Irradiation, destiny and prophecy: The image of Bahía Blanca as cultural center of the Patagonia (Argentina, 1940–1970)

Abstract

Self-appointed as “gate and port of southern Argentina”, the projection of Bahia Blanca to Patagonia has built a sort of common place which, though incontestable for its inhabitants, demands analysis of its ideological sense. While the notion finds its earliest antecedents in the nineteenth-century observations on her alleged central role in the austral region, it was during the middle years of the last century that its political, economic and cultural dimensions became more complex based on specific plannings and practices. In this paper we intend to account for the cultural and symbolic aspects that this idea took during the mid twentieth century and the role of the figure of Domingo Pronsato in it, for which we will examine debates put forward about the ways of producing understanding and knowledge that would legitimate local actions on the Patagonian territory. In this way, we will try to account for how the process of gestation and construction of the Universidad Nacional del Sur (1956) intertwined with these discussions, with the ambitions of the local bourgeoisie and its strategies for the symbolic validation of them and with the political and ideological dynamics in which the region in question was immersed.

Keywords: Bahía Blanca, Patagonia, cultural history, Domingo Pronsato, university.