Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Italian Language Press in Argentina
Drawing primarily from chapter five of my book, Mussolini’s National Project in Argentina (Fairleigh Dickinson, 2012), this paper examines how both pro-and anti-Fascist Italian newspapers in Argentina responded to Mussolini's propaganda by articulating their own notions of a diasporic Italian identity. It begins with a look at the Fascist regime’s use of the press as a vehicle for its propaganda through the embassy-sponsored Il Mattino d’Italia, followed by both pro-and anti-Fascist responses to the propaganda from within the Italian community with a focus on three newspapers:
Folco Testena’s pro-fascist Il Giornale d’Italia, Francesco Frola’s anti-Fascist Il Risorgimento, and the long-standing and most widely circulated mainstream Italian daily in Argentina: La Patria degli Italiani.
Whether supporting or opposing Fascism, each of the newspapers challenged the regime’s definition of an Italian identity abroad and articulated in its place their own original understanding of what it means to be an Italian in Argentina.
In the end their responses to Fascism communicate a new diasporic identity that speaks to a community in transition, one anxious to integrate fully into the fabric of Argentine society while at the same time maintain its cultural ties to the ancestral homeland.
In doing so, these newspapers provide a compelling example of the importance of the local Italian language press in shaping public discourse within an ethnic community as well as their power to challenge from abroad the propaganda apparatus of the Italian state.
David Aliano is Professor of Italian and History at the University of Mount Saint Vincent and is the founding director of its B.A. program in Italian and Italian Diaspora Studies. He is the Editor of the Italian American Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and has researched and published widely on the formation of Italian national and ethnic identities; Italian Fascism and anti-Fascism; and the transnational intersections of culture and politics in Italy, Latin America, and the United States. He is the author of Mussolini’s National Project in Argentina (2012), winner of the Association for Ethnic Studies’ Outstanding Book Award. His current book project examines American tourist encounters with Italy’s changing landscape in the twentieth century.
