Elites, oligarchs, and aristocrats: The Jockey Club of Buenos Aires and the Argentine upper class, 1920--1940
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Description
The dissertation examines the society, politics, and culture of the Argentine upper class through a focused interdisciplinary study of the Jockey Club of Buenos Aires, a famously elitist social club. The club was founded in 1882 to forge a progressive ruling class from a politically, divided, ethnically diverse, and highly regionalized upper class and political elite. It successfully brought the Argentine upper class together in one institution at the same time as placing a traditional part of rural folk culture under elite auspices. It failed, however, to build a meaningful political consensus. This upper-class disunity was masked by a Jockey Club 'identity' that fostered a common upper-class culture among a diverse membership. The membership included a hereditary elite (traditional aristocratic families) and an elite of merit (politicians, industrialists, and cultural figures) that encompassed virtually every ethnic and religious group. There was no conflict between these two groups. Members, however, were divided along ideological, generational, and regional lines. The club was divided between authoritarian and democratic liberals as well as between liberals and Nationalists. The political participation and affiliation of members demonstrate this trend, with factionalization increasing during the democratic interlude of the 1920s. In terms of culture, the Spiritual Nationalist movement reveals how this division into rival factions affected the course of upper-class culture and politics. This cultural movement attempted to unite the nation around a spiritualized concept of Argentine identity rooted in the traditional Catholic Creole provinces of the interior. The themes and rhetoric of Spiritual Nationalism, however, were in the club's lecture series to undermine liberal democracy and to advocate a Catholic corportatist state. The lecture series thus demonstrate the intellectual transition from liberalism to Nationalism. After the collapse of democracy in 1930 and brief corporatist regime, the lectures returned to defending a traditionally elitist and upper-class concept of liberalism that excluded the majority from power. In the end, it was not the upper class's mythical and all powerful solidarity that undermined their political power, but crippling disunity and cultural insularity in the face of democratic transition and concurrent social and economic change