Intellectuals in the Latin Space during the Era of Fascism

Crossing Borders

Valeria Galimi, Annarita Gori, Valeria Galimi, Annarita Gori

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351057127
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes

This volume investigates a galaxy of diverse networks and intellectual actors who engaged in a broad political environment, from conservatism to the most radical right, between the World Wars. Looking beyond fascism, it considers the less-investigated domain of the 'Latin space', which is both geographical and cultural, encompassing countries of both Southern Europe and Latin America.

Focus is given to mid-level civil servants, writers, journalists and artists and important 'transnational agents' as well as the larger intellectual networks to which they belonged. The book poses such questions as: In what way did the intellectuals align national and nationalistic values with the project of creating a 'Republic of Letters' that extended beyond each country's borders, a 'space' in which one could produce and disseminate thought whose objective was to encourage political action? What kinds of networks did they succeed in establishing in the interwar period? Who were these intellectuals-in-action? What role did they play in their institutions' and cultural associations' activities?

A wider and intricate analytical framework emerges, exploring right-wing intellectual agents and their networks, their travels and the circulation of ideas, during the interwar period and on a transatlantic scale, offering an original contribution to the debate on interwar authoritarian regimes and opening new possibilities for research.

Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

1 Hybridizing ideas in the Latin space

Transnational agents and polycentric cross-border networks

Annarita Gori and Valeria Galimi

1.1 Crossing borders: intellectuals in the Latin space

During the interwar period, authoritarian movements and regimes of the right – both of the ‘old’ authoritarian and the ‘new’ radical variety – embraced nationalist values but at the same time saw themselves as transnational agents of an otherwise international intellectual and political wave. At the end of the First World War, a growing sense of shared goals, commonality of vision, and a feeling of being on a historic mission led intellectuals to create networks and political projects that frequently crossed national borders.¹

Intellectual figures were central to this transnational process of ideological diffusion and cross-fertilization whether by formulating ideas, popularizing them across borders or by translating and re-contextualizing them for different national contexts and audiences. The recent wave of studies that have investigated the circulation of culture, ideas and intellectuals from a transnational perspective has provided interesting insights on how the formation of cultural and political networks was crucial to this process, and how these collective subjects constituted a universe more complex and multifaceted than had commonly been assumed. An already consolidated literature has thus retraced the activity of intellectuals across differentiated political contexts, and illustrated how intellectuals frequently played a pivotal role in the decision-making process as non-state actors.² Within this context, far-right and fascist intellectual networks have generated strong interest among social scientists as evidenced by the growing number of publications on this subject.³

With roots in this theoretical framework, this book aims to promote a different understanding of the role of right-wing intellectuals during the interwar period, scrutinizing it in a more comprehensive way. In so doing, this volume exploits three main assumptions.

Firstly, the concept of ‘Latin space’ was adopted here both as a spatial viewpoint and as a theoretical/ideological framework within which to profitably conduct an analysis of right-wing intellectuals, networks and political systems. The term is used here to understand a geographical as well as ‘imagined’ area that encompassed Southern Europe and Latin America.⁴ How was this Latin space conceived in different nations? How did actors look at it from the two shores of the Atlantic? Were there turning points during the interwar period that had an impact on the development and/or crises of this ‘Latin area’? We believe that putting the Latin space at the centre of our focus allows us to broaden a perspective that had thus far only considered the Italian–German axis as the main and almost sole point from which the fascist political model was spread abroad. In addition to the prominent influence exerted by Rome and Berlin, other ideological and cultural references and matrixes emerge distinctly from this Latin geography and present themselves as political options in the panorama of the anti-liberal political system.⁵ The contributions collected here indicate how the spread of fascism and the incisiveness of Mussolini’s idea to promote a ‘universal fascism’ in Southern Europe and Latin America deserve a comprehensive analysis. As a matter of fact, such a ‘Latin perspective’ seems to show that rather than it being a phenomenon of simple emulation, it is possible to detect an ongoing process of hybridization and re-contextualization in the right-wing panorama, as shown by the emergence of successful, and in some cases, extremely long-lasting, alternative political models in that area.

The plurality of models detected within the Latin space leads directly to the second perspective: the importance of not limiting our analysis of intellectuals’ networks solely to the fascist and far-right context. At a time when the ‘transnational turn’ in the study of fascism and dictatorships has underlined the need to be liberated from the restraints of national historiography, we consider a similar widening of the analytical lens necessary when it comes to the intellectuals themselves, viewing them as active historical agents of the transnational circulation of ideas and political engagement, who contributed to institutions and organizations created ad hoc. Such a choice responds to the need to broaden the focus from the circulations and exchanges in fascist intellectual circles – independent of their acceptance of being a part of the ‘black international’ – to a wider canvas composed of a variety of networks and agencies that shared a set of values ranging from conservatism to far-right radicalism. Intertwining itself with the aforementioned wider Latin geographical perspective, the enlargement of the political framework sheds new light on the reference models and cultural values that were widely disseminated in the right-wing milieu in Europe and beyond. It also helps elucidate the networks and agencies that spread those models. Furthermore, this perspective allows us to follow the ongoing dialogue among intellectuals gathered in informal groups. These structures were often overlooked by historians but were relevant in their action of crossing borders and as trailblazers, proposing solutions to the political, economic and moral interwar crises.

Who were the intellectuals at the centre of the right-wing networks? How did they act? Were there some common trajectories within the Latin space? To answer these questions it is necessary to abandon the traditional biographical approach that gives priority to these figures per se. On the contrary, we believe that intellectuals have to be scrutinized through their ‘global lives’, that is cross-border networks, relationships and paths.⁶ The analysis of their trips, meetings and dialogues across the Atlantic, allows us to investigate these subjects as mediators – or brokers⁷ – of cultural ideas and exchanges. In addition, in order to better understand this fascinating interwar intellectual flux, the juxtaposition of the analysis of the profiles of well-known, high-ranking politicians and leaders with the study of mid-level civil servants and propagandists, as well as engaged journalists, writers and artists is particularly useful and opens a new and interesting research horizon. Indeed, following such a perspective not only gives us an improved knowledge of this heterogeneous group that has almost always been the throbbing heart of the circulation of ideas and political projects, but also allows us to observe the transformations that the notion of the intellectual suffered during the interwar period.

1.2 Transatlantic agents: journeys and ideas

The cross-border trajectories of some right-wing intellectuals who have embodied literature, journalism, poetry, art and architecture and politics, are the main topic of the first part of this volume. The first four chapters investigate, respectively, António Sardinha, Ramiro de Maetzu, Pietro Bardi and Plínio Salgado from a network perspective as transnational agents. Even if the periods spent abroad and analysed in these chapters were sometimes quite short, the duration of time spent away and the influence of the figures analysed in this section were highly significant in terms of the ongoing flow of ideas both in their own countries and overseas. Some key concepts emerge from these four chapters: the cultural and political project of a macro-national identity that encompassed several countries across the Atlantic; the importance of Catholicism in political theorisation and its radicalization; the role played first by the European right-wing conservative movements and then by the dictatorships in the intellectual dialogue during the interwar period.

This is clearly explained in Chapter 4 (Pietro Maria Bardi’s first journey to South America: A narrative of travel, politics and architectural Utopia). Analysing the journey made by Bardi towards Latin America in 1933–1934, Paolo Rusconi embraces a multidimensional perspective on the theme of the circulation of ideas, encompassing the cultural importance of travel, the significance of visual propaganda and the overlapping of the personal and public life of intellectuals. In particular, the thoughts that Bardi noted down in his personal notebook along with his drawings and his collection of press cuttings offer a close look at both Bardi’s personal connections with the Latin American right-wing cultural milieu and the way in which Fascism promoted Italian modernism abroad as an artistic embodiment of the regime.

Another journey across the Atlantic is traced by Leandro Pereira Gonçalves in Chapter 5 (Plínio Salgado between Brazil and Portugal: Formation and transformation of Brazilian integralism). This chapter focuses on the network that Salgado established with Portuguese conservative thinkers during his stay in Lisbon. As the author highlights, following Plínio’s transnational trajectory allows us to better understand the multiple discursive matrixes and cultural circulation in the field of right-wing appropriations, taking into consideration the relationship between Catholicism and the Lusitanian components. What emerges from Pereira’s analysis is indeed the multiple elements at the origin of Ação Integralista Brasileira, the right-wing party founded by Salgado: the thought of António Sardinha; the ideological pillars of the Portuguese Estado Novo and Catholic doctrine. These components had a significant impact, more so than Italian fascism tout court, especially during the late thirties when Salazar’s regime emerged as a corporatist, Catholic and conservative alternative to both democracy and totalitarianism.

The Portuguese writer, poet and historian António Sardinha was indeed one of the preeminent traditionalist intellectuals in Southern Europe in the aftermath of the Great War and his intellectual path is the focus of Chapter 2 (António Sardinha and his Ibero-American connections: Traditionalism and universalism’ by Sérgio Campos Matos). Once again a journey – this time Sardinha’s exile to Madrid from 1919 to 1921 – represents a remarkable opportunity for the theorization and the mapping of his political and cultural discourse based on tradition, Catholicism, counter-revolution, ethnic nationalism and historicism. In particular, his theories about Hispanismo played a pivotal role in the renewal of the political vocabulary that put Portugal in connection not only with Spain but also with other Latin-American nations. Campos Matos thus investigates Sardinha not so much as a precursor to Salazar’s regime, but mostly as a transnational and cross-cultural intellectual. Since Sardinha had an impact on the cultural environment in Spain and Brazil, particular attention is paid to the formation and spread of his thought from the influence exerted on him by Fustel de Coulanges and Charles Maurras.

Catholicism, historical legacy and traditionalism are keywords that are also crucial in Chapter 3 (Ramiro de Maeztu between Spanish and Argentinian nationalism). Here Alfonso Botti and Daniel Lvovich explain how de Maeztu perfectly embodied the figure of the transnational agent, describing the period in which he was appointed as ambassador in Argentina by Primo de Riveira. There, de Maeztu established constructive collaborations with Zacarías de Vizcarra, a prominent actor of Spanish reactionary Catholicism, and with the young nationalists gathered around the magazine La Nueva Republica. Even though de Maeztu’s stay in the South American country was short, he left a notable mark in the cross-pollinated development of Spanish and Argentinean nationalisms. In addition, he contributed to formulating the concept of Hispanidad, a cultural and political programme that aimed to encompass all the pueblos that shared the same Hispanic language, culture and race.

1.3 Agencies and networks

The aforementioned agents represented the main core of an imbricate network with various degrees of informality composed simultaneously by state and non-state agencies. All four chapters in the second section of this volume deal with this reality, focusing on agencies, informal associations and circles of journalists, politicians and homme de lettre: the professional association of La Presse Latine, the Maurrassianism circles gathered around the magazine Je suis partout, the fascist journalists that operated in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile and the South American corporatist network of intellectual-politicians. The scrutiny of these agencies illuminates how they can be considered as pieces of a broader cross-border intellectual exchange arena: an ideal space in which intellectuals discussed key concepts such as the right-wing version of pan-Latinism; the category of fascism and its national variations; the diffusion of the corporatist model outside of Europe; and the influence of the conservative right as it related to Maurras’s political thought, which was already in crisis in France, but still attractive abroad. Furthermore, covering at least a ten-year period, the texts presented in this section allow us to follow changes within the analysed networks and, more generally, to emphasize the ways in which mutations that occurred in the broader political, cultural and economic context of the interwar period closely affected the cultural references within states and in the Latin space.

In Chapter 6 (The Association de la Presse Latine: Efforts and failure of a right-wing transnational pan-Latinist project), Annarita Gori illustrates how some of the right-wing transnational culture keywords – common roots, historical legitimation, pan-ism – that had already emerged in texts written by Campos Matos and Botti and Lvovich found an ideal forum for discussion in the Association de la Presse Latine (The Association of Latin Press). Tracing almost 20 years of the association’s activity, the author elucidates the role played by journalists in finding a right-wing cultural and political solution to the post-war collective crisis, by the concrete implementation of pan-Latinism. This chapter shows the rise and fall of this macro-national project that found a plac...