JUJUY
Jujuy has its very special interest for the Anglo-Saxon race, since it affords, in the history of the Leach family, a striking example of the colonizing enterprise and patience of that race.
Look at the position of Jujuy on the map and imagine what colonizing must have been like in the middle of last century when the brothers Leach first settled in what has since become a Province, but then was a wild district inhabited by native Indians.
One of the brothers, especially, Mr. Walter Leach, seems to have exercised a peculiar and highly beneficial influence over these people, and managed to introduce ideas of industry and gradual civilization to tribes whose former lives had been mostly occupied with warfare one with another.
Now we may almost say that “Leach” is synonymous with “Jujuy” and vice versa, and enterprises initiated by this family now embrace all branches of industry of which the Province is yet capable, including large sugar plantations and machinery. Now, the National Central Northern Argentine Railway connects Jujuy with the outer world, but before its advent it was indeed a far-off land to be reached only after many weeks’ arduous journeying. Jujuy is the most distant and, after Tucumán, the smallest Province of the Republic.
It is bounded on the North and North-West by Bolivia, on the West by the National Territory of Los Andes and on the South and East by the Province of Salta.
Jujuy produces not inconsiderable quantities of wheat, maize, barley and alfalfa and, as has been said, sugar.
In the North it has a number of salt lakes, which are exploited commercially, as also are some deposits of borax.
The climate of Jujuy is very varied, according to altitude, but in general is much more temperate than the actual latitude of the Province would lead one to suppose. There is always a considerable rainfall during hot weather. Its chief river is the Rio Grande de Humahuaca, a tributary of the Bermejo, which coming from the North curves in a semicircle through the Central and South-Eastern parts of the Province.
Jujuy, with its broken surface, claims rivalry with Tucumán as the most picturesque of the Argentine Provinces. In some of its southern districts the vegetation is tropical. In the North-West there is a high tableland much of which is dry and practically desert, interspersed with fertile valleys.
In the South of the Province the population is of mixed racial origin with a very large element of native Indian blood. In the North it is practically pure Indian. The native Humahuaca dialect is preponderant everywhere, even in Spanish as spoken there. In the North there is little or no pretension to speak anything but Humahuaca.
The Capital, however, the City of Jujuy, was, strangely enough, the first Argentine town to have its streets paved. It was the scene of the assassination of General Lavalle, one of the heroes of the Wars of Independence, and possesses the original flag of General Belgrano, the blue and white chosen by him for the nascent Republic, and ever since retained by it. Later the National Colours and those of Uruguay (a slightly different arrangement of the same blue and white) were officially emblazoned with the golden “Sun of May”; the 25th of May, 1810, being the date of the Declaration of Independence from the rule of Spain.
As has been mentioned above, most of such prosperity as Jujuy as yet possesses is due to the patient energy of the Leach family. Such administrative and fiscal discredit as attaches to the Province is, on the other hand, due to the native element among its politicians. These evils inevitably must soon be swept away by the advance of civilized ideas and necessity for better management by public authority. The mass of the population will, no doubt, continue to live in its own long-accustomed primitive fashion.
It hardly contains the racial elements of rapid advance towards a much higher civilization.
Future immigration must be relied on to do much to develop Jujuy’s natural resources.
At present a certain amount of rather primitive, and some contraband, export and import trade is done with Bolivia in the Northern parts of the Province.
Jujuy is poor in Live Stock even of the native kinds.