INDEPENDENCE CENTENARY GENERATION’S ARGENTINIAN NATIONALISM

Abstract

In the last decades of 19th century, Argentina received hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Liberal enthusiasm about immigration quickly was replaced by the vision of immigrants as a risk to social stability and to incipient Argentinian nationality. Therefore, State tried to homogenize country’s heterogeneous population, mainly by means of a patriotic education project. Concerned about nation values and traditions affirmation, in opposition to immigration, were those authors associated to the Independence Centenary Generation, celebrated in 1910. This article will analyze its principal names (Ricardo Rojas, Leopoldo Lugones and Manuel Gálvez), demonstrating how this discussion was related to promote and maintain hegemonic practices, which aimed to sustain the establishment.