Populate the border: Misiones and the presence of Swiss in the National Territory (1881-1920)

Abstract

In spite of the fact that the great majority of the Swiss, who settled down in Misiones, did this between 1920 and 1939, our attention is focused on those ones who did it in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first ones of the twentieth century. During that period, the National Territory received several people from the European country. Among them stood out Eugenio Lagier, Francisco Machon, Julio Ulyses Martin and Moises Bertoni. The relationship of these immigrants with Misiones land responded to diverse factors, and to identify them is the mainly objective of the present work. Consequently, the analysis of memories and letters written by those who participated in this process and the use of semi-structured interviews will reveal the objectives and interests that prompted them to emigrate. Although the trajectory of this group has gone almost unnoticed by the specialized literature on migration, we propose as an hypothesis, that this analysis is significant, in at least two ways: on one hand, in the identification of possible scenarios for the development of an immigration project for Swiss community in Argentina; and on the other hand, it helped in the formation of a network of relationships, which served for the people who arrived later, in a more organized way to Misiones.