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MODERNIZATION, MIGRATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ARGENTINE CASE, 1870-1945
Central Europe. The fourth national census of 1947 counted 249,330 Jews
and 310,633 Protestants, that is 1.6% and 2% of the Argentine population,
respectively. At the same time, Catholics made up 93.6%. While these
figures lump together immigrants of the first generation and their Argentine
descendants, they are a good estimation of the weight of the most important
religions at the end of our period.
Eighth, mass migration was produced by exceptional demographic and
economic conditions in the old continent but also, in the Argentine case, by a
particularly broad and generous migratory policy. That was the consequence
of two confluent processes. On the one hand, the ideas of intellectuals such
as Alberdi and Sarmiento, who considered that European immigration
(especially the northern one) was essential to increase the population and
leave behind the negative Spanish legacy." On the other hand, there was a legal
system with large guarantees for immigrants. This system was based on three
underpinnings: the National Constitution of 1853-1860, the Citizenship Law
of 1869 and the Immigration and Colonization Law of 1876 (the so-called
Avellaneda Law). These policies suffered changes in practice (for example, the
increase of requirements and administrative obstacles) during moments of
social conflict from 1900 until the first post war, a period that started a policy
of “closed doors”. The increase in xenophobia and nationalism in culture and
politics during the 1920s and especially the 1930s produced a rejection of
groups considered less assimilable, in particular Jews and political refugees,
suchas Spanish Republicans. Despite these negative processes, neither the legal
system nor the pro-migratory consensus were put into doubt because their
advantages were obvious for a large set of actors (landholders, industrialists,
etc.). As clear evidence of this consensus, Argentina had never established a
quota system, unlike the United States in 1924 or Brazil in 1934.’ After the
second post war period, Peronism went back to an “open door” policy, like the
liberal one of the 19" century.®
MIGRATORY INTEGRATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: A CENTRIFUGAL
AND PLURALIST SOCIETY
The impact of mass migration, briefly exposed, compels us to analyze now the
central issue of national identity, a kind of obsession in psychoanalytic coffee
Tulio Halperin Donghi: ;Para qué la inmigracién? Ideologia y politica inmigratoria y
aceleraciön del proceso modernizador: el caso argentino (1810-1914), in Halperin Donghi:
El espejo de la historia. Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1976, 189-238.
See the contribution of Elda Gonzalez Martinez in this volume.
Biernat, Carolina: ;Buenos o utiles? La politica inmigratoria del peronismo, Buenos Aires,
Biblos, 2007.
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