In Defense of Our Brothers’ Cause: Argentine Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

Tomas E. Piedrahita, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

Long a country of two faces – European and Latin American – Argentina saw the woes of the Spanish Civil War as deeply reflective of their struggles and immensely predictive of their fate. Their preoccupation with the war’s outcome was at once an expression of the country's long-simmering identity crisis and an attempt to affirm its Hispanic otherness, particularly in the wake of the 1930 coup d’état. This article explores the subtleties of this identity crisis with an eye toward determining the motives underlying claims and references to Spain, an exploration which rests primarily on the nexus of social and cultural history and secondarily on their intersection with political history. Appealing to the writings of intellectuals, politicians, and clergy, as well as newspaper accounts of the time, this article outlines Argentine framing of the Spanish Civil War in an attempt to elucidate its cultural and political character.

Discipline(s)

Cultural History | European History | Latin American History | Political History | Social History

Suggested Citation

Piedrahita, Tomas E., "In Defense of Our Brothers’ Cause: Argentine Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939" 07 May 2014. CUREJ: College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, University of Pennsylvania, https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/187.