A Sacred Duty: Nationalist and Anti-Imperial Activisms in Buenos Aires,1916-1930

Introduction

In the years between the First World War and the global depression of 1930, a wide variety of nonstate actors and state agents clashed ideologically and at times physically to shape the world according to discrete visions of geopolitical imperatives and dreamy social and nationalist arrangements. Many activists and revolutionaries found inspiration in President Woodrow Wilson’s famous speech before the U.S. Congress in February 1918 declaring that “national aspirations must be respected; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of actions.” ¹ At the same time, some European states attempted various solutions to quell or mollify the demands of its ethnically diverse and increasingly restive populations, such as Spain and the Catalans, while others gained new colonial possessions via League of Nations mandates, such as France’s control in Lebanon and Syria. ² The political questions of Ireland, Catalonia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Syria played out in places further afield than the Irish Sea or the Mediterranean basin. Political agitators in and moving through the Americas and the Caribbean, in particular émigré colonies, pursued a wide variety of strategies to raise funds, lend moral support, curry support from local governments, and host revolutionaries from the old country. Over time, networks of activists began to form throughout the Americas, much of which rested in and benefited from the large immigrant communities that emerged during the half century before World War I. ³

The declaration of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination allowed Irish, Catalan, and Arabic-speaking activists, among others the world over, to transform evolving nationalist sentiments and emergent national identities into a political project for sovereign, independent nation-states. As the historian Erez Manela notes, the Wilsonian moment

launched the transformation of norms and standards of international relations that established the self-determining nation-state as the only legitimate political form throughout the globe, as colonized and marginalized peoples demanded and eventually attained recognition as sovereign, independent actors in international society. ⁴

Equally important, Wilson’s pronouncements supporting this ideal gave these activists a shared vocabulary, internationalizing the cause for self-determination while providing a frame of reference to build the support of their compatriots. As such,

Catalan nationalists petitioned Wilson for freedom from Spanish rule, and Sinn Fein leaders demanded independence for Ireland, quoting long excerpts from President’s Wilson’s speeches in support of their demand even as the president’s British allies were engaged in a brutal campaign to suppress the Irish movement. ⁵

In addition to petitions sent by Syrians, Lebanese, and Assyrian Christians, King Faisal demanded from the victorious entente the recognition of a large Arab nation based on the principle of self-determination. ⁶

All of this activity, of course, did not exclude the prewar activism carried out by Irish, Catalan, and Arabic-speaking actors. Certainly, Irish nationalists had long agitated for greater autonomy from London, in particular with a proposed Home Rule bill, and received financial and moral support from the large, prosperous Irish colonies in North America. The Catalans pursued a variety of arrangements with Madrid and sought money from its diaspora in the Americas. A few Lebanese nationalists advocated for separation from Istanbul. On balance, however, most of these societies and their political leaders sought an accommodation with the national power and the redress of grievances through existing institutions. ⁷ The principle of self-determination changed the equation for nationalist agitators, and the idea took on a life distinct from which Wilson had narrowly envisioned. Wilson, at once unexpectedly and uncomfortably, came to embody the hopes and aspirations for colonized peoples and national minorities as he headed to Paris for the peace conference at the end of 1918. So seductive was the idea of self-determination, an exasperated member of the British War Cabinet quipped in December 1918 that “the extremists of all nations” had embraced Wilson as their lodestar, asserting he was “the champion of British Bolsheviks, of Catalan separatists, of French majoritarian Socialists, of Irish sinnfeiners, of Indian anarchists.” ⁸ This increasing international dimension necessarily led many of these radical activists to reestablish and develop deeper ties with their compatriots in the diaspora.

Buenos Aires became a critical hub of radical political activism between 1916 and 1930 at a time when the influence of anarchist activists waned and organized labor often worked with the Radical Civic Union Presidents Hipólito Yrigoyen and Marcelo T. de Alvear. ⁹ Whether based in or passing through this city, activists and exiles, partisans, and pretenders pursued various strategies to achieve revolutionary change, raise funds for causes, assure sovereignty, control the public narrative, and network with like-minded individuals and groups. These agitators created webs of associations throughout the Atlantic world in the process. These networks were vital in fashioning enduring transnational connections, strategies of resistance, shared discourses, and symbolic registers that framed how nationalist and anti-imperial interactions were understood well into the early Cold War era. As these actors interacted with local Argentine activists and dreamers, the Argentine state in turn had to respond diplomatically and domestically, transforming the city into a hotly contested terrain. Buenos Aires thus emerged as a port of ideas and exchanges related to imperialism, colonialism, democracy, and authoritarianism, centralizing much of the political dispute of the Southern Cone and integrating resident activists into these transnational circuits. This article focuses on the interactions of Irish republicans, Catalan nationalists, and Arab anti-colonialists with local agitators and sympathizers, Argentine officials, and European diplomats to more fully understand the importance of Buenos Aires in this period and the consequences on sociopolitical life in this southern Atlantic port city up to the global depression of 1930.

In the era of mass migration, Argentina positioned itself as a hemispheric leader and became the second most popular destination for sojourners in the Americas. This flow largely ended with the outbreak of war in Europe and did not begin again until the cessation of hostilities in 1918. Yet, these large populations of foreign nationals remained connected to the destinies of their homelands, many of whom created and sustained cross-border networks of anti-colonial actors and nationalist upstarts. Buenos Aires, with its lively press, literate population, prominent university, and civic freedoms, emerged as an important space of activism directed at freeing societies of European colonial rule. The actions and rhetoric deployed by these activists provoked great interest and consternation in London, Madrid, and Paris and inspired a wide range of responses to counter nationalist and anti-colonial politicking of these reformers and revolutionaries. Foreign and native activists, thus, had to navigate both the international and the local political realities in the South Atlantic.

The connections of Irish, Catalan, and Arabic-speaking activist networks based in Buenos Aires provoked surveillance and intervention by various actors. British, Spanish, and French diplomats leaned on the Argentine state and local agents to quell dissent and disseminate friendly information. In turn, nationalist and anti-imperial activists challenged the legal underpinnings of actions carried out by certain Argentine institutions and contested the legitimacy of British and French rule via the immigrant press, the Argentine press, public talks, charity events, and direct pleas to the League of Nations.

A Turbulent Atlantic

The long nineteenth century, or the period between the 1789 French Revolution and the start of the First World War in 1914, is highlighted by radical social transformations wrought by changing understandings of political rights and technological innovations in production. Ideas about individual, inalienable rights expressed in constitutions spread to communities throughout the Atlantic world. These notions influenced societies of the Mediterranean basin too. At the same time, novel notions regarding social organization based on shared histories, shared language, and other cultural criteria gained strength, leading to the phenomena of nationalism and the rise of the nation-state. While new states emerged and consolidated territorial control throughout the Atlantic basin, industrialization and technological advances in transportation led to global mass migration unprecedented in scale as global capitalism took root. Indeed, migration moved beyond a social utility to a widely accepted social practice. As a result, tens of millions of people were on the move in this era. This movement connected distant societies, led to such original policy measures as the passport, provoked the creation of new state institutions, and stoked a continual assessment of what it meant to be a part of a society and who could join it. Countless Irishmen, Spaniards, and Ottomans alike pursued destinies in the Americas, joining millions in this transatlantic movement. Mass migration, thus, had a profound impact on such host societies as Argentina inasmuch as producing consequences, many times unanticipated, in the old country. ¹⁰

Buenos Aires emerged as an ideal space for radical political actors and others to operate in search for moral, political, and financial support. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Argentine political leaders wed their country’s future to the deepening integration into the global capitalist economy. The emphasis on agropastoral goods intersected with a dearth of available labor and a state belief that social and economic development required large numbers of European immigrants. As such, the city and the country became a magnet for migrants and investment capital. Huge sums of British foreign capital built such infrastructure as railroads and trolley lines. This process produced radical economic, political, and social transformations, as this southern Atlantic nation-state became a land of opportunity. Unlike Ireland, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire, Argentina was a net receiver of immigrants. Its capital city grew from roughly 180,000 people in 1869 to 660,000 in 1895 to 1.6 million in 1914. This mirrored the massive growth of the national population, which grew from 1.9 million people to nearly 7.8 million in the same period. This rise was fueled by immigrants, as almost five million immigrants found their way to Argentina. More than half stayed permanently, and many settled in Buenos Aires. In 1914, the foreign-born accounted for half of the city’s population, which was slightly higher than New York City’s rate of 41 percent, and numbered 30 percent of the national population. ¹¹

Argentine political elites further invested in the emerging global liberal order, modernizing its legal system and its port, creating novel institutions to deal with the consequences of socioeconomic transformation, and allowing space for the evolution of a robust and relatively free press. In the process, these immigrants influenced the evolution of Argentine social and cultural expression, its political and legal culture, and the development of its economy.

Immigrants formed the backbone of growing workers unions and syndicates, with anarchists particularly strong. Indeed, the labor movement’s strength led to such legislation as the Law of Residence (1902) and the Law of Social Defense (1910) that targeted particular activists for deportation without the benefit of judicial review. Yet, it was these foreign workers who were critical in the development of Argentina’s economy and the creation of the country’s massive wealth. ¹²

Immigrants also initiated a sustained debate among Argentines about ideas of citizenship and belonging and what it meant to be Argentine. Broader society thus oscillated between celebrating the foreign-born as the harbingers of national development and condemning them as the root of every possible social ill. At the same time, the Saénz Peña law of 1912, which made suffrage universal and private for all males, helped usher in the first true democratically elected president Hipólito Yrigoyen in 1916. This transition to mass constitutional democracy happened at the same time the economy experienced serious challenges wrought by the conflict in Europe. Labor strife was significant and crested with the sacking of Jewish neighborhoods in Buenos Aires known as the Tragic Week (Semana Trágica) in January 1919. As the economy recovered following the end of the world war, the anarchists struggled to retain relevance in the midst of bitter internal division while organized labor often, though not always, worked with the Yrigoyen and de Alvear administrations. Nevertheless, the use of deportation as a tool to control social and labor agitators was much diminished in the 1920s. ¹³

The flow of immigrants returned to close to prewar numbers during the 1920s, with Italians and Spaniards far outpacing other national groups. A small surge of Irish immigrants materialized in the early part of the decade too as the isle contended with armed resistance against the British followed by civil war among the various Irish groups. The number of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants were elevated too as dissidents pursued relief from the French mandate and an inconsistent economy. In Argentina, all groups found an expanding economy that provided opportunity and living wages over the course of the decade. And while prosperity returned in the immediate postwar years and immigration accelerated, its pace ultimately tapered as Argentina passed laws and policies to strictly regulate the number of new arrivals. Still, Spaniards and Italians were predominant as in the preceding forty years, but Arabic-speaking immigrants, Germans, and Poles accounted for the next largest ethnonational groups. ¹⁴

Like many port cities along the Atlantic basin, Buenos Aires and its inhabitants experienced the density and the intensity of an interaction of human webs, commodity chains, and ideological currents. Transnational phenomena and global flows unfolded most clearly in discrete spaces such as port cities, and these connections’ consequences were often most acutely felt locally. Thus, the wealth found in the city, its openness to the world, the numerous and large immigrant colonies in the city and the adjacent eponymous province created a space within which newcomers could prosper, the foreign-born could develop a sense of immigrant solidarity, and radical activists from the old country could attempt to rally support and cash from their compatriots.

Inhabitants of the Irish isles possessed a strained relationship with the British government in London. A series of rebellions and reform movements, crackdowns, and democratic openings during the nineteenth century led to the evolution of popular national feeling from a resentment at the intolerable living conditions underwritten by law made in London to a Irish nationalist sentiment demanding independence. The Young Ireland movement, which began in the 1830s and was snuffed out in the failed Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, and the Fenian movement with its American iteration Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the latter being founded in Dublin in 1858, were manifest examples of this transformation. The progression of British democracy allowed for the secret ballot (1872) and the extension of the franchise to agricultural laborers (1884). Together, these laws tripled the Irish electorate, allowing more freedom at the polls from landlords, which led to an average of eighty Irish members of Parliament. In addition, the effects of Prime Minister Gladstone’s Irish policy initiatives and the efforts of such Irish politicians as Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond led to a push for greater autonomy. ¹⁵

The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), led by Redmond, accelerated its demands for home rule. Redmond leverages expertly the IPP’s seats in Parliament to secure Prime Minister Asquith’s government desire to pass a finance bill. Asquith thus presented a Home Rule bill to Parliament in 1912, which would have created an Irish legislative body to deal with Irish domestic concerns. It also would have allowed Irishmen to continue holding seats in the British parliament while issues relating to the crown, defense, foreign policy, and customs duties would remain the purview of London. With the outbreak of the First World War, the Home Rule legislation was tabled even with the support of Redmond, who was part of Asquith’s coalition government. This posture was broadly supported in Ireland, and of the 300,000 Irishmen who fought in the First World War, nearly fifty thousand died in defense of Britain. Yet, a small number of such committed nationalists as James Connolly, Eamonn De Valera, and Patrick Pearse bristled at this lost opportunity and sought to push for independence. ¹⁶

The Irish also formed one of the earliest immigrant streams to Argentina, with estimates as high as forty-five thousand people arriving over the course of the nineteenth century. Three particular features of the colony stand out. First, it was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Second, the majority settled in the countryside, particularly Buenos Aires and Santa Fe provinces, working as shepherds, cattle raisers, and agricultural laborers. Third, scholars suggest that only a small portion of Irish immigrants formed the nucleus of what would become a recognizable Irish immigrant community, some five thousand of the estimated forty-five thousand immigrants. Key to this formation was the prominent role of the Roman Catholic Church and the Irish Passionist and Pallottine priests sent to serve the faithful. Indeed, the Catholic Church was determined to develop and maintain a particularly Irish Catholic identity. Schools run by Irish nuns, monasteries and churches that served as religious and cultural centers, and the establishment of English-language newspapers helped to keep English as the lingua franca over the decades and shape an immigrant identity distinct from the English colony. In addition, the development of a hurling league, championed by The Southern Cross editor William Bulfin, in the early twentieth century was vital to further reinforcing a shared and recognizable immigrant Irish Catholic identity. These institutions also played an important role in introducing ideas of Irish independence from Britain to these communities. By the time of the 1916 Easter Rising, as many as seventeen thousand Irish, the vast majority born in Argentina, lived in the federal capital and the province of Buenos Aires. ¹⁷

Catalonia long held a strong identity within the larger Spanish nation, one that over the course of the nineteenth century radicalized from a regionalist sentiment to a nationalist one by the “Disaster of 1898,” the common expression of the war in which Spain lost Cuba and the Philippines to the United States. The loss of these territories had important consequences in Catalonia, stoking a “collective shock” with the loss of these colonial markets, generating discontent with the idea of Spain, and forcing the acknowledgment of political Catalanism as a force. The Lliga Regionalista, led by Enric Prat de la Riba and Francesc Cambó and founded in 1901, became a popular political party, drawing votes increasingly in Catalonia from the traditional parties. De la Riba, among others, convinced Madrid to promulgate a law permitting the creation of Commonwealths throughout Spain whose brief would only concern local administrative functions. Thus, the Mancomunitat Catalana emerged in March 1914, and de la Riba initiated a robust public works and infrastructure program as well as policies designed to improve schooling, the arts, and develop the agrarian and industrial sectors. ¹⁸

The First World War had positive and negative affects on Spain, despite it remaining neutral. While industrial output grew and gold reserves increased as belligerent nations sought goods where they could get them, this led to food insecurity and inflation throughout Spain, aggravating rural poverty. This crisis de subsistencias in turn led to food riots, significant internal migration, and increasing labor agitation. By the end of the war, the anarchist-led National Confederation of Labor (CNT) had produced a new generation of militants and incorporated thousands of migrant workers. The problems wrought by the war came to a head in February 1919 when the CNT initiated the “Canadiense” strike in response to the dismissal of eight workers. After bringing Catalonia’s industrial sector practically to a standstill for forty-four days, the efforts vindicated the strikers by leading to better wages and a codified eight-hour workday. ¹⁹

At the same time, Catalonian and Republican politicians in Madrid formed a working group to deal with the lingering issues of wartime inflation and scarcity. Also in 1919, Francesc Cambó pushed an autonomy statute, for which there was “no hiding that this proposal was made in the wake of US president Woodrow Wilson’s defense of the ‘self-determination’ of subjected peoples.” Despite Catalonia not meeting Wilson’s criteria of a dominated people, the statute was “a good pretext for autonomist agitation.” Still, many issues remained unresolved and helped explain why a good portion of Catalonia supported the coup of Primo de Rivera in 1923. Although enjoying firm support of the Catalan upper and middle classes, Primo de Rivera spurned and lost his allies by dismantling the region’s democratic institutions, abolishing the Mancomunitat, and implementing policies limiting regionalist cultural expressions. These efforts created an abyss between the dictatorship and Catalan society. ²⁰

Spanish emigrants became one of the two largest currents by the start of the First World War in 1914, numbering more than 300,000 in the capital of Buenos Aires alone. The general influx of Spanish subjects and citizens masked the internal diversity that created important fissures at particular moments and galvanized as a broader Spanish community at other times. The three largest ethnic groups of Spanish nationals included Galicians from northwestern Spain, Basques from northern Spain, and Catalans from northeastern Spain. The political activism of many Catalans in Buenos Aires hardened over the course of the first four decades of the twentieth century with the establishment of such cultural and political associations as the Casal de Catalunya. It also circulated a number of periodicals like Ressorgiment that constantly advocated for Catalonian autonomy and later independence. The Catalan community would emerge as one of the principal political agitators for independence in the diaspora, with strong communities also in Cuba and Mexico. As a result of the nationalist political evolution, the size of the community, and the wealth achieved by some, this colony became a rich source of money and succor for Catalan revolutionaries in Spain and throughout Europe. ²¹

The Arabic-speaking populations along the southern and eastern Mediterranean basin followed similar arcs in search of greater autonomy. France and Spain divided Morocco in 1900 into distinct zones with ill-defined borders. The Spanish zone consisted of the coastal areas, including the cities of Tangier and Melilla, along the Mediterranean and the Rif mountains. The French controlled the areas south and possessed the cities of Casablanca, Marrakech, and Rabat. In Spanish Morocco, future revolutionary Abd El-Krim, although working for the colonial bureaucracy, was imprisoned in 1916 for anti-colonial activities. He escaped in 1918. Soon, Abd El-Krim grew anxious as the Spanish state increased its presence in his home region. By 1920, Abd El-Krim and others decided to initiate a rebellion against the Spanish, humiliating them in 1921 at Annual by killing eighteen thousand troops in three weeks of fighting and securing the liberty of the Republic of the Rif. Abd El-Krim’s success was short lived. His attempts at further territorial expansion provoked the French to respond with great force, collaborating with the Spanish and mustering an army of 250,000 men, plus aircraft and artillery. Abd El-Krim surrendered in May 1926. ²²

Further to the East, the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, through a set of reforms in the second half of nineteenth century, had undergone a series of transformations that inspired the so-called nahda, an outpouring of cultural production that articulated greater demands for political participation. A sense of local identities began to harden by the end of the First World War into nationalist ones. Many in al-Sham (contemporary Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine) embraced the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. The return to constitutional rule gave hope to meaningful reform that fully integrated the Arab lands into the imperial superstructure. It was not to be. The Committee of Union and Progress grew increasingly autocratic and produced an environment in al-Sham where many believed the government prioritized Turks over Arabs. ²³

These issues came to a head in the autumn of 1914. The Ottoman Empire became a belligerent in the Great War, allying itself with the Central Powers. This position was controversial in Istanbul and the provinces. Ultimately, it stoked an Arab nationalist movement led by the Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, and produced a famine in Syria and Lebanon that killed hundreds of thousands of Ottomans. The conduct of the war made privation worse as ports were blocked and war requisitioning immiserated the local population. The conclusion of the Great War gave great hope for independence in Syria. Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein, established the Arab Kingdom of Syria in March 1920 only to see the French use primarily Algerian and Senegalese troops to defeat it at the battle of Maysaloun four months later in July. The French subsequently established colonial rule in Syria and Lebanon as the British did in Transjordan and Palestine. Both mandates were ratified by the newly established League of Nations despite countless appeals to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s promise of self-determination for subjected peoples. ²⁴

Yet, on the eve of the Great War, roughly sixteen thousand immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, primarily Arabic-speakers from the province of Syria and governorates of Mount Lebanon and Jerusalem, had arrived and settled in Buenos Aires. Like their Spanish counterparts, diversity was an important feature of these immigrants in the River Plate, in this case confessional identity. Christians made up the majority of Ottomans; however, Muslims accounted for an estimated 30 percent by 1917. Within the Christian and Muslim immigrants, there was also great heterogeneity. Christians featured Eastern rite and Latin rite Catholics, including Syrian Orthodox, Armenian Catholics, Antiochian Greek Orthodox, and Maronite Catholics. The latter two accounted for the two largest groups of Christians. The Muslim community included Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Ismailis, and Druzes. There was no similar concentration of Muslims from the Ottoman Empire anywhere else in Latin America or the Caribbean. Arabic-speaking Jews from Aleppo, Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem numbered roughly five percent. Like the Irish and Catalans, Arabic-speaking Ottomans became increasingly politicized in the century’s initial decades and in turn ethnocultural identities gave way to hardened political identities wrapped in nationalist sentiments of various sorts. The establishment of a French mandate in Lebanon and Syria proved to be fractious within the colony and created common cause among many activists to raise money to support the anti-French revolution. ²⁵

Irish Republican Activism in Buenos Aires

During the First World War Great Britain had to contend with Irish nationalist sentiments despite relying on large numbers of Irish soldiers and sailors. The gravity of the contribution and sacrifice, many on the hills of Gallipoli, led to two fundamental, yet distinct, interpretations of the war experience in Ireland. The first view asserted that fighting in the Dardanelles and in the European trenches for His Majesty’s government proved clearly Irish importance and contribution to the defense of the nation. The second understanding questioned the legitimacy of dying for a government that did not treat them with dignity or respect their political program of Home Rule within the broader imperial superstructure. The nationalist movement came to a head on April 24, 1916, with the start of the Easter Rising. ²⁶

For almost a week, nearly two thousand Irish Republican Volunteers battled British forces in the streets of Dublin. Over the ensuing days, the Republican forces became concentrated in the General Post Office on O’Connell Street and were led by James Connelly and Patrick Pearse. Among the volunteers was Eamonn Bulfin, an Argentine-born Irishman who studied at Pearse’s nationalist school St. Enda’s upon his return in 1908. Bulfin, the son of William Bulfin who published The Southern Cross in Buenos Aires and also wrote for Sinn Fein newspapers throughout the diaspora, served as a Lieutenant in the Headquarter’s Staff. During the Easter Rising, he led his troops to positions on the rooftop, where they received conditional absolution from a Roman Catholic priest as conflict intensified. It was then that Bulfin hoisted one of the Irish flags—green with a harp and “Irish Republic” inscribed in white letters across the middle. After a week of sustained machine gun fire and artillery rounds from British troops, Bulfin, Connelly, Pearse, and the rest of the surviving volunteers surrendered. ²⁷

Bulfin was convicted, but unlike such leaders as Connelly and Pearse, he was not executed. As Pearse faced his demise, he told the attending priest to go to the Argentine consul for his intervention on behalf of Bulfin. The consul complied, visiting the British military leaders and requesting to see the Argentine national. The young Irish-Argentine was remanded to Stafford prison, where he remained until the general amnesty given on Christmas 1916. Freed, Bulfin continued his nationalist activities, assisting in the formation of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit in his hometown of Birr, County Offaly until he was arrested anew on July 18, 1918, in association with the alleged German plot. The British searched his home, discovering arms, ammunition, explosives, and literature the authorities viewed as seditious. He again was incarcerated. ²⁸

Sometime in the Irish spring of 1918, the Argentine government informed the British that Bulfin was a citizen needing to report to serve out his obligatory military service. The British decided to deport Bulfin to Buenos Aires. In March 1919, Bulfin was served with the deportation order and paroled for two weeks to visit his dying mother. He intended to surrender his parole, go into hiding, and not return to prison. This plan was not to be. In April 1919, a letter intercepted by the British from prominent Irish Republican Darrell Figgis to his colleague Eamon Morkan, Bulfin’s commanding officer, revealed Sinn Fein’s plans for the Irishman in Argentina. Bulfin was to be used as a propagandist for the Irish nationalist cause. ²⁹

This seems to have been a strategic decision for several reasons. First, it was well known that the Irish colonies in Argentina were wealthy and thus a potential support for sustained remittances to the old country. Second, given the emergence of the League of Nations, the presence of Argentina as a potential supporter of Irish independence in this new international forum was a path to be pursued. ³⁰ It seemed, however, the English understood these realities too and worked to gain an advantage or at least mitigate any effectiveness of Bulfin’s mission. In Buenos Aires, Gerald Foley, the editor of The Southern Cross aggressively countered perceived anti-Irish propaganda. Foley complained that the intent of the British information campaign was to “poison the well of public opinion against Ireland, and incline neutral opinion towards England” by depicting the “Irish as an ignorant and thankless lot.” He harangued the campaign, declaring that

if one half of the perverse ingenuity displayed by the English government in distorting facts, inventing outrages and suppressing the truth were employed on finding a workable solution of the Irish Question, far more benefit would accrue to both countries. ³¹

While on parole in Birr, Eamonn Bulfin visited several republican activists. Sinn Fein leaders Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera ordered him to surrender to British forces, accept removal, and initiate an information office in Argentina. De Valera formally asked Bulfin to accept the position of representative of the Irish Republic in the Argentine and offered an annual salary of 500 pounds sterling. For his part, Collins asked Bulfin to procure weapons for the armed struggle. Bulfin accepted the offer. While in Liverpool’s Bridewell Gaol, Pearse’s sister Margaret visited Bulfin and handed to him “a detailed letter of instructions and some money from Headquarters.” ³²

Returning to Argentina, Bulfin found an Irish community that was attuned to the hardships and political situation of the island. In the immediate aftermath of the Easter Rising, the colony in Argentina began raising humanitarian aid for the “martyrs” and “victims” as well as celebrating the volunteers killed in the pitched battle of late April or executed thereafter. Indeed, raising money in Argentina, which was almost always organized by the Irish congregants of Passionists (an order of Roman Catholic priests and women religious) resident there, was an important feature of the colony. ³³

Shortly after Bulfin arrived, a series of pro-Irish activities and societies emerged. The Círculo Irlandés, for instance, emerged in early October 1919 and was open to “all sympathizers with the Irish Cause” and met in the downtown San Nicolás neighborhood. A “grand demonstration in favor of the Dail Eireann” (the independent Irish government) was set for late August 1919 at St. Brigid’s College in Buenos Aires’s Caballito neighborhood. The purpose was to organize the community to benefit the nationalist movement by arranging a campaign to raise money for the “funds requisite to carry on the work of Government during the present difficult situation.” The event planners were “confident that those resident in the Argentine will consider it a sacred duty to make a generous response to this appeal.” Out of the demonstration came the Irish Republican League of Argentina, established to “promote the interests of the Irish Republic.” The event, which featured a concert by the Sisters of Mercy (the religious order running the school), was deemed such a success that a second demonstration was announced for the end of November. ³⁴

In the buildup to the second demonstration, a story in The Southern Cross related the history of the young republic beginning with the Easter Rising. Its author argued that

the proclamation of an Irish Republic is a Declaration of war for Ireland’s Independence, not a war of blood, but a moral war to be waged chiefly outside Ireland, where the Irish are free to act, as they will never be free to act at home while the military occupation of Ireland, with its martial law terrors, subsists.

The article thus encouraged the Irish in Argentina to send in their “contribution to help Ireland in her hour of need.” The November event featured such nationalist imagery as a performance of Thomas MacDonagh’s speech given from the dock of his court martial and the performance of Lady Gregory’s play Dervorgilla, the nationalist poem “The Green, White, and Gold,” and the singing of “A Nation Once Again,” authored by Thomas Davis, a founder of Young Ireland, in the 1840s. ³⁵

While these events and organizations to unify the Irish in Argentina with the goals and needs of the republican government in Dublin developed, Eamonn Bulfin continued his work. As he remembered years later,

While in Argentina I carried out the instructions I had received to the best of my ability. My mission there was two-fold—political and military. I purchased arms, which I sent to Ireland via Liverpool, my activity in this connection was limited by the financial resources at my disposal.

Bulfin, although having to borrow money from local Irish sympathizers to purchase and ship the weapons, fit into a transnational trafficking network that directly aided the armed struggle in the old country and, according to historian Gerard Noonan, sustained the republican movement. Still, it was the propaganda campaign that created the greatest sense of urgency. ³⁶

Bulfin argued to his superiors that “the urgent need that exists of educating the whole people of the Argentine—as distinct from the Irish [here]—to the true position of Ireland and her claim to recognition as an Independent Republic.” He believed likely very naively that President Hipólito Yrigoyen would recognize Ireland if the U.S. government did first. Bulfin also asserted that publishing the official Irish Bulletin and a Spanish version of it in Buenos Aires could overcome the internal rivalries and misunderstandings in order to complete an effective reorganization of the Irish colony. Furthermore, several Buenos Aires newspapers were friendly, disposed toward the Irish Cause, and could be used in the information campaign. ³⁷

Some of these ongoing outreach efforts began to pay dividends as the Círculo Irlandés was invited to participate in the upcoming public demonstration supporting the actions of Argentine Foreign Minister Honorio Pueyrredón, who served as Vice President of the first general assembly at the League of Nations. Organized by the Junta Pro-Política Internacional del Gobierno Argentino, a broad spectrum Buenos Aires civil society participated and one observer noted that the Irish contingent, waving nationalist flags and banners, were “loudly cheered all along the Avenida.” Irish activists also participated in the public reception at the port of Minister Pueyrredón and the following parade. Arriving with flags and a banner reading “La República de Irlanda aplaude la actitud Argentina y saluda al Dr. Pueyrredón,” the Irish radicals were greeted with applause at the dock. During the parade, “many cheers for ‘Irlanda libre’ were raised as the flags and placard passed up Florida to Charcas and Santa Fe and then into Juncal, thus endearing ever more the sympathy of the Argentines for the Irish cause.” ³⁸

Within the community, the Irish Republican League maintained its fund drive and cultural events agendas. Reporting on its first general meeting attended by men and women, the League noted it had already raised more than 4,000 pounds sterling for the cause. Yet, this was not the lone humanitarian aid campaign. The Irish White Cross, a self-styled apolitical humanitarian organization headquartered in Dublin and presided over by Cardinal Logue, Primate of All Ireland, and chaired by Laurence O’Neill, Lord Mayor of Dublin, initiated an aid campaign throughout the Irish diaspora. The contributions in Argentina far outpaced the work of the Irish Republican League. These competing campaigns led Eamonn Bulfin to attempt an intervention. He admitted that it may seem strange to the colony that he would voice an appeal for money for Ireland “just at a time when funds are already being collected by three or four different bodies for this express purpose.” Yet, he argued that the best course was to centralize the aid campaigns into one fund, “applied in a manner which would render it difficult of confiscation by the military government that is at present harrying Ireland.” He noted it was a process filled with risk sending money to Ireland and that it could end up in the “coffers of the British Army of Occupation,” noting that the military authorities could seize up to 20,000 pounds from account upon the allegation that money will be used for “seditious purposes.” Bulfin proposed that shipments of food could be bought and shipped instead of remitting money. He admitted that money that safely arrived in Ireland could purchase foodstuffs there, but at a higher price than to purchase and ship from Buenos Aires. In addition, given that “banks are not philanthropic associations,” money would be lost in exchange from pesos to pounds. He concluded by alerting the Irish that the system was set up and that he was ready to help activate it. The White Cross campaign carried on. ³⁹

It was in this context that the esteemed and former member of the British Parliament Laurence Ginnell arrived in Buenos Aires as Ireland’s Special Envoy of the Republic of Ireland to the Governments and Peoples of South America. Ginnell’s mission was twofold—to secure recognition of the Irish republic and issue bonds to fund the government. Ginnell secured a meeting with Minister Pueyrredón at the Palacio de San Martín. The Argentine diplomat was cautious, and the local press described Ginnell’s request for a meeting as considered very delicate in diplomatic circles. Britain’s Minister Plenipotentiary Ronald Macleay had already spoken with Pueyrredón about Ginnell’s mission and proposals. If the meeting were to happen, Ginnell likely would be considered a basic visitor. Indeed, an editorial in The Standard, a pro-British English-language periodical published in Buenos Aires, described Ginnell’s mission as “being to thoroughly mix facts and fiction for the edification of the ill-informed who are determined to remain ignorant at all costs.” The writer suggested that Britain remained Argentina’s best client, confidently predicting that Argentina would “not forfeit the friendship of England by recognizing an Irish envoy.” ⁴⁰

The Standard was correct. Clearly, every Argentine official would have agreed with this assessment. Pueyrredón informed Ginnell that he could only accept him as a personal courtesy, despite receiving his credentials from the Irish government and a letter from President Eamon De Valera. Argentina’s relations with Britain dictated this posture. Ginnell, an expert in Celtic law and celebrated author of “The Case for Ireland’s Independence,” enquired whether he could carry on with his public relations mission. Pueyrredón noted that Argentina was a free country where speech was permitted provided it did not affect public order, the rights of others, or carry out an attack on another government with which Buenos Aires had friendly relations. Ginnell then asked whether he could initiate the bond drive, prompting a response from the foreign minister stating the Irishman could not do it without the permission of the Argentine government. Pueyrredón concluded the meeting by saying he left it to Ginnell to decide whether or not to move forward with his projects. Ginnell departed the meeting and immediately telegrammed his superiors. ⁴¹

The Irish colony celebrated his arrival, hosting a reception at the Plaza Hotel. His arrival peaked supporters of the Irish cause and led to the creation of the Comité Argentino pro-Libertad de Irlanda. A delegation from this group visited Ginnell at the Savoy Hotel. Its president, Comandante Thorne, related his pleasure at the chance to express

Argentine opinion to the Government and people of Ireland [and the] deep and sincere sympathy which the noble cause of the Irish people has aroused among us Argentines who, as faithful children of a glorious tradition of Liberty, are capable of understanding those who . . . are struggling for the same ideal, and our hearts beat in unison with people in any part of the world who aspire to and work for liberty and independence.

The Comité Argentino organized a banquet in the spring that featured prominent speeches from Thorne and the president of the Basque Society. Officials from the various Basque, Catalonian, and Galician organizations in Buenos Aires also attended this event. Other Argentines expressed support for Irish independence, blanketing the city with “striking” posters. The public support for Ginnell’s mission led the London newspaper The Independent to suggest that there was more interest in the nationalist cause among Argentines than the Irish-Argentine community specifically, except in provincial Mercedes where the operatives on the ground had greater connections. ⁴²

The excitement caused by the envoy’s presence encouraged Ginnell and Bulfin to push ahead with the information campaign and the bond drive. The Irish Republicans published advertisements in La Prensa and The Southern Cross, exhorting the broader public to “help a sister republic by buying Irish government bonds.” This was, after all, “for the cause of liberty and justice.” British Minister in Argentina Ronald Macleay was not amused. He protested to Pueyrredón, reminding him that he understood Ginnell was not permitted to sell bonds publicly. Macleay left it to Pueyrredón to take whatever measures he deemed appropriate. The Argentine foreign minister requested reports from the ministries of Interior and Treasury, specifically what measures would be taken. The federal police visited the Irish legation’s office and confirmed the sale of the bonds. The Banco de la Nación Argentina could not find an account in the name of the Irish government. Thus, it is unclear what measures the Argentine government deployed, but what is certain is that the bond drive suffered. ⁴³

According to British intelligence files, Ginnell’s actions in Argentina frustrated republican leaders and likely Bulfin too. The view in London asserted that Sinn Fein considered the Irish envoy “too old and nervous, and has allowed himself to be influenced by the Passionist Fathers. Dissatisfaction is also felt as to his initiative in connection with the Irish Bonds, and his lack of support is attributed to mismanagement.” Ginnell and Bulfin were unable to convince the Irish to stop contributing the White Cross aid campaign and old rivalries returned that hampered the efforts. The former is likely attributed to the prominence and power the Irish Passionists had over the community in Buenos Aires and the province, which was far more numerous. Second, the Irish diplomats agreed that the average Irish-Argentine was deeply critical of British action in the old country; however, this discontent did not translate into financial support for the armed struggle. ⁴⁴

During the Argentine spring and summer of 1921, the Irish republicans and the British government were engaged in negotiations to bring about a peace accord. These talks were closely monitored in the immigrant and Argentine press in Buenos Aires. For instance, the socialist organ La Vanguardia argued that a free Ireland was a guarantee for peace and a valiant element of cooperation for the prosperity of the empire. The ebbs and flows of the negotiations featured in La Nación and La Prensa. The signing of the so-called Anglo-Irish Treaty on December 6, 1921, enraged Ginnell and Bulfin. Ginnell argued that “a treaty reached under duress is invalid,” and this “attempt by England to force a Constitution upon Ireland is a practical negation of the title Free State.” He concluded “tyranny on one side and degradation on the other are England’s terms of reconciliation and peace. On these terms England may be able to make peace with our ashes, but not with the living Irish nation.” ⁴⁵

Bulfin remembered,

when the Treaty was signed the members of the Mission, Mr Ginnell, Mr Little and myself were dissatisfied and disgusted with the turn of events and with the instructions received from the Provisional Government. We decided to close down the Legation. Mr Little left at once for home. Mr Ginnell, who was ill at the time, left for home as soon as he could travel, which was in March 1922. I was left to wind up the affairs of the Legation. This occupied me until near the end of June 1922. I then left for home and arrived in Dublin about the end of July 1922.

Bulfin’s return was delayed in part because British officials refused to allow him to land in England, even as a transit point. ⁴⁶ In September 1922, Bulfin returned the balance of the Legation money, nearly 600 pounds, to Sean O’Mahoney, the representative of the Republican forces. He then told O’Mahoney that he was severing his ties with the republicans. He also refused a commission in the Irish Free State Army, thus deciding to sit out the Civil War then afflicting Ireland. Argentina kept a consulate in Dublin; however, no Irish diplomats returned to Buenos Aires for decades. ⁴⁷ Any subsequent activism on behalf of the Irish state or the republican cause would be mediated by interpersonal networks, Roman Catholic clergy, women religious, and lay school teachers serving this colony. But direct nationalist agitation dissipated in the disappointment of the treaty.

Catalonian Nationalists and the Case of Francesc Macià

In early February 1927, the Catalan nationalist Francesc Macià announced that he and his personal secretary—the poet Ventura Gassol—intended to travel to Buenos Aires. Their potential visit to Buenos Aires and elsewhere stoked controversy among the broader Spanish colony in Argentina. Catalan activists, for whom “the liberty of the distant birth land [was] the obsession,” began preparations. Angel Boixader, president of the cultural institution Casal Catalá, informed the press that Macià was coming to raise funds for the revolutionary movement in the old country, staying only long enough to travel into the interior to secure money for the cause. This revelation prompted an immediate protest from a group of “indignant” Spaniards residing in Mendoza province. ⁴⁸

These men, claiming to speak on behalf of “Spaniards in all of America,” asked their chief diplomat in Buenos Aires to request Argentina to prevent the entry of “this traitor called Macià.” For them, the sole reason for the visit was “to denigrate Spain and its God-designated government.” The activists concluded, writing, “We Spaniards are disposed to answer this venomous drivel with the bullets of our revolvers, and whether in the street or at the meeting or conference, we will bump him off as is done to harmful, irrational people.” Thus, Spanish Ambassador Antonio de Zayas contacted Argentine Foreign Minister Angél Gallardo, asking him to prevent his entry into the country. Gallardo complied, issuing a circular informing his consular officers in France to deny giving an entry visa. ⁴⁹

Francesc Macià was a revolutionary known throughout the world because of his failed attempt to foment revolution in Catalonia against the authoritarian regime of Primo de Rivera. ⁵⁰ In October 1926, French officials discovered a conspiracy led by Macià, seizing weapons, such as rifles, pistols, German machine guns, artillery shells, and bombs, in various hideouts in Prats de Mollo in southwestern France. The investigators arrested Macià. During interrogation, the former Spanish army colonel declared his intention was to liberate Catalonia and install a republican regime. He then revealed that all discovered weapons “had been purchased with his personal money and financial aid from Catalans residing in South America.” ⁵¹

After a short trial, the French state prosecuted and convicted Macià and his co-conspirators of possessing an illegal cache of weapons, sentencing the former to two months in prison. The French prosecutors focused simply on the possession of weapons and ignored the charge of conspiracy to incite rebellion. This was a political decision to avoid complicating relations with the Spanish government and to prevent any angered parliamentary debate from French Leftists. The French Interior Minister then expelled Macià and his personal secretary Ventura Gassol to Belgium in March. For its part, the Spanish government revoked the passports of the two. ⁵²

In Brussels, the two Catalan activists began planning their trip to Argentina while Gallardo dispatched the circular regarding Macià to his consular officers in Britain and Ireland. Macià passed by the Argentine consulate in Brussels and requested a visa, which was denied because Macià could not produce a document of good behavior and he was sixty-seven years old, well above the limit of sixty. Determined to make their way to Argentina, Macià and Gassol secured from the Belgian authorities a laissez-passer document for people without citizenship and then received an entry visa to Uruguay. The two then set sail for Montevideo in December 1927, arriving just after Christmas. ⁵³

Upon their arrival in Montevideo, Macià passed by the Argentine legation asking for an entry visa. He was denied and then met with Juan Lagos Mármol, the Argentine ambassador, for an explanation. The diplomat stated that since Macià could not produce documentation of good behavior, his hands were tied. Clearly frustrated, Macià spoke to La Nación, a prominent Buenos Aires daily, and explained that the Belgian passports he and Gassol currently hold define the two in question as Spanish in origin but without a country (“apátridas”). Further, they received the visas from the Uruguayan consulate because the latter knew the former could not provide the required documentation. After recognizing his conviction for clandestine possession of arms and munitions, which were to be used in the assault on Prats de Mollo, he also noted that the crime was judged as a common one, and not a political crime. This was an important distinction. Macià then made a plea to the court of public opinion, declaring

I hope that Argentina, as a free and democratic country, will understand our situation and will see us not as criminals but rather as men fighting for a noble ideal, that we represent no social danger to the country that provides refuge to us and therefore our presence does not cause harm. ⁵⁴

The Spanish ambassador Antonio de Zayas dispatched another letter attempting to ensure Gallardo’s resolve and laying out the case why Macià should not be permitted entry. First, Macià did not meet the good behavior criteria because he was tried, convicted, and expelled from France and was not given political asylum. Second, the travel documents given to Macià and Gassol by the Belgian authorities were invalid because the two were not stateless, rather they were Spaniards. For Zayas, Macià was a permanent agitator working for the dismemberment of Spain, who fled to France, which later deemed Macià’s activities punishable. And since his separatist activities did not find traction in Belgium, “his eyes return anew to Argentina where his activities would be more beneficial because of the numerous separatist Catalonians resident here.” Furthermore, Macià already had an open criminal investigation against him in Buenos Aires since 1925. The Provisional Government of Catalonia organized a collection drive targeting Catalans in Argentina to fund the revolution and achieve separation. In November 1925, the Spanish embassy lodged a formal complaint against this fundraising to Minister Gallardo, who then turned it over the Interior Ministry and the judicial branch, thus beginning the court case. Zayas noted finally,

the Catalonians that are in Argentina considered as separatists, concentrated in the Casal Catalá, have constituted a revolutionary committee and launched a manifesto in which they explain the goal—to gather funds to purchase weapons for the independence of Catalonia.

This was more than sufficient to prove the purpose of Macià’s visit, which was “frankly separatist.” ⁵⁵

While the Spanish legation and the Argentine foreign ministry worked to prevent Macià’s entry, public opinion began to weigh in. An anonymous op-ed in Montevideo’s La Razón argued that Argentina—“the heirs of the glory of May, the grandsons of that Mariano Moreno”—had forgotten its own revolutionary roots and its desire to overthrow despotism. ⁵⁶ In Buenos Aires, an organization named the Argentine Committee for Catalonia (Comité Argentino Pro Cataluña) began distributing an open letter to the broader public. The authors drew direct connections with Argentina’s fight for independence, including two heroes of Catalan descent (Juan Larrea and Domingo Matheu), and the tradition of Argentines in supporting other liberation movements. For instance,

We proclaim this only as sons of a free and sovereign republic and solemnly we promise to fight in Argentina for a cause so holy and noble—the liberty and independence of Catalonia—as much as illustrious compatriots who have gone before us during the independence of Cuba and Ireland or when it was necessary to encourage with Argentine sympathy the French irredentists in Alsace-Lorraine or the Italians in Trent and Trieste, that justly claimed her union to nations from which they had been separated by imperialist and inhuman acts of force. ⁵⁷

The authors concluded,

our weapons will be ideas pouring out in the leaflet, the magazine, the newspaper article or the manifesto that demonstrates the urgent necessity that free nations, putting into execution the grand ideas of Wilson about the self-determination of peoples, make amends to civilization by enforcing the absolute liberation of Catalonia. ⁵⁸

The rhetoric and the choices are revealing for a number of reasons. First, the reference to Argentina’s independence movement linked it with the Catalan example through a common enemy, namely, an anti-democratic Spain. Moreover, the specific mention of Larrea and Matheu devised to show how Catalans had been there at Argentina’s moment of need and thus these activists desired “to reward in part their magnificent gesture, fighting that Catalonia returns to be a free and respected nation in a secular and civilized Europe.” ⁵⁹ Second, despite the imperfections of Argentina’s democracy, it is clear that many citizens embraced the values enshrined in the national constitution. It was their duty to support Catalonia’s “noble” goal of achieving what Argentina already had. Argentines had an important role to play in the aspirations of peoples around the world in pursuit of Wilson’s idea of self-determination. Finally, this broadside connected the question of Catalonia to anti-imperialist and nationalist struggles in Cuba and Ireland and the irredentist movements demanding the cessation of land lost by force in continental Europe. Certainly, the long tradition of labor activism integrated Catalonia into the internationalist movement in intriguing ways. Yet, many in the Argentine public also viewed themselves as part of the struggle against imperialism that went beyond a simple anti-American disposition.

Catalans in Buenos Aires also intensified their activism, petitioning President Marcelo T. de Alvear to intervene in the name of the democratic principles of the constitution to resolve the impasse benefiting Macià and Gassol. The signatories noted that the pair in Montevideo were Catalan political militants opposing the current regime in Madrid. This fact prevented the release of the required documents to achieve an entry visa. Thus, Macià and Gassol found themselves, under the Constitution and Argentine laws, in an identical situation as the Chilean, Peruvian, Bolivian, and Spanish refugees that had arrived in large numbers in the recent past. ⁶⁰ The Buenos Aires daily La Prensa published an op-ed denouncing the behavior of the Argentine state, arguing that Macià had a valid passport and was a political refugee. ⁶¹

Macià and Gassol, however, preempted whatever deal the Catalan activists, public opinion, and the Argentine president may have achieved by entering into Argentina without authorization, surfacing in a prominent hotel in the center of Buenos Aires. After tailing the two Catalans for several days, the police arrested them, transferred them to Hotel de Inmigrantes where they were unceremoniously deported to Montevideo. Macià addressed the assembled crowd at Darsena Sur, pronouncing his affection for the Argentine people. He warned them that they were ruled by a bad government, but climaxed the impromptu speech with a “Viva al pueblo argentino.” Their lawyer—the iconic Socialist politician Alfredo Palacios—unsuccessfully attempted to prevent their removal. Several groups—Catalan and Argentine alike—organized public events in solidarity with the expelled men. Palacios then sued for redress because his clients had been denied habeas corpus. The cases worked its way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in favor of Macià and Gassol confirming an appellate ruling that under the 1889 Treaty of Montevideo, political asylum was inviolable. Macià and Gassol returned to much fanfare and commenced their fundraising activities without incident in either Buenos Aires or throughout the Argentine interior. ⁶²

Arabic-Speakers and the Politics of European Colonialism

For the most politically active Arabic-speaking immigrants, the French Mandate (1923-1945) in Syria and Lebanon was the central focus. Such intellectuals as Dr. Jorge Sawaya and the publishers of al-Salām (Peace), the leading Arabic-language periodical in Argentina, Wadi and Alejandro Schamún had been deeply involved in Ottoman diasporic politics since the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. They all were important figures in an emerging Arab nationalism. Former Ottoman Consul General Emir Emin Arslan-who arrived in Buenos Aires in 1910, was summarily sacked, tried in absentia, and condemned to death by the Ottomans following his public criticisms of Istanbul’s decision to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers-soured on France as the imposition of colonial rule dashed demands for independence. The Schamún brothers experienced this same political evolution. Sawaya remained suspect of the French from the outset. Thus, the French’s presence in the eastern Mediterranean was most divisive to the colony and far more corrosive internally than the issue of Zionism in Palestine and the British Mandate. ⁶³

The collapse and dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the fall of King Faisal in Damascus in July 1920, the granting by the League of Nations of mandates to France over Syria and Lebanon in September 1923, the Great Syrian Revolt from July 1925 to June 1927, and the joint French-Spanish effort to defeat Abd El-Krim in May 1926 preoccupied the Arab, Lebanese, and Syrian nationalist crowds. A variety of social groups bristled under French rule in Syria. Elite families that once benefited from historic access to political offices were replaced or micromanaged by French functionaries. Nationalists that once agitated for insurrection from abroad returned to Damascus and created an intellectual basis for rebellion. Yet, it was the diminution of Druze power in the Hawran Mountains south of Damascus and the perceived abuse and disrespect by French colonial administrators that provided the spark. Following the arrest in Beirut of a delegation of Druze sent to complain about a local French administrator, a general, loosely connected rebellion swept over Syria following the declaration of revolution by Sultan Pasha al-Atrash on August 23, 1925. This insurrection would lead to the emergence of a popular nationalism that was led by Ottoman-trained army officers. For a good many nationalists, a strong anti-French sentiment underwrote their interpretation of an emerging Arab consciousness. Abd El-Krim’s Rif War also animated certain pockets, principally Muslims, and led to public events denouncing European intervention and the denial of self-determination in North Africa. ⁶⁴

The Arabic-speaking colonies, however, were not monolithic politically. Syrian and Arab nationalists argued and at times fought with Lebanese nationalists and supporters of the French. For instance, a group of Christian and Muslim activists in Buenos Aires, including Sawaya and the Schamún brothers, united to form the Syrian-Lebanese Committee. These men, also composed of some of the colony’s wealthier merchants, began organizing a public demonstration for July 1922 to remonstrate France’s imposition of colonial rule. In the build up to the protest, the Superior of the Lebanese Missionaries, an order of Maronite Catholic priests, convinced the French minister in Argentina to meet with the Buenos Aires chief of police, municipal leaders, and a vice-minister of foreign affairs at the Argentine Chancellery. The French diplomat requested Argentine state intervention to prevent the demonstration from taking place. The Argentines refused to intercede. Thus, people took to the streets to protest France’s colonial rule. ⁶⁵

The French moved swiftly afterward. General Henri Gouraud, the High Commissioner of the French Republic in Syria and Lebanon, dispatched a letter to the Argentine president asking for help in managing the efforts of “a fanatical party of the Lebanese-Syrian colony in Argentina” that had been spreading lies about the mandatory powers. ⁶⁶ It worked for a time. Following this request, Argentine officials collaborated with their French counterparts at times to quiet dissidents and prevent public criticism of French colonialism. The French remained active. They were particularly concerned with a potential transnational pan-Islamic movement. As early as 1923, officials in French West Africa were interdicting al-Fiṭra, an anti-French weekly newspaper owned and published in Buenos Aires by an Alawite Muslim and edited by a Sunni Muslim, that arrived in Senegalese ports. The mandatory authorities in Beirut banned the periodical from Syria and Lebanon. France’s Minister of Colonies tasked the diplomatic corps in Buenos Aires to produce an intelligence report on the newspaper to understand its political disposition and reach. al-Fiṭra, however, was not alone. The Schamún’s al-Salām, al-Ittihād al-Lubnāni, al-Sahil, and Sada al-Sharq were periodicals hostile to the French in Syria and Lebanon and were edited by Maronites. ⁶⁷

The start of the Great Syrian Revolt was a critical moment for both sides. In Buenos Aires, intellectuals mobilized with great purpose, organizing street demonstrations and dispatching telegraphs to the League of Nations demanding France quit the mandate. The French revealed to the Argentines that Syrians there were remitting large sums of money, including the Muslim-led Arab Committee of Buenos Aires, to the revolutionary groups. The Argentine minister in France Federico Alvarez de Toledo informed his superiors that “a group of certain importance in the Argentine Republic exists” and the development of this movement was closely related to the concurrent war in the Rif. He continued, “There is a general panislamic movement; it is not difficult that this could extend itself and each day cover more ground.” While this assessment may seem alarmist, in the moment, there was significant concern among French and other European officials about the swift flow of money and materiel into Syria via a transnational network of Arab sympathizers based in Cairo, Istanbul, Rhodes, Berlin, Odessa, and elsewhere. Two activists, for instance, collaborated to purchase weapons in Italy and smuggle them in via Alexandretta. The trafficking of weapons was of such concern that Turkish officials interdicted shipments. ⁶⁸

The violence of the conflict featured prominently in the local Argentine press, and the French diplomats were worried about losing the public relations battle. They viewed their initial information campaign as a failure. Emir Emin Arslan, who was deeply respected by the Buenos Aires intelligentsia, continued his writing campaign in the capital’s leading newspaper La Nación, which included a confession admitting he was wrong to have supported French presence in Syria and Lebanon. He also established the Arabic-language periodical al-Istiqlāl (Independence) to wage the public relations contest within the immigrant community. More problematic for the French, a group of Syrian and Argentine intellectuals crafted and dispatched telegrams to the League of Nations and to U.S. president Calvin Coolidge demanding the revocation of the mandate and the sending of an independent commission to Beirut to restore order.

The drafting of the telegrams happened during a so-called apolitical event commemorating the victims of the conflict, which was organized by the Circle of Syrian-Argentine Women in the spring of 1925. The Syrian signatories included Muslims and Christians. Two of the Argentine signatories deeply worried the French. Leopoldo Lugones—the former head of the America France Committee in Buenos Aires and an unapologetic supporter of France during the First World War—was a widely acclaimed intellectual and poet whose views were seriously considered by his peers and the public. By this time, Lugones had experienced a radical political transformation orbiting from the left to the far-right. José León Suárez, the president of the prominent intellectual salon Ateneo Hispano Americano, was also a worry. Suárez, a jurist and founder of the College of Economic Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, was a member of the Argentine delegation to the League of Nations Committee of the Codification of International Law. At the event hosted by the Syrian-Argentine women, he had promised to “an anti-French Syrian group in Buenos Aires” to personally deliver their reclamations and protestations to the League. The French would not brook any sort of advocacy for the anti-French position by a representative of an independent state. In Europe, French diplomats cornered the Argentine and sought clarification. Nothing came of Suárez’s advocacy. ⁶⁹

The arrival and activities of Habib Estefano in Buenos Aires vexed the French. A former Maronite Catholic priest who served as King Faisal’s spokesperson during the ill-fated Arab Kingdom of Syria, Estefano’s oratory skill attracted large crowds and provoked consternation among the French and their allies in Buenos Aires. Upon his arrival in Argentina in September 1925, Estefano initiated a program of public talks in the capital’s principal theaters. During these events, Estefano celebrated Abd El-Krim and the Druze warriors of the Hawran as defenders of liberty against the French imperialists. He too was well received at the University of Buenos Aires, where his talks were particularly aggressive against the French.

To blunt the effectiveness of Estefano, Arslan, and the other activists in shaping Argentine public opinion, French ambassador François Georges-Picot, the same who negotiated the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and his deputies initiated a counter-campaign. Georges-Picot visited the leading Argentine newspapers asking them to not allow even an “echo of the calumnies that are also notoriously false and injurious” propagated by Estefano and Arslan. The Frenchman received a promise from the local press, and he admitted in his letter to Foreign Minister Briand that the editors had done the job. In addition, the French embassy planted stories personally attacking Habib Estefano as a fraud in the Catholic newspaper El Pueblo and the Buenos Aires–based French-language periodical Le Courrier de La Plata. These efforts had a rippling effect in the Arabic-language press as supporters of the French used the opportunity to criticize Estefano. Further, in the spring of 1925, Georges-Picot also met with law enforcement, revealing to Briand that “discreetly advised by me of the interventions which other Syrian groups would undoubtedly raise [by] such public demonstrations, the authorities warned the organizers that they would be held responsible for the disorder that would occur.” ⁷⁰

Despite these and other efforts, Georges-Picot lamented his inability to prevent Argentine president Marcelo T. de Alvear and several of his ministers from attending an Estefano public talk. Nor could the French fully snuff out various forms of activism, protestations, and criticisms. The vibrant Muslim community and the large Antiochian Orthodox Christian colony in Buenos Aires organized humanitarian aid drives. The Comité Central Pro Heridos Rifeños de Marruecos raised money for Abd El Krim’s wounded combatants. In the winter of 1925, this committee wired 350 pounds sterling via the Bank of London to the Red Crescent of the Rif. To facilitate this transaction, the central committee used as intermediary Sheikh Muhammad Farage El Meniaoui, the president of Muslim Association of Religious Scholars in Egypt and head of the umbrella aid organization for the Rif War injured. The latter committee headed by El Meniaoui was recognized officially by the Egyptian royal family, giving it legal sanction. ⁷¹

Several different groups raised and remitted money for the wounded and victims of the fighting in Syria. Following the aerial and artillery bombardment of Damascus by the French in October 1925, during which some 1,500 people died, and again in March 1926, many activists committed to raising humanitarian aid and money for the war effort. Much of the money was routed through Jerusalem via the Supreme Muslim Council, which was a British-established body led by the nationalist and anti-French religious leader al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini. The Supreme Council, for instance, confirmed in August 1926 that it received 600 pounds sterling from the Buenos Aires–based National Committee for Aiding Syrian Victims. As the war ground on, Druze nationalist leader Sultan al-Atrash dispatched a letter to the Muslim Society of Flores (a neighborhood in Buenos Aires), thanking it for its recent contribution and that future money should continue to be sent through the Supreme Council. The Circle of Syrian-Argentine Women sent 130 pounds sterling for the Syrian victims via its intermediary Michel Lutfallah, president of the Syrian independence group Cairo Committee. ⁷²

As the conflict became one of attrition, the rhetoric in the Arabic press moderated and public demonstrations diminished in number and prominence. Checri Abi Saab, who served as the Arabic dragoman in the French embassy in Buenos Aires, beamed in a report on public opinion and the immigrant press. He gloated that “the violent tone in the opposition newspapers had sensibly moderated and attenuated.” And although those periodicals that moderated its tone and coverage had not changed their political positions, they were disposed to “acknowledge the truth” of the situation. ⁷³

Despite the stalling of the Great Syrian Revolt in 1927, an active campaign against the mandate persisted in Syria and the Americas, especially after the French dissolved the Syrian assembly following an impasse relating to specific articles for inclusion in a Syrian constitution. This placed the French, in the eyes of its critics, as an imperialist power. The Unión Libanesa continued its demand for complete independence and its criticism of the French. Habib Estéfano continued to lecture throughout Argentina and, in the eyes of French diplomats, spread “his harmful venom.” Yet, there was apparently a noticeable waning of support among some actors and the Argentine public due to the schisms plaguing the Executive Committee of the Syrian–Palestinian Congress, based in Cairo, and the revolutionaries in Transjordan and Syria. Even some Maronite priests, hearty supporters of the mandate, expressed occasional disagreement with French policy in Lebanon and Syria. ⁷⁴

At the end of the 1920s, several Syrian revolutionaries emigrated to South America, in particular to Argentina. Upon their arrival, they sought the support of Emir Emin Arslan, Jorge Sawaya, and Habib Estéfano. Arslan, who was disillusioned at this point with the events in Syria and the politics the Damascene Muslims had toward the Druze, rejected the overtures for financial support by Assad al-Bakri, nephew of the prominent Syrian nationalist and revolutionary leader Nasib al-Bakri. Further, Sawaya and Arslan asserted al-Bakri did not leave Syria to work on behalf of the revolution, but rather to hacer América. With this rumor circulating, the fundraising for al-Bakri stopped, and only Estéfano contributed to the drive. With these meager funds, al-Bakri moved on to visit the Syrian and Lebanese colonies in Chile. Exhaustion had seemingly set in. ⁷⁵

Conclusion

These three examples illustrate the important role the city of Buenos Aires played in the contentious politics of European colonialism and minority hopes for self-determination. The Irish republican efforts in Buenos Aires reveal the various strategies of radical movements to curry favor and seek legitimacy. Despite the small size of the Irish colony, its wealth and prominence in local society convinced Sinn Fein leaders to send Eamonn Bulfin and later Laurence Ginnell to Buenos Aires. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty clashed with the political sensibilities of the two Irish republicans. Bulfin and Ginnell decided to close the legation and go home.

The case of Francesc Macià shows in grand relief the willingness of the Argentine state to support the requests of an anti-democratic regime with which it possessed historical ties. At the same time, it highlighted the separation that could emerge between government actions and popular sentiment. More importantly, the Macià affair portrays the deep integration of émigré communities in the nationalist struggle. Catalans in Buenos Aires help bankroll the failed revolution at Mollo de Prats, continued to organize fundraisers, and prepared an itinerary for their leader once Macià finally arrived. These activists clearly viewed themselves as stakeholders and active agents in the destiny of the old country.

For such activists as Habib Estefano, the city was home to a large and prosperous Syrian-Lebanese colony featuring a number of sympathetic activists and wealthy Christian and Muslim merchants willing to financially support war efforts and humanitarian aid campaigns. While Syrian and Lebanese activists created institutions and tapped into a transnational network that trafficked weapons and facilitated the flow of money to desperate communities or battle hardened warriors, the French mandate created increasing tensions within this immigrant colony.

British, Spanish, and French diplomats, for their part, kept close tabs on activists operating in Buenos Aires and in the interior. The propaganda campaign and the intervention by the British minister plenipotentiary played a role in preventing deepening ties with the Argentine government. The Spanish did everything they could to prevent the arrival of Francesc Macià and Ventura Gassol in Buenos Aires, and continued to ask the Argentine state to impede in their activism once in the country while the French asked Argentine authorities to intervene with varying levels of success. Further, such diplomats as François Georges-Picot understood the power of public opinion and worked diligently to convince local newspapers to run certain stories and bury others. Their surveillance and reporting of these protests and remittances and the leaning on local newspapers demonstrate their concern and worry. The French embassy fully supported the actions of the Maronite priests, and given that the majority of the Arabic-language periodicals in Buenos Aires were deemed anti-Mandate, the French decided to provide a subvention to a distinguished newspaper from the colony to provide propaganda supporting French positions in the Levant. In sum, by examining the actions of nonstate actors and state functionaries, it becomes clear that Buenos Aires was an important site of contestation relating to European colonialism and nationalist dreams, and these examples reveal the appearance of novel connections linking diverse groups of people in search of a more just world.