Scalabrini Ortiz, Raúl (1898–1959)

Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz (b. 14 April 1898; d. 30 May 1959), Argentine nationalist writer and historian. Although trained in the physical sciences, Scalabrini early showed literary talent in his collection of short stories, La manga (1923). In 1931 he published a famous analysis of the Argentine mindset El hombre que está solo y espera, from which emerge two key ideas. First, echoing nationalist thinkers from Johann Gottfried von Herder to Charles Maurras, Scalabrini holds that authentic Argentines uncontaminated by foreign ideas find their real identity in "the spirit of the land." Second, he argues that nineteenth-century Argentine liberalism, by failing to understand the country's true spirit, had built a country at cross-purposes with its true destiny. Scalabrini's increasing nationalist militance eventually produced two famous revisionist studies, Política británica en el Río de la Plata (1940) and Historia de los ferrocarriles argentinos (1940), which argue that British imperialists in cahoots with Argentine liberals had dispossessed Argentines of their rightful patrimony. Distrusting the British, Scalabrini supported Argentine neutrality during World War II, a position that led to charges of pro-Nazi sympathies. While he never became a Peronist functionary, his rhetoric and ideas became staples of Peronist thinking. Scalabrini's sympathy for Peronism emerges most powerfully in his book of poetry, Tierra sin nada, tierra de profetas (1946). His other writings include Historia del primer empréstito (1939), Cuatro verdades sobre nuestras crisis (1948; 2d ed. 1985), and Bases para la reconstrucción nacional (1965). After Juan Perón's ouster in 1955, Scalabrini fought until his death for the president's return and vindication.

See alsoNazis .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vicente C. Tripoli, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz (1943).

Norberto Galasso, Scalabrini Ortiz (1975).

René Orsi, Jauretche y Scalabrini Ortiz (1985).

Additional Bibliography

Galasso, Norberto. La búsqueda de la identidad nacional en Jorge Luis Borges y Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz. Rosario: Homo Sapiens Ediciones, 1998.

Shumway, Nicolas. La imaginación tribal: Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz y su reconstrucción de la tribu argentina que nunca fue. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Departamento de Letras Modernas, 1997.

                                    Nicolas Shumway