Narrativas de Italianidade: fascismo e construção simbólica da comunidade italiana no Rio Grande do Sul

The article is based on a factual assumption: the program to spread the fascist political project within the Italian immigrant community in Rio Grande do Sul failed. The activities of the main fascio di combattimento in the Italian “colonial” zone were severely hampered by Vargas’s nationalization policies, especially beginning in 1938. In any case, the ideological force that took shape in the second half of the 1920s and the early 1930s was rooted in the overlap between fascism and Italian identity. In this regard, the central objective of this article is to analyze this shared vision among the local elite of the Italian Colonization Region (RCI) in the Serra Gaúcha, the propagandists of fascism—some of whom were directly linked to the movement—based on the relationship that was taking shape between Italy’s rising power, its new place in international society, and the rise of fascism. For a region that was beginning to reap the benefits of 50 years of migration in 1925, the creation of a new, positive representation of the land of departure—or the ancestral homeland—served to “explain” the pioneers’ achievements as part of the legacy of the Italian people. Without denying the effort to spread the fascist movement in the Serra Gaúcha through the establishment of the Caxias do Sul section of the Fascio di Combattimento, this study seeks to emphasize the cultural aspects involved in the embrace of this new political era in Italy—given its concrete implications—through the prism of conservative Catholicism and the image of the Italian nation as a powerful force.