Rencores angelicales. El nacionalismo sentimental en Argentina

Abstract

Argentine nationalism promoted, through the press, the performance, of an opera at the Colón Theatre that could symbolize the traditional local values. The aim of this operation was to bring together two enemy parties and to build a defensive bastion against the foreign immigration that was considered dangerous and invasive. The agent of this operation was an amateur composer Eduardo García Mansilla, a diplomat and member of the social elite and a descendent of the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas. Shortly after the performance of the Opera, in August 1917, very different artists linked with popular circles, staged a parody that mocked the sticky sentimentalism of García Mansilla’s melodrama. Centering on this parody, and with reference to similar situations cited in other studies on nationalism, I try to demonstrate the link between the violent attitudes of the nationalists and manifestations of kitsch sentimentalism.