Viaje deportivo, nación y territorio. El Automóvil Club Argentino y los orígenes del Turismo Carretera. Argentina, 1924-1938.

• Main Author: Melina Piglia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherches sur les Mondes Américains 2008-09-01
• Series: Nuevo mundo - Mundos Nuevos
• Subjects: Argentina; automobilism; races; roads; sport history; territory formation
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/40923

This work focuses on a modality of motor sports in Latina America, in the period between World Wars in Argentina, paying special attention to the processes of territory formation and national identity construction. We are interested in studying the origins of TC through the analysis of Great Prizes, long distance races (between 1500 and 7000 km) in non-closed regular road circuits, organized by the most important automobile association of Latin America: the Argentine Automobile Club (AAC). In the 1930s these races reached their climax at the top of the “national championship”; they also turned out to be very important in the construction of the institutional strength of the AAC, helping the club in gaining virtual control over motor sports, and becoming the “speaker” of car owners before the State and the public opinion. Road races in the 1920s and 1930s inaugurated and promoted circuits and roads, involving material and symbolic interventions that actually built “places”, starting with the roads themselves. Finally, by putting in circulation images of distant national landscapes, and presenting the car racers as models of Argentine virtues, these races played a key role in the process of integration of the national territory and in the production of national identity.