Argentinos lietuvių bendruomenės kultūrinės tapatybės konstravimas ir kaita XIX a. pabaigoje – XXI a. pradžioje

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to analyze the development (heretofore only episodically treated in the historiographical literature) of a Lithuanian cultural identity among the emigrants from Lithuania to Argentina, an analysis embracing the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In attempting to determine the extent to which Lithuanian cultural identity manifested itself, we review a rather broad spectrum of Lithuanian cultural activities, embracing organizations, parishes, schools, family life, newspapers, and so on. In addition, we offer a look at the broader context including the causes of Lithuanian emigration to Argentina and the financial, cultural, and social conditions prevailing in Argentina at that time as well as the ties maintained to the Lithuanian homeland. All this information is divided into four periods coinciding with the main flows of emigration from Lithuania. Delving into this rather specific topic revealed the paucity of information from historiography and relevant sources. This problem is especially acute for research on the period from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. However, it must be acknowledged that information-wise the later periods – the interwar years, the period from 1940 to 1990, and the period from 1990 – are problematic as well. Thus the goal of reconstructing the earlier cultural identity if Argentina’s Lithuanian community as well as the present one turned into a difficult challenge, which was largely met thanks only to a few concentrated historiographical publications, some periodical sources, and an interview with Alicija Anatalija Zdanevičiūte, a respondent of Lithuanian descent visiting Lithuania but living in Argentina.