Constructing National Identities in the U.S. and Argentina at the Turn of the Century

2006

Catalina Buliubasich M. Clara Núñez-Regueiro Héctor E. Rodriguez Marta R. Tartusi

2006 ASA Conference: The United States from Inside and

Out: Transnational American

Studies

Oakland, California

October 12-152006

Ordinary Exceptionalism: Constructing National Identities in the United States and Argentina at the Turn-of-the-Century, a Comparative Look

Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

610 Hickory Circle, LaPlata, MD 20646 301-934-8589 or [email protected]

2006 ASA Panel More than the Collective Self: Constructing identity to Build Group Experience

This panel works to problematize the process of collective identity construction

by exploring the dynamic and nuanced ways in which one group’s identity can work both in dialogue or in opposition with that of other groups. Groups construct identities with multiple purposes and give them numerous uses—strengthening community ties, demonizing marginal groups, or to excluding an Other. Collective identity defining strategies, whether in relation to race, nationality, or nationhood, can work in opposition to normative practices, perspectives, and experiences. The panel looks at some ways in which marginalized, subjugated, disenfranchised people engage in the process of the construction of their self-perceptions. The session includes discussion of the ways in which these groups can fall victim to hegemonic forces. The panel explores experiences among a variety of ethnic groups and two nations of the Americas, in an effort to transcend the insular view of “America” and call to question what “America” really means. To explore these dynamics, we can begin by looking at the cultural production of a variety of social groups to identify commonalities that might broaden American Studies’ epistemological perspectives and methodological practices. Chaired by Alan Trachtenberg, the Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University, our panel includes contributions from the Wah-Zha-Zhi Cultural Center in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, Saint Louis Community College-Meramec, and Saint Louis University. The first panelist, Clara Núñez-Regueiro, presents her collaborative work with anthropologists Catalina Buliubasich, Hector E. Rodriguez, and Marta R. Tartusi which engages in a comparative look at how Euro-American nation planners crafted images of Amerindians in the United States and Argentina, elevating the one and demonizing the other. The paper looks at how, simultaneously, the figure of the gaucho came to embody the Argentine ideal in the same way the noble savage did in the United States. The second panelist, Patty Rooney, locates and addresses troubling notions of exclusion and dominance resonating from the visual forms and architecture in the American World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. World War II involved the commitments, participation, and contributions of a wide range of American and transnational social groups. However, the visual forms, architecture, and textual inscriptions included in this public commemorative space represent images and voices of white male American as the visible and exclusive form of identity. The third panelist, Elizabeth Schroeder, explores a forgotten decade of African American cultural production during the Cold War, specifically those artists whose work delineates an articulation of African American racial identity from within the United States, but also from artists exiled abroad in Paris and Mexico City.



Ordinary Exceptionalism: Constructing National Identities in the United States and Argentina at the Turn-of-the-Century, a Comparative Look Key Words: AMERICAN, EXCEPTIONALISM, IDENTITY, ARGENTINA

ABSTRACT

Euro-American notions and interests in the United States and Argentina

interacted with images of Amerindians to craft westernized representations of these groups, as nation-defining strategies that influenced collective experience and identity at the turn of the century. In both cases, representations of Indians were central because domestic territorial expansion depended on the appropriation of Indian lands for agricultural and commercial development. Several similarities become apparent upon examination. Both nations overcame civil wars, were similarly affected by an influx of European immigrants in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and imposed ethnogenecist education to strip native peoples of their indianness. In the United States, cultural producers, such as writers, photographers, and others, contributed to the creation of a mythology of a vanishing race of noble savages. The end of the great Sioux war and other events helped to create a sense that Indians were indeed a people of the past, after which their image could be incorporated in the service of national ideals of self, and assist in the claim of Amerindian ancestry. In Argentina, a series of presidencies in the second half of the nineteenth century conducted the Campaigns to the Desert against the Indians in the South, and the military occupation of the Chaco region in the North. Indians were demonized as a thieving, murdering, and uncivilized people, who were enemies of the state. This negative view inspired the continuing wars against the tribes in Patagonia and the Chaco and defined state policies about Indians. While the myth of a vanishing race gained momentum in the United States, a still active campaign against Indians in Argentina encouraged, instead, the idealization of the gaucho, who was often employed to fight in the frontier. The tensions between the dominance, extermination, and confinement of Indigenous populations and the idealization of the image of the Indian in the U.S., were similarly present between the glorification of the gaucho and the simultaneous attempt to eliminate him as a social class. From the perspective of their cultural function, H. W. Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, Jose Hernandez’ Martin Fierro and the Argentine Indian were all mobilized in the service of national identity construction through a similar process of mystification. The parallels we propose suggest an overarching epistemological moment of concurrent national organization and self-definition in these two physically distant points of the American continent. Our examination contradicts each country’s insular views and perceptions of exceptionalism by bringing to the fore,



a larger shared reality with numerous commonalities. This insight helps us to better understand U.S. history and culture by challenging the tacit understanding that the U.S. is separate and different from the rest of the Americas. The nine remaining indigenous ethnias in the province of Salta, as well as the presence of gauchos in rural Argentina and the millions of Indian peoples of various nations in the U.S. today, all attest to the contradictions inherent in the discourse about their disappearance, which in large part, continues to inform inter-ethnic relations in both countries.



Ordinary Exceptionalism: Constructing National Identities in the United States

and Argentina at the Turn-of-the-Century, a Comparative Look

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Euro-American notions and interests in the

U.S. and Argentina interacted with images of Amerindians to craft westernized

representations of these groups as nation-defining strategies, attempting to influence

collective experience and identity at the turn of the century. In both cases,

representations of Indians were central because domestic territorial expansion

depended on the appropriation of Indian lands for agriculture and commerce. The way

in which these images were mobilized in official discourse, however, indicates a similar

problematic and different strategies for dealing with it.

Several commonalities become apparent upon examination. Both nations

overcame civil wars, were similarly affected by an influx of European immigrants in the

latter half of the nineteenth century, and imposed ethnogenecist education to strip

native peoples of their indianness. In the US, cultural producers contributed to the

creation of a mythology of a vanishing race of noble savages, after which their image

could be incorporated in the service of national ideas of self, and help claim Amerindian

ancestry.

In Argentina, presidents conducted Campaigns to the Desert against Indians in

the South, and the military occupation of the Chaco region in the North, while Indians

were demonized. This negative view inspired the wars against the tribes in Patagonia



and the Chaco and defined state policies. While the myth of a vanishing race gained

momentum in the U.S., a still active campaign against Indians in Argentina encouraged,

instead, the idealization of the gaucho, who was often employed to fight in the frontier.

The tensions between the dominance, extermination, and confinement of

Indigenous populations and the idealization of their image in the U.S., were similarly

present between the glorification of the gaucho –an Indo-European figure –and the

simultaneous attempt to eliminate him. From the perspective of their cultural function,

Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, Hernandez’ Martin Fierro and the Argentine Indian were

mobilized in the service of national identity construction through a similar process of

mystification.

The parallels we propose suggest an overarching epistemological moment of

concurrent national organization and self-definition in these two physically distant

points of the American continent. Our examination contradicts each country’s insular

views and perceptions of exceptionalism by proposing a larger shared reality with

numerous commonalities. This challenges the tacit understanding that the U.S. is

separate and different from the rest of the Americas. The nine remaining indigenous

ethnias in the province of Salta, the presence of gauchos in rural Argentina, and the

millions of Indian peoples in the U.S. today, all attest to the contradictions inherent in

the discourse about their disappearance, which in large part, continues to inform inter-

ethnic relations in both countries.

This paper looks at ways in which nation-building discourses about Indians and

national character influenced collective experience and identity in the U.S. and



Argentina as the twentieth century drew near. We examine how Euro-American notions

and interests interacted with images of Amerindians in both countries, to craft

westernized representations of these groups as nation-defining strategies.

A comparative look at this consolidation process in both countries suggests

similar efforts, on the part of nation planners, to craft an ideal national identity,

although the political and social realities of both made the expression of this project find

different outlets. Yet it is still the same in both: the idealization of a fictional figure that

was simultaneously glorified and persecuted, which embodied the continental virtues.

In both cases, the Indian would be fundamental because it was the major distinguishing

feature that separated the young American nations from their European counterparts.

Both countries shared a series of factors that seem to have been mobilized the

creation of a national figure that would be representative of Americans in the trans-

continental sense. After overcoming civil wars that tore both nations apart over

questions of economics and ideology, both countries were similarly affected by the

influx of European immigrants in the latter half of the century. Also, engaged in

aggressive territorial expansion, both nations depended on the appropriation of Indian

territories for western agricultural development. Both similarly imposed western,

universalistic, scientificist, homogenizing, Eurocentric, and ethnogenecist education,

which sought to strip indigenous peoples of their indianness. Both came to rely on the

myths of an agricultural utopia and of national exceptionality.

The image of the Indian at the turn of the century was very different in these two

countries. In the United States, the wide welcome of H.W. Longfellow’s The Song of



Hiawatha in nineteenth-century United States and photographic projects such as

Edward Curtis’ The American Indian contributed to the creation of a mythology of a

vanishing race of noble savages as a way to appropriate Indian virtues and claim

American ancestry. The 1890 census which declared the closing of the frontier and the

massacre at Wounded Knee in the same year helped to create a sense that Indians were

indeed a thing of the past.1

Their image could now be appropriated to claim an American ancestry based on

a utopist idea of an agricultural west of Indian origins. I want to highlight, however, that

while I focus herein on how the leading class of European Americans in both countries

used the images of these racialized Others in their collective identity creation process,

this not mean Indigenous peoples lacked agency. On the contrary, the numerous

challenges to this discursive usurpation of the ethnic collective self found multiple

expressions in both countries. Yet if one concentrates strictly on the white collective

imagination, it becomes evident that as western progress made the perceived Indian

threat disappear, photographers crafted an iconography of indianness that was

produced for non-Indian eyes. noble savages and of an extinguishing red people.

This imagery simultaneously exploited the romantic notion of a white

agricultural west and the perceived imminent extinction of native peoples. Not only was

this appropriation process necessary for the formulation of national character

1 With the Wounded Knee massacre the frontier became rhetorically closed in an

official way. It is important to note that around this time we also had the rising Gilded Age white middle class, Jim Crow South, and the Chicago’s World’s Fair or “Columbian Exposition 1893” where Indigenous peoples were showcased as conquests.



throughout the Americas, but I believe it was also a form of preservation of the past

even as “enw Americans” rejected the Old World and its history. This view would tend

to support anthropologist Renato Rosaldo’s insights that “imperialist nostalgia” which

would certainly include this newly deviced form of preservation, acts to lessen the guilt

of colonial agents for their part in the destruction of worlds that succumbed to the

relentless march of western “progress and civilization.”2

While a similar influx of European immigrants drastically increased the

Argentine population towards the end of the century, the series of governments known

as “the Generation of the 80” continued to fight Indian peoples in search for national

expansion over Indian territories, which generated the Indian Campaigns of the Desert

and the military occupation of the Argentine Chaco. Unlike in the United States, where

the myth of a vanishing race of noble savages gained acceptance after the professed

defeat of Native nations, in Argentina a still active campaign against Indians

encouraged, instead, the idealization of the gaucho, often employed to fight in the

frontier. Gauchos were a sector of the Creole population who were forcefully recruited

to fight in the frontier.

In opposition, Indians were perceived and propagandized as a thieving,

murdering, and uncivilized people, who were enemies of the state. This negative view of

Indians inspired the wars against the Mapuches and the tribes of the Chaco. This view

also defined state policies about Indians and the consequences are felt still today, in

spite of new legislation that began developing towards the end of the twentieth century.

2 Renato Rosaldo. Imperialist Nostalgia. Representations 26 (Spring 1989), 107-22.



Longfellow’s Hiawatha shared more in common with Martin Fierro that he did

with the Argentine Indian, who was perceived as a killer and thief in contrast with the

ennobling image of the vanishing savage that became popular in the United States

towards the end of the century. Just as Longfellow glorified Indian virtues and made the

figure of the Indian digestible and adoptable by non-Indian Americans, Hernandez’

gaucho came to represent the true Argentine virtue, markedly different and antagonist

to both the new European immigrants and to the Indians that gauchos fought in the

frontier. Jose Hernandez’ Martin Fierro was the most widely read –and controversial-

work in Argentina during this time.

In Argentina, gauchezca literature, which had its beginnings towards the end of

the eighteenth century, offered a different vehicle for the same cultural Eucharist

whereby the Argentine Indian could be mixed with European elements in order to

produce the distinctive national character.3 With European fathers and Indian mothers,

gauchos embodied the notion of (South) Americans who were rugged, lived off the land

and had a particular moral code.

As U.S. Indianness became the didactic tool that could Americanize European

immigrants, the gaucho came to personify an agricultural Argentina. The tensions

between the submission, extermination, and confinement of Indian nations in the North

American west and the idealization of the image of the Indian similarly were expressed

3 As Shomway sotes, the 1880s are considered by many as the decade that saw

the birth of the modersn Argentine nation-state; 1880 was “a watershed year separating a period of civil strife, warlordism, and chaos from a period of relative stability and unprecedented growth, and material progress.” Nicholas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina, Berkley, University of California Press, 1993, xii.



between the glorification of the gaucho and the simultaneous attempt to eliminate them

as a social class. In both countries the very groups that were idealizad were relentlessly

persecuted and subjugated.

Nation-building interests forged, in both countries, idealized images of the

American man through a similar process of mystification, albeit of different groups.

Both elevated a figure that came to represent a national character, an ideal merger of

European and Indian ancestry. While undoubtedly, specific national histories and

cultures marked countless differences, the similarities we propose mark, we believe, an

overarching epistemological moment of national organization and self-definition in

these two physically distant poles of the American continent. By placing the

examination of the meaning of American nationhood and character into a broader

context, this analysis challenges notions of what American means.

A larger, shared reality with numerous commonalities, in spite of each country’s

insular views and claims of exceptionalism, thus emerges. This insight helps us to better

understand U.S. history and culture by challenging the tacit understanding that the U.S.

is and has always been, separate and different from the rest of the Americas. American

Studies would benefit from looking beyond its own borders to gain an understanding

that we are but a part of much larger processes, not merely economic and historical, but

cultural as well.

Similar underlying process of national identity creation as a critical aspect of

ruling class projects mobilized the gaucho and the noble savage vanishing race. In

Argentina today, the political practices in the province of Salta, home to nine different



ethnias (the greatest diversity anywhere in Argentina today) continue to exhibit the

degree to which the discourse of vanishing races and the realities of physical and

political presence contradict one another. Likewise in the U.S., millions of Native

Americans today bear witness to inaccuracy of these constructions; yet similar images

remain obstinately fixed in the non-Indian American imaginary. The thing of it is, that

both identity strategies and mechanism coexist and borrow from one another. More

work needs to be done to see how the two intersect and affect one another.

Constructing National Identities in the U.S. and Argentina at the Turn of the Century

Documents

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