Tradition and reaction in the sesquicentennial: The Sevillian school of Mendoza

Abstract

Research on the nationalism present in post- Peronism in Mendoza has allowed us to retrieve a number of intellectual itineraries that exemplify the complexity of a period in which the circulation and traffi c of ideas show not only strong identity mutation processes, but also the crystallization of undoubtedly anachronistic positions. In this article we aim to survey -in the context of the sesquicentennial of the May Revolution celebrations-, the important historical production that circulated in zones of wide diffusion, and which contributed to implant a powerful tradition that lasted for a considerable time in the local academic scene. Rather than explaining the impact that they had on the refraction of other schools of thought, interpretative theories that see May as a reaffi rmation of Spanishness and a negation of its emancipatory sense -as well as their authors' biographical trajectories- they reveal an intellectual sociability that under the rubric of nationalism, veiled many internal differences, just as they at the same time revealed strong connections with the Sevillian school of historiography, then an intellectual engine of Francoism and a buttress of the conservative, authoritarian Nationalist thought of the Nineteensixties.