¹ R. Prefettura di Genova to Gabinetto, 7 and 12 April 1926; Archivio Centrale dello Stato, (EUR/ Rome)(hereinafter ACS), Ministero dell’ Interiore, Direzzione Generale della Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, busta 101 (1926), foglio C2.

² Censimento degli italiani all’ estero alla metà dell’anno 1927 (Rome, 1928). The figure of 1,771,373 includes the Argentine-born children not naturalized to Argentine citizenship of Italian-born parents. However, under the jus soli principle, the basis of Argentine citizenship law, those children were Argentines. Cited by De Rosa, Luigi, “L’emigrazione italiana in Argentina: un bilancio,” in Devoto, Fernando J. and Rosoli, Gianfausto, eds., L’Italia nella società argentina: Contributi sull’emigrazione italiana in Argentina (Rome, 1988), p. 80.Google Scholar

³ Appunto per il Duce, Gabinetto file “Argentina” (Rome), 12 November 43, U. S. National Archives (Washington, D.C.) (hereinafter USNA), Record Group 242, micro T586/R1201/095625ff. The previous year the Buenos Aires consulate had reported there were five hundred thousand “italiani di pasaporto” in the city. 24 August 42, Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Rome) (hereinafter ASMAE), Affari Politici, Argentina, b 33(1942).

⁴ Argentina’s population was 7.9 million in 1914, 11.4 million in 1930. The latter estimate is from Pastore, Lorenzo Dagnino, “Una vision de la demografía,” in Editorial Sur, Argentina, 1930–1960 (Buenos Aires, 1961), 90.Google Scholar

⁵ In 1927 3.7 million Italians were living in the U.S., 1.84 million in Brazil. In 1920 the U.S. population was 106.0 million, that of Brazil 30.6 million.

⁶ In addition to works cited elsewhere in this article, important recent contributions to social history are Baily, Samuel L., “The Adjustment of Italian Immigrants in Buenos Aires and New York,” American Historical Review 88:2 (April 1983), 281–305 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baily, , “La cadena migratoria de los italianos a la Argentina: los casos de los agnoneses y los siroleses,” in de Voto, Fernando and Rosoli, Gianfausto, eds. La inmigración italiana en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1985)Google Scholar and other studies in the same volume; Cannistraro, Philip V. and Rosoli, Gianfausto, Emigrazione, Chiesa, e Fascismo: Lo scioglimento dell’Opera Bonomelli (1922–1928) (Rome, 1979)Google Scholar; Klein, Herbert S., “La integración de immigrantes italianos en la Argentina y los Estados Unidos: un análisis comparativo,” Desarrollo Económico 21:81 (April-June 1981), 3–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nascimbene, Mario C., “Origenes y destinos de los italianos en la Argentina, 1835–1970” in Korn, F. comp., Los Italianos en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1983), pp. 61–92.Google Scholar

⁷ This is due in part to the fact that although Italy did not win World War Two, she did not–like her Axis allies–lose it either. Only a few Italian official documents were seized and published by the Allies; the rest are lost or under the control of bureaucrats. The archive of the Fascio all’Estero remains missing, a great lacuna for research projects such as this. See: “Italians Abroad with Special Reference to Argentina,” COI Report #18, 16 March 1942, USNA, RG 59, 865.20200/8 (report undoubtedly prepared by the “Bureau of Latin American Research,” described below). On Italian fascism in Argentina see Nascimbene, Mario C. “Fascismo y antifascismo en la Argentina (1920–1945),” “C’era una volta l’America”: Immigrazione dei piemontesi in America. Mostre documentarie a cura del CEMLA di Buenos Aires (Cuneo: L’Arciere, April-June 1990), pp. 137–41Google Scholar; Gentile, Emilio, “Emigración e italianidad en Argentina, en los mitos de potencia del nacionalismo y del fascismo (1900–1930),” Estudios Migratorios Latino Americanos [EMLA] (Bs As) 1, 2 (April 1986), 143–80Google Scholar; Dore, Grazia, “Tra i miti di una ‘più grande Italia al Plata,’” in Dore, , La democrazia italiana e l’emigrazione in America (Brescia, 1964)Google Scholar; Banzato, Guillermo y De Voto, Fernando, “Notas acerca de las manifestaciones de adhesión al fascismo en las sociedades italianas de La Plata,” seminar report, FLACSO (Bs As), 1. trimestre 1988.Google Scholar

⁸ A working definition: Fascist ideology comprised clear political choices: the nation (rather than humanity) as the ground of social being, the inclusive state (versus the liberal state) consubstantial with the nation, the leader-principle and hierarchical order (versus majoritarian democracy), organicism or corporatism (versus liberal individualism or liberal pluralism), national syndicalism (versus international proletarianism). Its postulates were derived from biological determinism and were less coherent: fascists assumed the inequality of individuals (hence rejected egalitarianism), of elites (hence demanded that “natural” elites replace hereditary and/or plutocratic elites), and of peoples (hence sanctioned racism, irredentism, and the drive for empire). These propositions were grounded in a still more vague worldview of beliefs, moods, and attitudes: the exaltation of modernism (and rejection of the pre-1914 liberal-bourgeois order), youth (“Giovinezza!”), voluntarism, violence, the exceptional individual against the mass.

⁹ As in L’Italia del Popolo [Bs As], 1 January 1932.

¹⁰ Considerations of space require the propagation of Italian fascism in Argentine political society and the Mussolinian origins of Peronist doctrines and institutions to be dealt with elsewhere.

¹¹ De Rosa, , “L’emigrazione italiana,” p. 79.Google Scholar Many thousands re-emigrated, including contingents of migrant harvesters–“gotondrinas”–who worked year-round by following the harvest cycles of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The most extensive statistical treatment is in Nascimbene, Mario C, “Los italianos y la integración nacional” : Historia evolutiva de la colectividad italiana en la Argentina (1835–1965) (Bs As, 1988)Google Scholar.

¹² Nascimbene, Mario C., “Los italianos y la integración nacional,” pp. 77–87.Google Scholar

¹³ The extensive literature on the formation of the burguesía terrateniente, and on social class formation generally, does not provide convincing answers to this negative question. It suggests however that the Italians’ propensity to accumulate land for agricultural rather than stockraising purposes lies at or near the heart of the matter. See particularly the data on landownership by ethnic group in Zemboraín, Saturnino M., La verdad sobre la propiedad de la Tierra en la Argentina: Los orígenes de la propiedad, la movilidad social y el proceso de la subdivisión de la tierra. (Buenos Aires, 1973)Google Scholar, a work commissioned by the Sociedad Rural.

¹⁴ Carlos Pellegrini, one of Argentina’s most accomplished presidents (1890–1892), was a rare exception. Note that to the socially-secure Hispanos he remained “El Gringo.”

¹⁵ Cara-Walker, Ana, “Cocoliche: The Art of Assimilation and Dissimulation among Italians and Argentines,” Latin American Research Review 22:3 (1987), 37–67.Google Scholar Cara-Walker finds that the language and stereotype originated in Argentina; however, the fascist Mattino d’Italia (Bs As) asserted in 1937 (25 March) that cocoliche arose in the eighteenth century from the interaction of Neapolitans and Spanish soldiery stationed in Southern Italy. In Argentina “cocoliche” refers both to language and to the stereotyped Italian immigrant of the popular media. As recently as April 1991 the author witnessed street theatre in La Boca–the old Genoese and Italian quarter of Buenos Aires–that drew heavily on Cocoliche and other ethnic stereotypes, and drew enthusiastic applause.

¹⁶ “The Italian newcomer in the Argentine Republic developed two ambitions: first, to own a horse … and second, to become adept in its use; and that he never was. His awkward postures on horseback are the constant delight of the Creole horseman.” Jefferson, Mark E.L., Peopling the Argentine Pampa (New York, 1926), p. 32.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Rivista Mensile del Patronato di Lavoro [Bs As], 5:52 (June 1922); Cannistraro, Philip V. and Rosoli, Gianfausto, “Fascist Emigration Policy in the 1920s: an Interpretive Framework,” International Migration Review 13 (1979), 673–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ De Rosa, , “L’Emigrazione italiana,” pp. 80–81.Google Scholar See also Nobile, Annunziata, “Aspetti dell’immigrazione italiana in Argentina negli anni del gran esodo: alcuni contributi americani,” Storia contemporanea 13 (February 1982), 123–28Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Nascimbene, , “Fascismo y antifascismo,” p. 137.Google Scholar

²⁰ Nascimbene, , “Los italianos y la integración nacional,” p. 14.Google Scholar

²¹ Nascimbene, Mario C., Historia ele los italianos en la Argentina (1835–1920) (second ed; Bs As, 1987), pp. 55–63 Google Scholar, for a full tabulation of Italian societies extant in 1906, in their period of greatest flourishing.

²² Italia del Popolo, 3 November 1940.

²³ 14 November 1940. Emphasis added.

²⁴ “Argentina,” Enciclopedìa Italiana di Scienze, Lettere, e di Arte (Milan/Rome, Istituto Giovanni Trecanni, 1929), vol. 8. In Córdoba, which would become a redoubt of the reactionary wing of Italo-Argentine fascism, fascists appropriated, over local protest, the local chapter of Veterans of the European War. Italia del Popolo, 29 May 1923. For the background of the first overseas missions see: Relazione al Duce … [di Cornelio di Marzio], 7 November 27, ACS, Segretaria Particolare del Duce, busta 27 (1927), sottofascicolo 5c; Enzo Santarelli, “I fasci all’estero,” in Santarelli, , Ricerche sul fascismo (Urbino, 1971), pp. 113–132 Google Scholar passim; Santarelli, , “Intorno ai fasci italiani all’estero,” in his Fascismo e neofascismo (Rome, 1974), pp. 113–133 Google Scholar; Fabiano, Domenico, “I fasci italiani all’estero,” in Brezza, , comp., Gli italiani fuori d’Italia, pp. 221–36Google Scholar; Fabiano, , “La lega italiana per la tutela degli interessi italiani all’estero,” Storia contemporanea 2 (1985), 203–50Google Scholar.

²⁵ Italia del Popolo, 1 and 6 July 1923.

²⁶ La Razón (Bs As), 1 May 1923, cited in Italia del Popolo, 2 May 1923.

²⁷ Gentile, , “Emigración e italianidad en Argentina,” 174 Google Scholar, n. 95. Italia del Popolo, 6 July 1923. Il Littore, edited by ex-Captain G. Trapani Milazzo, became the official organ of all the Argentine fasci in 1924.

²⁸ Italia del Popolo, 23 May 1923. The communists included Vittorio Codovilla, of whom much more would be heard.

²⁹ Mattino d’Italia, 4 April 1938. The wartime figures do not appear to represent an outpouring of patriotism. Italian returnees from Argentina were fifty-five thousand in 1915 and thirty-six thousand from 1916 through 1918. The number of returnees had reached sixty thousand in 1911, fifty-nine thousand in 1913, and sixty thousand again in 1914. Enciclopedia Italiana 8, “Argentina.”

³⁰ According to the COI report cited above, at least eight fascists were killed in Argentina between 1923 and 1933; however, I have been unable to verify even one of these deaths. The killing by fascists of Camillo Nardini in Mendoza in 1926’remained a grievance on the left for years. On Nardini; ItalEmb to MAE, Bs As, 30 December 26, ASMAE, AP, Arg 20–30, p. 806, f. 931. On the beating of an employee of the Argentine Legation, Rome, by fascist goons: Note Verbale, Arg Leg to MAE, Rome, 3 January 24, ASMAE, AP, Arg 20–30, p. 806, f. 922. Violence was reported from Rosario in 1929, Córdoba in 1930 (a “dynamite plot”), Buenos Aires in 1933, Chivilcoy in 1934 (three young men hooted the film “Mussolini Parla”), and Córdoba again (1939).

³¹ See Cannistraro and Rosoli, cited above, on the subordination of party to national interests and the continuing dominance of old-style diplomacy and old-line diplomats in the 1920s; also Cassels, Alan, Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy (Princeton, 1970)Google Scholar. In 1923 the minister, Colli di Felizzano, was a count, and the consul, Serpi, was titled. Among Colli’s successors were Count Luigi A. Marescotti di Vianna, Count Martin Franklin, and Count Bonifacio Pignatti Morano di Custozza.

³² La Patria degli Italiani (Bs As), 28 October 23.

³³ La Patria degli Italiani, 3 December 1922.

³⁴ Born near Ancona in 1866, Guidi was educated as a physician and worked as a journalist. He was head of the Dante Alighieri Society in Argentina before he took over as president of the Federazione. He had a hand in the erection of numerous statues and busts in Argentina and Italy. He died in Buenos Aires in 1944. Diccionario biográfico italo-argentino (Bs As, 1976), pp. 356–57.

³⁵ Italia del Popolo, 22 May 1923, 24 September 1930.

³⁶ The newspaper’s backers and editorial staff undoubtedly included Masons: Ital Emb to MAE, Bs As, 17 September 1929, ASMAE, Arg 20–30, p. 808, f. 950; Gazzera to MAE, Bs As, 23 September 1929, same file; Div. Polizia Politica, Rome, 15 May 1929, citing confidential report from Buenos Aires, ACS, MI, PS, DAGR, b 205, f. K3. In 1945 it was reported that La Patria degli Italiani and Il Mattino d’Italia were owned by the same company. Memo, legal attaché [FBI], U.S. Emb, to chargé d’affaires, U.S. Emb, re: “Italian Hospital,” Bs As, 25 October 1945, USNA (Suitland), RG 84, Bs As Post Records 1945(C), 820.02. Il Giornale d’Italia also turned against fascism in 1929; Masonic influences were suspected there also: Div. Polizia Politica report cited above.

³⁷ “La Delegazione Generale del Partito Fascista,” Bolletino Mensile, Associazione Italiana Reduci Guerra Europea, 7:3 (March 27).

³⁸ At that time the priest Gustavo Franceschi, who in the 1930s would become one of Argentina’s best-known clerical-fascist propagandists, was recruited to the movement. Franceschi made his debut in the new fascist daily Mattino d’Italia in May 1930.

³⁹ Noted by Cannistraro and Rosoli, op. cit.

⁴⁰ Ducino was the common, slightly contemptuous, diminutive of duce. Ducini is the plural. Dittatorielloli was a similar usage.

⁴¹ La Patria degli Italiani, Almanacco 1922 (Bs As, 1922), pp. 547-48. The 1923 Almanacco suggested a shakeup had occurred with the coming of fascism to Italy: the Santa Fé consulate had been dropped and only seventy-eight consular agencies were listed-still a ponderable number.

⁴² Italia Libera (Bs As), 17 April 1943.

⁴³ In 1926, following a sumptuous luncheon, Ambassador Martin Franklin addressed the bourgeois association “Circolo Italiano” on “The New Italy;” the address was followed by the singing of “Giovinezza,” which was followed by the singing of the “Marcia Reale.” (Tolerance of ambiguity is the hallmark of the true opportunist.) ItalEmb 2146/484 to MAE, Bs As, 26 October 1926, ASMAE, AP, Arg 20–30, p. 806, f. 931.

⁴⁴ II Mattino d’Italia [Bs As], 21 October 1943.

⁴⁵ Italia del Popolo, 8 November 1930.

⁴⁶ For example, the employees of Umberto Nisi’s “Arrocera Argentina” in the 1920s, who found themselves on Sunday mornings doing militia physical drill. Italia del Popolo, 29 June 1938. The newspaper also accused a number of “big firms” of pressuring their employees to join the PNFI or Dopolavoro; Pirelli Platense SA pressed even criollo employees to join the Dopolavoro. 18 May 1939.

⁴⁷ In 1942 Bruno Foa, chief of the Bureau of Latin American Research, posited three “phototypes” [sic] of Italians in South America: “(a) the democrat, steeped in the traditions of Garibaldi, of Italian and French radicalism, and in some cases evolutionary socialism; (b) the average non-politically-minded Italian, who somehow has fallen under the sway of fascism and whose vague feelings of Italian patriotism induce him to sympathize with Mussolini and Fascist Italy; and (c) the dyed-in-the-the-wool Nazi.” Group (c) was of course the most dangerous, though it was “probably very small.” “Propaganda Strategies (Some Suggestions),” 1 April 1942, end to Foa [BLAR] to Duggan [Dept State], Washington, 16 April 1942, USNA, RG 59, 865.20210/42.

⁴⁸ “Fascismo y antifascismo,” p. 140.

⁴⁹ The speaker, “Mr. [Paolo] Vita-Fihzi,” was described by his interlocutor, Serafino Romualdi, as “one of the most brilliant Italian career diplomats” until the enactment of the Italian racial laws. Cited in BLAR memo, Tucci to Ascoli, Washington, 14 February 1942, end to Foa to Duggan, Washington, 16 April 1942, USNA, RG 59, 865.20210/42.

⁵⁰ 6 August 1927. At the time, only France received more migratory Italian workers than Argentina. Pointed out by La Prensa on 14 August in its reply to the Italian ambassador’s protests against its earlier editorials.

⁵¹ La Prensa, 6 and 9 August 1927.

⁵² 8 August 1927. In fact the colony planted in 1927 by the Italian Colonizing Society “Vittorio Emmanuele III” in Chañar Ladeado, Santa Fe, under a provincial government charter, was a venture of the sort described by L’Esportatore. Only Italian citizens were admissible; anyone who acquired Argentine citizenship could be expelled. ItalEmb to MAE, Bs As, 4 November 1927, ASMAE, AP, Arg 20–30, p. 807, f. 965. Colonia Regina (now Villa Regina), then being developed in the Río Negro Valley, was a similar project. Still another was discussed in 1933 by President Justo and an agent of Italian business and weapons interests named Rodolfo di Ciò: Società Finanziaria Italiana to MAE, Milan, 15 February 1933, ASMAE, AP, Arg, b 4 (1933), f. ll. In the matter of ethnic exclusivity La Prensa overlooked such precedents as the Welsh communities in Patagonia, the Volga German settlements in Entre Ríos, and the Jewish Colonization Association colonies. None of the latter, however, were linked to an expansionist European power.

⁵³ 6 August 1927.

⁵⁴ “La Politica italiana dell’Emigrazione,” Bolletino Mensile, Associazione Italiana Reduci Guerra Europea (Buenos Aires), 7:9 (September 27).

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ The crisis between the two countries continued through 1928-1929; in the end Mussolini’s government backed down. Italia del Popolo, 11 January and 1 March 1929. The vexing question of to which country men owed military service was resolved by a diplomatic convention on 9 August 1938. Italia del Popolo, 9 August 1938.

⁵⁷ Eg., “Los bárbaros,” section of magazine Alma gaucha (Bs As), ACS, MI, PS, DGAR, b 101 (1926), f. C2; Carlos Néstor Maciel, La italianización de la Argentina (Bs As, 1924); ItalEmb 1944 to MAE, Bs As, 3 July 1928, (comment on hostile article in La Nación), ASMAE, DG, Italiani Estero, b 196bis, f. 71.

⁵⁸ Repetto first denounced the fascists on the floor of Congress in 1927. His interpellation of Foreign Minister Angel Gallardo in 1930 demonstrated that not all of Yrigoyen’s ministers were hostile to fascism; Gallardo said he saw nothing wrong with the Argentine fasci since fascism had a “spiritual organization” rather like a “religious order.” Italia del Popolo, 4 October 1930; also Mattino, 25 July 1930.

⁵⁹ On the antifascists: Fanesi, Pietro R., “El anti-fascismo italiano en Argentina (1922–1945),” EMLA 4:12 (August 1989), 319–52Google Scholar; Leiva, María de Luján, “Il movimento antifacista italiano in Argentina (1922–1945),” in Brezza, B. comp., Gli italiani fuori d’Italia: Gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d’adozione, 1880–1940 (Milan, 1983), pp. 549–82Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Masonry was banned by Mussolini in 1926. The extensive police files on Italo-Argentine Masonry in the ACS provide the only available documentation on this important subject.

⁶¹ He died in Argentina in 1932. His thoughtful correspondence with Torcuato di Telia is preserved in the Di Telia Institute in Buenos Aires.

⁶² Mussolini’s spies told him that Labriola had great influence with the Argentine government and advised the latter on antifascist measures. Seg. Part, del Duce, bag 13, folder 168/R “Labriola,” USNA, RG 242/T586/R1119/F072510 et seq. See also the guest list, provided by a spy, of forty prominent fuorusciti who attended a “Refugees’ Dinner” organized by the Concentrazione Antifascista in January 1932. Div. Polizia Politica, Rome, 26 January 1932, citing anon, report from Buenos Aires: ACS, MI, PS, DGAR, p. 17, f. C2/2.

⁶³ The fullest study is in Fanesi, op. cit. See also de Luján Leiva, op. cit. Voluminous police reports in the ACS on republicans, Masons, socialists, communists, and anarchists in Argentina suggest that dozens of spies were employed.

⁶⁴ Urbani, Manilio, Italia del Popolo, 14 August 1935.Google Scholar Urbani was a veteran of the partisan battles of the 1920s. Also de Luján Leiva, op. cit.

⁶⁵ Nascimbene, , Historia de los italianos en la Argentina, pp. 65–75.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Which saw fit to adopt Argentine rather than Italian statutes in 1926. Nevertheless, in 1939 it fell under the terms of President Ortiz’ decree of 15 May.

⁶⁷ In Buenos Aires, after 1922 the Scuola Nazionale Italiana and the Pro Schola Association of elementary schools accepted the Gentile reforms and the subsidies that accompanied them. By 1932 the former had closed and the number within Pro Schola had dwindled from 9 to 3. The schools operated by Mutualit ed Istruzione, Colonia Italiana, and Italia Unita and the Scuola Edmondo de Amicis rejected fascist overtures. Italia del Popolo, 24 January 1929, 8 October 1930, 4 and 8 December 1932. For background see Cinel, Dino, Scuola italiana all’ estero: realizzazioni e prospettive al 1922 (Rome, 1972), esp. pp. 112–115.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Unlike, for example, the Nazi Party’s Overseas Organization (AO/NSDAP), which until 1933 offered aid to merchant seamen, manual laborers, and white-collar workers, social elements whose problems were routinely ignored by Weimar Germany’s diplomats and consuls. Newton, Ronald C., The “Nazi Menace” in Argentina, 1931–1947 (Stanford, 1992), p. 38.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Urbani, op. cit.

⁷⁰ Italia del Popolo, 21 October 1930, listing their comings and goings. The Fascist Deputy, Franco Ciarlantini, sent to Argentina on a cultural outreach mission in the late 1920s, gave a “pessimistic and defamatory” interview concerning Argentina and the Italo-Argentines on his return to Rome (Italia del Popolo, 11 January 1929). The mission of the special ambassador for industry, Giovanni Giurati, in 1927 achieved little. Galeazzo Ciano and Raffaele Guariglia (later Badoglio’s foreign minister), both of whom served in Buenos Aires, in private poured scorn on both the country and the Italo-Argentines: Guerri, Giordano Bruno, Galeazzo Ciano: Una vita, 1903–1944 (Milan, 1979), p. 43 Google Scholar; Guariglia, , Ricordi (1922–1946), (Naples, 1949), pp. 332–336.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Italia del Popolo, 13 May 1932.

⁷² 29 July 1938.

⁷³ Valdani was born in Milan in 1870, died in Buenos Aires in 1964, was buried in Milan in 1965. Trained as an industrial engineer, he worked in the gold fields of the western U.S., in Mexico, Canada, Alaska, Hungary, and Siberia. He joined the Pirelli firm in 1899 and was influential in expanding Pirelli’s holdings in Argentina; he became the match king of Argentina with the Cía. General de Fósforos and later expanded into cotton, paper, cellulose, and other products in Argentina and Uruguay. His multiple interests dominated what became known as the “Italian group.” He raised loans in the Italian collectivity for Italy’s effort in World War I and worked for the Italian government in 1918. When blacklisted by the Allies early in World War II he resigned from all his directorships to throw himself into political work. Diccionario biográfico italo-argentino, pp. 682–85. See also Italia del Popolo, 18 September 1932 (unfriendly profile of Valdani); Carlo Scorza’s fawning biography, Vittorio Valdani: un uomo (Bs As, 1955); and U.S.Emb 14899 to State Dept, Bs As, 27 May 1944, USNA, RG 59, 865.20200/Morreale/8.

⁷⁴ Reportedly at a cost of 700,000 pesos; he also covered the paper’s deficits. U.S.Emb 14899 to State Dept, Bs As, 27 May 1944, USNA, RG 59, 865.20200/Morreale/8. See also Italia del Popolo, 19 October 1932.

⁷⁵ When censorship was lifted in 1932 it was alleged that the fascists had collaborated with Uruburu’s police to identify and deport Italian and Italo-Argentine leftists to Italy. An OVRA specialist in torture, Stefano Marucci, was brought in to advise Leopoldo Lugones (hijo), the psychopathic secret police chief; Marucci tortured Severino di Giovanni before his execution: Italia del Popolo, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 February 1932. See also Bayer, Osvaldo, Severino di Giovanni, el idealista de la violencia (Bs As, 1989), pp. 315, 321–330Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ The hopes for expanded economic ties with Italy that Uriburu’s coup might have awakened, and the economic consequences for Valdani and his group of the confirmation of British pre-eminence in 1932-further solidified by the Roca-Runciman Treaty of 1934-are themes for further research.

⁷⁷ A Partido Fascista Argentino was founded in 1932. Its later history is unclear: in Buenos Aires it struggled along through the 1930s, an object of amusement to the Italian Embassy. In Córdoba, however, a party of the same name, though apparently dominated by criollos, was active in the feverish and violent politics of the decade. See the author’s “Not for Export (?): Italian Fascism and the Argentine Right, Uriburu to Perón,” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies annual meeting 1993; and the forthcoming study by Sandra McGee Deutsch.

⁷⁸ Oda Olberg de Lerda to Fritz Stampfer, Bs As, 24 July 1935. Stampfer Mappe, Archiv der Sozial-Demokratie, Friedrich Ebert-Stiftung (Bonn/Bad Godesberg).

⁷⁹ Blackshirt volunteers from overseas were formed into two legions in Italy under the nominal command of Pietro Parmi, Director General of Italians Overseas. They were rescued from Mogadiscio by a shipment of Chevrolet trucks donated by Italian organizations in the United States. Some volunteers apparently reached Ethiopia after the fighting ended. The largest contingent returned to Buenos Aires in December 1936. Five had died; it is unclear how.

⁸⁰ Galeazzo Ciano, who loathed the physical appearance of Buenos Aires, lauded the city’s beauty in his broadcast inaugurating shortwave service in April 1935. Mattino, 19 April 1935. See also Welles, Sumner, “Fascist and National Socialist Activities in the American Republics,” 12 October 1938 Google Scholar, enclosure to Department of State to Western Hemisphere Missions, Washington, 21 October 1938, USNA, RG 59, 800.20210/166a.

⁸¹ For which he was snubbed by Mussolini and the King on his trip to Europe in 1938. ItalEmb 4919/2628 to MAE, Bs As, 3 August 1938, ASMAE, AP, Arg, b 20 (1938), f. 3. Justo’s radical son Liborio was openly contemptuous of Mussolini and fascism. His article attacking Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia appeared in Italia del Popolo on 4 October 1935 and prompted a visit to the Casa Rosada by the counselor of the Italian Embassy. President Iusto’s secretary told the Italian that Liborio was indeed “a constant cause of the deepest displeasure to his father.” ItalEmb telespresso to MAE, Bs As, 11 October 1935, ASMAE, AP, Arg, b 7, f. 1 (1935).

⁸² Such as the Battaglione della Morte organized by Candido Testa of Bs As and affiliated with the POUM. Italia del Popolo, 3, 5 January 1937, May 1937, passim. IP supported both the Trotskyite Battaglione and the Communist-organized Garibaldini. Among the latter Vittorio Codovilla was the best known Italo-Argentine. On returning to Argentina in 1939 Codovila acquired Argentine citizenship to avoid deportation and subsequently had a long career as CP leader.

⁸³ As late as 20 March 1937 Il Mattino d’Italia refused to admit that Italian troops were fighting for the Nationalists. On 1 May 1937 Italia del Popolo published the names of 277 Italians some presumably known personally to Italo-Argentines captured at Guadalajara.

⁸⁴ Italia del Popolo, 31 July 1938. Miniggio, a fascist di prima ora, had been sent from Italy in 1937 with orders to raise the number to ten thousand. He evidently failed to do so, and returned to Italy in 1940.

⁸⁵ One beneficial consequence for Il Mattino was a sudden access of advertising. By October 1936 the daily was featuring large ads for Klöckner, Hasenclever, Thyssen-Lametal, and other German firms.

⁸⁶ Mattino d’Italia, 19 February, 13 April 1937. To underline his quirky personal prejudices, he added, “and [in international circles] where [Jewish] men do not show up, the [Jewish] woman does arrive–younger, lovelier than Wally Simpson, but, like her, wilful, energetic, immodest, and Jewish.” 19 February 1937.

⁸⁷ Mattino d’Italia, 7, 28 April, 1, 22, 24, 27 July, 6, 16, 26 August, 2 September 1936, 1, 2, 15 March 1939.

⁸⁸ ItalEmb teleg. 2992 to MAE, Bs As, 28 February 1939, ASMAE, AP, Arg, busta 25 (1939), foglio 3; Mattino d’Italia, 2 March 1939 et seq.

⁸⁹ Olivetti, one-time President of the Confederazione Fascista delle Industrie, made a “pleasure trip” to Argentina in November 1939 and remained there. Italia del Popolo, 1 November 1939; Cannistraro, Philip V. and Sullivan, Brian R., Il Duce’s Other Woman (New York, 1992), p. 355.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Margherita, director of the cultural journal Gerarchia, had visited Buenos Aires in 1930 as the “ambassadress of Italian spirituality.” Close as she then was to Mussolini, her visit to the fascio was graced by the full complement of counts, commendatori, cavalieri, and other Fascist eminences. Mattino d’Italia, 19 September 1930 et passim. In 1939 she traveled to Montevideo on an Italian passport and resided there and in Buenos Aires, mostly in the latter, until 1947. See Cannistraro and Sullivan, pp., passim.

⁹² Nevertheless, L’Italia del Popolo denounced Italian anti-Semitism and lent its support to a protest meeting organized on 30 October 1938 by the radical Jewish Organización Popular, the Comité Contra el Racismo y el Antisemitismo, and other elements of the Argentine left. Italia del Popolo, 28, 30 July, 4, 9 September, 30 October, 11 November, 16 December 1938.

⁹³ Professor Gino Arias, who arrived in January 1939, was denounced by Il Mattino (12 April) for making an anti-Mussolini statement on his arrival, while Italia del Popolo (29/30 January) denounced him for not making such a statement. The fascists were perhaps displeased with Arias for declaring himself a Catholic in March. ItalEmb Bs As 537/251 to MAE, 31 January 1939; MAE to ItalEmb Bs As, 29 March 1939, ASMAE, AP, Arg, busta 25 (1939), foglio 3.

⁹⁴ For prominent Italian Jews who chose Argentine exile see Italia del Popolo, 7 November 1939; Lore Terracini, “Una inmigración muy particular: 1938, los universitarios italianos en la la Argentina,” Anuario del Instituto de Estudios Histórico Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires [Tandil], 335–369. A recent addition to the literature is Jarach, Vera and Smolensky, Eleonora W., Colectividad judía italiana emigrada a la Argentina (1937–1943) (Bs As: Biblioteca Política Argentina 394, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ The German and Austrian Nazis held a joint celebration at Luna Park in Buenos Aires on 10 April 1938 which attracted much uneasy comment on the left. The speakers made frequent laudatory reference to Il Duce, Fascist Italy, and the Rome-Berlin Axis. They were meant to mollify Italian fears concerning Austria, and also to prepare for Italian-German cooperation in Argentina–little of which was forthcoming. See Newton, , “Nazi Menace,” p. 187.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Italia del Popolo, 13–17 May 1939. As early as 1935 the appointed governors of the Territories of Misiones and La Pampa had complained of Nazi influences in the public schools, which were under the jurisdiction of the federal Consejo Nacional de Educación. Exposés of the situation in the territories and elsewhere increased in the freer public climate which followed Ortiz’ election at the end of 1937; in May 1938 Socialist and Radical deputies denounced the “Nazification” of the schools from the floor of Congress. The consequence was tightening of nationalistic school legislation and the embarrassment of the German collectivity. República Argentina, Congreso, Comisión Investigadora de Actividades AntiArgentinas, Informe No. 4, septiembre 30 de 1941 (Bs As, 1941); Newton, , “NaziMenace,” pp. 188–93Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Ciano 7073/78 to Guariglia, Rome, 20 May 1938, approving Guariglia’s proposals of 27 April 1938 (report 2630/1238), ASMAE, AP, Arg, b 20(1938), f. 6; Italia del Popolo, 2 and 4 July 1939. According to Italia Libre, 11 October 1941, the Italian government had proposed in 1937 to spend the grandiose sum of four million lira on a centralized facility in Buenos Aires. Part of the money was collected in the collectivity, but it was never returned to Argentina because Rome declared itself offended by the nationalistic legislation of 1938–1939. Evidently Rome’s threat to cancel construction was meant to bully the Argentine government. Pro Schola threatened to close its remaining schools following the 15 May 1939 decree, but backed down: Italia del Popolo, 23 December 1939. In 1942 there were ninety Italian schools in Argentina: COI Report #18, 16 March 1942.

⁹⁸ The Plot, exposed by the Buenos Aires press in March 1939, consisted of an alleged effort by Nazis and German diplomats to gather information on Patagonia with a view to causing the region to secede and place itself under German protection. It was a hoax, as Ortiz almost certainly knew. It seriously discomfited the Germans, as its sponsors, a British-backed antifascist coalition, meant it to do. Newton, , “Nazi Menace,” pp. 194–214.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ For Italian self-congratulation at having taken “prudential” measures to transfer fascist archives, mask institutions, etc., before the beginning of war, see: ItalEmb telespresso 234591 to MAE, Bs As, 7 October 1939, ASMAE, AP, Arg, b 25(1939), f. 5.

¹⁰⁰ Regime Facista (Rome), 22 Aprii 1940. Found in AC, DP, caja 4336, Ital 40/17.

¹⁰¹ L’Italia del Popolo, 10 October 1940.

¹⁰² Chief of Federal Police to Minister of Interior, 3 July 1940, AC, DP, caja 4336, It 40/16. I have not been able to determine how many Italians returned to Italy for military service in World War Two. Tasco was a professional diplomat whom Italia Libre acknowledged to be “un hombre listo,” one who “knew how to gain great influence and popularity in the colonial fascist environment … he flattered to the maximum the largest ‘melones’ of the collectivity, particularly if they were heavy with money and light on intelligence … .” IL, 25 October 1941. He switched to the Badoglio, pro-Allied, side in late 1943.

¹⁰³ Fullerton (U.S. Consul) to DS, Marseilles, 28 May 1941, “Italian Secret Agents in the Western Hemisphere,” USNA, RG 59, 865.20210/22; ItalEmb to MAE for MinCulPop, Bs As, 22 December 1940, ASMAE, AP, Arg, b28 (1940), f. 5 (on subventions to Argentine press).

¹⁰⁴ Born Rome 1893, died Buenos Aires 1974. Lawyer, diplomat, decorated in World War I, volunteered (at age 42) for the Ethiopia expedition in 1935. Diccionario biográfico italo-argentino, 437. In 1936 he received his reward by being named inspector of the fasci for Argentina. Mattino, 19 November 1936.

¹⁰⁵ When Italy entered the war in June 1940 the ailing Guidi Buffarmi gave a “fervid discourse” to the Consociazione, apparently his last thrust against Valdani. Shortly afterward he resigned from the Federazione; he died in 1944.

¹⁰⁶ Italian spies reported it had been started by Guido Tempesti, was supported by British funds, and had obtained the address-list of the “Italian Canoe Club,” whose president was Mauro Herlitzska, an antifascist Jew. ItalEmb 09682 to MAE,Bs As, 28 July 1940, enclosing MSVN report of 16 July, ACS/MI/PS/G l/b326/f1384.

¹⁰⁷ The BLAR, with headquarters in Washington, was an ad hoc dependency of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. The State Department approved: e.g., Selden Chapin’s memo of conversation with Berle and Duggan of 10 February 1943 in which he quotes Berle as observing that Mr. [Serafino] Romualdi’s activities were productive for the war effort and that the CI-AA might well continue financial and other support. USNA, RG 59, 800.01/247.

¹⁰⁸ ACS, MI, DGPS, DAGR, GI, b 326, f. 1384. The names on the manifesto should be compared to the names subscribed to the 296-page Homenaje de la industria y el comercio argentina a Su Excelencia Benito Mussolini (Bs As, ca 1939) held at the U.S. Library of Congress.

¹⁰⁹ Carlo Sforza arrived from the U.S. on the last day of the congress; the State Department would not allow the more radical Pacciardi to travel at all.

¹¹⁰ MAE nominated a successor but although Great Britain did not oppose his travel to Argentina the State Department refused to grant a safe-conduct. Malbrán 61 to Ruíz-Guiñazú, Rome, 13 July 1942, AC, DP, Ital 42, caja 17, leg 9.

¹¹¹ Italia Libera, 6 November 1943.

¹¹² Mattino d’Italia, 23 September 1943. On the 28th II Mattino editorialized, “Grazie, Luigi Palmieri!” The military junta’s interventor in the Province of Santa Fe ordered a day of mourning; the Argentine flag was flown at half-staff.

¹¹³ In October 1943 the German chargé d’affaires in Buenos Aires, Erich Otto Meynen, suggested to Berlin that Mussolini appoint Valdani his personal representative and Masi the head of a fascist stay-behind organization. U.S., War Department, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, The Magic Documents: Summaries and Transcripts of the Top Secret Diplomatic Communcations of Japan, 1938–1945 (Microfilm, 14 reels; Washington, 1980), 7, summary 634, 20 December 1943.

¹¹⁴ Gaio Gradenigo, Mussolini’s secret police chief in Verona at the end of the war, made his way to Genoa without difficulty in the summer of 1945 and took ship for Brazil; thence he later traveled, in the company of Vittorio Mussolini, to Argentina. He speaks of many comrades who shared that experience. Conversation, Bs As, April 1991. See also Aarons, Mark and Loftus, John, Ratlines: How the Vatican’s Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets (London, 1991)Google Scholar, Senkman, Leonardo, “Las relaciones EEUU-Argentina y la cuestión de los refugiados de la post-guerra: 1945–1948,” Judaica latinoamericana estudios histórico-sociales (Jerusalem, 1988)Google Scholar; Meding, Holger M., Flucht vor Nürn-berg? Deutsche und österreichische Einwanderung in Argentinien, 1945–1955 (Cologne, 1992)Google Scholar. See also Schneider, Arnd, “Italian Immigrants in Contemporary Buenos Aires: Their Responses to Changing Political, Economic, and Social Circumstances,” Ph.D diss., Anthropology, London School of Economics, 1992 Google Scholar.