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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, AustroHungarians, 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. + 27e
