Abstract
Community press and local
politics (1875-1880):
Towards the formation of a
"Hiberno-Argentine" political opinion?
Ana M. Castello (Universidad Católica
Argentina)
![](imagenes/tn_DSCN6534.jpg) |
Around
1875, the Irish and their children, the ‘Irish-porteńos,’ were
perceived by Argentine society and public authorities as a
small, pioneering and prosperous migrant community embedded
in the agricultural activities of the countryside of the
thriving Province of Buenos Aires. The majority of their
residences were scattered across the rural zone that
surrounded the capital city, but they were connected
together by their native culture. Guided spiritually and
materially by their priests, few were now arriving from
Ireland and many had lost their foreign status: they were
Hiberno-Argentines. The cheap government land, sheep farming
and a favourable international market allowed some of them,
around the 1870s, to become owners of vast lands and
financial businesses. Former tenants or sharecroppers, they
differentiated themselves from the rest both socially and
economically. Buenos Aires, meanwhile, was inundated by
immigrants: associations and publications of all kinds were
sprouting up, enriching the public sphere of a mobile and
rapidly politicised civil society. Their personal relations
with members of the governing elite were frequently the
informal modes that these ‘respectable’ estancieros, like those of other communities, had recourse to in
order to communicate with the political system. Accompanying
the native newspapers, the prolific community press was
born. In 1875, among those in the English language, The
Southern Cross (hereafter, TSC) edited and run by
Monsignor Dillon, indisputible ecclesiastic leader,
supported by these landowners. He adopted a predominantly
rural and religious profile, becoming, on the one hand, the
most efficient organ of internal communication and debate in
maintaining an articulate community, preserving the values
and the customs of the homeland. However, on the other hand,
it was the medium by which these ‘respectable’ people
attempted to lead the rest, organising them, deciding on
opinions and identifying an agenda of various topics
considered favourable to the entire community. Legitimated
by their own, ‘official’ mediators between the governing
elites and their compatriots, between 1875 and 1880 the used
the pages of the newspaper as an idealy way of ‘doing
politics:’ they attempted to embody a homogenous voice
that was specifically Irish
in the face of partisan battles, and to create among the
‘Irish-porteńos’ a
conscious that can be termed ‘civic.’ With its
editorials, the writers interpreted the unstable local
political reality for their readers, suggested and planned
ways of accomodating these vicissitudes. This involvement
gave a qualitative jump
around 1879, when the newspaper made an explicit call
to them to elections.
This
paper forms one aspect of a masters thesis, still being
researched, on the Irish and their political activities in
Argentina during the 1880s. What is attempted here is not a
discursive analysis, but rather to place a focus on the
articles of the TSC from the period 1875-1880 to understand
the view of this minority on the national ‘cosa
publica,’ their preoccupations, positions and commitments
to local political figures and their efforts to organise
their compatriots, resulting from this, althrough scattered
among its pages, a ‘Hiberno-Argentine’ political
opinion, as a first step towards their subsequent electoral
participation. This would evidence that apart from others
communally explored, political life would have been for the
Irish an effective method of assimilation into Creole
society.
Finally,
although this paper does not examine their subsequent formal
entry into the political arena, some possible reasons will
be outlined as to why they would have decided to complement
the community press with electoral practice.
|