Oldal 28 [28]
MODERNIZATION, MIGRATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ARGENTINE CASE, 1870-1945
Associations included societies for the protection of immigrants; charity
societies; cultural and recreational societies, especially for the elites (such
as the Spanish Club or the Italian Circle); regional societies, more abundant
in Italian and Spanish cases during the first half of the 20" century; societies
of veterans, created after the Great War; and mutual aid societies. These last
ones included basically adult men and carried out many functions: aid,
medical care, retirements, burials, and so on. We must add also hospitals,
orphanages and old people’s homes. Associations developed also ethnic and
patriotic functions in a complex relationship with chambers of commerce, big
enterprises and the diplomatic authorities of the motherland.
Ethnic nuclei evolution describes a parable that reaches its maximum level
of pluralism between the 1880s and the Great War. These nuclei were most
powerful and lasting in mutual aid societies rather than in ethnic schools.
In the latter case, religious schools such as those of Protestants and Jews but
also of Catholics (for example, Italian Salesian schools) were more lasting
than secular ones. The community press had a similar but faster evolution: by
1914 foreign journals, very important in the 1880s, were scarce and limited
to Buenos Aires only.
The decline of associations had three steps. First, conflicts were produced
by the economic, political, and military mobilization of the Great War not
only between the communities from countries at war (British, French, Austro¬
Hungarians, Germans, and Italians after 1915, etc.) but also neutral ones,
such as the big Spanish case. Studies show that British (4,852) and French
(5,800) combatants represented a very high percentage when compared to
the number of enlisted Italians (32,430). Although the Italian contingent
was approximately 6 times larger than the French and the British, the Italian
community in Argentina was in fact 11 times bigger than the French, and
over 33 times bigger than the British. While the figures for British and
Italian combatants do not discriminate between first- and second-generation
immigrants (like France, both countries based their citizenship on right of
blood), all data indicates that Anglo-Argentines’ participation was far higher
than the almost insignificant numbers of second-generation French and
Italian immigrants.' Even if there are no systematic studies, mobilization of
Germans and Austro-Hungarians was seemingly not very significant, since
most of them would not have been able to avoid the British naval blockade.
55 Emilio Franzina: La guerra lontana: il primo conflitto mondiale e gli italiani d’Argentina,
Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos, 44, 2000, 57-84; Caroline Douki: Les emigrés
face à la mobilisation militaire de |’Italie, 14-18 Aujourd ‘hui, 5, 2002, 159-180; Otero: La
guerra en la sangre. Los franco-argentinos ante la Primera Guerra Mundial, Buenos Aires,
Editorial Sudamericana, 2009; Maria Inés Tato: El llamado de la patria. Britänicos e italianos
residentes en la Argentina frente a la Primera Guerra Mundial, Estudios Migratorios
Latinoamericanos, 71, 2011, 273-292.
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