Stivaloni, camicia nera e orbace. Italiani a Villa Regina (Patagonia).

Villa Regina is the most Italian among the cities in Patagonia., Located at the entrance of the Rio Negro Upper Valley (Argentina), it was founded in 1924 by Italian settlers as a «business center» of the ciac (Italo-Argentine Society of Colonization). Considered a fascist model of planned emigration, before the so-called «Cities of the Duce», for about twenty years it was dominated by an élite wearing the fascist black shirt, acting in perfect fascist style, as if they were still in a lictorial «enclave». In this paper, based on unpublished archival documents, testimonies, and rich media sources, the author documents how and how much the political genetic imprinting influenced and conditioned the new community in terms of political, social and cultural rights. Finally it investigates what was left of the original fascist model in Villa Regina, where, incidentally, many settlers also professed socialist, communist and anti-fascist ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]