Trade, race and culture: Mussolini’s Italy, Latin America and Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Abstract

The political, economic and cultural relationship of Italy with Mexico and the Ibero-American countries from 1920 to 1940 is inevitably linked to the turn-of-the-century crisis and the emergence of totalitarian practices that shaped the 20th-century political culture. In this context, Mussolini’s authoritarian construction not only guided the commercial and cultural strategies and exchanges with the Ibero-American nations, but it also constituted a model of political thought that, in many ways, influenced their political culture. This trend deeply permeated the political imaginary in Mexico and in the Spanish-Lusitanian nations, and it can be traced up to this day. This essay addresses the phenomenon by exploring the strategic articulation of three specific elements: Italy’s commercial approach based on its diaspora in the region, the rescue of common historical and cultural ties and the vindication of a so-called racial community that would find unity for its diversity in a Latinity supposedly originated in imperial Rome.