Argentine Intellectuals and Spain: the Generation of '37 Ricardo Rojas

Abstract

Eager to turn his natal country into a modern nation similar to France or England, Sarmiento strongly disapproved of analphabetism, clerical power submission, and everything that he considered “backward” in any of the manifestations inherited from the Mother Land.

He was certainly not the exception amongst the intellectuals that belonged to the so-called “Generación del ‘37”. Heiress of those who fought for political independence, this generation was the ideologist and promoter of a national project that became successful after the downfall of Juan Manuel de Rosas, and carried out an enterprise of cultural emancipation in search of a new identity profile.

However, not everything was anti-Spanish in the construction of the Argentinean culture. Like in many other things, the writers Lucio and Eduarda Mansilla were able to reach equilibrium.

In addition, soon arouse two powerful reasons that encouraged an increasing revalorization of Hispanic roots. One of them was the massive immigration from other places and languages. The other one, the disturbing pace of the United Sates of America towards becoming a continental hegemony.

In this context of more attention and consideration for the Spanish heritage, we can situate the work of Ricardo Rojas, a young intellectual around the first centenary of the revolution, who would carry out an intense vindication of the Hispanic roots, as well as the “resetting” of the aboriginal roots in the Argentinean imaginary, where they had been deliberately hidden and forgotten. His written works recover the legacy left by “Generación del ’37”, but also reset the Spanish elements that the independence fervor and the veneration for French culture had left aside and obscured.