La inmigración fascista en la Argentina

The image of Argentina as a paradise for fascists is widely shared across the globe. To be sure, many Nazis escaped to Argentina and, thanks to the Peronists’ warm reception of them, international justice was not served. But other countries in the Western hemisphere received German fascists without much fanfare or historical research. The myth of a postwar Argentina overflowing with Nazis and fascists is problematic, yet it contains important grains of truth.Nazi activities in Argentina are well researched. Ronald Newton’s Nazi Menace in Argentina, 1931 – 1947 (Stanford University Press, 1992) remains an essential book for Argentine historians. Less known are the Argentine activities of defeated fascists from Croatia, Belgium, and other European countries. The most influential fascism in the Southern Cone was Italian fascism, but until the publication of this timely book by the Italian scholar Federica Bertagna, historians lacked extensive contextual studies of postwar Italian fascist activities in Latin America. This lack was especially problematic for Argentina, the Latin American country most affected by fascism and the one with perhaps the most Italian emigrants per capita in the world. For this reason the book is highly significant for Argentine studies.The book is especially illuminating when it addresses the neofascist networks for escapees and the rather unusual role played in them by the Italian fascist Maria Pignatelli, who was a central figure in organizing neofascist women in Italy as well. The list of fascist escapees is surprisingly large and includes a son of Mussolini, a former boss of the National Fascist Party, government ministers of different caliber, Salò fighters, and war criminals. Students of Italian politics might also be interested in the larger contexts of fascist republican emigration, especially in Switzerland. The book’s analysis of internal conflicts in the Italian community in Argentina should interest historians of Italian emigration.Why would radical nationalists, such as the escaping fascists, leave their nation for Argentina? Why did their departures represent an “escape” in the first place? Bertagna unnecessarily tends to oppose social networks to culture and politics. Although she recognizes that, for many of the escapees, the reasons to leave included the lack of political prospects in Italy; she also argues that, for most of them, “escaping” was more related to economic possibilities in the New World. In short, ideological and cultural developments are not given the centrality that they deserve, especially when the subjects of study are fascists who chose politics, the Mussolinian “primacy of politics,” as their life pursuit.As Bertagna notes, a main difference between Nazi and Italian fascist emigration lies in the fact that the latter was almost entirely legal. Unlike the Nazis, Italian fascists were leaving a country that had given amnesty to most fascists in 1946. They decided to come to Argentina because they saw this country in more positive terms than postwar Italy. Peronism played no small role in this view. Many fascists saw Peronism as the transatlantic continuation of fascism, whereas Peron saw them as prospective Peronistas, that is, Argentines of Italian origins who eventually could vote for him. Bertagna does not substantially analyze Peronista or fascist ideology, and she tends to downplay these as prime motivations for the fleeing fascists, but she addresses significant personal links between members of these two political currents. She shows how substantial funding for postwar neofascist activities in Italy was coming from Latin America, especially from fascist escapees living in Argentina. Bertagna superbly addresses the rich itineraries of the fascist escapees and she illustrates a wide range of postwar fascist economic and social activities in Italy and Argentina.All in all, this book is an extremely well researched transnational history, especially from the perspective of Italian archives and printed sources. It reads like a history of Italian emigration, but the author also considers some socioeconomic dimensions of the nation that hosted them. Italian history is given more space in the book than Argentine history, as it informs the context of departure that prompted south-Atlantic-bound fascists to leave their past behind. From an Argentine historical perspective, though, the book brushes aside a central question that deserves more analysis. Most Italian emigrants practically became Argentines and ceased to act within the confines of the organized Italian community. A broader consideration of processes of assimilation and Argentine political culture and history could have added a significant Argentine angle to a book that represents an important addition to the history of European immigration to Argentina

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Economic history · Emigration · German · Humanities · Latin Americans · Nazism · Paradise · Political science · Politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Memory, violence, and history · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America