Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890-1916

Abstract

R E C E N T historiography of Latin America has evinced a growing interest in the various ways racial ideas affected the political, social, and cultural development of the new nations. This paper addresses the particular connection between racial thought and the emergence of a social reform movement in Argentina at the turn of the century. The idea of race provided a common language and a foundation for a wide variety of discourses connected to the Argentine social question-problems such as public health, criminology, immigration control, anarchism, and labor militancy that were the consequences of urbanization and industrialization. In this context, race transcended all ideological boundaries and, as we shall see, was adopted as a key term by intellectuals and politicians of all persuasions. Ideas that later became symbols of reactionary politics, such as the intrinsic superiority of certain racial groups over others or the need for a scientific regulation of racial purity, were at that time considered to be progressive notions, accepted by liberal reformers and socialists both in Argentina and in the countries where many of these doctrines originated.'

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