Nationalism and Invention of Tradition in Argentinean Folk Narrative Archives

Abstract

Argentina is a multicultural Latin American country located in the very south of the world, whose history as an independent nation began in 1816, although the foundation by Hispanic conquerors can be dated to the 16th century. Nevertheless, indigenous vernacular cultures have been living in the Argentinean territory since ancient times. In the late 19th century, Argentina also received European migration, mainly Spanish and Italian, as well as migration waves from Asia, Africa, and from other South American countries that contributed to trace a multiethnical profile, partially mirrored in folk narrative archives. The aim of the first Argentinean folk narrative collection has been to show the image of a nation, with a homogeneous cultural heritage composed by a Hispanic and Créole culture. According to these political guidelines, the aim of the first Argentinean folk narrative archive, the 1921 Folklore Survey – which reflected the results of a questionnaire sent to the teachers of public primary schools of the whole country, registered in manuscripts and recently digitalized – has been to contribute to construct the profile of the nation through homogenization of their cultural tradition, as the Argentinean writer and politician Ricardo Rojas stressed in The Nationalist Restoration (La restauración nacionalista 1909). This has been the dominant trend of the first folk narrative collections, whose main distinctive features will be described in this chapter. Through a diachronic study, a change of this trend can be observed. In fact, it can be seen that recent collections are aimed at not only to highlight the Hispanic and Créole, and indigenous heritage but also to reflect the process of invention of tradition, which opens the concept of “nationality” to an interweaving between European and vernacular cultures. However, the register and study of the intertwining of these traditions with the ones of other migrant groups is still missing in Argentinean folk narrative archives, and this lack of collections is connected with a rather homogeneous concept of nationalism. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the role of folk narrative archives in the construction of a heterogeneous concept of nation and “nationalism,” being aware of the recent trends of transnational history.