Mussolini’s National Project in Argentina

Abstract

This book represents a welcome addition to studies of fascism and migration. The history of both southern Italian immigration to Argentina and the Italian fascists’ attempts to dominate this immigrant community have been approached by Italian historians such as Emilio Gentile, Loris Zanatta, and Eugenia Scarzanella, among many others, as well as by Argentine historians such as Fernando Devoto and María Victoria Grillo. In this context, David Aliano’s book provides a refreshing look at old sources while also bringing new primary sources to the equation, from propaganda materials to school textbooks. His questions are also different from those of his Italian predecessors. Aliano is not so much interested in the history of fascism but rather in how studying its impact on Argentina’s Italian community helps us understand the complex history of Italian ideas and projects for the nation both inside and outside Italy.Aliano is well versed in migration studies and Italian history, and he aptly combines both in examining the Argentine context, where most Italian immigrants eventually became and thought of themselves as Argentines. This was, to be sure, the most frustrating dimension of the problem for Benito Mussolini and his propaganda team. But Aliano is not that concerned with the history of this transnational failure of fascism and what it says about that political movement’s geopolitical conceptions and practices. Rather, the book’s emphasis on national conceptions among the different actors in Italy and abroad allows the author to cogently highlight limits and continuities in the broader history of Italy’s state policies of emigration. For Aliano, important traditions of national identity were continued by the fascists, who added to these their specific political identity. He argues that national projects such as Mussolini’s attempts to convert Argentina’s Italian community to fascism were substantially transformed by their contexts of reception, which posed important limitations on a “national project outside of the nation-state” (p. 2). The book presents a fine history of the Italian community in Argentina and the failed attempts by fascists to proselytize it from the 1920s to the 1940s. It explores a diversity of topics, from propaganda aimed at the immigrants and the schooling of Italian children in Argentina to fascist-antifascist debates within the Italian immigrant community. The author stresses how the Italians of Argentina formed an Italian identity different from the more authoritarian one in vogue on the peninsula. Another element in the development of this more liberal national conception that Aliano cogently highlights is the significant role of Italian antifascism in Argentina. He explains how this identitarian diversity limited the expansion of fascism within the community. Without much elaboration, he also emphasizes how Argentine democratic traditions had an impact in this regard.But how can one explain this persistent liberalism in the context of an ever-increasing consolidation of militarism, authoritarianism, and even clerico-fascism in Argentina during the 1930s and 1940s, from José Félix Uriburu’s dictatorship in 1930 to the so-called Década Infame and the military dictatorship of 1943? To be sure, Aliano criticizes an emphasis on Argentine authoritarianism that downplays the centrality of Argentina’s liberal traditions. But he does not engage as much with the intricacies of the ways in which Argentina’s liberal civil society turned its back on an increasingly authoritarian state hegemonized by the church and the military. While Aliano is very engaged with migration studies on both sides of the Atlantic, his book could have benefited from a similar engagement with Argentine historiographical discussions of nation building and the politics of immigration, from the earlier ideas of an “alluvial” society to the debates in the 1980s and 1990s over the idea of the melting pot as well as the more recent pathbreaking works by Hilda Sabato on political participation. The important scholarship of Lilia Ana Bertoni is also absent from Aliano’s discussion. The book is at its best when analyzing the Italian community in Argentina. If Argentine historians will note these absences and, more generally, the book’s schematic view of their country’s history, they will also benefit from learning about the European, American, and more specifically Italian discussions of emigration that drive the questions and answers of this subtle, challenging book.This book raises important questions for the field of migration studies in Latin America and Europe. It is highly recommended for specialists in Latin American and European migration and ethnic studies as well as historians of Italian fascism. By focusing on what Mussolini’s national project for the Italian community of Argentina reveals about the changing nature of the idea of the Italian nation, the book critically complements current historiography. Aliano provides a new conceptual look at the history of European migration in Argentina.