The celebration of the 100th anniversary of Argentina’s emancipation from Spain (the Centenario, or Centenary) was a cultural milestone. Social and cultural organizations as well as individuals joined the state in its efforts to commemorate the event by planning public festivities, inviting foreign dignitaries and intellectuals, as well as commissioning projects of urban reform, artworks, and book collections. This chapter examines how occasional literature addressed this pivotal moment in Argentina’s history as established and emerging writers discussed the country’s past and future. It discusses how Leopoldo Lugones’ Odas seculares, Alberto Gerchunoff’s The Jewish Gauchos, Ada María Elflein’s Del Pasado as well as nationalist book collections discussed the country’s cultural traditions vis-à-vis the arrival of millions of immigrants, the introduction of electoral reforms, and the emergence of a dissident form of political, social and cultural engagement. While the occasional literature produced in the year 1910 conveys a sense of optimism about Argentina’s historical ascent as a one of the world’s wealthiest nations, the political and cultural challenges resulting from the continuous flow of foreigners and the expansion of democratic participation after 1910 contributed to darken the triumphant mood that permeated the anniversary.

This chapter proposes a reading of Argentine-Jewish literature that stresses key moments of production. It begins with a focus on Alberto Gerchunoff´s The Jewish Gauchos as the foundational text (and of modern Jewish literature in Spanish) and the moment of massive immigration. Gerchunoff is read alongside Borges, who is treated as a contrapunctual figure, a canonical writer who engages with transnational Jewish literatures and draws strategies from Jewish reading and writing to devise his own literary models.  The second part examines the impact of the Shoah on Argentine Jewish literature of the 1950s and 1960s focusing on playwright Germán Rozenmacher and in the world of Yiddish and Ladino publishing. Tamara Kamenszain is subsequently described as an author that espouses “reluctant belonging,” someone who has engaged with different subjects and different styles but never ventures very far away from Jewishness. The third part treats the use of the Holocaust metaphorically to discuss state terrorism in the works of Reina Roffé and Sergio Chejfec. It concludes with a reflection on contemporary writing and the variety of literary genres.