Penultimate and not copy-edited draft. Final version will appear in Alfred Betschart and Juliane Werner (Eds): Sartre and the International Impact of Existentialism, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-3-030-38482-1 A Brief History of the Reception of Sartre in Argentina Alan Patricio Savignano Abstract This chapter is a brief reconstruction of the reception of Jean-Paul Sartre’s work and thought in Argentina from 1930 to 1970. It shows the French writer and philosopher’s early and crucial role in the intellectual history of Argentina by displaying the major milestones of said process. Firstly, it deals with the process of the translation of several of Sartre’s short stories, articles and novels accomplished by literary journal Sur and publishing house Losada. Secondly, it goes over the rigorous academic studies of Being and Nothingness carried out during the 1950s by some members of the so-called ‘existentialist generation’ or ‘generation of 1925’ in the history of Argentinian philosophy, such as Carlos Astrada, Vicente Fatone, Miguel Ángel and Rafael Virasoro. Thirdly, it analyses the influence of Sartre and his magazine Les Temps modernes on the New Argentinian Left in the late 1950s and the 1960s, especially on the young intellectuals who were part of the magazine Contorno. Then, it addresses the impact of Sartre’s Marxist texts published in the 1960s in the philosophical and political debates between members of the New Left. Finally, it explains the decline of Sartre as an intellectual beacon in Argentina due to the rise of rival schools of thought (structuralism in particular), the deterioration of Sartre’s health and the beginning of political persecution and cultural censorship in Argentina because of the imposition of military dictatorships. Introduction Jean-Paul Sartre’s literature, philosophical system and political opinions reached Argentina very early and were crucial for the intellectual history of the country. By the end of the 1930s, Sartre’s short stories and his novel Nausea had arrived at the River Plate and the author was immediately lauded by some of the most important members of Sur (South), a very important Argentinian literary journal founded in 1931. That’s when Victoria Ocampo’s magazine decided to translate and publish Sartre in Spanish, lured by the excellence of his prose and his antifascist humanism during the post-War years. Around the same time, the publishing house Losada embarked on translating Sartre's books for similar reasons. Throughout the 1940s, in the philosophical academic field, a group of Argentinian professors associated with existentialism reviewed Being and Nothingness and judged its philosophical value. In the 1950s, Sartre’s presence in the Argentinian intelligentsia became ubiquitous. The emerging Argentinian New Left took Sartre as an intellectual beacon. In fact, the denouncer mentality of the magazine Contorno (Contour) was mostly based on the Sartrean theory of littérature engagée (committed literature). The existentialist and humanistic reading of Marxism proposed by Sartre in the late 1950s and early 1960s offered this young generation an interesting alternative to the antiquated and determinist version of the Communist orthodoxy, which was unable at that time to explain historical events like Stalinism, the Soviet intervention in Hungary and then in Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Revolution, and the independence struggles in Africa and Asia. On the other hand, in 1961 the preface of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth written by Sartre touched the Argentinian New Left’s nonconformist and revolutionary spirit, while also inspiring those who would later join rebel groups in favor of armed struggle.