World War I Reportages: The Dispatches of Roberto J. Payró during the German Invasion of Belgium

Abstract

By 1907, when leaving for Spain with his family, Roberto J. Payró was already a consecrated literary figure in Argentine. After atwo-year stay in the city of Barcelona, Payró decided to settle with his family in Belgium, as the correspondent of La Nación, one of the most important newspapers in the city of Buenos Aires. Based in Brussels since 1909, Payró was the only Argentine correspondent who spent four years of the Great War in Belgium. During the first months of the war he will plunge into the frantic writing of journals, features and correspondences that, with some difficulty, will get to Buenos Aires where they will see the light in the pages of La Nación.Payro´s chronicles, published in this newspaper, are of particularly rich in information considering the news about the beginnings of the Great War provided by the locals newspapers came mostly from European news agencies,such as Reuters andHavas, from the scarce foreign newspapers that arrived by mail to the editors of the Argentine newspapers and from travelersreturning from Europe after the outbreak of war. No doubt, this is why, Payro´s chronicles constitute one of the most documented sources about the violation of Belgian neutrality and the most systematic denunciation of the abuses committed by the German army that can be found in the pages of the periodical press of Buenos Aires. However, this important role as a journalist has been much less analyzed in comparison with the large amount of research devoted to his work as a writer linked to the literary realism in Argentina. Although they are aimed at the reader of a neutral country, therefore outside the gross militarization of culture that arose among the belligerents, Payró behaves as cultural mediator between the Belgianworld occupied by the Germans and Buenos Aires public opinion, broadcasting a series of images and representations ofthe "German atrocities" which had a major influence in the local press. Located in the framework of cultural meanings that contributed to the shaping of a particular imagination about the "German atrocities" in Belgium, Payró had access to various European sources ―especially, Belgian and Dutch newspapers but also postcards and posters of propaganda― that provided him a set of meanings about the referred atrocities which is not explicitly mentioned. The aim of this paper is to analyze, from the perspective of cultural history of the press, the variety of problems underwent by an Argentine when, located in the theater of operations, he tries to decipher the new reality of the Great War through the images and representations drawn by European intellectuals ― oriented by the drive to legitimize and justify the war efforts―, and write a series of chronicles for the neutral public of Argentina. With this objective in mind, this article will offer a general characterization of Payró´s chronicles about the unfolding of the German invasion and occupation of Belgium focusing images and representations deployed by the author. But, the analysis of Payró´s writings allows revealing some particulars of his prose beyond the images and representations of the "German atrocities". First, the texts produced during the Germanoccupation of Belgium allow to relatives the author´s perception of journalism and literature as two irreconcilable activities, a conflict that haunted him throughout his intellectual journey. For in his chronicles ofthe Great War, Payró stands on an eclectic narrative thread in which he combines his status as a journalist and reporter with a textual gesture that evokes that of a classical intellectual whose autonomy in thefield allows him to intervene in the public sphere to denounce the abuses of the invader. Second, the representations set forth on the "German atrocities" in Belgium allow not only to give an account of the ideological universe and cultural climate that marked the early months of the Great War in Europe but also to perceive a self-referential perspective on the cultural horizon of the observer in which it can be detected cultural values, political viewsand elements of the historical memory ofcountry of origin. That skewed look between Belgium and Argentina is a recurring feature of chronicles written during the occupation of Brussels. Thus, the Payro?s writings are embedded in a much broader question of national identity that was one of the prominent reactions between different alignments of the Buenos Aires press before the start of the Great War. Finally, although closely related to the above mentioned, this article will seek to demonstrate that as long as the Great War begins to be perceived as a civilization breakdown it will emerge the questioning and uncertainty on about national identities and their fate in the new post-war scenario. With this purpose, we will focus on the chronicles that are written in the heat of the early months ofthe Great War and are published in the Buenos Aires between September 1914 and September 1915; period in which Payró´s activism came to the attention of the German authorities in Belgium, unleashingrepressive a barrage against which resulted in several raids of his house, the requisition of manuscripts, his submission to interrogation and imposing strictmonitoring conditions. The proposed text to incorporate in thisarticle is the chronicle ?Dos representantes argentinos muertos en la guerra?, dated in Amsterdam on 20 October, 1914 and published in La Nación on 17 November 1914. In it, Payró denounces the shooting the Argentine vice-consul in Dinant, Remy Himmer and the death of Chancellor of the Argentineconsulate general in the city of Antwerp, Julio Lemaire. The relevance of this article lays in the immediate impact it had: it resulted in various demonstrations of the public opinion of Buenos Aires, whose most radical pro-allied sector demanded the conservative government of Victorino de la Plaza Argentina´s entry into the war and deserved the comments of the local and international press.