Honor y duelo en la Argentina moderna

This compelling book demonstrates the centrality of honor in the culture of Argentine elites in the late nineteenth century, and is the best effort so far to rescue honor and the concomitant practice of dueling from the historiographical neglect of Latin American historians. The sources mined by Gayol (press, private and public archives, literature) are particularly generous. It would be difficult to build such a detailed account for any other Latin American country; I know it would be impossible for Mexico. Argentine men wrote and read about dueling (there was a section in newspapers for the theme!) and in doing so documented the significance of honor in their lives. Based on the strong foundation of her previous work on forms of sociability in Buenos Aires, Gayol shows the role played by honor in codifying social difference but also providing a center of gravity for elite social life. Yet her study goes beyond sociability and provides a new lens to understand politics, gender, and public culture. With the consolidation of liberal equality, republican honor (pp. 18, 94) could be claimed by anyone as a right, even as it defined the tightly knit world and constant bickering of Argentine caballeros.The book starts with a careful reading of the disputes that emerged in newspapers and parliamentary situations and, often aided by rumors or gossip, found their way to the field of honor. Elite men structured the narratives of their passions to make them plausible in terms of the logic of republican honor, characterizing their adversaries in a way that illustrated their own dignity. These stories were always addressed to public opinion, whose sentences were not only about politics but also about reputations. Libel became particularly important for the growing number of candidates for elected office and the bureaucracy, thus expanding the readership of news related to reputations. The specific reasons for disputes were diverse, including allegations of cowardice and corruption and a disorderly propensity for violence, although sex played a lesser role than might be expected. It was not just about defense: chapter 3 focuses on the “honor político” that was required for any successful career in public life (p. 95). Insults set the style of political life but also revealed the primacy of personalities and personal connections over ideology, an intertwining of politics and ethics that seems foreign to contemporary political analysis. Chapter 4 uses an extensive database to document the increasing frequency of dueling in the latter decades of the century but also to demonstrate the duel’s ability to exclude: defended as a means to control passions, its regulations sought to distinguish between “duelo criollo” and “duelo entre caballeros,” however similar their implicit rules. Chapter 5 examines dueling in the context of a new aesthetic of public life and of the self among elite men: the multiple dueling codes and schools devoted to the exercise of weapons and self-control made violence a legitimate expression of power and masculinity. Paradoxically, this discipline came with a new imperative to fight duels if one was publicly challenged.The knowledge, rules, weapons, and instructors imported by Buenos Aires gentlemen demonstrated, in their eyes, the seamless connection between local cultural practices and those in Europe. Fencing had no national meaning: it was a cosmopolitan ability that men of honor shared across the “civilized” world (p. 153). Yet fights between men of the lower classes, in chapter 6, were not heroic but a demonstration of the backwardness of Argentine society. Duels among politicians, examined in chapter 7, built reputations and leadership. Although duels followed political cycles, the use of violence in the field of honor contrasted with the recent past of civil war.Not all was unanimous support. Chapter 8 shows politicians, lawyers, and writers grappling with the tensions between dueling and the concept of equality in front of the law. For its apologists, the duel was a natural right, akin to self-defense. A “delicado equilibrio” between the law and elite mores was found in the mild penalties imposed on duelists in the penal code and the rarity of indictments against duelists. Multiple changes in politics and culture in the early decades of the twentieth century explain, according to Gayol, the decadence of the duel. Honor became associated with honesty rather than individualism. Death in the European battlefields provided a new perspective on local duelists, considering that very few of their encounters were fatal. Politics, where party organization and mass membership imposed discipline against personalismo yet allowed for a more open expression of dissidence, made politically motivated challenges seem authoritarian. A complex cultural and political phenomenon embedded in Argentine society, the duel and the concern about honor were not created nor terminated by a single cause. This richly textured book gives historical relevance to that complexity, opening new paths to understand modern political practices

Art · Elite · Honor · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Argentine historical studies · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Law