"Oscar Chamosa's book is an ambitious foray into largely uncharted intellectual waters. Chamosa writes well, knows how to drive a narrative forward, knows how to integrate his theory into the story he is telling, and never loses sight of the forest for the trees."---Daniel James, author of Dona Maria's Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity Oscar Chamosa brings forth the compelling story of an important but often overlooked component of the formation of popular nationalism in Latin America: the development of the Argentine folklore movement in the first part of the twentieth century. This movement involved academicians studying the culture of small farmers and herders of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent in the distant valleys of the Argentine Northwest, as well as the artists and musicians who took on the role of reinterpreting these local cultures for urban audiences of mostly European descent. Oscar Chamosa combines intellectual history with ethnographic and sociocultural analysis to reconstruct the process by which mestizo culture---in Argentina called criollo culture---came to occupy the center of national folklore in a country that portrayed itself as the only white nation in South America. The author finds that the conservative plantation owners---the "sugar elites"---who exploited the criollo peasants sponsored the folklore movement that romanticized them as the archetypes of nationhood. Ironically, many of the composers and folk singers who participated in the landowner-sponsored movement adhered to revolutionary and reformist ideologies and denounced the exploitation to which those criollo peasants were subjected. Chamosa argues that, rather than debilitating the movement, these opposing and contradictory ideologies permitted its triumph and explain, in part, the enduring romanticizing of rural life and criollo culture, which are essential components of Argentine nationalism. The book not only reveals the political motivations of culture in Argentina and Latin America but also has implications for understanding the articulation of local culture with national politics and entertainment markets that characterizes cultural processes worldwide today.

Oscar Chamosa brings forth the compelling story of an important but often overlooked component of the formation of popular nationalism in Latin America: the development of the Argentine folklore movement in the first part of the twentieth century. This movement involved academicians studying the culture of small farmers and herders of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent in the distant valleys of the Argentine northwest, as well as artists and musicians who took on the role of reinterpreting these local cultures for urban audiences of mostly European descent. Oscar Chamosa combines intellectual history with ethnographic and sociocultural analysis to reconstruct the process by which mestizo culture—in Argentina called criollo culture—came to occupy the center of national folklore in a country that portrayed itself as the only white nation in South America. The author finds that the conservative plantation owners—the “sugar elites”—who exploited the criollo peasants sponsored the folklore movement that romanticized them as the archetypes of nationhood. Ironically, many of the composers and folk singers who participated in the landowner-sponsored movement adhered to revolutionary and reformist ideologies and denounced the exploitation to which those criollo peasants were subjected. Chamosa argues that, rather than debilitating the movement, these opposing and contradictory ideologies permitted its triumph and explain, in part, the enduring romanticizing of rural life and criollo culture, essential components of Argentine nationalism. The book not only reveals the political motivations of culture in Argentina and Latin America but also has implications for understanding the articulation of local culture with national politics and entertainment markets that characterizes contemporary cultural processes worldwide today.

In nearly every account of modern Argentine history, the first Peronist regime (1946–55) emerges as the critical juncture. Appealing to growing masses of industrial workers, Juan Perón built a powerful populist movement that transformed economic and political structures, promulgated new conceptions and representations of the nation, and deeply polarized the Argentine populace. Yet until now, most scholarship on Peronism has been constrained by a narrow, top-down perspective. Inspired by the pioneering work of the historian Daniel James and new approaches to Latin American cultural history, scholars have recently begun to rewrite the history of mid-twentieth-century Argentina. The New Cultural History of Peronism brings together the best of this important new scholarship. Situating Peronism within the broad arc of twentieth-century Argentine cultural change, the contributors focus on the interplay of cultural traditions, official policies, commercial imperatives, and popular perceptions. They describe how the Perón regime’s rhetoric and representations helped to produce new ideas of national and collective identity. At the same time, they show how Argentines pursued their interests through their engagement with the Peronist project, and, in so doing, pushed the regime in new directions. While the volume’s emphasis is on the first Perón presidency, one contributor explores the origins of the regime and two others consider Peronism’s transformations in subsequent years. The essays address topics including mass culture and melodrama, folk music, pageants, social respectability, architecture, and the intense emotional investment inspired by Peronism. They examine the experiences of women, indigenous groups, middle-class anti-Peronists, internal migrants, academics, and workers. By illuminating the connections between the state and popular consciousness, The New Cultural History of Peronism exposes the contradictions and ambivalences that have characterized Argentine populism. Contributors: Anahi Ballent, Oscar Chamosa, María Damilakou, Eduardo Elena, Matthew B. Karush, Diana Lenton, Mirta Zaida Lobato, Natalia Milanesio, Mariano Ben Plotkin, César Seveso, Lizel Tornay

"For several decades now, the Andean conjunto has been the preeminent format for 'Andean folk music' groups in the major cities of the world. Easily identified through the musicians' colorful ponchos and indigenous-associated instruments such as the panpipe, these 4-6 member ensembles interpret the music of the Andes in a style that bears little resemblance to traditional indigenous music, notwithstanding the efforts of "world music" labels to market their recordings as if they accurately reproduce indigenous expressions. Developed mainly by criollo and mestizo musicians, the Andean conjunto tradition has taken root in many Latin American countries, from Argentina to Mexico, but it is only in Bolivia that mainstream society has long regarded ensembles in this mold as exemplars of national folkloric music. As this book reveals, Bolivia's adoption of the Andean conjunto as a national musical expression in the late 1960s represents the culmination of over four decades of local folkloric activities that at various points articulated with transnational artistic currents, especially those emanating from Argentina, Chile, France, Mexico, and Peru, as well as with Bolivian state initiatives and nation-building projects. By elucidating these connections through an examination of La Paz city's musical scene from the 1920s to 1960s, this book not only sheds light on the rise of a prominent manifestation of Bolivian national culture, but also also offers the first detailed historical study of the Bolivian folkloric music movement that documents how it developed in dialogue with Bolivian state projects and transnational artistic trends in this period"--

Music has been critical to national identity in Latin America, especially since the worldwide emphasis on nations and cultural identity that followed World War I. Unlike European countries with unified ethnic populations, Latin American nations claimed blended ethnicities—indigenous, Caucasian, African, and Asian—and the process of national stereotyping that began in the 1920s drew on themes of indigenous and African cultures. Composers and performers drew on the folklore and heritage of ethnic and immigrant groups in different nations to produce what became the music representative of different countries. Mexico became the nation of mariachi bands, Argentina the land of the tango, Brazil the country of Samba, and Cuba the island of Afro-Cuban rhythms, including the rhumba. The essays collected here offer a useful introduction to the twin themes of music and national identity and melodies and ethnic identification. The contributors examine a variety of countries where powerful historical movements were shaped intentionally by music.

This book reconsiders the relationship between race and nation in Argentina during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and places Argentina firmly in dialog with the literature on race and nation in Latin America, from where it has long been excluded or marginalized for being a white, European exception in a mixed-race region. The contributors, based both in North America and Argentina, hail from the fields of history, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. Their essays collectively destabilize widespread certainties about Argentina, showing that whiteness in that country has more in common with practices and ideologies of Mestizaje and 'racial democracy' elsewhere in the region than has typically been acknowledged. The essays also situate Argentina within the well-established literature on race, nation, and whiteness in world regions beyond Latin America (particularly, other European 'settler societies'). The collection thus contributes to rethinking race for other global contexts as well.

Through a variety of case studies, Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century examines the emergence of youth and young people as a central historical force in the global history of the twentieth century.