Resumen

CARDOZO, Marina. You are the hero who will never die: The Unknown Soldier: politics and memory of the Great War in Italy. Av. Cesor [online]. 2018, vol.15, n.18, pp.83-107. ISSN 1514-3899.

The long anniversary of the Great War - which initiated in 2014 and continued until 2018 - has relaunched the myths created by the liberal regime, amplified by fascism and then preserved in democracy. This article deals with analyzing the construction of the figure of the Unknown Soldier in Italy, from his institution during the liberal regime until the advent of the democratic republic, after the end of fascism. The Unknown Soldier commemorations, organized in several nations participating in the war, consecrated a strategy of sacralization of the war, within the framework of an effective policy of memory redefinition. The Italian case is particularly important, because the ceremonies carry out during 1921 when the coffin of the Unknown Soldier was laid to rest in the Altare della Patria, in the center of Rome, coincided with the founding of the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Then Mussolini will complete the retroactive fascistization process of the war, with a constructing wave of memorials to the fallen and the building of huge ossuaries in the areas that had been scenes of battles. In the passage from dictatorship to democracy, the Unknown Soldier remained a reference element in official rites and in the collective imagination.

Palabras clave : Memory; Politics; Unknown Soldier; Italy; First World War.