Mapas alternativos: virtudes y contradicciones del regionalismo en Luz de las crueles provincias de Héctor Tizón

Abstract

In the Nineteenth Century Argentinean national identity was built over the legal formation created by the liberal project that organized the politic, social and cultural life during this period. After 1920, this selective process (through which they decided what remained inside or outside the Nation) modified its structure mainly due to the massive European migration that reallocated social practices and cultural spaces. The Nation also changes, and the map, designed with certain power relations between center and periphery in mind, requires another configuration. The conception of cultural tradition as a rigid and static norm becomes a dynamic and more flexible notion that allows us to understand Nation as a heterogeneous construction that shares the same changed stages as the reality that supports it. This article examines the novel Luz de las crueles provincias by Héctor Tizón that describes life complexity in another country and portrays the reconstruction of the immigrants identity in their journey from the modern European city to the rural Argentinean countryside.