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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.
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"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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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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
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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