by

poets and politicians." In an obvious reference to Rojas, Bunge argued that

those who sought a "national restoration" were members of the conservative

class who wished simply to perpetuate the status quo.95Argentine socialists ideas about nation and nationality clearly harkened back to

the political understanding of nationality espoused by Rivadavia and other

members of the revolutionary generation of 1810. For the socialists, the nation

was above all a political association: membership in the national community had

nothing to do with an individuals ethnic characteristics, language, or even

length of residence in Argentina, but rather ones willingness to participate in the

political system and to contribute to the general well-being and greatness of the

nation. This identification of citizenship and Argentineness, and the voluntaristic

nature of nationality, comes through clearly in Bunges claim that the naturalized

citizen who was loyal to his adoptive nation was more completely Argentine

than the corrupt, native-born politician who stole from the public till or the

decadent society matron whose only concern was to spend her husbands

fortune on Parisian fashions.96CONCLUSIONThe Socialist Partys insistence that immigrants should become naturalized

citizens and the cultural nationalists belief that the immigrant wouldin some

fashionform part of an emerging Argentine race, represent very

Documents

DELEANEY, J. (1997) - National Identity, Nationhood and Immigration in Argentina