Avances del Cesor (Jul 2016)
Fascism; Antifascism; Bahía Blanca; Associationism; Italian community
Abstract
The aim of this article is to reconstruct the conflict between fascists and antifascists during the elections celebrated in the Italia Unita Society of Bahía Blanca, on January 16th 1927, through the wide broadcasting it had in the local press. These elections showed an openly politic nature, having into account the fact that the fascio ‘Giulio Giordani’ operated in the city, since May 15th 1926. This institution, since its very origins looked for becoming the representative of the local Italian community. In that context, the elections in the Italian entity were an institutional manifestation of the conflict that, since the constitution of the fascio, existed between its members and local antifascists, many of them linked to the Socialist Center of Bahía Blanca. Then, our study attempts to understand the elections – as well as the atmosphere during the election campaign, and fundamentally its consequences- in the light of the dispute between fascism and antifascism for the hegemony in the Italian community of Bahía Blanca. This paper belongs to a wider investigation that searches to analyze, for the case of Bahía Blanca, the results of the Italian government’s attempt to control the Italian institutions abroad.
