"1914-18 : the Death Throes of Civilization. The Elites of Latin America face the Great War "

The historiography of twentieth-century Latin America has neglected the years 1914-1918. Most of those who seek to define the century in terms of identifiable periods choose to concentrate less on the two world wars than on two turning points that mark a true break in continuity in the sub-continent's contemporary history: one consists of the social and political effects of the economic crisis that began in the United States in October 1929, the other is Fidel Castro's assumption of power in Havana in January 1959. The natural conclusion of this approach is that the Great War did not have the same formative role in Latin America that it is held to play in Europe. Yet this proposition does not mean that the First World War in Latin America remains a completely neglected topic. For example, within the framework of a traditional diplomatic history it is possible to analyse why certain nations sustained a prudent neutrality until November 1918, or why other states finally rallied to the Allied cause; it has also been possible to measure the impact of the war on the economy of certain countries, such as Argentina, Chile or Brazil, which profited from reduced agricultural production in Europe by seizing new markets and fundamentally modernising their structures. Yet the chronology of 1914-1918 has undoubtedly been very little studied to date, rather as if the absence of any collective memory of the Great War in Latin America condemned the period to complete oblivion.<br /> This paper does not claim to introduce a historiographical revolution and present the First World War as a major break in the specific chronology of Latin America. More modestly, it seeks to suggest some ways in which the impact of the years 1914-1918 across the Atlantic can be re-evaluated as part of a cultural and intellectual history. For although the Latin American nations did not experience warfare within their own territory, nor live through the suffering of war, they were the privileged spectators and ultimate new participating entrants in the cultural confrontation that engulfed the chief belligerent nations -- led by France and Germany. This was intensified by Latin America's nineteenth century, mostly lived with eyes fixed on European civilisation -- in all its many forms -- and with their identity as newly emancipated states constructed from it, frequently in mimetic style. Perceived as the death-agony of Belle Epoque Europe (as it was possible to imagine and dream of it across the Atlantic), the Great War helped to destroy images, to transform the imagination of the Latin American élites and to strengthen a questioning of identity that was already emerging in the earliest years of the century. Without being a true mould of the Latin American twentieth century, the war thus appears to have influenced some fundamental tendencies and to have acted to some extent as an accelerator