Abstract

PITA GONZALEZ, Alexandra. The ethnography and history Collection of America and ambassador Roberto Levillier in Mexico, 1934-1939. Hist. mex. [online]. 2019, vol.68, n.4, pp.1697-1742. ISSN 2448-6531.  https://doi.org/10.24201/hm.v68i4.3858.

In 1934, the Argentine diplomat and historian Roberto Levillier proposed that the League of Nations create an ethnography and history collection for the Americas that would focus on the 15th to 17th Centuries, which would be under the control of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. As Levillier was Argentina’s ambassador to Mexico in those years, the Mexican foreign service closely followed the progress of the proposed collection and the vicissitudes of its mentor, as they feared that his sharply Hispanist tone would prejudice the interpretation of the colonial past and that the Argentine’s statements to the press would harm the international image that the country was trying to project. This process has been reconstructed through detailed diplomatic documentation. Beyond the case in question, this allows us to understand the diplomatic tensions between Mexico and Argentina, both in their direct relations and through the League of Nations and the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. As this article shows, although this was an academic proposal, the arguments for and against were not connected to a debate within the discipline nor to the constitution of the history of the Americas as a line of research. Instead, there prevailed the political perspective and the interests of a diplomatic class concerned with the complex prewar environment in which actors attempted to simultaneously resolve national, regional and international issues.

Keywords : Roberto Levillier; Ethnography and History Collection of America; League of Nations; Committee on International Cooperation; Argentine Embassy in Mexico.

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