The Americas

Introduction

An analysis of Peronism constitutes an obligatory point of departure of any study of Argentina's history since 1945. The advancement of the popular masses toward the Plaza de Mayo on 17 October 1945, clamoring for their new leader (the Colonel Juan Domingo Perón) inaugurated a new era for this nation. For some, especially for those who marched on that day, it represented the beginning of a period of hope. For others, those who looked with stupor at the crowds "invading" the city, this was the start of a decade of undemocratic practices and populist pseudo-fascist reforms. Perón's rise to the presidency in 1946 would find the majority of the Argentine intelligentsia in the ranks of the opposition. The intellectuals were particularly worried by the emergence of this political movement which, in their eyes, was a combination of a local incarnation of European fascism and the 'barbaric' regime of the caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas. In 1956, the writer Ezequiel Martínez Estrada summarized the horror that this march signified for the "decent people." He declared it the threat of a "San Bartolomé del Barrio Norte" (an affluent neighborhood in Buenos Aires) and characterized the Peronists as "those sinister demons of the plains which Sarmiento described in El Facundo."¹ In his description Perón was depicted as a local Franco, a Mussolini or a Hitler. Only those intellectuals who defended different versions of local nationalism joined the enterprise of the colonel-turned-popular-politician and put their hopes in him. [End Page 591]

The mainstream reading by the patria letrada of the inauguration of Peronism (the march of 17 October 1945) was no more than the start of a relationship—that of intellectuals and Peronism—marked by misunderstanding. Perón's reaction to the intellectual opposition oscillated between disdain—he was constructing a working class identity and for this he did not need intellectuals—and repression; especially as he entered his second presidency in 1952. Argentine men of letters, with the exception of a small number of cases, continued to interpret Peronism as fascism throughout Perón's decade in power (1946-1955). Such is the case that even today the divorce between Peronism and the intelligentsia is commonplace in the debates about this phenomenon. Still, little is known about the chronicle of this schism; about what happened in the intellectual world during these days. In the extensive bibliography on Peronism, the history of the relationship between the intellectuals and Perón during the period 1945-1955 has been the subject of only a few isolated studies; the debate has been dominated by the extraordinary radicalization and Peronization of Argentine intelligentsia in the decade of the sixties.² This is linked to another vacuum in the historiography of this political phenomenon: the little and partial attention that the topic of anti-Peronism has received.

This article explores the particular experience of the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE) during the decade of Perón's rule. Analysis of SADE permits us to understand the way intellectuals reacted to and behaved under a political regime we know they despised.³ This indirectly provides us with interesting insights into Perón's attitudes toward the intellectual-opposition. Clearly, a detailed appraisal of the world of intellectuals during this period is essential for a better understanding of this political phenomenon. Intellectuals played an important role in the way Peronism was read and re-read in Argentine history. The subsequent views of this political movement had an important influence on its development to the extent that the history of Peronism is also "the history of its changing interpretations"⁴ The study of this particular literary institution is consequently justified. SADE—although almost ignored by historiography—was the cultural institution that sheltered the greatest number of intellectuals; it was composed of both Peronists and anti-Peronists and demonstrated a capacity of endurance rare among the country's cultural institutions (existing up until today).⁵ More significantly, [End Page 592] its particular nature constitutes a novel point of reference for studying the intersection between the world of writers and that of political power—the focus of this article. If successful, institutions like SADE have the power to control and organize the behavior of their associates, to the point that they regulate the intellectual field.⁶ Moreover, their existence and vitality, as pointed out by Alan Viala, are good signs of the degree of autonomy of the literary field from politics, as well as being central to the process that lead to the consecration of certain writers.⁷

The paper is structured into three sections with a conclusion. The first, "From Culture to Politics," briefly examines the origins of the writers' union in 1928 and describes the debate that preceded the rise of Peronism. It discusses how the apolitical foundational-spirit of SADE changed due to the polarization of Argentine society that took place in the thirties and forties. The following part, "The Limits of the Opposition," studies the behavior of the union during Perón's rule, illustrating how politics became marginal in order to guarantee SADE's survival. The last section, "A Glorious Past," looks at the way the organization re-positioned itself for the post-Peronist Argentina. The conclusion refers to the positive and negative impact of the association's conduct during Perón's rule, which had important implications for its future.

From Culture to Politics

From early on, Argentine writers acknowledged the need to strengthen their efforts in the fight against the precarious economic and professional conditions in which they carried out their work, and on several occasions they tried to found a writers' association. The institution finally materialized in November 1928. As documented in its first Act, fourteen writers founded [End Page 593] SADE, among them Jorge Luis Borges, Enrique Banchs, Roberto Giusti, Leopoldo Lugones and Samuel Glusberg.⁸ This list speaks for itself about the heterogeneous ideological nature of SADE in its early days: Borges, who in 1928 embraced the candidature of Hipólito Yrigoyen; Giusti, a member of the Independent Socialist Party; Lugones, a virulent nationalist and Glusberg, a Trotsky sympathizer. Conspicuous members of the literary avant-garde Martín Fierro group such as Borges sat in the first directive commission of SADE together with some of their "literary enemies" such as Lugones.⁹ The initial aim of the union was clear: to unify the writers in order to defend their interests. The founding members were determined that they did not want to create a literary society with a particular aesthetic and/or political position. Giusti, the director of the journal Nosotros, clarified the limits of the association by stating that "art was an individual activity and [they] did not need an association to define their poetic or political values," and such values should be voiced in the "the political party, the militant association, the tribune, the newspaper or the book."¹⁰ The third article of the new association's foundational act was there to guarantee this provision, stating that "all philosophical, political, or literary movements [were] alien to SADE."¹¹

The foundation of SADE in this particular moment should be understood as a symptom of the increasing concerns of writers and intellectuals to professionalize their activity and legitimize their status. In a society where those dedicated to the life of the mind were dependent on private patronage, where writers were accustomed to paying for their own work to be published, the foundation of SADE represents their struggle for social recognition and the consolidation of a market for their products; among other things in order to stabilize their fragile labor and economic conditions.¹² The fourth article of the foundational act of the institution vividly shows these attempts, declaring that SADE's aims were to "foment and to promote . . . Argentine literature," both outside and inside the country and, to "represent, manage and defend the material and moral interests of the [End Page 594] country's writers and publicists."¹³ Clearly, the positive examples of the formation of other professional associations some years before were a source of inspiration for the writers. For instance, a union representing the interests of playwrights had existed since 1910 and another for musical composers since 1915. SADE's project embodied also the efforts of a professional group to impose internal standards of control and allocation of prestige. That was for example the case with the institution of SADE's literary awards: the Fajas de Honor. SADE should then be seen as a key step in the transformation of the status of the writer from that of an "amateur" to that of a "professional."¹⁴ The fact that establishment of SADE was followed by the creation of other institutions of literary life such as the local branch of the Pen Club a year after, and the Academy of Argentine Letters in 1931, can be read as part of this transformation.

The organization of SADE was not easy, but by the mid 1930s, the institution had a certain stability.¹⁵ It had achieved by law representation in the Comisión Nacional de Cultura—the state agency in charge of dealing with the cultural issues that escaped the concern of the ministry of justice and instruction—and had amassed 450 members, according the bulletin of 1938.¹⁶ It had branches in the provinces in Tucumán, Santa Fé, Córdoba, Mendoza and Santiago del Estero, and practically all writers and intellectuals with some reputation participated in it.¹⁷ The declared apoliticism of the group was both a goal and limit at the same time. Rómulo Zábala, an Argentine historian and one of the founder members, expressed this when he first presented SADE's project to his intellectual-colleagues. Zábala grudgingly accepted that the current features of Argentine cultural market and the increasing political and literary differences among writers did not permit SADE to be a real société des gens de lettres as he would have preferred;therefore the only viable option was "to unite all writers to defend their legal and economic interests."¹⁸ This implied that those responsible for SADE's creation did not want divisive issues to undermine the bigger goal of founding a professional union. Behind the apoliticism was also the conviction that the intellectual world could indeed constitute an autonomous space independent of political disputes; even if a great number of SADE associates were militants of different political parties or had different ideological positions. [End Page 595] Defending culture from political and ideological intrusion was important for a large section of the Argentine intelligentsia. This position demonstrated that they did not perceive themselves as having a specific "mission" other than their artistic tasks. But, by the mid 1930s the intellectual field had become increasingly and irreconcilably politicized. Obviously, given SADE's founding nature, politicization was not as easy a step as it might have been for other institutions of literary life.

The fact that there were so few incidences of serious conflicts among intellectuals until the decade of the 1930s can be explained by the existence of a certain underlying ideological homogeneity capable of reconciling different political and literary positions.¹⁹ Between 1880 and 1930, Argentina grew under a model of economic liberalism based on the exportation of agricultural products and a close financial relationship with the United Kingdom. The political system was liberalized with the introduction in 1912 of free, universal, compulsory, secret, male suffrage. Liberalism was then quite widespread among the economic and intellectual elites. Among intellectuals, although they did have different ideological beliefs, faith in progress under a system of free secular education worked as the underpinning of a consensus that translated into the intellectual field without grave conflicts. But disagreements started in the twenties when a new ideological position gained allies in the local intellectual field: the so-called nacionalismo.This was an intellectual movement inspired by European right-wing thinkers like Charles Maurras, which was summarized by one of its members as an "anti-liberal reaction."²⁰ It implied the rejection of liberal democracy (especially its institutions like the parliament and popular suffrage), appealed to religion to guarantee social order, and invoked the revival of Hispanic heritage in local culture. A certain anti-Semitism permeated the thinking of several of its representatives. In terms of a political system, nacionalismo supported [End Page 596] state interventionism and a corporatist regime while it highlighted the need to strengthen economic sovereignty to reduce the dependence on foreign countries, particularly the United Kingdom. Nacionalismoidentified communism and social disintegration as the greatest dangers of the epoch. Throughout its history, nacionalismowas divided into several associations and was not homogeneous. Itrepresented only a relatively small group within the political system but ithad influence in the army, the university, the Church and business.²¹

The coup of 1930 lead by Félix Uriburu—a military man of right-wing beliefs—increased the concerns of liberals over the influence of nacionalismo in the country. Certainly the coup that ended Hipólito Yrigoyen's democratic administration represented its ascendance as an ideology. However, with the exception of a few cases,its intellectual supporters did not gain much relevance and collaboration between nacionalista and liberal intellectuals was still possible.²² The liberal writer and founder of the magazine Sur, Victoria Ocampo, continued to open her house and her publication to well-known right-wing thinkers, like the writers Rodolfo and Julio Irazusta and the essayist Ramón Doll. The liberal newspapers La Nación and La Prensa remained committed to publishing the writings of militaristnacionalistaslike Lugones. This can be explained by the political ambiguities that marked this epoch.²³ The government gradually mutated into a conservative regime that was dependent on fraudulent elections and lasted for more than a decade. This process started when Uriburu had to resign and call presidential elections. Fraud was bolstered by the sectors that could be called democratic in order to boycott Yrigoyen's followers, seen as populist. Moreover, European fascism had not yet revealed its most dangerous characteristics and its power was still able to provoke some level of fascination, or at least arouse curiosity in Argentine political circles. Even Victoria Ocampo, who opposed fascism fervently, visited Il Duce in a trip to Italy in 1934.²⁴ With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 the unity of Argentine intellectuals was for once seriously threatened. [End Page 597]

The Spanish Civil War definitively polarized the Argentine intelligentsia. The nacionalistasperceived the conflict as a "holy war" to restore Hispanic and Christian values against communism.²⁵ Many others sided with the Spanish Republicans. For them, the struggle was against fascism, perceived as a menace to the survival of the values of justice, liberty and democracy. The backing of the two factions delimited two clear-cut camps in the local intellectual world: the democratic and the anti-democratic, or the anti-fascist and the fascist, as they were called by the pro-Republican group, which was hegemonic in cultural circles. Cultural projects that once included the collaboration of intellectuals of both factions now became the exclusive domain of only one. After 1936, the magazine Sur no longer accepted contributions from authors who identified themselves as nacionalistas.²⁶ The Congress of the Pen Club, held in Buenos Aires in September 1936, was the scenario for disputes opened up by the Spanish conflict, and was also one of the last instances in which the two groups debated in the same forum.

Divisions along the lines of 'fascists or democrats," depending on whether they supported Franco or the Spanish Republicans, were imposed by those who were hegemonic (the democrats) and were quite unrepresentative of the nuances in both positions. In SADE the so-called democrats were the majority, because they were preponderant among the ranks of the Argentine intelligentsia. Clearly, and although politics was not part of SADE's program, the politicization in the intellectual field brought about by the Spanish conflict made cohabitation between nacionalistasand anti-nacionalistasinside the association quite conflictive.²⁷ This was evident in the two congresses of writers organized by the institution in 1936 and 1939, where a bitter debate between the two camps took place. Still, the association was less polarized than other groups. The differences inside it were not such that they could prohibit the affiliation of nacionalista writers to the institution, an important fact considering that the members who joined the society in 1938, such as Mario Amadeo, Ernesto Palacio, Ramon Doll, Leopoldo Marechal, Cesar Pico, Julio Meinveille, and Julio and Roberto Irazusta, were all prominent nacionalistas.

The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 added new dimensions to the quarrel between the nacionalista and democratic intellectuals [End Page 598] within the writers' union, as many nacionalistasopenly backed the Axis, or supported the government's position of neutrality. Argentina's neutrality in the World War was interpreted as obvious support of fascism by the democratic intelligentsia. Thus, by the beginning of 1940, the apolitical character of SADE began to be openly questioned by several of its members. Those who no longer agreed with SADE's apolitical nature shared the idea that a public position-taking was necessary, first to preserve the values of the democratic system and, secondly to clarify the institution's position in favor of the country's sovereignty. At the time, the topic of a supposed "Nazi menace" in Argentina had acquired a catastrophic tone. If at the beginning the concern was that a fascist coup backed by Germany might take place, by 1940 the newspapers began to expose supposed plans for a German takeover of the country. The press headlines also included accusations of links between German National Socialism and the local nacionalistas.

In 1941, on the occasion of the third congress of writers in the northern city of Tucumán, SADE made a clear statement advocating democracy and reiterating its opposition to the "régimenes de fuerza." The declaration postulated that only a democratic regime would assure artistic freedom and the viability of the values of civilization.²⁸ Such a declaration demonstrated that the society had become the exclusive voice of the so-called democratic camp, as many nacionalistaswere indeed against it. This defense of democracy spearheaded by SADE's democratic intellectuals during the early forties was expressed in universal terms. They did not respond to the coup of 1930, which ended Yrigoyen's democratic government, or against the fraudulent crimes committed by the conservative government throughout the decade of the 1930s. They were simply concerned with the democratic system (at least publicly)—to the point of jeopardizing the very unity of the institution—for they perceived themselves as immersed in a worldwide fight that was endangering the very possibility of artistic creation. The attack on the American writer Waldo Frank, who during a visit to the country in 1942 was declared persona non grata, called the "Yankee-Jew" by a nacionalista publication, and brutally assaulted by members of a terrorist nacionalista militia, was interpreted as a sign that Argentina was in fact in the "global battle."²⁹ In that context, the nacionalistas could no longer be considered allies and SADE was outspoken about this in a debated manifesto made public on the occasion. This vindication of democratic ideals expressed in such general terms suggests that the writers were definitely more worried [End Page 599] about the propagation of fascism than with the actual fate of the local democratic regime; at least rhetorically, they were more militantly anti-fascist than democrats. The foundation of Acción Argentina in 1940—an anti-fascist union formed by both politicians and intellectuals from different ideological positions and political parties—was a clear sign that many contemporaries perceived the "fascist threat" as greater and much closer than previous dangers to democracy.³⁰

In 1943 the fraudulently elected conservative government was overthrown by a military coup. SADE initially supported the coup. In a public announcement on 16 June 1943—signed in conjunction with other cultural institutions—SADE endorsed the coup's goals to reinstate "constitutional rules and the democratic ideals."³¹ Soon, the union was provided with strong evidence that the writers had misinterpreted the coup. In various meetings during the year, the Comisión Directiva of the writers' association received letters and information about intellectuals who were jailed and/or their publications confiscated.³² The seizure of the offices of Acción Argentina and its newspaper Argentina Libre,specifically concerned the members of SADE, as most of them belonged to the group.³³ SADE's activities were also seriously curtailed by state repression. In the records for 1943, the association described its situation as one in which it was "unable to initiate or even to accomplish any of its projects."³⁴ It was quite obvious that the government was not willing to return to a constitutionally normal situation or to abandon the position of neutrality in the War. Moreover, the new administration was dominated by a group of colonels with nacionalista beliefs (GOU). That year, several nacionalista intellectuals—some of them members of SADE—were given prominent roles in the government that was repressing the institution itself. Among these were Leopoldo Marechal, Gustavo Martínez Zuvíria and Mario Amadeo.³⁵ The public authorities endorsed a very controversial measure supported by the nacionalistasbut seen as catastrophic by the so-called democrats: Catholicism was introduced by decree in state [End Page 600] schools, going against the nation's tradition of secular education. The year 1944 did not inspire hope in the anti-fascist writers. Though SADE was initially optimistic about the liberation of Paris, the fact that the police disbanded the celebration that they had helped organize to commemorate the event gravely concerned the writers.

In March 1945—when the Axis countries had practically lost the war—the Argentine government declared war on them.³⁶ SADE responded with a manifesto written by Jorge Luis Borges and Enrique Amorín in which they invoked the institution's faith in democracy and the hope that the declaration "meant the first step toward the establishment of a democratic regime . . . to finish with the regimes of force and their ideas against civilization."³⁷ Four months later, in August 1945, when the state of siegewas abolished, SADE made a very similar public pronouncement that demanded the normalization of the country's institutional life:

En su carácter de entidad gremial que agrupa a los hombres de letras, cuya labor intelectual se identifica con los intereses y fines de la cultura, la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores ha permanecido y permanecerá ajena a las actividades políticas de partido, pero no puede eludir su deber de militar con todos los recursos de que dispone en la defensa de la libertad y la justicia, contra los sistemas e ideas enemigo de los derechos y de la dignidad del hombre.³⁸

SADE's engagement—that is to say their defense of democracy—was presented as a kind of moral obligation, so as not to appear politically oriented.

Until mid-1945, the majority of nacionalistas remained in the writers' association despite the fact that they had practically no influence or voice in the institution. The opinions of so-called democratic members of SADE about what to do with the nacionalistas were divided. There was a sector composed of lesser-known writers, such as the author Juan Carlos La Madrid (a defender of lunfardo), who aimed to remove all nacionalistas from the institution and to make being a "democrat" a pre-requisite for participation in the writers association.³⁹ One writer suggested changing the name of the association from SADE to "Sociedad de Escritores Democráticos." The adherents of this position proposed to create lists of nacionalistas in order to condemn them publicly as if they were Nazi criminals. At the core of the debate was the direct [End Page 601] participation of several of these intellectuals in activities against the democratic intelligentsia while they were government civil servants. As one of the union's acts documented, there were several objections of this sort. Such was the case of the novelist Leopoldo Marechal, who worked as Council of Education (Consejo Nacional de Educación) President in the province of Santa Fé, and who was accused of taking measures against primary school teachers.⁴⁰ Not all of the so-called democratic intellectuals agreed with the expulsion of the nacionalistas. A sector lead by the president of SADE at that time, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, supported the already existing strategy of limiting their actions to a declaration of anti-nacionalismo. This discussion in itself implied a debate on the limits of the union's politicization: it was one thing publicly to defend democracy and thereby offend some writers, but it was a very different matter to expel all nacionalistas from the institution.⁴¹

In the meantime, the political situation took an unexpected turn. Perón—who in previous months had risen from less important positions to the vice-presidency of the government—emerged as a presidential candidate. As secretary of labor issues of the 1943 administration, he implemented a series of social concessions for workers. On October 8, 1945, due to public opinion pressure, the government forced him to resign and imprisoned him on the island of Martín García. The following events are well-known: masses of Argentine workers marched towards the Plaza de Mayo asking for the freedom of their new leader, who had promised them a social revolution. The regime had to liberate Perón, and call elections.⁴² Until that moment, SADE had not been particularly concerned with Perón. Though the liberal intelligentsia had been informed of his activities in the Secretaria de Previsión they underestimated his ascendance among the workers. This fact is not so peculiar; many politicians were also unable to foresee his later centrality. Although the decade of the 1930s was not a mere sequence of events that led to the election of 1946, those years certainly conditioned Perón's reception in Argentine society. The history of SADE from 1940 to 1946 chronicles a series of events that would determine its positioning in the anti-Peronist camp. By 1945 the writers' association was marked by an increased politicization dominated by an "anti-nacionalistamood." The path from anti-nacionalismo to anti-Peronism did not imply any complex interpretation: not only was Perón a member of the nacionalista group of military officials (GOU), in the eyes of many a fascist, a friend of Catholics, and a key figure in the government of 1943, but to make matter worse, he was also supported by many nacionalistas. [End Page 602]

The Limits of the Opposition

If anti-Peronism was the expected position of SADE, the following actions of the association were not so predictable. While the debate around the expulsion of nacionalistas from its ranks raged on, SADE decided, "due to the political situation of the country," to postpone all its public activities.⁴³ The popular march of October 1945 was ignored: no institutional declaration was made.⁴⁴ Many democratic writers published a manifesto in early February 1946 to support the Democratic Union—the electoral alliance that was formed to contest Perón's candidacy—but SADE prohibited them from becoming delegates in the alliance's executive committee.⁴⁵ The association only supported the Democratic Union unofficially. These positions were justified by the simple fact that the "statutes banned all kinds of political activity."⁴⁶ Obviously, an appeal against this proscription seems quite ironic, considering the institution's previous political commitment. Was it not then political to condemn a government, as the association had done before? It is true that participation in the Democratic Union was of a different nature, as it involved participation in an electoral alliance; still, this does not seem to have been the key concern at that time, as the institution's lack of political action became recurrent. SADE's quasi-retirement from the public political debates became more evident after the elections of February 1946, when there was no public announcement, nor even an internal discussion. This picture contrasts with the tradition inaugurated in the early 1940s, when the institution repeatedly made public statements and sent manifestos to the press specifying its stance on the country's political developments. Therefore, even if there were no doubts that the association did not favor Perón's government, politics became a marginal topic at its meetings. This process of de-politicization of the writers' institution did not mean a return to the apolitical and tolerant foundational-spirit of SADE. If the association did not decide to expel the nacionalista writers, this only happened because they had already abandoned the institution of their own initiative and had founded their union (ADEA), which soon became a Peronist association.⁴⁷ [End Page 603]

It is difficult to explain why, having entered the political game in the late 1930s in order to defend the high values of civilization; SADE abandoned the battle when these values became even more threatened. If Peronism was a local variation of "nazismo"⁴⁸ —as Jorge Luis Borges had suggested at one of the few meetings in 1946 in which Peronism was at least named– why did the writers' association not condemn the new regime upon Perón's ascent to power? It seems that during Perón's rule the institution's survival was the goal that guided the actions of SADE. Thus, the institution's anti-Peronism was neither militant nor heroic, in order to permit the association to continue to exist. It is striking how this strategy seemed to have been defined as early as 1946. This aspect must be linked to the fact that between the years 1943 to 1946 more than 1,200 teachers left the university (423 were expelled and 823 resigned).⁴⁹ Intellectuals then had enough evidence to be worried about Perón's future policies regarding intellectuals, and to believe that their association could be at risk as early as 1946.

Between 1945 and 1955, six different Comisiones Directivas governed SADE. When Perón became president in 1946, the president of SADE was the essayist Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. Though his dislike of Peronism was clear-cut, he was emphatically against any institutional pronouncement on that issue.⁵⁰ In mid-1946, Leónidas Barletta assumed the presidency of the writers' union. Barletta, a former member of the literary group Boedo, aimed to convert it into a real trade union of writers. His priorities were to provide free medical and legal assistance to writers and to lobby for the promulgation of a law of copyright.⁵¹ He was outspoken in his belief that SADE's project was not linked to "enervantes estatismos."⁵² This meant that Barletta did not want SADE to be co-opted (and controlled) by the state, as happened with the majority of the unions during this time. As an intellectual of the left, he was worried about the lack of contact between the intellectuals and the popular masses. Given the loyalty of the lower classes of society to Peronism, this was a relevant concern. With this in mind, Barletta attempted to increase the links between these two sectors in order "to dispel the [masses'] apprehensions about the intellectuals."⁵³ For example he backed a project of cultural conferences in the trade unions. This implied an attempt to dispute [End Page 604] spaces of "culturalization" of the lower classes with the government, as it cannot be ignored that one of the main features of Perón's cultural administration was to give a greater audience access to culture.

Barletta was a declared anti-fascist and consequently anti-Peronist; but he did not want SADE to become an arena for political disputes. His vision contrasted with the politicized trend that the institution had taken since the mid-1930s, but it enabled SADE to avoid quarrels with the government. In fact, SADE's actions during these years suggest that the union and its writers were prepared to abandon the public stage if the government was willing to accept the autonomy and independence of the intellectual field. It was a line of tolerance, a tacit limit that the association imposed upon itself. The strategy of de-politicization was viable for two main reasons. On the one hand, the association's internal conflict with the nacionalistas was resolved when these individuals left the institution in late 1945, and founded their own association (ADEA). But on the other hand, this behavior was a viable alternative, given Perón's open contempt for intellectuals and for the culture of the elites. Perón was outspoken from early on about his disdain for the life of the mind and its practitioners. He identified Peronism as a "cuestión del corazón más que de la cabeza,"⁵⁴ while he advocated the role of education to be the creation of "men of actions rather than thinking."⁵⁵ Perón portrayed intellectuals as "men of cold hearts," "lovers of everything that was foreign for reasons of snobbishness, in order to pretend they have a culture they do not possess."⁵⁶ He was convinced that Argentine intellectuals were separated from the people and the nation and had historically acted against both; therefore they had little (or no) ascendance among the masses. This meant that Perón reacted with disdain to his many and prestigious intellectual detractors. Once they were no longer part of the state apparatus—fired from the university, for example—they could exercise their task without being seriously disturbed. Regarding culture, Perón's government presented it as having a minor importance in comparison with that of "social and economic reform."⁵⁷ Although Perón repeatedly expressed his willingness to create a "more Argentine" culture, he admitted to not even having started to work on cultural reform until 1953.⁵⁸ Culture was for him something that [End Page 605] had been a "privilege" of the upper classes, which should be extended to the greater public, but in order to do so cultural manifestations had to be adapted to the taste of the masses.⁵⁹ The consequence of this was that the most striking and almost the exclusive features of the treatment of culture during those years were massification and the widening of access to cultural spectacles.⁶⁰

Perón's lack of interest in high cultureand the intellectuals (even those who supported him, who had almost no role in the new administration) can be linked to two salient aspects of the Peronist phenomenon: the working class identity of this movement and the authoritarian trend of the regime.⁶¹ Perón was aiming to construct a legitimacy based on the workers—he presented himself as the primer trabajador argentino—and the small importance the regime gave to intellectuals can be seen as a complementary aspect of this identity. The fact that the majority of the intellectuals and students had rejected the Peronist regime from the very beginning had nourished the anti-intellectual feelings among the workers. One of the cries of those who marched on October 1945 towards the Plaza de Mayo was: "haga patria mate un estudiante" ("Honour the nation, kill a student!").⁶² At the same time, the regime's authoritarian component should not be underestimated to explain its intellectual policies. Perón aimed to construct an alternative consensus to the liberal one, one based on the spiritual unity of the society around his persona and his doctrine, where distinct voices had practically no space.⁶³ [End Page 606]

The "positive" outcome of Perón's vision of the intelligentsia and the culture of the elites was the regime's lack of a systematic policy of control and censorship of cultural and intellectual circles, as happened for example with the mass media.⁶⁴ Given their lack of relevance (as perceived by Perón), intellectuals could carry on with their activities and their institutions could remain active. SADE was not an exemption to this rule. This meant that during the decade a whole cultural circuit existed outside the state, and was stimulated by internal mechanisms of legitimation and sponsorship. This can explain, for example, why during the period numerous cultural magazines were founded. Such was the case with the cultural journals Imago Mundi, Contorno, Liberalis and Realidad, among others. Moreover, during the years of Peronist rule outspoken and prestigious anti-Peronist intellectuals, the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casáres and Ernesto Sábato, could continue publishing. These three writers, for example, released some of their most well-known works: Aleph (1949), El Sueño de los Héroes (1954), and El Túnel (1948) respectively.⁶⁵ Nevertheless, Peron's "intellectual policy" (or rather the lack of it) implied a fragile balance that did not always work smoothly, especially in moments of political instability or when some bureaucrats jeopardized this delicate equilibrium. It is evident that after the start of Perón's second presidency (1952), when the regime turned to more authoritarian means, this equilibrium became increasingly difficult to maintain. SADE was clearly one place where the shortcomings of this policy can be perceived. The state did not always respect the aforementioned "unspoken agreement" with the writers' institution, and certainly did so less often after 1952. In other words, even though SADE toned down its political statements and restrained itself from political rallies, clashes were not totally absent; a fact that certainly ended up compromising SADE's redefinition as an apolitical union.

The first conflict with Perón's cultural administration in 1946 was a very particular situation. In 1945, the jury set up to award the literary prize of the Comisión Nacional de Cultura hadrecommended giving it to the historian and writer Ricardo Rojas for his book about Domingo Sarmiento. As is well known, Sarmiento was a thinker of liberal, cosmopolitan and secular ideas [End Page 607] and quite critical of the country's native roots. Because of this he was attacked by nacionalistas. In 1946, the Peronist cultural commission, headed by the revisionista historian Ernesto Palacio, decided instead to grant the literary prize to a historian supportive of their cause, for a book with clear nationalistic content. Ricardo Rojas was a prominent intellectual, who though a romantic and literary nationalist in his younger years, had evolved into a clear opponent of political nacionalismo. In 1930, Rojas had become a supporter of the Partido Radical, and in the elections of 1946, he ran as a legislative candidate for the Democratic Union. Clearly, taking away Rojas's award had strong political connotations and it was perceived in this way by the anti-Peronists. It is impossible to know if the act against Rojas was a punishment for his involvement in theDemocratic Union, or a response to the topic of his book. In a cynical tone Roberto Giusti affirmed: "Sarmiento [the topic of Rojas's book] was not at that time a good role-model to present in a society of devout, decent and well-behaved people."⁶⁶ The comment expressed Giusti's disgust for the government's attacks on the country's educational secular tradition—a tradition which Sarmiento had endorsed.

Rojas was not associated with SADE, but the group did interpret the incident as an attack on intellectuals in general and acted as if Rojas had been one of its members. Therefore, the society's response was categorical: the institution gave its own major award to the offended writer. To award Rojas with SADE's Gran Premio de Honor was more than a symbolic act; the society of writers acted to reinforce the cultural hierarchies that had been destroyed by the government. If we think that in the world of intellectuals, recognition by peers is essential to gain prestige, it is possible to understand how significant it was to deny the official prize's validity. The Rojas incident converted the Gran Premio de Honor into a symbol of "anti-Peronist resistance" and into a means of exercising power in the intellectual field. SADE's tributes established hierarchies and allocated symbolic power in a manner that the government was unable to replicate. SADE was fighting for what—according to Pierre Bourdieu—is the fundamental "stake in literary struggles . . . the monopoly of the power [to] consecrate producers or products" of literature.⁶⁷ In the periodical Antinazi, SADE's response was celebrated, specifying that the award made by the society came from a jury of "recognized writers" and "no mandarins."⁶⁸ During the whole decade studied [End Page 608] here the society gave its award to writers with evident "democratic credentials" such as Francisco Romero and Alberto Gerchunoff. Described by one of the institution's presidents as "one of the biggest honors that a national writer can aspire to,"⁶⁹ the Gran Premio de Honor was both a recognition of their work and also of the ideological values of those who won it. As was specified by the jury who awarded the prize to Rojas, above and beyond considerations of quality, the tribute also reflected his "support of democratic ideals, as extolled by his life and oeuvre."⁷⁰

As seen in the Rojas incident, even if Perón was not particularly concerned with the culture of the minorities, the government, due to its authoritarian trends, did not abandon all attempts to exert its power in that domain. The only moment in which inclusion of intellectuals in the project envisaged by Perón seemed more plausible was when some writers—among them some members of SADE—asked the Argentine president to legislate a statute of the intellectual worker. Perón, in response, proposed the creation of a Junta de Intelectuales (a sort of big trade union of intellectuals).⁷¹ Although various associates of SADE had participated in the origin of this project, SADE interpreted it as an attempt by the government to restrict the independence of intellectuals. Consequently, the society of writers initiated a public campaign against the project, refusing to participate in it. It issued press releases expressing its disagreement and affirming that:

Se anticipan a manifestar categóricamente que la cultura no puede ser dirigida; que en su libertad cada vez más dilatada y segura tiene su fundamento, que es inherente a la discusión de este grave problema la reposición de los intelectuales separados de sus cargos u obligados a renunciar; el restablecimiento integral de la libertad de prensa, el levantamiento de la censura radiofónica, cinematográfica y teatral y la suspensión de las limitaciones que afectan al derecho de reunión.⁷²

The event illustrated the limits of SADE's silence. The conflict showed that the organization was prepared to fight when their own interests were put at risk and when the autonomy of the intellectual field (its very own rules and hierarchies) was violated. A letter sent on that occasion by the president of SADE to Perón [End Page 609] illustrates this point. Barletta asked the Argentine president to end all "government intrusions" in the cultural terrain with the aim of achieving the collaboration of the writers.⁷³ Of course, every time the association opened itself to the public scene, it used the occasion to express other criticisms.

This quarrel reached a new stage in early 1948. Then, the intellectuals' junta presented to the broader public the very project which had motivated its creation: the statute of the intellectual-worker which established clear regulations in the editorial market to protect Argentine writers but also restrictions that SADE could not accept. It stipulated that the beneficiaries of the statute could only be those writers who were part of the Confederación de Intelectuales (the trade union of intellectuals that the state was planning to create), and it excluded from its benefits the authors of books whose content offended moral, religious or national sentiments.⁷⁴ Defense of writers' economic interests was SADE's main goal. The statute provided some real benefits for the writers—for example percentages paid for copyright—yet the writers were not willing to accept the subordination of their creative freedom to their material interests. The association opposed the statute with vehemence in an unsigned document written by leftist essayist Carlos Agosti which was published in the institution's bulletin and reproduced in the press. This article stated, "beyond material interests SADE is primarily concerned with the protection of the writers' freedom which is paramount to the intellectuals' tasks."⁷⁵ The letter mailed to the ministry of education also said that "all measures set aside to improve the intellectuals' situation should count on the support of the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores."⁷⁶ On the one hand, this expressed SADE's unwillingness to accept the government's attack on the autonomy of the intellectual field. On the other hand, the letter's text clearly depicted the association as the writers' legitimate representative, and was a statement that intended indirectly to de-legitimize the Peronist rival association ADEA. In the end, the contentious statute was never put into practice, not only because of the level of rejection it provoked, but also because some of its measures were impractical.

While this debate was taking place, in July 1948, Carlos Alberto Erro became the president of the writers' society. In contrast with his predecessor, Erro wanted to make SADE a space for discussing the political problems that the country was experiencing and to convert it into a more active opposition [End Page 610] to the government. In his first speech as president he exhorted the writers to affirm, the "fighting tradition of Argentine literature . . . as the power of a writer is based on his/her loyalty to an ideal that should guide his/her life and oeuvre."⁷⁷ In the same speech he asserted that "the foundation of freedom is primarily moral and only accessorily economic."⁷⁸ The context of Erro's presidency was more problematic for SADE. After a dispute that began at the end of 1947, and which lasted until mid-1948, the government officially deprived SADE of its participation in the Comisión Nacional de Cultura, and gave the position to a member of ADEA. The whole operation of revoking SADE's conquest was subtle but decisive. The society's delegate to the Comisión Nacional de Cultura, Leónidas de Vedia, felt that his behavior was under scrutiny, because he had been one of those writers who visited Perón to ask for the formulation of the statute of the intellectual worker. Therefore, he resigned from his position as the representative of SADE but, instead of sending his resignation to the Comisión Directiva of SADE, De Vedia mailed it directly to the Comisión Nacional de Cultura. The government declared the writers' seat in the official body vacant, and gave it to a member of ADEA. Just after De Vedia resigned, SADE ratified his position and behavior, but it was too late, and by a decree dated 26 March 1949, the institution officially lost its representation in the Comisión Nacional de Cultura.⁷⁹ Erro considered the recovery of this representation a key objective of his mandate.⁸⁰ He even tried unsuccessfully, to organize an interview with the recently named minister of education in order to solve the problem.

The interests in conflict were serious and for this reason the union sent manifestos to the authorities with copies to the press, highlighting the illegal procedure of passing over a law with a decree.⁸¹ It was evident for the first time that SADE had been clearly and openly punished for being an association of the anti-Peronist camp. The anti-Peronism of SADE's members did not mean that the association was a forum for opposition, since the writers' union had disentangled itself from political issues as of the end of 1945. Moreover, the association was not a platform for the promotion of either cultural or literary debates. Liberal heroes like Sarmiento or Esteban Echeverría were celebrated in the same pantheon as the precursors of cultural nationalism like José Hernández or Ricardo Güiraldes. Writers from both Boedo and Florida,as well as writers of folklore, were members of [End Page 611] SADE. The appeal to a certain Americanism coexisted comfortably with the Europeanism of several of its members. It is therefore clear that if SADE was penalized it was not because the activities of the institution were against the government (there were no such activities).

The "restricted participation" of the writers' society in political debates and the calculated level of its opposition actions can be understood within the goal of institutional survival. Nonetheless, this disappointed some of its members. For the very president of the institution, the level of their opposition was too limited. In a speech to the writers in 1949, Erro declared that he wanted all "who shared [his] political, spiritual and moral beliefs to be moved by a decisive passion, instead of showing themselves hesitant, impassive, submissive or scared."⁸² This frustration explains his later decision to found an association known as ASCUA, with the declared goal of protecting the ideals of the liberal generation of 1837, but which in reality aimed to be the centre of a more active anti-Peronism.⁸³ With the exception of these two highly conflictive incidents, SADE continued its activity as before. According to minutes taken during the period of Erro's presidency, eighty-two new members entered SADE while, in its own words, the institution became an "active presence in the cultural circles of the republic"⁸⁴ through its conferences, awards and celebrations. This suggests that despite the government's erratic attacks on it, the union's power in the field was not weakened.

In 1950, Jorge Luis Borges became president of the society. By then, there were no doubts about his hatred of Perón. He had strong personal reasons for this, among which the order that removed him in 1946 from a minor post in a local library to inspector of birds in the Central Market was probably the most symbolic. Borges, stunned by the vulgarity of state-promoted-cultural activities, aimed to convert SADE into a cultural forum in order to oppose the nacionalista and populistorientation of those events. This is clear in the proliferation of conferences, courses and expositions during his presidency.⁸⁵ The first year and a half of Borges' incumbency passed without major problems. The only area of conflict experienced with the government was in reference to a recent law, which permitted the executive power to stipulate a tax of 50% on the value of all foreign books that were imported into the country. Hitherto books had not been liable to taxation. It was intended that the tax would promote national production but, according to SADE's public position [End Page 612] the law constituted an attack on the normal development of culture.⁸⁶ At the same time, the association used the occasion to protest against a so-called "crisis of the Argentine publishing industry," that these writers attributed to "the increase in the price of paper and labor costs."⁸⁷

Perón was again appointed president in November 1951 after the regime controversially reformed the constitution to permit the president's re-election. By then, the political environment was increasingly polarized. In September 1951, the government passed a decree declaring "a state of internal war" which led to the serious curtailment of public freedoms. On 28 October 1951, General Benjamín Menéndez headed an attempt to overthrow Perón that was easily frustrated. In addition, there was some concern about recent state policies against institutions of the intellectual world. A law dated 29 September 1950 ordered government intervention in the professional national academies and, although it was not implemented until the end of 1952, it represented a clear threat to the autonomy of the intellectual field.⁸⁸ The headquarters of the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores—a sort of private university center where intellectual activities took place—was closed during the same period. Federico Neiburg has shown how the Colegio, like SADE, depoliticized the content of its meetings and debates in order to survive the regime.⁸⁹ It was patent to the writers that their union's existence and autonomy were at risk. This concern became evident with the death of the First Lady Eva Perón in July 1952. The intellectuals' dislike of the president's wife was plain, due to her virulent anti-intellectual discourse, among other things. However, in a highly polarized context, SADE adhered to the decreed national mourning, postponing all its courses and conferences, in order to avoid a gratuitous conflict with Perón's administration.

At the end of August 1952, when the writers' society was to hold elections to renew the Comisión Directiva, the government forced SADE to postpone the event for "public security reasons."⁹⁰ According to the statute of the writers' union, when elections were delayed, the old authorities would remain in their posts. The prohibition was maintained for a whole yearand as a result the old authorities had to continue in their posts.⁹¹ The institution did not confront the government on this occasion. Instead, it used all means that could [End Page 613] be considered "diplomatic" to end the ban. The association initially informed the press and its associates about the proscription,⁹² but the communication was presented in a neutral tone so as not to intensify the conflict. The letter sent to the Inspección de Justicia reproduced the text of article sixteen of the by-laws,which stipulated that if internal elections were not held the acting Comisión should continue to direct the society of writers until new authorities could be chosen.⁹³ SADE also sent various correspondences to the police and to government's authorities asking for an end to the ban.⁹⁴ Finally, the proscription was lifted when a delegation visited the minister of the interior, Angel Borlenghi, and convinced him to remove it.⁹⁵ Before 1945 this event would have triggered a public discussion about the authoritarian character of the government, but in the current situation, the survival of the institution came before any other consideration. Still, while SADE's reaction to these attacks was not confrontational, it was not completely submissive either.

There is a correlation between the censorship experienced by SADE under Borges' presidency and the mounting polarization in Argentine society, where anti-Peronist sectors had become more active in the opposition. As a response, the government augmented the use of repressive methods to the point where one observes an evident increase in censorship in Perón's second presidency; a fact that made the relationship with intellectuals more conflictive. In April 1953, during a gathering in the Plaza de Mayo at which Perón was the main speaker, several bombs exploded. Many people were killed or wounded, and a violent upheaval followed, the likes of which had never been seen before in Argentina. In an act of revenge, Peronist militias burned down the Jockey Club, the buildings which housed the Unión Cívica Radical and the Partido Conservador, and the library of the Partido Socialista. The government imprisoned some 4,000 people, among them several of SADE's most dynamic members, together with recognized politicians from the opposition such as the UCR's leader, Ricardo Balbín. The whole Comisión Directiva of ASCUA, the association founded by former president of SADE Carlos Alberto Erro, spent nearly forty days in jail. The writers Julio Aramburu, José Barreiro, Víctor Massuh, Carlos Manuel Muñiz, Norberto Rodríguez Bustamante and the philosopher Francisco Romero, all members of SADE, were also imprisoned. In addition, other high profile writers affiliated with SADE were jailed, such as the director of the magazine Sur, Victoria Ocampo; the poet Enrique Banchs; and the philosopher Vicente Fatone. [End Page 614]

On this specific occasion, SADE ignored its commitment to defend writer's freedom; and decided not to intercede on behalf of its members. The reason for SADE's silence was only clarified a year later, when the same considerations were made for the case of the writer Carlos Agosti, also jailed by Perón's administration. The report states that "the situation is not encouraging for intervention"in the defense of the writers.⁹⁶ To ignore the detention of intellectuals was a unilateral decision of Borges' Comisión Directiva, as at that time assemblies were forbidden. Behind this controversial decision was the fear that any belligerent attitude could cost the institution its very existence. This was not a major concern for the journalists' union, the Círculo de Prensa, which named a commission to petition the ministry of the interior for the freedom of the writers.⁹⁷ SADE's official refusal to defend its members was highly criticized by some of its affiliates, such its ex-president Barletta who, in a personal letter to Manuel Gálvez, declared:

Si es por miedo, ¿miedo de qué?; ¿de qué los encierren? ¿Y acaso no es mejor estar entre rejas con el respeto y la gratitud emocionada de los jóvenes que nos suceden, que estar en el cómodo gabinete escribiendo con suma cautela sobre Sarmiento y Echeverría, soportando la sonrisa desdeñosa de quienes se sienten defraudados por una conducta que no puede ser nunca la de un intelectual?⁹⁸

This episode showed the then level of polarization within the Argentine intelligentsia. Barletta aimed to get the support of all writers, even Peronists, to sign a manifesto for the release of their colleagues and to highlight that the whole intelligentsia was against repression. Such a declaration would have had greater legitimacy, but unsurprisingly Barletta was faced with the refusal of the anti-Peronist writers, who were unwilling to sign a statement in conjunction with their own enemies (the Peronist intellectuals). He also faced the refusal of Manuel Gálvez to participate in an enterprise with a "communist writer⁹⁹ such as himself and who did not want to support a petition in favor of writers who had previously asked for his expulsion from SADE. In the end, the statement was made public without the signatures of Manuel Gálvez and the anti-Peronists.

Evidently, the divisions between the Peronists and the anti-Peronists were such that collaboration between the two camps seemed almost impossible. [End Page 615] Giusti said had not signed the statement because those in prison refused to obtain their freedom in that way.¹⁰⁰ At this point, there was almost nothing left of that spirit of professional teamwork that had made the foundation of SADE possible in 1928. But it is necessary to note that in some cases the rigid frontier that separated the Peronists and anti-Peronists was crossed. Peronist writers were still allowed to be a part of SADE and a few of them even won awards. Such is the case of the poet Atilio Castelpoggi who, among other things, committed the "sacrilege" of publishing in the literary supplement of the government-expropriated newspaper La Prensa, but who was still able to receive an award from SADE.¹⁰¹ Elías Castelnuovo, a former member of Boedo who also identified himself with Peronism, was able to become affiliated with SADE in 1949. These exceptions were probably accepted only because these intellectuals did not participate in nacionalista associations and had nothing to do with the government created in 1943. The association of Castelnuovo with SADE also indicates the lack of power of ADEA by the end of the 1940. Casltenuovo, instead of joining ADEA as would have been expected of a Peronist sympathizer, became a member of SADE.

The government's actions against SADE during Borges' time as president meant that for the year between August 1952 and August 1953 the institution postponed all its official activities, as no meetings were allowed. After all these incidents, it was probably a relief for Borges to finally leave the presidency of SADE. In October 1953 the poet José Luis Lanuza became the institution's president. It was very difficult for Lanuza to define a project for SADE. In this situation the association's goal was simply survival. Still, it seems that Lanuza shared Borges' view that the writers' union ought to be a "refuge" for high culture. This explains the numerous conferences planned during this period, although most were banned by the government for "reasons of public security."¹⁰² These measures were unjustified, as the topics of the scheduled talks were not political at all. SADE's reaction to the prohibitions was to mail letters to the authorities from where these proscriptions originated. In those letters the writers downplayed the political character of the conferences and their possible effect "on public safety or social order."¹⁰³ In that year (1953), writers affiliated with SADE were jailed again and once more the institution did nothing in their support, alleging the situation did not permit it.¹⁰⁴ It is impossible to know whether [End Page 616] the institution would have assured its existence if it had defended its own members, but it seems clear that SADE did not act upon the commitment its founders had made some years before. Though it is not given to intellectuals to be courageous, the previous moral involvement of the institution predicated a different attitude. This was certainly the expectation of some of the jailed associates when they sent letters to SADE asking for its mediation with the authorities.

Can we blame these intellectuals for having—using Tony Judt's expression—a "past imperfect"?¹⁰⁵ Judt studied the case of the French intellectuals during the Nazi occupation and he arrives at the conclusion that, "in practice only a minority of intellectual resisters saw real action of any sustained sort, whether in the French armies, the armed resistance, or clandestine networks of all kinds."¹⁰⁶ However, in the post-war period they constructed for themselves an image of heroic members of the resistance.¹⁰⁷ According to Judt, it was the moral association with the community of resisters—"the sense of being part of something larger than oneself"—that enabled the French intellectuals to portray themselves in that way. Clearly the risks of the French writers under the German occupation were much higher than those of the anti-Peronists, but still the experience of French intellectuals enables us to understand the attitude of their Argentine fellows. For many of SADE's members, guaranteeing the survival of the institution constituted a form of resistance in itself. The very activities of the union can be interpreted within this framework, too. Against the "non-culture" of Peronism SADE offered its own awards, conferences, and courses. This was the case of the Gran Premio de Honor. Rewarding writers attacked by Peronism, such as on the case of Rojas, constituted a form of confrontation against the state and a vehicle to maintain SADE's power as an arbiter in the intellectual field. The symbolism and the subtle "opposition messages" of certain acts were also obvious; for example, a conference on Sarmiento was an opportunity to evaluate Peronism negatively. The highly contentious ideological war of the thirties was thus transformed into a silent spiritual one, understood as the defense of intellect and its endangered values. [End Page 617]

A Glorious Past

In mid-1954, an internal discussion indicates that SADE's quasi-passive attitude began to be cast into doubt by more associates. During that year twenty-one members signed a letter asking the leadership of SADE to make a public statement about the events in the Republic of Guatemala, where the leftist government of the Colonel Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown by a group aided by the United States.¹⁰⁸ After a hot debate, the writers finally agreed on a declaration. In this the institution affirmed its "support of the free determination of nations." SADE used the occasion to stand up for the defense of "freedom of speech and human rights" in the whole continent.¹⁰⁹ Although this political pronouncement was an isolated case, it suggests that something had started to change in the institution. In early 1955 SADE re-embarked on the defense of its jailed associates, even though the meetings of the association were still banned. In March, the society sent an official letter to the ministry of interior on behalf of the writer Raúl Larra, who had been imprisoned a short time before. SADE continued doing the same for other associates throughout those months.¹¹⁰ The institution was still forbidden from having its annual gathering to distribute the Fajas de Honor. By that time, Argentina was a society in crisis. The outbreak of a conflict between the state and the Catholic Church in the last months of 1954 had a strong impact on the whole society. It was clear that Perón's government would not last much longer, and it is in this context that SADE's change of attitude is understandable. SADE was adapting for the days ahead. In June 1955, following a presidential appeal for pacification in a context of increasing violence, SADE stated its position in a manifesto asserting that peace could only be achieved if the government ended the "unjustified detentions" and the "banning of literary acts."¹¹¹

SADE's response to the president's request was quite similar to the one given by other actors of Argentine civil society, such as political parties.¹¹² What was surprising in the case of SADE was the fact that, for the first time since October 1945, it had stated publicly its opinion on a national political debate. There is a clear parallel between SADE's statement of August 1945, in which the association appealed for a return to the rule of the constitution, and the one made ten years later. In both, SADE made a public commitment [End Page 618] to the defense of public freedoms. It was therefore becoming clear that after years of silence, the nature of the union's role was changing again. In August 1955, the writer Vicente Barbieri replaced Lanuza as president. In the middle of the change of presidency the so-called Revolución Libertadora that overthrew Perón's government took place. On the occasion SADE declared that it "celebrated the end of a regime that curtailed the exercise of the sacred rights of citizenship and culture."¹¹³ The announcement also condemned the repression of which SADE had been a victim during the previous government:

Durante largo tiempo esta sociedad vio trabadas sus actividades. Sus conferencias, sus cursos de arte y de literatura y sus reuniones de difusión intelectual fueron prohibidas. Muchos de sus asociados, conocidos profesores y escritores, sufrieron persecución y encarcelamiento, y no pocas veces la entidad debió afrontar la difamación. . . . La libertad del intelectual, en sus expresiones más puras, ha sido siempre el ideal de nuestra institución, y orientada hacia ese fin expresa hoy un profundo anhelo. ¹¹⁴

In the present context, to talk about a record of persecution was not a meaningless detail. It soon became clear that SADE's intention was to legitimize itself with a glorious anti-Peronist past in order to profit from the new situation. By giving itself credentials as an organ of the anti-Peronist intellectual resistance, SADE and its writers could acquire a relevant role in post-Peronist Argentina. This was evident when a delegation representing the association visited the provisional president, General Eugenio Lonardi, to thank him for "nominative distinction to members of SADE" in government posts.¹¹⁵ Among others, Jorge Luis Borges was named director of the National Library; José Luis Romero was appointed interventor of the university of Buenos Aires, Vicente Fatone was chosen as ambassador to India, Victoria Ocampo was offered a diplomatic post, Vicente Barbieri became director of the magazine El Hogar and Ernesto Sábato director of the publication El Mundo, and Roberto Giusti was named director of the Instituto de Literatura Iberoaméricana of the University of Buenos Aires.

As of September 1955, SADE constructed for itself a history of anti-Peronist militancy that was not completely in accordance with the reality of the institution's previous years. The argument presented was quite simple: if SADE had been assaulted it was because it constituted an organ of opposition [End Page 619] to the government. As if this were not enough, SADE's silence was offered as evidence of the anti-Peronist past of the institution. As one of its poets affirmed: "con sólo negarse a las genuflexiones de rigor, con sólo mantenerse en la SADE, ese benémerito reducto de la inteligencia libre salvaron su dignidad y la de nuestras letras."¹¹⁶ This "past" had a deliberate intention. In one of the association's meetings, Giusti declared that "validated by the moral strength that gave [them] a clean past, SADE associates had no right to exercise punishments but had to be vigilant, so as not to let those who sinned against freedom be reprieved."¹¹⁷ Was this an element of bad faith? A "self-induced amnesia," using another of Judt's expressions? If we believe in the power of the spiritual war that these intellectuals fought—ensuring the survival of their institution and defending the values of civilization—they can be seen as resisters; and deserved the role they claimed for themselves in 1955. Still, in good faith it is possible to doubt the real impact of this kind of opposition. This past has another dimension also. Portraying themselves as victims of Perón's regime, in the persona of its most important figures and institutions, intellectuals nourished even more the widespread perception (at least among the elites) of Peronism as a barbaric regime ultimately against culture and civilization. This was clearly a contentious ideological weapon in the hands of the government that in late 1955 was instituted to eradicate Peronism from Argentina.

Conclusion

SADE's course during the decade before 1946 showed vividly the transformations that were taking place across the entire local intelligentsia. During that period, SADE experienced an increasing process of polarization and politicization. By 1941, it had become an exclusive tribune of one of the two fronts into which the intellectual field was divided. That meant a loss in the level of autonomy of the intellectual field because it was subordinated to political definitions. The conflicts that began in the late 1930s provided the Argentine intelligentsia with the language and assumptions with which to interpret Peronism. Nevertheless, in the specific case of the society of writers studied here the reaction was not so predictable. While the disputes inside the institution forecast SADE's position on the anti-Peronist front, these did not forecast its de-politicization. After 1946, politics in general terms was no longer a public concern of the association, and the group only entered into [End Page 620] disputes with the government when its own limited interests were in conflict. Anti-Peronism was thus an attitude that was neither open nor confrontational. Therefore it is possible to conclude that, even if SADE was an institution punished for being composed of anti-Peronist intellectuals, Borges' later description of the association as a "bastion of anti-Peronist" resistance was far from real.¹¹⁸ The retrospective construction of this history of militant resistance was not gratuitous. It legitimized a prominent role for the intellectuals in the rebuilding of the country that was considered necessary in 1955. Yet the censorship and repression that these intellectuals had to endure in SADE reinforced their perception of Peronism as a pseudo-fascist dictatorship against culture and freedom. The echoes of these memories played an important role in the following years when younger generations of intellectuals started to support Peronism. Most of the older intellectuals—those who had a first-hand experience of Perón's policies—maintained their anti-Peronist beliefs. Having lived under a political regime that clearly attacked them, they could not identify anything positive in that political experience. In the late sixties this turned into an unbridgeable generational gap.¹¹⁹

The de-politicization of SADE during Perón's rule was a strategy to guarantee its survival. The tactic was evidently successful. In September 1955, SADE emerged as a powerful organization that had managed to stay alive during the whole period of Peronist rule without being dissolved by the government, as had for example happened with the Academy of Letters. Moreover, during those years, SADE built its own headquarters, known as the house of the writer,anddoubled its number of members.¹²⁰ These facts reflected the institution's current prestige and vitality. This means that the foundation of the counter-SADE group, the Peronist ADEA, did not affect the older association in terms of "representativeness" of the intellectual sector. On the contrary, SADE seems to have emerged intact from the difficult years of Perón's rule. This is clear if we consider the rapid capacity with which the writers' union accommodated itself to profit from the political situation of the end of 1955.¹²¹ The aforementioned strategy of de-politicization was not exclusive to SADE, and other institutions of the country's cultural life—like literary journals for example—depoliticized the content of [End Page 621] their interventions to assure their survival.¹²² SADE, however, was not just any group of intellectuals; it was a sort of trade union with the express intention of defending its own associates. Thus, the strategy meant that SADE was not able to fulfill its primary objective: to fight for the resolution of writers' problems. The outcome of the lack of more "principled" behavior on the part of the association meant, for some of its members, the loss of the "institution's moral prestige."¹²³