Celluloid Gauchos and Tangos: Buenos Aires as the Cultural Capital of South America in the 1930s and 1940s

In the 1930s and 1940s, Buenos Aires was recognized as the capital of South American cinema largely due to the Argentine film industry's production of hundreds of commercial films and the ability to distribute these films throughout Latin America. My paper explores the understanding of Buenos Aires as a cultural capital in a transnational context by examining the Argentine film industry's reception across national borders. Drawing on Argentine, Chilean, Uruguayan and North American sources, I argue that it is possible to evaluate the international reputation of Buenos Aires's cultural marketplace in relation to the hegemonic presence of Hollywood within Latin America. The golden age of the Argentine film industry was a thoroughly transnational construction where performers and directors from Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay often measured their successes by their ability to succeed in Buenos Aires. Specific forms of mass culture like the tango and social realistic narratives inspired by life in cities and the countryside of Argentina and Uruguay found their most lasting resonance in Argentine cinema. Nevertheless, the overwhelming reception of Hollywood films in Argentina as well as Chile and Uruguay during the 1930s and 1940s also reflected the challenges for Buenos Aires's film industry to compete with Hollywood. This paper shows how Buenos Aires benefited from its unique place as a cultural capital in South America and how Argentine mass culture shaped the wide-reaching tastes for global cinema in film audiences in the major cities of the Southern Cone.