Oldal 32 [32]
MODERNIZATION, MIGRATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ARGENTINE CASE, 1870-1945
both kinds of associations. However, worker leaderships were very critical
of the patriotism and bourgeois reformism of ethnic leaders. The tension
between ethnic and class identities (or between national and class conscience
using the expression of Guy Bourd&)” was in fact very important and ended
with the victory of the latter.
The Saenz Pefia Law of 1912, which established a universal, secret and
mandatory vote for 18-year-old men (the women’s vote was passed in 1947)
had a similar effect because it allowed the massive incorporation of immigrant
children into political parties such as the Radical Civic Union of Hipölito
Yrigoyen, chosen president in 1916, or the Socialist Party. Moreover, according
to Ema Cibotti, this political opening was decisive to the fall of the ethnic
press, the main way of political participation of immigrant communities
until then.”' Significantly, both political parties and labor movements had
universal programs and discourses, without particular emphasis on ethnic
considerations.
Olivier Compagnon has recently stressed that the Great War (the “suicide
of barbarians” according to the contemporary expression of José Ingenieros)
was crucial to the emergence and strengthening of Latin American
nationalism.” The rise of political nationalism, pro-Hispanic and Catholic (or
even fascist and anti-Semitic in their extreme versions), first with the military
coup of General Uriburu in 1930 and then with the military coup of 1943,
precursor of Peronism, contributed to a cultural atmosphere more favorable
to identification with an Argentine nationality than with the motherland. The
enormous distance that separated a continent in flames from a country with
positive forecasts during the first half of the 20th century reinforced those
feelings.
CONCLUSIONS
We may conclude by stressing a few but significant points. First, the
integration process in Argentina had clear and significant levels of Cultural
Pluralism during the mass migration period, between 1870 and the Great
War. However, the country has been characterized in the middle and long
term by one of the fastest Melting Pot processes of the American continent,
Guy Bourdé: Buenos Aires. Urbanizacion e inmigracion, Buenos Aires, Editorial Huemul,
1977, 215-227.
Ema Cibotti: Del habitante alciudadano: la condiciön del inmigrante, in Mirta Zaida Lobato:
Nueva historia argentina. El progreso, la modernizaciôn y sus limites, 1880-1916, Buenos
Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, 2000, Tomo V, 365-408.
Olivier Compagnon: America Latina y la Gran Guerra. El adiés a Europa (Argentina y
Brasil, 1914-1939), Barcelona, Critica, 2014.
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