Commemorations, celebrations and performances

This book deals with a complex phenomenon in 20th century Argentine history: the commemorations surrounding the centennial celebrations of the May Revolution in 1910 and the Declaration of Independence in 1916. A period chronicle by Jules Huret (French visitor in 1910) and the news, covers and materials from the magazine Caras y Caretas (1898-1939), one of the periodicals characterized by its political humor, one of the longest-running publications of Argentine printed cultural production, have been used to outline the representations that local elites sought to project.It also stops to reflect on the otherness seen from the power and the needs of the local elites to homogenize in the political and economic project of a prosperous and booming Argentina, which conceived Buenos Aires as the Paris of Latin America. The civilization/barbarism dichotomy underlies and persists, even to this day, although the "other" changes, it is always necessary to build a representation of rhetorical, political and visual alternation.