Local Contexts and Transnational Influences: Antifascism and National Writers’ Associations in Argentina and Chile, 1930s–50s

This paper explores the involvement of the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (SADE, established in 1928) and the Sociedad de Escritores de Chile (SECH, established in 1931) with antifascism. Created with the purpose of defending the professional interests of writers, both associations eventually became actively involved with antifascism in relation to national and international processes connected to the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Cold War. In this process of politicization, each association’s trajectory was specifically shaped by each country’s context. In Argentina, SADE’s politicization unfolded over a period marked by military regimes, conservative fraudulent governments, and Juan Perón’s regime. In Chile, SECH’s politicization developed in the context of the governments of the Popular Front and the relative strength of leftist parties. In both cases, antifascism paved the way to conflicts among writers around communism in the 1950s in the context of the Cold War. Drawing on extensive research on both associations’ records as well as other primary and secondary sources, this paper seeks to illuminate convergences and differences in how similar associations engaged with antifascism, what it meant for them, and the conflicts that it generated. The paper will shed light on the political, ideological, and intellectual networks that connected writers at the national, regional, and broader international levels. Presented in this manner, this comparative analysis provides a new angle on the local and transnational frameworks for the antifascist struggle in the period 1930-1945 and its transition to Cold War-era divisions around liberalism, communism, and anti-communism.