“Dublin Traitors” or “Gallants of Dublin” The Argentine Newspapers and the Easter Rising

Abstract

Sir Roger Casement Captured off Irish Coast. This was main headline of front page of Buenos Aires Herald on 25 April. The first article on that page gave detailed information about arrest of the arch-traitor and, at end, a subtitle Capture of Dublin!: Amazing New York Story, under which it was succinctly reported that it was announced that Irish volunteers have captured Dublin and are holding it. The same happened in other Argentine daily newspapers, like La Nacion, La Prensa and The Standard: first news of that key week in Ireland was about former British diplomat and his failed landing of weapons, with a brief reference unconfirmed news about problems in Dublin. The Standard even gave this latter cable title A Stupid Rumour, and added at end: Ed. Note: Our readers will understand this refer insignificant Sinn Feinn [sic] movement described in other cables (p. 13). But during following days news about Casement received less attention: Easter Rising occupied an important place on Argentine newspapers until end of executions of its leaders on 12 May. (1) The next pages will analyse treatment of this news by some Buenos Aires papers: La Prensa, La Nacion, and Critica, which were printed in Spanish; and The Standard, Buenos Aires Herald, and The Southern Cross, published in English. (2) The Argentine newspapers examined By 1916 La Prensa (1869) and La Nacion (1870) had been published for more than forty years and had grown to be among great daily papers of (Murray 1919: 307). They belonged Paz and Mitre (3) families, respectively: in 1916 Jorge Mitre was director of La Nacion, and Ezequiel Paz of La Prensa. More recently, Natalio Botana had founded Critica (1913-1962), an innovative newspaper of sensationalist tones (Beltran 1943: 257-63 and 279; Fernandez 1943: 113-22; De Marco 2006: 310-5 and 319-22). was an important topic in these newspapers. For example, in case of La Prensa, only is all local news fully chronicled, but its correspondents all over world send articles of great literary merit. The letters from London correspondents, Mr. H. Nield and Sr. Ramirez [sic] de Maeztu, show perfect knowledge of all British movements, lengthy articles from pen of latter showing a deep acquaintance with all phases of thought in Great Britain (Pennington 1910: 284). (4) This is not surprising since Argentina in early 20th century has a clear relationship western world. Its ruling classes admired and tried imitate from France its culture, from England economic development, and from Germany its militarism ... In 1914 Third National Population Census was conducted; it reported a total of 7,885,237 inhabitants, of which 2,357,952 (30%) were foreigners, most of them Spaniards and Italians (Ramirez Bacca 2015: 192). The pro-British attitude was related as well fact that [t]here was probably a generally pro-Allied sentiment among Argentine populace (Dehne 2014: 155), which was reflected in its newspapers. Also, it should particularly be remembered that United Kingdom had great influence in Argentina, not only on its economy, but also on its culture and way of life: In 1900 British-owned companies accounted for almost 90 per cent of aggregate railway investment in Argentina and some 15 per cent of Argentina's total capital stock ... By 1913 Argentina alone absorbed almost half of Britain's exports Latin America ... In Argentina ... British and Anglo-Argentinian community, already 5,000-strong in 1830s, had by 1914 expanded 40,000--the largest British community outside Empire. Several thousand lived on pampa and in Patagonia, but majority were concentrated in Buenos Aires ... They were served by two daily newspapers, Standard and Buenos Aires Herald. …