"Recording the war effort. Immigrant communities in Latin America and the memory of the Great War"

MARÍA INÉS TATO

Melbourne

Congreso; X Conference of the International Society for First World Studies. Recording, Narrating and Archiving the First World War; 2018

During the First World War, the belligerent states mobilised their societies for totalwar. The call to the home front also included the citizens residing overseas, showing the global and transnational character of the conflict. Those migrants - despite the distance - responded on a great scale to their government's military and economic requests. In the aftermath of the war, most of these communities devoted themselves to recording their contribution to theirhomeland's war effort, registering the participation of reservists andvolunteer soldiers, the shipment of donations, the subscription of war loans,the development of propaganda activities, the implementation of economicwarfare, and the cooperation with local groups that supported the cause of their states and with other immigrants, amongother tasks.This paper aims to analyse the initiatives undertaken by some immigrant communities residing in Latin America to record their mobilisation around the First World War. In the first years after the armistice, the leaders of European communities installed in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Perú, and Uruguay undertook the task of gathering detailed information about their activities displayed during the conflict. The results of that recording effort took the shape of books of remembrance and/or charity books profusely illustrated, offered to their governments as proof of their loyalty. The paper also intends to examine the meaning of those initiatives regarding the building of a community memory of the war, which used to emphasise the strong connections with the homeland and to downplay the internal tensions around the war mobilisation.