The Establishment of the Argentine European Reception Agency (SARE) formalized a system for receiving European fugitives in Argentina. Founded in June 1948 through a network of European collaborators and Argentine officials, the agency could process residence applications; its institutional form gave organized migration a bureaucratic channel, connecting private networks to the Argentine state.

Background and Political Sponsorship

SARE arose from contacts between European representatives and Argentina’s political leadership. The novel places its creation within a broader effort to receive politically defined immigrants, with President Juan Perón personally involved in shaping the proposal for a reserved official body. The agency’s origins therefore lay not only in private escape assistance but in political sponsorship that could convert such assistance into an administrative process.

Founding and Organization

On 28 June 1948, SARE’s governing committee met at the home of Radu Ghenea to sign the agency’s statutes. Pierre Daye, who had designed the organization, attended with René Lagrou as representatives of the Belgian exile community. Ghenea represented the Romanians. Other participants represented people fleeing from multiple countries, including Germany, Austria, France, Slovakia, Italy, and Croatia; among them was Ferenc Luttor, a Hungarian diplomat to the Vatican who had escaped in 1947 using a Vatican passport.

The founding meeting gave the organization a multinational character and a concrete governing structure. Soon afterward, Pablo Diana, director general of migration, officially recognized SARE’s authority to accept and manage applications for residence in Argentina. The archbishopric of Buenos Aires provided a building on Canning Street for its headquarters. These steps moved SARE from a committee and a set of statutes to a recognized body with a place to receive and handle requests.

Work Beyond Argentina

SARE’s work extended beyond applicants already in Argentina. A letter from Daye dated 25 February 1948 asked Víctor de la Serna to prepare lists, organized by nationality, of political refugees in Spain and to identify those most urgently in need of rescue. Daye stressed that the refugees would not need to make requests themselves: his group would arrange the necessary procedures. The proposed lists made SARE’s reach transnational, tying the agency’s Argentine destination to the identification and selection of refugees still in Spain.

The network’s activity was already under way by the time its premises were secured. The narrative’s description of the machinery as having started and operating urgently underscores the difference between the date of formal establishment and the development of the system around it: the statutes and headquarters consolidated an effort already in motion.

Historical and Narrative Significance

SARE represents the institutional side of postwar flight: personal contacts, political influence, national representatives, and migration administration converged in a system that could manage arrivals. The wider narrative situates this machinery against the later Argentine dictatorship, whose terror began with mass illegal arrests on the night of 24 March 1976 and drove thousands to seek a way out of the country. That later history is distinct from SARE’s founding, but the juxtaposition makes exile appear as a recurring condition shaped by political power, borders, and the institutions that determine who can find refuge.