The antifascist climate and the Italian intellectual exile in interwar Argentina

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

Ricardo Pasolini

This article examines the relationships between the Italian Jewish intellectuals in exile in Argentina in the 1930s and antifascist Argentine intellectuals. It argues that the Italian intellectuals who arrived in Argentina between 1938 and 1941 as a result of the of the ‘racial laws’ in fascist Italy adopted strategies to establish themselves that relied more on the employment opportunities that their social and professional status made accessible than to political networks or affinities. Indeed, links with the Italian antifascist groups already present in Argentina were of only secondary importance. But, once established, the Italian exiles received significant support from Argentine intellectual circles and especially from the Free College of Higher Studies (CLES) and other cultural as well as local and international antifascist networks.