The Aleph Historical Context

The Aleph Historical Context

Argentine Politics and Art

In 1940, Roman Castillo replaced President Roberto Ortiz. Like many Argentines at the time, Castillo admired Hitler and Mussolini; like many citizens of Germany and Italy, many Argentines yearned for the order that fascism would presumably impose on their nation; like many of their European counterparts, many Argentines lacked the foresight to see the eventual, bloody results of such political movements.

The tide of fascist sympathy in Castillo's administration was felt by Borges in 1942, when the National Commission for Culture did not award his collection The Garden of Forking Paths the National Prize for Literature on the grounds that Borges's work was too "English"—a suggestion by the NCC that indirectly (but clearly) condemned Borges as one sympathetic to the Allied cause (which he was). Borges's indignant friends devoted a special issue of the influential journal Sur to what they saw as a clear example of a government attempting...
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