Abstract
This chapter exemplifies the process by which the oral narratives were recorded and subsequently analyzed and the potential that they provide in unwriting the dominant narrative of Irish Argentina that revolves around endogeneity, whiteness and conservatism through verbal and non-verbal performance. It features just one narrative and is the only recording that is not published in its entirety but is rather segmented so as to allow for the interjections of the author, which act as signposts for readers on the multilayered insights that can be gleaned through the collection of oral narratives.
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Notes
- 1.
A useful guide for deciphering the dialectology of the Irish in Argentina came from Nally’s linguistic analysis of the Irish West Midlands. See Nally, E. V., 1971, Notes on a Westmeath Dialect: Journal of the International Phonetic Association, v. 1, p. 33–38.
- 2.
Coughlan’s was the first important genealogical study of the settlement of the Irish in Argentina and a copy of his findings is used in many Irish-Argentine homes as a reference manual. Coghlan, E., 1987, Los Irlandeses en Argentina: su actuación y descendencia: Buenos Aires, University of Texas. Two theses have been completed on the historical dimension of Irish Argentina by McKenna and Daly; McKenna, P., 1994, Nineteenth Century Irish Emigration to, and Establishment in, Argentina NUI Maynooth. Daly, H., 2009, Irish-Ingleses: The Irish Immigrant Experience in Argentina 1840–1920: Dublin, Irish Academic Press.
- 3.
Carlow College and Trinity College Dublin’s 2016 conference on Migration and Conflict included a panel on South America; The Society for Irish Latin American Studies now hosts an annual conference, which was held in Cork in 2015 and scheduled to be hosted in Havana, Cuba, in February 2017. www.irlandeses.org/conferences. Accessed 11 September 2016. The Canadian Association for Irish Studies and the American Conference for Irish Studies have both hosted presentations on an aspect of the Irish in Latin America while the Irish embassy in Buenos Aires’ 2015/2016 schedule was a year-long celebration of interconnectivity between Ireland and Argentina’s history and literature: http://www.irishstudies.ca/category/announcements/ Accessed 11 September 2016. For details of the Irish embassy in Argentina’s lecture series see https://www.dfa.ie/irish-embassy/argentina/
- 4.
Fanning, T., 2016, Paisanos: The Forgotten Irish who changed the face of Latin America: Dublin, Gill.
- 5.
Ussher, J., 1951a, Father Fahy: A Biography of Anthony Dominic Fahy, Irish Missionary in Argentina 1805–1871: Buenos Aires, Ussher, J., 1951b, Irish Immigrants in Argentina in I. E. Records, ed., Vol. LXX, Dublin.
- 6.
Ussher, J., 1951a, Father Fahy: A Biography of Anthony Dominic Fahy, Irish Missionary in Argentina 1805–1871: Buenos Aires.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
The Irish experience of racialization in Canada is explored in Jenkins, W., 2009, In Search of the Lace Curtain: Residential Mobility, Class Transformation and Everyday Practice among Buffalo’s Irish,1880–1910: Journal of Urban History, v. 35, p. 970–997. For important reading on the racialization of the Irish in North America see Ignatiev, N., 1995, How the Irish Became White: New York, Routledge.
- 9.
See McKenna, P., 1992, Irish Migration to Argentina, in P. McKenna, ed., The Irish World Wide: History, Heritage, Identity, v. 1: London and Washington, Leicester University Press, Murray, E., April 2003, The Irish Road to South America: Nineteenth Century Travel Patterns from Ireland to the River Plate: Society for Irish Latin American Studies v. 1, p. 28–44.
- 10.
Murray, E., Becoming Gauchos Ingleses, p. 73
- 11.
P. McKenna, Irish Migration to Argentina; in P. O’Sullivan (ed.) The Irish World Wide: History, Heritage, Identity, Vol. 1 (London and Washington: Leicester University Press) p. 71.
- 12.
Sabato and Korol’s study links the origin of Irish-inspired towns like Luján, San Andrés de Giles, Carmen de Areco, Pilar, San Antonio de Areco, Baradero, Rojas and Salto with the accessible land prices of 1865 that allowed Irish immigrants to purchase camp there. However, as noted in the text, between 1875 and 1885, the process slowed down, and the expansion of the Irish and their descendants only continued in Arrecifes, Pergamino, Salto, Chacabuco and 25 de Mayo, and at a lesser extent, in 9 de Julio, Junín and Lincoln, where Sabato and Korol found relatively few landowners with Irish surnames. By 1890, Irish immigrants had purchased over six hundred thousand hectares of agricultural land, making up 17 percent of the total landmass of the province of Buenos Aires. Korol, J. C., and H. Sábato, 1981, Como fue la inmigracion irlandesa a Argentina: Buenos Aires, Editorial Plus Ultra.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Wilkinson, S., 2008, Arthur Pageitt Greene 1848–1933: A Rural Doctor in Argentina: Irish Migration Studies in Latin America, v. 6, p. 201–211.
- 15.
Swift, R., and S. Gilley, eds., 1999, The Irish in Victorian Britain: The Local Dimension: Dublin, Four Courts Press.
- 16.
Both Edmundo Murray and Michael Geraghty write that The Dresden disaster was the result of a scheme of Irish-Argentine government agents to bolster their personal interests through a vigorous recruitment campaign in Ireland. Murray, E., 2004, Devenir Irlandés: Narrativas íntimas de la emigración irlandesa a la Argentina (1844–1912) Buenos Aires, Eudeba (Universidad de Buenos Aires). Geraghty, M., 1999, Argentina: Land of Broken Promises, Buenos Aires Herald Buenos Aires.
- 17.
Boland, Santiago, ‘Los Irlandeses en la Argentina y en Bahía Blanca’ La Nueva Provincia, 6 November 2006.
- 18.
Geraghty, Michael, ‘Argentina: Land of Broken Promises’ Buenos Aires Herald (17 March 1999).
- 19.
The Irish Episcopal Commission on Emigration, which was founded after World War II, is one example of the role played by the Church in integrating Irish migrants into Britain into de-ethnicized, middle-class-oriented Catholic communities. Records of the Episcopal Commission 1948–62 can be found in McQuaid Papers, Archdiocese of Dublin 7, Drumcondra, AB8/B/XXIX. Hickman argues that the success of the commission is mirrored in the categorical loss of ethnic identity experienced by second generation Irish in Britain. See O’Brien, S., 2009, Irish Associational Culture and Identity in Post-War Birmingham, University of Limerick, Limerick. Hickman, M., 1995, Religion Class and Identity; the State, the Catholic Church and the Education of the Irish in Britain: London, Avebury.
- 20.
Lynch, J., 1981, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas 1829–1852: Oxford.
- 21.
Curtis’ Apes and Angels is useful in its analysis of how social Darwinism was used to inform and validate simian portrayals of the Irish in Victorian Britain. Curtis, L. P., 1971, Apes and Angels: The Irish in Victorian Caricature: Newtown Abbots, David and Charles.
- 22.
Kathleen Nevin’s You’ll Never Goes Back portrays a young female Irish immigrant’s open disdain for the purported manners of the gauchos and the bare tolerance that he received from his Irish neighbors. Nevin, K., 1947, You’ll Never Go Back: Buenos Aires, Unknown. In turn, Thomas Murray attempts a justification of the Irish racialization of nativos Murray, T., 1919, The Story of the Irish in Argentina: New York, Unknown.
- 23.
Daly, H., 2009, Irish-Ingleses: The Irish Immigrant Experience in Argentina 1840–1920: Dublin, Irish Academic Press. Murray, E., 2004, Devenir Irlandés: Narrativas íntimas de la emigración irlandesa a la Argentina (1844–1912): Buenos Aires, Eudeba (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Murray, E., 2009, Becoming Gauchos Ingleses: Palo Alto, Maunsel & Co.
- 24.
Tipperary-born Peter Campbell arrived to the Rio Plata with the 1807 British battalion, joined the Platian patriot ranks as a guerrilla leader in the war against Spanish colonization and became famed in 1814 for launching a squadron of river vessels to support Artigas on the River Parana, earning him the title of “father of the Uruguayan navy” and leading to his appointment as Governor of Corrientes Province after Artigas’ appointment as the first president of independent Uruguay. Campbell went on to lead a dramatic life in Uruguayan politics and died in captivity in Paraguay, his body returned to Montevideo in the 1960s.
- 25.
As accounted by Murray, Irishmen in Argentina, Chile and Peru were involving themselves at the highest ranks with South American independence movements from the eighteenth century. Bernardo O’Higgins, son of Ambrose O’Higgins from County Meath, emerged as the famed leader of the Chilean fight for liberation during the mid-nineteenth century, while Admiral Thomas Cochrane, in 1830, led the fleet of General Jose de San Martin into Paracas Bay, Peru, bringing about the surrender of the port and the eventual liberation of the country. Documents record the prominence of Cochrane in the battalion, stating that San Martin and the amphibious Irish Admiral led the way side by side on horseback. In turn, Fanning details the important role played by John Thomond O’Brien in Argentina’s war of independence and the repatriation of his remains from Portugal to Buenos Aires in 1935.
- 26.
Walsh’s background is expanded upon in Post-Peronism and the Collapse of Community and his writings are well documented in Verbitsky, H., 1985, Rodolfo Walsh y la Prensa Clandestina 1976–1978: Coleccion el Periodista de Buenos Aires: Buenos Aires, Ediciones de La Urraca.
- 27.
Until the 1950s, and in spite of the Depression, the Irish community prospered in Argentina, bolstered by opportunities provided by English and European investment in the country in the early twentieth century. This changed with the coming of age of Peronismo, which prioritized the rights of the urban proletariat in the shaping of a New, Left Argentina. By 1976, a military coup ousted left leader Isabel Peron from government and the country entered a seven-year military dictatorship until 1983. Guest, I., 1990, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina’s Dirty War against Human Rights and the United Nations: Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights: Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, Lewis, P. H., 2002, Guerrillas and Generals: The ‘Dirty War’ in Argentina: Buenos Aires, Praeger. In the first year of the dictatorship, on 4 July 1976, St. Patrick’s Church, long the spiritual anvil of Buenos Aires’ Irish-Argentine community, was raided by six members of the military junta and five priests were assassinated in the church’s parochial home, their bodies left in their places of execution as a warning to those who would find them. One of the priests was Alfie Daly, a thirty-five-year-old Irish-Argentine who grew up in the pampas town of Mercedes. An explanation for his murder was never provided to his family. Young, J., and P. Zubizarreta, 2007, 4 de Julio: La Masacre de San Patricio: Buenos Aires, Aguafuerte Films. In December 1977, two French nuns and a group of mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were taken from Holy Cross Church in paramilitaristic circumstances. Holy Cross Church had been the associational nucleus of the Irish-Argentine community since its foundation in 1894 by Irish Passionist brothers. An investigation by the French Embassy into the women’s disappearances later found that the nuns, along with the Plaza de Mayo mothers, had been detained in a military headquarters, tortured, and then thrown, still alive, from an airplane into the Rio Plata. It is estimated that between seven thousand and thirty thousand other victims of the military junta met such a death between 1977 and 1984. For a report of the Holy Cross murders, see United States Embassy, W. D. C.
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O’Brien, S. (2017). Do They Not Know What I Want to Say?. In: Linguistic Diasporas, Narrative and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51421-5_3
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