Argentine letters in the nineteenth century: ‘gentleman’ and ‘professional’ writers

In artistic matters, absolute beginnings are extremely rare: we find instead continuities and breaks with the past. Sur was always very conscious of historical precedent and saw its own development as part of the Great Tradition of Argentine liberalism, which had been expressed, in its purest form, by the ‘generations’ of 1837 and 1880. Even though, as will be argued below, the magazine arose out of the specific cultural and social conditions of the early 1930s, its significance cannot be understood without reference to the formative years of Argentine history. For Victoria Ocampo, there was only one history in Argentina, that which had been forged by her family and friends, and which had to be defended against the mass movements of fascism and communism spawned by the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The most significant historical reference point for the magazine was the life and work of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. In an issue devoted to Sarmiento in 1938, Ocampo included a photograph of that great liberal patriarch which had been dedicated to one of her ancestors, also called Victoria Ocampo. Sarmiento was one of the family, and his classic statement on the need for Argentine development, Facundo: civilización y barbarie (1845), was a model for Sur's later enterprise.