Nationalism has played a uniquely powerful role in Argentine history, in large part due to the rise and enduring strength of two variants of anti-liberal nationalist thought: one left-wing and identifying with the “people,” and the other right-wing and identifying with Argentina’s Catholic heritage. Although embracing very different political programs, the leaders of these two forms of nationalism shared the belief that the country’s nineteenth-century liberal elites had betrayed the country by seeking to impose an alien ideology at odds with the supposedly true nature of the Argentine people. The result, in their view, was an ongoing conflict between the “false Argentina” of the liberals and the “authentic” or real nation of true Argentines. Despite their commonalities, scholarship has yet to pay significant attention to the interconnections between these two variants of Argentine nationalism. "Identity and Nationalism in Modern Argentina" fills this gap.
