Table 5

"Transnational activist and political circulations/movements"

The role of political and activist militants has been reevaluated by recent historiography of the history of international relations. During the second half of the 20th century, marked in Latin America and Europe by the use of violence as a form of protest or as the primary mode of repression, these circulations have at times been intentionally encouraged or undertaken urgently and under constraint. Conceived from Latin America, these mobilities do not concern only left-wing or even far-left circles, studied in the context of political exiles and the transnationalization of armed struggle in the 1960s and 1970s. They also extend into right-wing networks and affect more traditional political formations. This panel aims to study, from a global perspective, the modalities of political activist circulation between Latin America and Europe. What role do these circulations play in the genesis of transnational activist networks? How do these circulations contribute to the redefinition of collective political identities and practices in Latin America’s contexts?

Moderation
Giulia Calderoni

Discussion
Frank Georgi [Université Évry Paris-Saclay]

Speakers

Aldo Marchesi [University of the Republic]
Rethinking Internationalisms in the Southern Cone Radical Left: Between Ideas and Cold War Constraints

Among the successive ruptures that sparked the debate of the new left, a key one was the critique of traditional internationalisms. The history of radicalization of many of the new armed groups created during the sixties was associated with the distancing from the communist, socialist, and Trotskyist internationals. This situation led them to rethink their conceptions of internationalism and their policies of international alliances. The new conceptions involved thinking about the world from a broader perspective where Europe was no longer necessarily the beacon of internationalist ideas. Alliance policies were reformulated according to the possibilities and limitations that the new balances of the Cold War in the Southern Cone offered to these groups. In the presentation, I will work around three strategies of foreign policy developed by these groups. On the one hand, the strategy of the continental revolution of the Latin American revolution, which was based on previous ideas about a continental identity and, in terms of alliances, was linked to the Cuban foreign policy project mostly developed during the sixties. This project also included a Third World dimension through the tri-continental proposal experimented by the Cubans. The second strategy refers to the relationships that these Southern Cone groups developed with other movements of the new left in Europe and the United States. In these cases, the alliances did not achieve significant development due to the constraints of the Cold War world. Finally, we will investigate the ways in which these armed organizations, linked to new forms of political internationalism such as human rights movements, brought together international organizations and Western governments supportive of this cause, and social movements in Western countries.

***

Celina Albornoz [National University of General San Martín]
Argentine Nationalists Between Two Continents: Transnational Militancy During the Cold War

The Tacuara Nationalist Movement (MNT), a prominent Argentine nationalist right-wing group that gained significant prominence in the political scene between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, included among its ranks several militants who, far from engaging solely in activities within the national territory, circulated throughout the Atlantic space and established connections with far-right groups in Europe. This presentation will focus on the transnational trajectories of some (former) members of the MNT who had dual militancies, simultaneously in Argentina and European countries. Many of them integrated or closely related, to varying degrees, with neo-fascist groups and movements in Spain and Italy.

***

Elisa Santalena [University of Grenoble]
"Neither with Washington nor with Moscow": Does the Democratic Path Lead through Rome? A Christian Democratic Perspective on Italo-Chilean Relations

To understand the roots of Italo-Chilean friendship and the social, political, and economic ties that were woven between the two countries from the late 1950s until the civic-military coup, we will briefly reconstruct the stages that led the Italian Christian Democracy – the main party governing the peninsula – to support the political trajectory of the Chilean Christian Democratic Party. The latter represents not only the new face but especially the future of a continent that must dream of a better future, where poverty and illiteracy must give way to a development that allows it to achieve a standard of living as close as possible to the Western world. In the eyes of Rome, in the context of the Cold War, the Chilean Christian Democratic Party symbolizes the new path or, better yet, the "third way": free, democratic, Catholic, and, above all, opposed to Castroism. Eduardo Frei Montalva, the party's leading figure, will thus be perceived as the man charged with defending the Chilean people from both American economic monopoly and Marxist risk. A Christian democrat of the same vein as Alcide De Gasperi – at least in appearance – to support at all costs, in an attempt to confer on Italy a new role in international diplomacy.

***

Selective bibliographies

Albornoz, C. (2022). La extrema derecha entre dos continentes: La dimensión transnacional del Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara (1957-1980). Anuario IEHS, 37(2), 113–137. https://doi.org/10.37894/ai.v37i2.1473

Albornoz, C. (2021). La derecha nacionalista argentina en perspectiva transnacional: Historia y memoria del Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara (1957-1973) (Tesis doctoral). Università degli Studi di Padova - Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Padova.

Gutman, D. (2012). Tacuara. Historia de la primera guerrilla urbana argentina (2. ed.). Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.

Tanya Harmer, Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. 

Herrán Ávila, L. A. (2015). Las guerrillas blancas: Anticomunismo transnacional e imaginarios de derechas en Argentina y México, 1954-1972. Quinto Sol, 19(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.19137/qs.v19i1.963

Aldo Marchesi, Latin America's Radical Left: Rebellion and Cold War in the Global 1960s.

Lvovich, D. (2006). El nacionalismo de derecha: Desde sus orígenes a Tacuara. Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual.

Padrón, J. M. (2017). “¡Ni yanquis, ni marxistas! Nacionalistas”: Nacionalismo, militancia y violencia política: El caso del Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara en la Argentina, 1955-1966. La Plata: Universidad Nacional de La Plata; Universidad Nacional de Misiones; Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento.

Eric Zolov, Expanding our Conceptual Horizons: The Shift from an Old to a New Left in Latin America.