The scope of this study is both narrower and wider than is suggested by its title. It is narrower because it does not engage with the broader phenomenon of serialised radio drama during the infamous decade, but concentrates on three serials that, although highly successful in their days, do not reflect the full range of dramatic genres on the air. And rather than approaching these serials as broadcasts, it focuses primarily on their written content as provided in the surviving scripts. At the same time, this study goes well beyond radio drama in the 1930s and early 1940s. Lauren Rea, a literary scholar, subjects the three sets of texts to a narrative analysis that reaches back into time and deep into the nineteenth century. By means of a close reading of the scripts themselves and the literary and wider cultural traditions that informed them, she seeks to show that these programmes engaged in a long-standing and intricate debate about Argentine nationhood.
The first two chapters deal with Bajo la santa Federación: romances de la tiranía by Héctor Pedro Blomberg and Carlos Max Viale Paz. Broadcast over Jaime Yankelevich's LR3 radio station in 1933–4, this serial was set in the Rosas era and drew on the writings of Argentina's Generation of 1837 and particularly on José Mármol's Amalia. Chapter 1 revisits the representations of the Rosas regime as they evolved over time until the 1930s, when the ‘official’ (liberal) view of the past came under frontal attack from the historical revisionists. As is well known, the latter's reading of Rosas served to promote an authoritarian solution to the deepening crisis of liberalism in Argentina – a message, we might add, that found ready acceptance in some quarters, most notably among the military. Yet, the revisionist portrayal of Rosas made little headway. Revisionist intellectuals, it seems, were no match for Blomberg, Viale Paz and a host of copycat entrepreneurs who imitated their highly successful formula of mining the Rosas era for its thrill and romantic potential. In order to explain the attractiveness of this formula, Rea analyses the serial's plot devices and suggests that these appealed to a pre-existing understanding of the past. Argentine audiences had been exposed for quite some time and through a variety of media, including mass-produced folletines, to a set of ‘cultural markers’ (pp. 32–5) that clearly identified the regime as a tyranny. By reinforcing this view of the past, programmes such as Bajo la santa Federación ensured that Argentina's popular culture remained wedded to Rosas the tyrant.
Such differences in historical perspective, however, do not imply that the serial's projections of nationhood were wholly incompatible with those propagated by revisionist intellectuals. In chapter 2, Rea explores portrayals of the heroines of the Rosas regime and finds that these contain notions of womanhood that are rather similar: Blomberg, Viale Paz and the revisionists took inspiration from the same romantic sources (most notably in their characterisation of Manuela Rosas) and projected similar conservative views on women's duties as daughters, wives and mothers.
Questions of race and gender are prioritised in chapter 3, which deals with Juan Cuello: el romántico rebelde, written by Blomberg and broadcast over Radio Argentina in 1941. Patterned after a popular novela por entregas (serialised novel) published in 1880 by Eduardo Gutiérrez, this serial features a romantic hero who is a gaucho outlaw, not a refined lady in distress, which opens up different theatres of dramatic engagement. Rea revisits the portrayal of the gaucho over the course of the nineteenth century, his cultural rehabilitation and gradual consecration as a national symbol. She shows that Blomberg's Juan Cuello is very much a product of this rehabilitation process, as he fearlessly stands up against the oppressive regime and injustice in general while at the same pursuing numerous love interests. Whereas the gaucho is rehabilitated, however, indigenous Argentina is not. In both Gutiérrez's and Blomberg's renderings of the popular lore, the frontier where the Indians roam continues to be a barbarous and dangerous place. Forced to flee and live among the natives, Cuello soon loses his moral moorings and comes to naught. Black Argentines, as Rea shows, fare hardly better: Carpincho, Cuello's loyal sidekick in Blomberg's version, was designed to be an endearing character, but apart from providing comic relief, ‘el moreno de Juan’ (p. 86) serves primarily to highlight the superior qualities of his master. The female characters in this radio serial remain unexplored accessories, except for the woman who ultimately betrays the hero to the henchmen of the regime.
The third serial under scrutiny (in chapters 4 and 5) is José Andrés González Pulido's Chispazos de tradición (Sparks of Tradition, 1932–5). Again broadcast over Yankelevich's LR3, it was an instant success, to such an extent that it is said to have interfered with the daily routines of the porteños: Argentina's telephone company reported a marked reduction in the volume of calls during the early evening when the programme was on the air. Not surprisingly, given the fiercely competitive nature of Argentina's broadcasting system, Chispazos de tradición triggered a host of copycat shows. Contemporary critics were less impressed by (what Sintonía called) ‘González Pulido y Cía – Fábrica Nacional de Gauchos’ (p. 99). As the entrepreneurs of popular culture appropriated the gaucho in their folletines, sainetes, circo criollo and now in radio programmes, they helped to create a national symbol, but they often did so in ways that dismayed the lettered city, not least for the lingo they invented for their dialogues. González Pulido, a gallego producing criollismo among criollos, was an easy target for critics who liked to complain about popular culture's lack of authenticity and melodramatic excesses. Produced for a largely urban audience, which in a very few decades had been transformed by massive waves of immigration and socio-economic change but now faced a less promising future, Chispazos de tradición evoked a thoroughly nostalgic vision of the countryside of the pampas. This was presented as the real Argentina, where close-knit communities upheld national values. Although some of his characters seem like descendants of gauchesque literary characters straight from the nineteenth century, González Pulido's gauchismo refers rather to a state of the heart: the term ‘gaucho’ now refers to positive character traits such as generosity of spirit, and it is also used as a synonym for ‘criollo’. Rea shows how over time the cultural entrepreneurship of inmigrantes acriollados like González Pulido undermined the previous meanings of these terms, transforming them into a badge of honour that could be conferred even to recent immigrants. González Pulido's gauchismo thus calls for an inclusive Argentine identity, yet his inclusiveness is ultimately premised on a rather conservative vision that resembles the discourse on nationhood as promoted by the historical revisionists (p. 156): his characters inhabit the social world of the estancia, where everyone knows his or her place. Their melodramatic crises are plotted and resolved within the narrow confines of an authoritarian and strictly paternalistic order.
This study speaks primarily to literary scholars with an interest in the history of Argentina's intellectual traditions and popular culture. Readers interested in political history will regret that Rea does not relate her findings to the current scholarship on the cultural origins of Peronism. Although her study is obviously not concerned with the rise of the Peronist movement, the New Argentina would have provided an additional backdrop against which to display and discuss her findings on the peculiarities of nationhood as transmitted by mass culture.
