3 “Everything Unites Us” Diplomacy, International Visits, and the Periodical Press In Angust 1909 many newspapers and magazines in Rio de Janeiro, Mon tevideo, and Buenos Aires reported the brief visit of Roque Séen, Pefia, the Argentine minister in Italy and candidate for president in the upcoming elections of 1910, to the Brazilian capital on his way home from Europe, A short time after the German steamship liner carrying the guest had enteced the port, it was approached by several boats, On board were staff members of the local Argentine delegation, a representative of the Brazilian foreign ministry, the Peruvian Minister to Brazil, many Argentine delegates to the Fourth Latin Ametican Medical Congress held in the city at that time, family members, and “a large group of portefio families and gentle- ‘men,” including members of parliament, senators, and other public officials who arrived from Buenos Aires especially for the occasion, All of thei had sailed to welcome the honorable guest. Once on shore, two automobiles sent by the Minister of Foroign Afairs picked him up for an intimate lunch at the Ramaraty Palace, seat of the Ministry, The festivities continued with a banquet that same evening in honor of the guest given by the distinguished ‘group of Argentines, and a ball in honor of the participants of the medical congress later that night, again held at the Itamaraty.* In the midst of allthis Brazilian-Argentine and all-Latin American social ‘mingling over lunch, some serious words concerning international relations were delivered by Argentina’s upcoming president (1910-1914). Directing his speech to Foreign Minister Baron of Rio Branco, Senz. Petia, like many Argentine travelers before him, praised Rio de Janeiro’s natural beauty, which overwhelmed him in “a rapid sequence of images, almost a glare of ‘growing admiration,” Yet, unlike many of his predecessors, he also praised the “human effort, which, confronting nature, had formed sudden creations of beauty, magnificence and attraction.” Going beyond the common tropi- calism of incoming travelers from temperate zones, highlighting man-made achievements, heralded the vision of Argentine-Brazilian greatness that was proposed next? “Time works for peace, and we live within time (.. allow me then, in this fraternal intimacy (, . . to express our identical ideals of marching forward in peaceful and rapid evolution.” The two peoples, the Argentine92 “Everything Unites Us” and the Brazilian, have always been true to the principles of the law of nations that will mark their inevitable ascendance along the “infinite curve of human development and progress,” in accordance with “the laws of soci- ology.” Combining the language of evolutionism, Americanisin, and what modetn historiography concerning the Furopean context of that period has defined as “patriotic pacifism,”? or “liberal internationalism,” Sdenz Pefia stressed the effort of both countries in securing peace, a goal that embodied the “superiority of this continent” and its dedication to good government and sovereignty. Then the geographical focus narrowed, with the speaker expressing his “fervent wishes for peace in South America and for an. ever- lasting friendship between Brazil and Argentina, the two great nations who flourish on the shores of the Southern Atlantic.”* Delineating three concen- tric spaces, Séenz Pefta stressed the complementary rather than competitive nature of the Brazilian and Argentine economies, 2 basic, beneficial condi- tion that would allow replication in the economic realm in the present, of the cooperation and friendship that had typified the two countries’ part pation in the political process of the continent in the past. "The speech now shifted to the early nineteenth century, identifying the ‘initial hour of our free existence” as the starting point of the process of transformation from “forgotten American colonies” into powerful indepen- ent states, From that point on, the historical trajectory continued to the shared experience of the War of the Triple Alliance, in which Brazilian, “Argentines, Uruguayans fought and shed blood alongside one another in ‘order “to remove the obstacles that seemed to stop the forward march of the continent.” Having added a third nation to the natrative, Saenz Pefia returned his attention to the present and the future. Past memories from the battlefields of Paraguay should serve to buttress international solidarity but rust be refreshed,with the “breath of modern spirit.” New challenges were looming, awaiting their own comtnon solotions. The battles for freedom should make way for the work toward eminence, work that had been so far “national,” but from now on can be “continental,”* ‘As he was careful to emphasize, the vision Senz Pefia delineated was not only abstract. In the last segment of his speech it was translated into a concrete project of cultural diplomacy destined to foment European interest in and true knowledge of the changing circumstances of Latin America. The tltimate objective was to elevate the continents reputation as a whole, pre- venting the nations of Latin America from drawing negative comparisons among themselves, To this end he joined the initiative of Chile's Minister to the Quirinal to found, in Rome, a Latin American Academy of Fine Arts tunder the common auspices of Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. In this way, “the three big states will demonstrate to both America and Europe their perfect harmony of interests and shared civilizing outlooks.”” ‘The intimate speech, with its notions of bi-national, tri-national, regional, and continental solidarity, rooted in a fusion of shared historical experi- ences, ethnicity, powes, moral values, worldviews, and future visions, made“Everything Unites Us” 93 ‘headlines in Buenos Aires and in Rio de Janeiro. Given in the immediate aftermath of a near-war situation between Brazil and Argentina, it was ana- lyzed positively by the host, Baron of Rio Banco, in a confidential telegram sent 0 the Brazilian embassy in Washington, D, C, several weeks afterwards. “On August 7, we welcomed Séenz Pefia who gave a beautiful speech dur- ing lunch at the Itamaraty, hoping for Brazil's friendship and promising us his. The impact here and in Buenos Aires was huge.” Still, complained the Brazilian foreign minister, “[official] Argentina answered our amicable mes- sages with the unfortunate nomination [...] of our enemy and slanderex”* ‘The said “enemy” was Estanislao Zeballos, who had resigned as Argentina’s Foreign Minister in June 1908 after two-year mandate marked by his old personal rivalry with Rio Branco, and by an aggressive, nationalistic pol- icy toward Brazil,’ His “unfortunate nomination” was for the Fourth Pan American Conference, destined to convene in Buenos Aires in 1910, another of the many opportunities for Latin American diplomats and journalists to meet, both formally and informally, at around the turn of the century in a climate of both belicose preparations and peace efforts, nationalism and internationalism, “WEAPONS OF THE MIND” IN THE AWAKENING VILLAGE OF LATIN AMERICA ‘These details of Séenz Peita's 1909 visit and discourse, gathered in part from newspaper social columns, encapsulate the intimate relationship between three transnational practices that are the focus of this chapter: diplomacy, international visits, and the periodical press. The interdependence among. these fields has been mentioned in the previous chapters of this book. It was evident in the cases of the 1882 Buenos Aires Continental Exposition, and of the 1883 Rio de Janeiro festa literdria, two events which brought together Argentine and Brazilian diplomats, statesmen, writers, and journalists, with the declared purpose of strengthening bilateral and macto-regional ties, and which were documented and disseminated in print, But while the previous chapters concentrated on the issue of language and on cross-border experi- ences of individuals who traveled on their own private initiative and their ‘written accounts, the emphasis here is on the public discussion of interna- tional relations generated as part of and in connection with the exchanges of official and semi-offcial visits and other events of diplomatic nature involv- ing Brazilians, Argentines, as well as Latin Americans of other nationalities. ‘This chapter also takes a closer look at the role of journals and journalists, highlighting their symbiotic links tothe realm of diplomacy and their active role as more or ess independent players init. In other words, in methodological terms, the following pages belong ro international history, a sub-discipline which has been struggling to free itself from “national, local, and geocentsic patterns of thought,” and which is94 “Everything Unites Us” marked today by an “attempt to write supranational history without taking, up the perspective of a parcicular nation,” paying increasing attention to “private actors and groups who operate within and outside of the govern- mental bureaucracy.” These tendencies have gone hand in hand with the development of a culeural approach to diplomatic history, as distinguished from the traditionally more prevalent power and economic approaches. ‘A caltural approach treats “international affairs in terms of dreams aspira- tions and other manifestations of human consciousness.” If in the study of international relations, power can be loosely defined as “a nation’s ability to defend itself, and economy as its production and exchange of goods and services,” then culture in this context means “the communication of mem+ (ry, ideology, emotions, life styles, scholarly and artistic works, and other symbols,” across national borders.'" ‘Yet none of this has had any substantial effect on the historiography of international relations among Latin American countries, an area of study which is still largely dominated by the traditional approaches just described, and which has moved along a separate path not only from cultural history. conceived broadly, but also from closer fields such as literary studies, intel- lectual history, and history of ideas. “Closer” since diplomacy and intellee- ‘tual life coincided in post-independence Latin America in such a way that ‘one can claim for the existence of a tradition or a model of the “diplomat- intellectual” who was linked interactively to the sphere of foreign policy due to his very training and experience in literature, journalism, or the social sciences. As a matter of truth, this link can be seen as a part of the more general symbiosis between writing and governing in nineteenth- century Latin America, While the advance of modemnization since circa 1870 brought about a certain degree of professionalization of intellectual activities, thereby contributing to an incipient separation between ‘the state fand written culture, the relationship between the two remained strong, and, jin what concerns diplomacy, even intensified.! As Angel Rama has observed, the period 1870-1910 saw a decline in the number of writers who earned a living as elected politicians or relied on fam- ily fortunes. Some came from patrician families, often impoverished, but the .rge majority were from middle-class backgrounds and found income in the expanding journalistic scene, At the same time, state apparatus also grew, offering new possibilities of suitable employment in education, libraries, archives, and, above all in the diplomatic service.'* These two parallel trends hint at the intersection of journalism and foreign affairs, an intersection that Rama and other literary scholars such as Julio Ramos and Susana Rotker, who have been mainly interested in the impact of journalism on literature, did not explore thoroughly. They did pave the way, though, for research in this direction-by emphasizing not only the growing number of periodical publications and readers, but also their diversification and transnational- jon. Technology, as Rotker has stressed, spurred significant changes in 1¢ press. “The instantaneity brought by the telegraph was an incentive for“Everything Unites Us" 95 internationalism and modernization, which dovetailed with the interests of the importing bourgeoisie.” Rama highlights, in this regard, the grow- ing influence of big and well-respected journals of the kind of La Nacién of Buenos Aires, and O Estado de Sao Paulo, and the equally important appearance of a popular press featuring caricatures, drawings, and photos that catered to the tastes and interests of new literate generations."* Contemporaries ware well aware of these far-reaching changes and their implications for diplomacy and international relations. Vicente Quesada, for example, tells in his memoirs how, soon after his arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1883 as Argentina’s minister to Brazil, prior to the festa literdria, he organized a banquet at his private residence only for journalists, taking advantage of his reputation as a member of the profession, His personal background had assisted him, he recalled, to alleviate his guests’ concerns that he would try to persuade them to stop their usual “attacks on the Rio de la Plata, which, for many of them, were a recourse for increasing the number of subscribers, always avid for new sensations.” Creating close ties with the Fluminense press and “conquering journalists” was a prime objec- tive of his “campaign plan,” both a5 a means to “win the goodwill of Bra- il” and to “feel the pulse of public opinion.” Since “in the final analysis, journalism today is the true ruler in any well-organized country without ‘whose collaboration no statesman, as audacious as he may be, can suc- ceed, Besides, as a former career journalist myself, and currently having a son in the profession, I had already come halfway in the dicection of such sapprochement.”"” Pigure 3.1. “The last party for the Brazilian journalists": one out of the many social events that accompanied the visi of President Carnpos Sales to Buenos Aices and involved the active participation ofthe press, The photograph was included in a special issue of La Ihstracion Sud Armerican commemorating the occasion (see Figure 3.2).96 “Everything Unites Us” i “i Semana Breslet Figure 3.2. “The Brazilian Week.” Cover of La Iustraciin Sud Americana: ‘Revista’ Quincenal Ilustrada de las Repiblicas Sud-Americanas 8 189-190 (Noversber 1900), No the macto-regional logic inherent in the magazine’ tite, Asis evident here, recognition of the existence of “public opinion” com ceming forcign policy issucs and of the power of the press to influence it, fed diplomats to use print publications both directly and indirectly, at home and abroad, in order to promote international agendas, and enhance their per- sonal prestige. They did so by transmitting their messages through acquain- tances and journalistic mercenaties, by giving newspaper interviews, as well as by writing articles and essays themselves, and even initiating and editing ‘periodical publications, activities that amounted to what can be described as “public diplomacy,” to use a relatively modern term often applied to perlods“Everything Unites Us” 97 later than the one considered here."As in the case of Vicente and Ernesto Quesada and their Nueva Revista de Buenas Aires, whose editorship passed from father to son when the former went on his mission to Brazil, diplomats and joumalists did not formally play both roles simultaneously, and when they did, they might not dlivide their time and energy evenly. But overall, in practice, the overlap between the two professions was great, especially around the turn of the century when the three most powerful countries of South America—Argentina, Brazil, and Chilo—all of which had experienced some financial and political turmoil during the 1890s, achieved new levels of political stability, economic growth, and military power. A balance of power,” in the language of international relations theory, started to evolve in South America in the 1870s after the end of the Pat- aguayan War, in large measure due to Argentina’s emergence as a fourth regional power alongside Brazil, Chile, and Peru, Chile's victory over Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific (1879-1881) was another step toward the consolidation, during the three following decades, of what international relations scholar Arie Kacowicz has called 2 “South American zone of peace. interpretation, “che period from 1883 to 1919 can be regarded as an institutionalized balance of power among Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, a kind of ‘ABC concert."” Chile exercised hegemony in the South Pacific, ‘while Brazil and Argentina competed for leadership in the River Plate area, in a triangular dynamics marked by both conflict and cooperation.” ‘At the same time, the menace of U.S. imperialism started to loom large over Latin America as a consequence of the 1898 Cuban-Spanish-American ‘War. These developments in the north and the south of the American con- tinent brought about geopolitical compression at both the regional and the hemispheric levels on top of the already existing informational connectivity, which had increased after the 1870s. During the first decade of the twenti- eth century, South American statesmen and writers were therefore not only well informed but also increasingly alarmed about external threats, be it from “the colossus of the North,” from European powers, or from the ncighbors next door, and, at the same time, more self-confident about theit nations’ might.” ‘This heightened and complex consciousness translated, in turn, into both nationalism and internationalism, competition and cooperation, aggression ‘and conciliation between the countries of South American themselves and vis-a-vis the United States. The sheer volume of south-south and north-south international activity grew as did the awareness of its importance, attracting the involvement of Latin American men of letters from within and outside the state as if they were heeding José Mart’ call put forward in his founda tional essay “Nuestra América”: “What remains of the village in America ‘must rouse itself. These are not the times for sleeping in a nightcap, but with ‘weapons for a pillow, like che warriors of Juan de Castellanos: weapons of the mind, which conquer all ochers, Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones.”**CARICATURAB CONTENPORANIAS Dr. QUINTINO BOGAYUVA, ror cro ty ee yewienaremicnes aa ed Be wate Figure 3.3. In 1900, with a chree-lecadeslong record of promoting Brazilian- “Argentine rapprochement, Senator and newspaper editor Quintino Bocaitiva arrived in Buenos Aires on the occasion of Campos Sties’s presidential visit to Argentina ‘The ety’ most populac magazine Caras y Caretas (November 3, 1900) extolled the guest’ virtues a8 a brilliant journalist and an “energetic, virile, republican caudill.” The laudatory portrait thus exemplifies the intimate links between journalism tod diplomacy, andthe combined iteleesal ciate of socal Darwinism and internationalism.“Everything Unites Us” 99 ‘Marti himself used the weapons of the mind extensively in a profusion of journalistic genres during his residence in New York from 1881 to 1895, disseminating his “truth about the United States” through Buencs Aires’s La Nacién and other press organs in Latin America, His warnings against the growing expansionist lust of the “monster” he had learned to know from inside stemmed in large part from his experience as an active observer of the first Pan American Congress in Washington, D.C. in 1889, and as Uru- guay’s delegate to the 1891 International Monetary Conference. His intel- lectual career was thus one of the most notable embodiments of the evolving fusion of geopolitics and culture in Latin America of the period in terms of both the occupations he pursued and the topics of his writing, Stil, as Julio Ramos has observed, “the relationship between Marti's texts on the dangers of pan-Americanism—the risks of hemispheric compression—and his own, compaction of a ‘mestizo America,’ ‘our America,’ has not been sufficiently emphasized.” ‘What is true for probably the most discussed Latin American intellectual of the period, is even more true for less celebrated figures such as the Brazil- jans: Francisco Otaviano, Quintino Bocaitiva, Joaquim Nabuco, Rui Bar- bosa, and Oliveiza Lima, and the Argentines: Vicente Quesada, Roque Séenz Pea, and Estanislao Zeballos, who have been discussed in the previous chapters and/or will be further discussed below. What is common to all of them is the same belonging to the overlapping worlds of the periodical press and international relations, culture and diplomacy, which typified Marti Indeed, in view of their movement in similar orbits, it should not come as 1 surprise that the paths of many of them crossed, as in the case of Vicente Quesada, Sdenz Pefia, and Marti, who exchanged ideas face to face, and in writing, in che context of the 1889 Pan American Congress, together laying the groundwork for a new anti-imperialist Latin Americanist discourse and politics. Ultimately, to write about, and to “make” foreign policy were not separate activities but one and the same thing, an integral part of an urban Latin American mindset ever more interested in and knowledgeable about international relations and highly cognizant of their importance, CONGRESSES: “THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE ‘THEORY OF EVOLUTION” Many of the visits exchanged between Brazilians, Argentines, and other Latin Americans occurred within the framework of regular regional confer- ences such as the above-mentioned 1909 Fourth Latin American Medical Congress in Rio de Janeiro, which intersected with the celebracions in honor of Séenz Pei, Largely ignored by historians for many years, these transna tonal events, which proliferated during the first decade ofthe twentieth cen- tury, have attracted attention recentiy and a picture is emerging suggesting ‘a tich, variegated dynamic of social and intellectual exchanges with strong100 “Everything Unites Us" ties to diplomacy and international relations. Most notable in this context ‘was the series of Latin American scientific congcesses inaugurated in Buenos Aires in 1898, and followed by three more meetings in Montevideo (1901), Rio de Janeiro (1905), and Santiago (1909). The initiative originated in the civil society. It came from the Sociedad Cientifica Argentina, Yet it had pree- edents in prior international meetings ofa strictly formal character between South American countries, as the Argentine Minister of Justice, Culture, and Education, Luis Beldustegui, saw fit to mention in his inaugural address to the delegates of the first congress. The first precedent he evoked was the Rio de Janeiro sanitary conference of 1887 between the Brazilian Empire and the republics of Argentina and Uruguay. As a matter of fact, this meet- ing followed an earlier one not mentioned by the minister, which had taken place in Montevideo in 1873. The main objective of both conferences was to prevent the spread of epidemics in the region in order to facilitate teade and European immigration, which were directly affected by them. As Cleide de Lima Chaves observed in a recent study, the pioneering nature of these conferences—which eventually led to the establishment of the Pan American. Health Organization—in the history of international health, and thus also of international relations, has not been accorded the scholacly atzention it deserves compared to the development of the international sanitary coop- ecation movement in Europe from the mid-nineteenth century. "The second forerunner international meeting Beléustegui mentioned was the South American Congress of International Private Law held in Monte- video in 1889 at which Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay signed agreements destined to regulate practices concerning patents, literary and artistic property rights, trademarks and the judicial process for individual crimes. The Brazilian Empire did not immediately accept Argentina’s and Uruguay's invitation to participate in this meeting, and its foreign minister described the eventual decision to do so as a rupture from Brazil's traditional approach to exclusively American congresses. Brazil’s hesitation could partially have been related to Argentina’s regional leadership protensions in the face of the new U.S.rled Pan-Americanism. As historian Thomas . McGaon has observed in a rather forgotten classic, the ‘Argentine delegates to this congress, Manuel Quintana and Roque Senz Peita, “were sketching the first lines of quite a different pictuze of interna- tional harmony, one which foreshadowed a strong Latin America, indepen- dent of foreign domination, solving its own problems in its own way.” There was much in common, then, between the 1887 sanitary confer. ence and the 1889 international private law conference. At the material level they were entwined with the general modernization that affected mul- tiple dimensions of South America’s reality as it was being integrared into the Atlantic world, from immigration and technological innovations, to the corresponding standardization and bureaucratization. The issues on the agenda and the participating sides also demonstrate the formation of con~ centric spaces: a Platine or western-south Atlantic space in the case of the“Everything Unites Us" 101 sanitary conferences, and a broader all-South American space in the case of the Montevideo gathering. At the level of consciousness, both international encounters reflected the coalescence of intcrests of the region's governments in confronting natural or human threats from outside, a growing degree of self-confidence in dealing with those challenges, and a greater willingness to translate common perceptions into joint action, overcoming old national animosities and competition, all under the idcational umbrella of “South America” as a unique entity with its own particular circumstances, ‘The series of Latin American scientific congresses indeed signified a con- tinuation of these incipient material and ideational trends from the 1880s, this time on a larger scale and with a far greater involvement of civil society ‘The Argentine government lent financial support to the first of them and ‘was represented in the opening session by the Minister of Justice, Culture, and Education. Still, in his own words, Beléustegui praised the role of non~ governmental actors, giving them his blessing and linking the work of the delegates in “the neutral terrain of science” to the “prosperous life of our republics,” and the strengthening of “South American confrateraity.”” In the same spirit, engineer Angel Gallardo, one ofthe initiators ofthe congress and president of the organizing committee, also associated scientific cooper ation with nationalism embedded in a notion of a macro-regional ethno-his- torical identity. The newly inaugurated series of scientific encounters were in his words “a pledge of love and friendship among the sister republics so they can continue peacefully with their civilizing mission toward becoming vig- orous, rich, intelligent, and moral nationalities; aspiring all to the greatest hhuman perfection amid the beauties of our bountiful American nature.” The next congresses in the series, envisioned Gallardo, would pass like “a mes- senger of peace and justice through every capital city of the Ibero-American peoples, bringing together thousands of members.”# Politicians and scholars activated on the occasion a discourse quite uni- fied in its tone and messages. In yet another inaugural speech, the president of the Sociedad Uruguaya de Ciencias y Artes also evoked the familial meta- phor of brotherhood to describe the relationship between the participating nations, refering, to them as sisters in terms of origin, historical tradition, and language, but above all in terms of a common search for “progressive evolution.” It was a moment of a new beginning—a new Latin American beginning, The new continent was about to achieve something like a second independence. The political independence from Spain would be followed by an epistemic independence from the old continent as a whole. The River Plate, that region where scientists like the Uruguayan naturalist Daémaso Antonio Larrafiaga (1771-1848) and Charles Darwin had conducted their path-breaking investigations, “the birthplace of the theory of evolution,” now gave rise to “the notion of an independently evolving American knowl edge, the first sign of the scientific originality of Latin America.”” Scientific knowledge, material progress, and international cooperation through state and civil society went together in the minds of the organizers102 “Everything Unites Us* of the congress and its supporters. The engineer Gallardo highlighted the contribution of scientific societies and institutions, as well as of the press, from across the continent to the organization of the event.” Matters of sociability and national self-promotion were also involved. The Minister of Justice, Culture, and Education indicated that the Buetios Aires municipal- ity and the Scientific Society made sure that “our guests, sons of the sister republics” would enjoy “out social life,” and become acquainted with “our advancements by visiting our port, sanitation projects, factories, hospitals, schools, and other institutions that we proudly show to foreigners.”™" ‘And there were quite a few of them to socialize and absorb: 552 guests from 13 Latin American countries, from Mexico in the north to Chile in the south, attended the Buenos Aires congress, numbers that grew to 697 and 18, respectively, seven years later in Rio de Janeiro, The large majority were locals, but there was significant representation from the nearby neighboring countries. Thirty-two Usuguayans participated in the frst congress across the River Plate and eighty in the second along with seventy-four Argentines, Sessions were dedicated to engineering, law, mathematics, physics, chemis- tay, natural sciences, anthropology, ethnology, pedagogy, agronomy, animal scicnce, and medicine and hygiene. These scientific fields may seem at frst glance completely detached from the realm of international relations and collective identification, yet they were not so from the point of view of the participants, as was apparent in much of the work they presenced. ‘A notable case in point was the study presented by Uraguay’s ex-Minister of Development, engineer Juan José de Castro, about “the railways that will connect the American zepublics inthe future,” in the framework of the congress's engineering section, which invited presentations concerning the topic: “The best plan of a railways network that will connect the republics of South America.” For Castro this was a matter of “transcendental impor tance” with ramifications for “the general circulation in the American con- tinent and especially for the Latin republics in this part of the world.” Rail connections were of importance for industry, commerce, administration, and politics, but the overall goal of developing them went much further, having to do with both “moral and material advancements,” and with the falfillment of “Latin America’s civilizing mission.” Similar notions and practices received even greater expression during the third congress, which convened in Rio de Janeiro seven years later under the auspices of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, with the link between sci- entific knowledge, transnational sociability, and international relations set forth explicitly, The official activities started off with a mass at the Cande~ liria Church, and a reception at the Government Palace. One of the many inaugural addresses at the opening ceremony was given by Brazil's Foreign Minister, Baron of Rio Branco, a national hero of sorts during his lifetime thanks to the enormous territorial gains he secured for his country as the representative in cases of international arbitration, beginning in 1895, and later as the most influential head of the Itamaraty, as the Brazilian Foreign Ministry is known, between 1902 and 1912."“Buerything Unites Us" 103 After a reference to the Brazilian sincesity, hospitality, and sympathy toward foreign guests, Rio Branco proceeded to single out “intellectual exchange and the making of acquaintances” among people of the same ficlds of inter- est, as the most beneficial outcome of international scientific congresses— beneficial not so much in the domain of science as in the domain of inter ational relations, since upon their return to their home countries those delegates would “undo prejudices and dispel misunderstandings, taking part in this way in che great task of the calming the spirits and promoting friendship among nations.” Presenting a clear agenda of what present-day public diplomacy scholars designate “exchange diplomacy,” Brazil's most celebrated statesman of the time described the word spread spontaneously by way of the comings and goings of such “worthy men, convinced, and detached from political passions,” as superior to any “official and biased propaganda.”* Itis for a reason that the proceedings of the 1905 Rio de Janeiro Congress were republished some hundred years later by the Brazilian government on the occasion of the centennial of Rio Branco’s nomination as Foreign Min~ ister, with the subtitle “science and politics.” In an introduction to the 2002 second edition, one of Rio Branco's modern successors in office and a scholar, Celso Lafer, observed that the Baron, as he is known in Brazilian lore, understood already at an early stage the relevance of scientific and environmental issues such as navigation on the Amazon and the River Plate systems for the foreign policy of a country like Brazil and for its position in. the “South American space." “The reawakening of Brazil to these largely forgotten aspects of its mythi- cal foreign minister is of course largely ideological and instrumental, hay- ing to do with the lace twentieth-century trend toward regional integration symbolized by the creation of Mercosur in 1991, renewed aspirations to feadership in Latin America, and to greater prestige and influence at the global level, Yet, as a matter of fact, the distinction between ideology, ot power, and culture in this regard is superfluous. This is because Rio Branco’s ‘own regional and hemispheric projects, as much as those of his twenty-first- century self-declared disciples, were at once diplomatic and cultural, com- bining ideology and history, diplomacy and culture, science and sociabilit and should be understood as a unified whole, Such an approach has indeed been applied to some extent by South Amer- ican scholars to che 1905 congress and to other international and transna- tional encounters that took place in the capital cities of the region during that time. Thanks to them, we now know more not only about the aforemen- tioned sanitary and scientific meetings, but also about the Latin American Medical Congresses and International Exhibitions on Hygiene celebrated in Chile (1901), Argentina (1904), Uruguay (1907), Brazil (1909), Peru (1913), and Cuba (1922); about the International Congresses of American Students celebrated in Montevideo (1908), Buenos Aires (1910), and Lima (1912);* and about two international police conferences held in Buenos Aires (1905 and 1920). A synthesis—which has not been attempted so104 “Everything Unites Us" fat—of the body of evidence and insights provided in the above mentioned historical studies describes a process similar to that described by literatuxe specialists, a process of an increasing cross-border flow of men and ideas in South America fueled by the material forces of modernization, as well as by the conscious action of both state and non-state actors in the name of national and supranational interests and ideals, The next part of the chapter complements this general picture by concentrating on one of the paramount expressions of the changing landscape of South American international rela~ tions: the exchange of presidential visits between Brazil and Argentina at the very end of one century and the begging of another AHISTORIC DAY “A Historic Day” declared the headline of an article published in Rio de Janeico’s Ditirio de Noticias on August 8, 1899, the day in which the Argen- tine dreadnought San Martin, the cruiser Buenos Aires and the torpedo boat Patria entered the waters of Gaunabara Bay escorted by three Brazilian ves- sels of corresponding size.*® “This is the frst time that this capital has had the pleasure of welcoming a forcign head of state,”.wrote the newspaper's editor and senator Rui Barbosa in reference to the honorable guest that arrived on board his navy’s most modern battleship: President Julio Argen- ‘tino Roca. For quite some time, diagnosed Rui, a growing shared conscious- ness of peaceful and civilizing solidarity had alleviated antagonism between “the three great nations of South America,” Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, His analysis of the significance of the official visit, which had just started with great pomp and ceremony and would continue like that through August 18, was at once geopolitical, ethnic, and historic. Tyig together Roca’s visit to Brazil with the latter’s meeting with his Chilean counterpart Federico Eerézuriz in January at the Straits of Magellan, Rui argued favor ably that the three countries were “sisters” in terms of their shared desire “to vigorously safeguard the Latin contingent in America’s evolution,” and that the Avgentine president was laying the basis for “southern peace and Latin security in the continent of Columbus.”* History was factored into Rui’s interpretation in the form of a geneal- ogy of Brazilian-Argentine rapprochement stretching from the common vic- tory over Rosas at Monte Caseros in 1852, to the 1865-1870 War of the ‘Triple Alliance, to the simultaneous celebrations of the abolition of slavery north and south of the River Plate in 1888. These “three great moments of ‘our national existence,” in which the “two families had mixed their blood on the same battlefield, and their souls for the same ideal,” these “three liberating alliances,” reached a peak with the presidential embrace. Weav- ing two national trajectories, Rus narrative acquired its full meaning in a subsequent evocation of the same two fundamental events in Argentina's historical evolution mentioned by Nicolés Avellaneda some two decades“Everything Unites Us" 105 earlier at the opening of the 1882 Buenos Aites Continental Exposition: the 1879-1880 military campaign against the Indians under Roce’s leadership as Minister of Wax, and the effective federalization of Buenos Aires in 1880 ‘when he was president. Thanks to his talent both as a military commander and as a political leader, Roca “personified the project of social unification and political pacification of the Argentine Republic.”** Rui provides a true bistoire-croisée of Axgentines and Brazilians, and his ideas should therefore be examined from this perspective, suspending the usual nation-state prism. Destroying outdated institutions and barbarism, in the image of caucillos, Juan Manuel de Rosas and Francisco Solano Lépez, in the image of “the night of black slavery,” and in the image of the pampa Indiams, as much as the edification of a strong unified state, were all milestones in a unilinear path, inevitably leading toward South American peace and a higher stage of an evolving Latin civilization ‘The Brazilian jurist need not have read Avellaneda’s speech from 1882 in its Portuguese translation published by Gazeta de Noticias or in any other version in order to fashion this cultural-historical treatise about diplomacy and South American intemational relations. By the time of Roca’s visit, he had behind him a decade of joumaliscic writing experience about Argen- tine and Chilean affairs and a long exile of many months in Buenos Aires in 1893, which included active collaboration in the city’s press and read= ing Argentine political thought (see Chapter 4). His active interest in Span~ ish American affairs can be traced at least as far back as 1883, when he wrote to Brazilian journalist, politician, and author Franklin Tévora, who had ties wich Vicente and Emesto Quesada, asking him for information about subscribing to the latter’s Nueva Revista de Buenos Aires, a publi- cation devored to Latin American literature, history and international law as discussed in Chapter 1. Also that year, he cited excerpts from an off- report of Argentina’s Superintendent of Education, and from Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s book on education in the United States, Las escuelas: base de la prosperidad y de la republica en los Estados Unidos (1873), in a series of studies about education in Brazil, finding the neighboring republic to the south superior to the Empire in this field. From then on his aware- ness of things Argentine only grew, and along with it the relevant section of his opulent private library, as well as the number of written treatises on the subject in journal articles, judicial works, and essays complete with biblio- ‘graphic references to and citations from Argentine authors, Rui's widening Argentine-Brazilian, Luso-Hispanic intertextual path would crisscross several times, at critical junctures in South American atic history, with the equally broad path of the same kind of Estanislao Zebal los, The first textual entanglement between the two statesmen-journalists occurred in the pages of Rui's Didrio de Noticias in April 1889 in a series of three articles discussing the issue of “Civil Marriage in the Argentine Repub- lic,” based on an extended parliamentary speech by Zeballos concerning the same issue that had been published the year before.t* At frst glance106 “Everything Unites Us” the theme may seem to have nothing to do with international relations. ‘Yet, the proximity of the publication to the fall of the republic in Novem- ber, and Rui’s direct indictment of the monarchy for having failed to solve ‘the question of civil marriage as the rest of America did, making Brazil “a backward piece of old Europe, within the New Continent,” suggest « close link to geo-cultural matters. These were the heydays of anti-monarchist propaganda, which had everything to do with Americanism on both regional and continental scales. It is inthis light that Rui’s fist intellectual exchange with Zeballos should be read: as an integral step in the construction of transnational South American sociability and knowledge. Just how Zeballos’s speech reached the hands of the Brazilian liberal leg- islator in the first place is not known, What is certain is that it started off with a personal eulogy to Zeballos, praising his combined skills as a great orator and a fine statesman, and that within less than a month a letter of thanks arrived from Buenos Aires, mentioning two Brazilian intermediar ies who informed its author about Ri’s intellectual stature and the Diario de Noticias articles, Attached was one of fifty special copies of the speech “dedicated to Argentine statesmen.”"” Clearly, exchanging texts meant also changing and exchanging identities, as is also apparent in the story of the Revista de Derecho, Historia y Letras (1898-1923), which was founded and edited by Estanislao Zeballos, and that many of its volumes found their way into Rui’ library Ic isto this journal and its coverage of the 1899/1900 presidential visits, an exemplary moment of the concurrence of diplomacy. and the periodical press in the western South-Atlantic interurban space, that the narrative now turns, “SQUTH AMERICAN OLYMPICS” Not long after Rui Barbosa celebrated Roca’s upcoming visitas a historical milestone in Argentine-Brazilian relationships and in the civilizing process of Latin America, once the travelling president was back at home, Estanislao Zeballos provided the readers of his recently founded Revista de Derecho, Historia y Letras a detailed analysis of the same event in an essay entitled “After the Journey.” This retrospective assessment of Roca’s meeting with his Brazilian counterpart Campos Sales in the Brazilian capital contrasted in. tone with Rui’s triumphalist and congratulatory prose, and differed on some points in the interpretation, Nonetheless, the two accotints featured some meaningful narrative and conceptual similarities. ‘In Zeballos’s opinion Argentine-Beazilian. rapprochement was desirable, Indeed, it was born half a century earlier out of the shared sacrifice of blood in Monte Caseros, after Unitarian diplomacy had managed. to enlist Brazil to the struggle for liberty in the River Plate. Just as in Rui’s newspaper article, in Zeballos’s essay the victory over Rosas, a “transcendental event” of political and moral significance, was coupled with a similar experience of“Everything Unites Us" 107 the Paraguayan Was, which opened, in turn, “a new era of cooperation, her- ism, triumphs, and military and political solidarity,” not just between two states but between two peoples as well."But while the third key moment in Rui’s transnational genealogy were the mutual celebrations of the abo- lition of slavery, the next event in Zeballos's story was the 1890 border agreement he had signed with the Quintino Bocaitiva in 1890, The treaty, which divided the contested territory of Missées equally between the coun tries, was celebrated in Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities in Argen- tina with parades and ceremonial receptions in Bocaitiva’s honor, treating him as a hero of American republicanism. In Brazil, however, the treaty fell under vehement criticism for being unpatriotic, driving the Congress to vote unanimously against it, In 1893 the two parties submiteed the Misses con- troversy to arbitration of the President of the United States, in which Zebal- Jos, who led his country’s mission in Washington, D.C., lost the case to the Brazilian representative, future Foreign Minister Baron of Rio Branco—an ourcome the Argentine diplomat experienced as a humiliating defeat, and ‘which marked the beginning of a long personal rivalry.” Zeballos evoked this sequence of events in which he had been the (tragic) hero, as proof of the existence of a lingering current of mistrust and preju- dices toward Argentina among Brazil’s upper class and especially among its ‘masses. This entrenched ill will also found expression in Brazilian public opinion, which had been favorable towards Chile in recent situations of near war between Chile and Argentina, In the final analysis, he concluded, despite the efforts of the not so many “friends of the Argentine Republic” in Brazil, and of the local “wise and farsighted press” to inculeated love for ‘Argentina in the masses of the people,” Roca’s visit failed to achieve this desited goal. Thus, what will be left “once the pleasant memories of the splendid August days will have dissipated,” may tamentably deserve Shake- speare’s irony: “Wordst Words and Words! (Sic, in English] ‘Yet Zeballos’s own words went beyond this concrete practical judgment. ‘What isthe significance of Roca’s journey for South American and for world diplomacy? He asked a question, and went on to provide a deep cultural- historical reply, He traced the origin of the 1899 visit 0 a previous exchange of visits between former president Miguel Juérez Celman (1886-1890) and his Uruguayan counterpart Maximo Tajes (1886-1890), first conceived in connection with the already mentioned South American Congress of Inter national Private Law held in Montevideo in that year: ‘In 1889 the visits remained limited to the Montevideo and Buenos Aires, Sparta and Athens, rivals over the River Plate. In 1899 Chile and Brazil got involved, giving the South American Hellenism square shape; since the other countries of the continent live isolated and without mutual knowledge of each other, like some remote peoples of the East had been in relation to the Greeks. This continental reality is to be lamented, but it is a fact, The temporal regularity which the international jugeleries108 “Everything Unites Us” are acquiring in the present and will acquire in the future, the exclusion of the Europeans from it, their resttiction to Atlantic countries only, the concurrence of all the highest dignitaries to Buerios Aires, and the extravagant show of forces and all kind of sports [Sic, in English], make them similar to the Olympics of Hellenic hegemony." But the games in ancient Greece were not just a demonstration of friendship, continued Zeballos. They were also an outcome and a generator of the rival- ries between the cities, encounters destined to cultivate individual physical force and virility at times when competence in these areas was indispensable, ‘The “South American Olympics,” in contrast, grew like tree fungus among, the “Latin democracies,” improvised and disconnected from the organic needs of the participating nations, Whatever the validity of this final verdict, when read along with Rui’s article, and against the background of the thriv- ing scene of international congresses from the late 1890s onwards with its regional discourse and practices, Zeballo’s essay corroborates the picture ‘of a South American space under construction, captured in the metaphor cof the Olympics. What emerges from his depiction is a space with dynamic territorial and conceptual boundaries and logics, spanning the two coastal cities of Montevideo and Buenos Aires at its heart, joined by the nations of Brazil and Chile to form a tetra-nation-state-based configuration, and con- tained, in turn, within a wider political-ethnic entity comprising all “Latin democracies.” Part descriptive, part prescriptive, “After the Journey” fell short of being a full-fledged ideational or political project, yet it appeared in and thus formed part of one. AJOURNAL FOR “THE SELECTED SPIRITS OF ARGENTINE AND AMERICAN CIVILIZATION” ‘The said project was Revista de Derecho, Historia y Letras. “Unique and torrential” in the words of literary critic David Vifias, it served Zeballos, together with the best-selling newspaper of the period La Prensa, of which ‘was the co-founder and a frequent contributor, asa platform to propagate his views to different readerships for more than two decades, until his death in 1923 (which marked the end of the journal as well) The appearance of this largely forgotten journal, despite its umusual longevity and the high intellectual or public profile of some of its contributors, should be placed in several contexts: Latin American, Argentine, and Argentine-Brazilian, At the continental level, Revista de Derecho, Historia y Letras can be located within a new wave of literary journals of transnational Hispanic American scope that appeared throughout Latin America during that period. Often mentioned in this regard ase: Revista Cubana (1885-1895); the Caracas- based HI Cojo ilustrado (1892-1915); the Mexican Revista Azul (1894~ 1896) and Revista Moderna (1897-1911); La Biblioteca (1896-1898),“Everything Unites Us" 109 Revista de América (1896), and El Mercurio de América (1898-1900) of Buenos Aires; and Revista Nacional de Literatura y Ciencias Sociales (1895-1897) published in Montevideo. Literacy scholars have tended to group these publications and treat them asa main mode of expression—alongside the daily press—of the Spanish ‘American literary movement known as modernismo, which thrived from circa 1890s until the First World War. For many years conventional wis~ dom suggested that the modernistas were “Eurocentric elitists who retreated from the unsatisfactory social realities of their countries into an artificial aristocratic world of derivative aestheticism,” a scholarly image that has nade way, in the last two decades or $0, for a mote nuanced interpretation, sensible to diversities within the movement, and cognizant of its mundane and political aspects. One such aspect present in the Modernista jour nals? inaugural statements, according to Gerard Aching, was their “uto- pian impulse, a ‘prefiguring and fulfillment’ of Spanish American national and regional self-knowledge and a critique of the present, In some of those programmatic texts founders and editors define their publications’ role as the purveyors not only of self-awareness but also of national and regional, socioeconomic progress."** They created the possibility of “belonging to national and transnational spaces simultaneously and, moreover, without contradiction.” In this regard Aching raises the example of the Revista de ‘America, founded by the foremost figure of the modernista movement, Nicaraguan poet Rubén Dario, and the Bolivian Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, from whose point of view, “national literatures seem obliged to ‘depart’ the national community in order to define the nation from outside its borders. This ability to define from without is precisely what empowered the region's ruling classes within their respective countries “These observations are most pertinent to the Revista de Derecho, Histo- ria’y Letras, whose prospectus set the goal to both study and transform, that is, to study in order to transform, “the Latin American societies,” which although they kept the virtues of the “founding race,” had so far failed to produce the expected fruits of political and civil liberty. Similarly, its intended readership was both national and transnational: “all those selected spirits who contribute to the Argentine and [Latin] American civilization with their brilliant and rigorous devotion to literature,”*” These features, Jargely present also in Zeballos's discussion of Roca’s journey to Brazil, were not the only ones his Revista had in common with the modernista kind. ‘There were also the reservations, typical of many modernistas, about both the Hispanic tradition and “technocratic modernity." The prospectus thus included a programmatic insistence on weaving literature into the scientific discussions of law and history, on the grounds that “the new countries, formed out of a combination of authentic elements and foreign tendencies, capital, and work force, must not forsake their origins [, ..] Therefore, they should be channeled and protected from utilitarian vulgarity, pursuing the ideal of art.” ® Finally, the modernist sensibility was present in the journal110. “Everything Unites Us" through the publication of poetry by members of the modernist movemerit such as José Marti, Leopoldo Diaz, José Santos Chocano, and others, or in the form of studies about them. Curiously enough, notwithstanding those identifying marks, Zeballos and his Revista, have been completely absent from scholarly discussions of modernismo and latinoamericanisino in. the discipline of literature, At the same time, historians of international relations, if they show any interest at all, have focused on Zeballos himself as a statesman and ideologue, rather than on the jouznal he published, although it has been recognized in passing as “the principle nucleus of Argentine nationalist and xenophobic think- ing during that period.”* This characterization suggests the centrality of the Revista de Derecho, Historia y Letras in Argentine intellectual history and highlights some ofits dominant ideational traits. Ie misses, nonetheless, other aspects, Afterall, as already noted, nationalism and internationalism, or transnationalism, were not mutually exclusive in periodicals of the time, Zeballos's Revista being a notable case. Nor did xenophobia preclude con~ tacts, cooperation, and identification between individuals, institutions, and governments of distinct Latin American countries. A RIOPLATENSE TRADITION OF TRANSNATIONAL SOUTH AMERICAN PERIODICALS Here itis worthwhile to shife attention away from the continental, literary context of modernismo, to the Argentine, or Rioplatense context. When placed in this setting, Zeballos’s journal can be seen as a continuation of several earlier trans-Spanisti American publishing projects, such as Vicente Quesada’s Revista del Parand (1861), Revista de Buenos Aires (1863-1871), and Nueva Revista de Buenos Aires (1881-1885), discussed in Chapter 2. ‘The first of the three has been considered ‘a true milestone in the intel- lectual and journalistic history of the River Plate, as well as a typical case of @ cultural integration project, both national and regional.” Moreover, Revista del Parand and its successor, Revista de Buenos Aires, kept true to their professed transnational mission, creating a whole network of the- matic and inter-personal relations on both regional and American scale with correspondents, contributors and distributors throughout Argentina and in the neighboring countries of Uruguay, Paragiay, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, Within this framework their explicit goal was to dedicate special attention to the River Plate region regardless of political boundaries. Another notable case in point is that of Vicente Quesada’ friend, Juana ‘Manuela Gorriti, who was born in Argentina but spent most of her adult life in Lima, leading a sich trans-Andean career as a writer of novels, short stories, poems and essays, founder and editor of periodicals, and organizer of veledas literarias (culeural salons), Heer writings appeared in newspapers and journals in Lima, Valparaiso (Revista de Sud-América), Parana (Revista“Bverything Unites Us” 111 del Parand), and Buenos Aires, a testimony to her interest in transnational stylistic and intellectual exchanges with writers throughout the Americas and Europe, but especially in Souther South America with her literary salon “reputed to have been the most dynamic sie of intellectual exchange in South Ametica in the nineteenth century." As Leona Martin has argued, Gorriti was a key figure in the construction a Pan-Hispanic women’s net- swork concerned with “gender issues, a clear awareness of their important role as nation builders, and a political stance that privileged international- sm and pan-Hispanic ideals.” The declared mission of the “international periodical” she founded in Buenos Aires in 1877, La Alborada del Plata, ‘was “to tie our literature to the literatures of the American republics, and propagate theit rapid progress." “These publishing projects and others that took place in Argentina between 1850 and 1880 impacted greatly the publishing scene of the following two decades by giving rise to a whole generation of writers who had developed transnational intelectual connections with counterparts across the conti nent through teavel, correspondence and exchange of literary products, The results became evident from the late 1890s onward, when it was normal for texts by Argentine intellectuals to appear on the pages of Mexican journals and for Buenos Aires newspapers and magazines to regularly publish the ‘writings of someone like Rubén Dario, which originated in different comers of America and Europe—a crisscrossing movement that went hand in hand with the appearance of “Latin American themes,” discussed simultaneously. across national borders, the most notable example perhaps being the Spanish- ‘Cuban-American wan DHL; NATIONALISM, TRANSNATIONALISM, AND INTERNATIONALISM ‘What is missing from this picture of Rioplatense or Argentine transnational publishing tradition is the Brazilian part, so central in the publishing proj- ects of the two Quesadas and Zeballos. By 1872, when he was only eighteen years old, Zeballos gave a public presentation at the University of Bue- nos Aires about “The Treaty of the Triple Alliance,” in which he attacked the behavior of the three allies and especially Brazil, a country that “had always planted more or less considerable evils."* Like Gorriti, Zeballos's intellectial trajectory also involved national border-crossings in the River Plate region. His interest in the Paraguayan War, and by extension in Bra- 2il, originated, according to his testimony many years later, in his expe ences during a journey to occupied and demolished Asuncién in 1869. This interest would lead him once again to Paraguay in 1888 in order to collect oral testimonies of war veterans as a basis for a historical study he had intended to write, but never completed, about the regional conflagration of 1865-1870."112. “Everything Unites Us" ‘Notwithstanding, there was another side to Zeballos's interest in Brazil ian matters, also revealed early on in his 1877 laudatory article about Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum in Anales de la Sociedad Ciemtifica Argentina, ‘as well as in his private and institutional correspondence with the museum's director Ladislau Netto and with other Brazilian men of stave and men of letters from the early 1880s onward. Yet the best evidence of this Argen- tine’s complex relationships with Brazil and Brazilians is to be found in the Revisia de Derecho, Historia y Letras, whose title does not refleet the heavy presence of international selations themes in its pages, or the transnational intellectual exchanges underlying their discussion. “Argentine diplomatic historians have debated Zebalios’s thought and action mainly within a national paradigm, arguing about the measure and nature of his nationalism, his ideological and emotional motives, and even tual contribution to Argentina’s standing in South America in particular and oon the continental arena at lacge. In conclusion, who emerges is an aggres- sive nationalist, a stcong believer in and promoter of imperialistic, social Darwinist, racist, and xenophobic attitudes toward Argentina’s two power- fal contenders, Chile and Brazil, and an ardent “antilatinoamericanista.”# However, a close reading and analysis of the Revista de Derecho, Historia 1y Letras ftom the perspective of entangled history combined with sensibili- ties of book history and commodity transfer discloses a truly integrationist, at once objective and subjective, enterprise that coexisted with the crude nationalism so strongly associated with Zebalios. And Brazil, along with Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, was a major component of that endeavor 'A good demonstration of this concurrence of nationalism and transna- tionalism is the journal's bibliography section, which had been published regularly since 1904, featuring book reviews from across Latin America, organized under national headings. Written mostly by Zeballos hirnself, they do not only tell the stozy of books in Spanish and Portuguese travelling from tzcross the continent—from Mexico and Colombia far north, to Chile, Uru- quay, and Brazil next door—to Buenos Aires, but also of personal contacts between authors, mutual intellectual interest, and a methodical production of shared knowledge. Thus for example, the review of Chilean writer, diplomat, and journalist Benjamin Vicufia Subercaseaux’s La cidad de las ciudades: (correspondencias de Paris)” (The city of all cities, letters from Pats), included, like many others, a reproduction of the dedication of the author to the reviewer, “the distinguished Argentine publicist and public man, don Estanislao Zeballos, in memory of the friendship he had with the father and which the son would courteously like to continue.” In continuation, Zeballos reminded his readers that the author was “heir to the name and pen” of his father Benjamin Vicuiia Mackenna—one of Chile's foremost writerstatesmen of the century—whose defeat as a presidential candidate had been a true loss for his country’s progress.” Clearly, turn-of-the-century intellectual sociabil- ity had roots in earlier times, a fact that the men involved did not fail to underline, consciously creating macto-regional genealogies of togetherness,“Everything Unites Us” 113 "These second-generation trans-Andean exchanges continued in the next volume of tae Revista de Derecho, Historia y Letras that featured a private- turned-public letter, sent by Zeballos to Subercaseaux, containing detailed comments about the same book, @ letter that the Chilean had published in one of Santiago's newspapers. “I read your book with the interest of some- ‘one who knows the subject matter,” wrote the Argentine. “By coincidence, I was in Paris for the second time in 1904, at exactly the same period as you.” As for the book's contents, Zeballos disagreed with Subercaseaux’s statement that Santiago had been destined to be “the Athens of South Amer- ica,” despite the brilliant furure awaiting her. At the most, it would be che Athens of the Bastern coast of the Pacific,”* ‘The mentioned European sojourns, and desires to remake Europe in America, or more precisely in “South America,” reinforce the point that Latin American creole intellectuals were moving along similar geographical and culeural paths, envisioning similar futures, at the same time that they ‘were competing for national preeminence and prestige. All this they did together, through dialogues that produced both sameness and otherness, concretizing regional spaces. The roads of national !maginings and national self-identification crossed the Atlantic, stretched along the two oceanic coasts of South America, and traversed its internal space, with books, literary journals, newspapers, and letters, moving along the way, inter-penetrating one another in such a way that problematized rigid distinctions between these supposedly separated mediums, ‘The intertwined, overlapping nature of the print media of the time is to be stressed since the Revista de Derecho, Historia y Letras has been usu- ally considered, in accordance with its statement of mission, « highly elitise periodical, featuring quality contents destined for a narrow public; “solemn, scholastic, orthodox, but infused with all the values of the intelligentsia,” it published “fundamental works” in its areas of expertise. Stil, “it did not transcend the narrow academic environment toward which it had been originally targeted."”? My argument, in this regatd, is not so much about the actual size of the direct readership of the journal as it is about its hav- ing formed an integral part of an evolving Latin American, and especially South American, cultural and “societal space,” constructed through vati- ‘ous means of communication—less and more popular in terms of content and distribution—that discussed international relations, both historical and contemporary on a daily basis in close connection with other spheres of life. Tt was not only the plethora of citations from the daily press within academic-style articles, or the bibliographical section with the abundant personal and institutional interrelationships enabling its production—and in turn reproduced by it—that incorporated Zeballos’s Revista into this regional matrix. There was also the Analecta section he authored regularly since the very first volume, reporting and commenting on ongoing cultural and diplomatic events, from the reform of Argentina’s universities, to a reunion of the University of Bueno Aires's Department of Lav an obituary114. “Everything Unites Us" toa Bolivian diplomat who hed served in the Argentine capital, to commer- cial relations between Brazil, the Unites States, and Argentina, to list some of the themes discussed in just one volume.”* The section in yet another volume discussed the poetic essays of “Mr. M. Magallanes Moure, of Santiago de Chile” a leceure at Instituto de la Asunci6n by “the well-known Paraguayan propagandist, Mz, Carlos Rey de Castro, former consul general in Buerios Aires,” on the occasion of the celebrations of the anniversary of Peru's inde- pendence; and, under the title “Chilean notes,” the recent complaints of the Santiago press over Chile's lack of access to Argentine territories it had been awarded in arbitration, and the fact that the Chilean press was the only one to criticize the Argentine attitude toward the Monroe Doctrine,” In addition, the journal published numerous biographical portraits and notes about men of state and men of leters from across Latin America, of greater and lesser renown, testimony to the expanding size of the cindad Tetrada and its communal self-celebratory practices. Commercial ads for fine wines, cigarettes, insurance companies, and bookshops, which helped Zobalios finance this independent venture of his, may also suggest a not- so-narrow readership, Finally, is should also be noted that the Revista was not only a port of entry and departure for texts shipped from and to other Latin American cities, but also sailed itself, Thus, one can find its volumes in the personal libraries of Zeballos’s Brazilian acquaintances Oliveira Lima and Rui Barbosa, with whom he maintained personal correspondence and ‘whose works he published.” A short, yet highly variegated, list of foreign subscribers from 1917, found in Zeballos’s personal archive, includes, among others, the foreign ministries of Colombia, San Salvador, Panama, and Uruguays individuals in faraway cities ike Managua and Pinca (Peru); and Brazil's National Library, as well as the Escola de Comércio Alvares Penteado in So Paulo.” Exactly how complete this list i, and to what extent it represents the number of subscrib- xs in previous years is not clear. In any case, whether thanks to their own subscriptions or by other means, Rio de Janeiro newspapers reported and commented on the contents of the Revista, including sometimes-translated citations of whole passages. For example, in 1903 Gazeta de Noticias reported the publication of a favorable review by “the well-known Argen- tine publicist” Estanislao Zeballos about Silvino Gurgel do Amatal’s Ertsaio sobre a vida é obras de Hugo de Groot (Grotius) (1903), citing; translating a couple of favorable paragraphs from Zeballos’s commentary, In this review, Zaballos observed that Gurgel do Amaral connected Grotius’s theory con- ceming the free navigation of rivers to the question of the secusity and integrity of nations, applying the discussion to the specific regional context of Brazil and its neighbors Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, with whom the same rivers were shared, Alongside this analysis, Zeballos was careful to mention that Gurgel do Amaral was serving at the Brazilian legation in Buenos Aires, a fact which indicates another route of material transfer and provides yet another illustration of the symbiotic relationships between“Everything Unites Us” 115 diplomacy, sociability, the periodical press, and the production of South American knowledge,” Ieems of similar character involving Brazil appeared in the Revista throughout its existence, but the year 1900 saw an exceptional concentra~ tion of them. In that year Rio de Janciro's O Pafs published a translation of a laudatory biographical sketch of Bocaitiva, written by Zeballos, one out of a rather heterogencous cluster of pieces on Brazilian themes published on the occasion of President Campos Sales’ visit to Buenos Aires, which took place in October The two volumes covering the second half of 1900—the second of them explicitly devoted to “Argentine-Brazilian brothethood”— included a fragment entitled “The Young Muse in Brazil,” from Argentine diplomat-intellectual Martin Garcia Mérou’s forthcoming book, E! Brasil intellectual (1900); two pocms by the late Emperor Dom Pedro Il, in Portu- guese; and another poem, also in the Portuguese original, by young poet and journalist Deodato Maia—all that in the realm of literature. Political, dip- omatic, and economic issues wore represented by a translation of an article from Washington, D.C.’s Evening Star about “Coffee in Brazil,” written in Siio Paulo by one Frank C. Carpenter; an article entitled “Brazil in the year 1900” featuring numerous statistics; a transcript of the official speeches of Presidents Roca and Campos Sales; and “Brasil-Bolivia. Justitia et Pace,” an article by former Foreign Minister and international law expert Cat» los Augusto de Carvalho discussing his deliberations with Peru and Bolivia over border questions. The texts by Deodato Maia, Dom Pedro Il, and Care Tos Augusto de Carvalho were accompanied with biographical sketches. In addition there were some other stand-alone biographical notes and essays, about General Manuel Luis Osério, “hero” of the Paraguayan Wars about the actual ministers of foreign affairs and navy who formed part of Campos Sales’s entourage; and about the Brazilian President himself." ‘The overall message thar emerged from the diverse assortment of texts that Zeballos selected, translated, and composed, as well asthe explicit judg- ments he put forth with regard to Campos Sales’ reciprocal visit to Buenos Aiea, stood in sharp conteast with his 1899 negative assessment of the politi- cal outcomes of Roca’s visit to Brazil (albeit not with the discursive elements and narrative steucture of the entire article of which they formed part), The best illustration of that is the hagiographic biographical note about Pedro Uthat weaved the Emperor into the historical fabric of Argentine-Brazilian relationships, “In this month, when Argentine minds and hearts go out to the neighboring, friendly people of Brazil,” wrote Zeballos, we shall not forget its former leader, under whose leadership the Empire—back then the “major military power of Latin America,”—intervened the River Plate, but never turned against Argentina, He was an ally who shared with us the ideal of “civilization and liberty.” Brazilian-Argentine friendship, accord- ing to this message, not only had deep historical roots but went beyond the ideological debates of monarchy versus republic, o central in earlier phases of South American international relations and national identity formation.116 “Everything Unites Us” “Peace and glory to Brazil! Peace and glory to the noble ally of the Argen- tine people in 1852 and 18651” sealed Zeballos.** “EVERYTHING UNITES US, NOTHING SEPARATES US!” In August 1910, a year after his previous visit to Rio de Janeiro, Roque Séenz Pefta arrived again in the Brazilian capital, this time as Argentina's president. As head of state, Sdenz Pefia pursued a foreign policy based on notions similar to those of Rio Branco. The encounter between them was also an encounter between two political-intellectual generations whole- heartedly committed to the task of state formation and national aggran- dizement, a task, which in their eyes, as well as the eyes of other leading statesmen on both sides, coincided with the construction of “a new political space,” or “a Rio de Janeiro-Buenos Aires axis,” of stability and moder- nity inthe Southern Atlantic. Brazilian-Argentine cooperation should have formed the basis of this regional project, which was also meant to counter the United States and establish a “dual hegemony” of the two nations over the continent." Consistent with this convergence of interests and ideas, the festivities that surrounded the visit were numerous, this time pouring out from close ‘chambers into the city’s public space, The popular illustrated magazine O ‘Malho participated in and joked at the excessive nature of the welcome with a cartoon describing the figure of the guest divided into pieces spread between numerous invitations to both indoor and outdoor events under the tile “conquering hearts.” The castoon’s caption bade farewell to the “great friend of Brazil, the sincere and amicable statesman who had launched in such @ spontaneous way the grand progressive project of reconciliation between the American republics.” Another part of the cartoon featured three statesmen, Brazil's Rio Branco in the middle holding hands with Sfenz Pefia on one side and Uruguay's Foreign Minister Antonio Bachini, with Estanislao Zeballos hanging from a rope tied around his neck at the margin of the drawing. As already mentioned, crude national hatreds and trium- phant international solidarity went hand in hand in the southwestern Atlan- tic of the period. Thanks to their great leadership, “The three American nations” who had nearly clashed with each other at one time due to the malignant bellicose influence of Zeballos ("influencia Zeballica”) were now “true friends,” explained the caption [see Figure 3.4]. © Malho's cartoonist thus translated into visual popular language the contents of Saenz Pefia’s speech delivered three days before over dinner at the Itamaraty—the same location as in the previous visit, and the same messages concerning “matters of continental polities,” as the speaker himself stressed at the outset of his address. The only thing that had changed from then to the present was his official position, with his convictions remaining “com- pletely unchanged.” It would be superfluous, then, to repeat the description