Kako smo postali Jugoslaveni: o etničkim/nacionalnim identitetima Hrvata u Čileu i Argentini za vrijeme Prvoga svjetskog rata
How We Became Yugoslavs: On Ethnic/National Identities of Croats in Chile and Argentina During WWI

Summary/Abstract: WWI and the events that ensued during and after the war had a strong impact on the immigrants’ collective identity. National self-determination of Croats in or outside of the Monarchy, on the trilateral foundation with The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy or in the association with the South Slavic nations, imposed themselves as the dominant national ideology in the homeland. The same political situation was also evident among the immigrant communities in Chile and Argentina. Events such as WWI changed the collective identity and strategies of the Croatian emigrants in Chile and Argentina, whereby a new national definition and South Slavic concept of a future state was promoted by the immigration press and emigrant associations. Consequently, the immigrant movement Yugoslav People’s Defence (JNO) in South America was established. Using the emigrant press as a source, in order to find the dominant discourse in shaping emigrants’ collective consciousness, in this paper we are trying to answer the questions of how the events in the homeland, WWI in particular, had affected the collective identity of immigrants in Chile and Argentina. The article analyzes the factors that contributed to the strong support and participation of immigrants in the Chile emigrant movement JNO (as opposed to immigrants in Argentina) as well as their role in creating the future state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia (SHS/Jugoslavija).

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