ABSTRACT
This chapter examines notions of latinidad (latinità in Italian or “Latinness” in English) professed by Italian intellectuals and their collaborators in Montevideo during World War I and the immediate postwar period. It outlines the cultural activities hosted, institutional relations organized, and points of view held by some Italian, Uruguayan, and Spanish writers and civic leaders who emphasized their shared notions of origin, belonging, and cultural invention. The analysis centers on the Montevideo chapter of the Dante Alighieri Society and other institutions of Italian immigrant civil society that brought together prominent intellectuals who resided in or traveled through Uruguay's capital during and after the war. It demonstrates how these institutions and individuals conceived of a “Latin” collective that incorporated Italian, Uruguayan, and Spanish communities and cultures, in Montevideo and a wider transatlantic space that encompassed South America and Southern Europe. In doing so, this chapter argues, these actors attempted to reimagine notions of uruguayidad (or “Uruguayanness”) that incorporated Italian and Spanish immigrants and their children into national narratives. They also sought to reify connections and identifications within a “Latin Atlantic world” that diverged from other transnational cultural allegiances associated with Pan-Americanism or an Atlanticism rooted in the Anglophone North Atlantic.
