Two Anarchist Cultural Agents Forging the Twentieth-Century Uruguayan Cultural Field: Publishing as Soft Power

Abstract

This chapter seeks to explore a phenomenon within Uruguayan culture throughthe lens of soft power, as defined by Joseph Nye (1990, 2021). Orsini Bertani andBenito Milla were anarchist cultural agents who operated in Uruguay’s literaryfield at two key moments in the twentieth century. Both men were foreign toUruguay, and both exerted their influence over local culture for a certain timeperiod after having engaged with politics and culture in other countries. Asanarchists, they participated in politics through their actions and words. In Ur-uguay, where they were not involved indirect military action, they took onplenty of critical work as agents, booksellers, publishers, printers, and maga-zine editors. This cultural work is what I’m interested in investigating throughthe notion of soft power. By analysing archive materials that allow us to ad-dress two specific life episodes in which the oscillation between hard and softpower is especially evident, I conclude that the latter concept is befitting whenconsidering anarchist cultural internationalism, as embodied through thesetwo agents who transited the local cultural field.