The Social Evolution of the Argentine Republic

by Ernesto Quesada

Public life with its complex machinery of elections and governing bodies has been, so to say, delivered into the hands of a small group of men who at present are not productive of anything new in the general social situation of former times; that is to say, these men form a definite class, moved by the influence of this or that personality. Though it has suppressed the bloody characteristics of the previous period it has not relapsed into their heresies.

Little by little this shadow of the old system changes into that of the "boss" of the settlement and ward. The boss makes his business that of the mass of the voters, he stirs them up from their indifference, makes them go to the polls, deliberately falsifies public opinion, and so wins for himself a political managership, which gives him a marked influence in the back offices of officials and in the lobbies of legislatures. From such methods there spring no little censurable legislation of privilege and a great loss of contentment on the part of the people. When public spirit strengthens and shakes from itself the dust of inertia, and when the laboring classes have passed beyond that first stage of money grabbing, all the inhabitants of the nation will commence to busy themselves about the common weal. The thorn of the "boss" will prick them and they will then be able to form into political parties with unselfish programs and platforms. Every voter will cast his ballot to send to the legislature candidates who uphold the principles of his particular platform. As yet the people have not even reached the gateway to this goal. The past is still seen in full process of evolution and it is not easy to foresee the end.

This does not mean that the present moment of transition is valueless. On the contrary, it is of very great importance, because the social situation in the Argentine Republic is in process of making. The politicians, now that they look upon themselves as called to stand forth above the heads of the rest of the people, have to be real statesmen. In this historic period, such statesmen, have the personality of the chauffeur who directs one of those swift engines of our century upon its dizzy course, the mechanism of which is so sensitive to the controlling pressure of the hand that it can deftly avoid all accident or cause a catastrophe of fatal consequences. There is required in such a man extraordinary coolness, clearness of vision as to responsibility, perfect knowledge of the course to be run, besides ceaseless vigilance, iron nerve when the time of trial arrives and a complete concentration upon the task. The legitimate tasks of government, in this very grave period of Argentine evolution, require a special training on the part of public leaders. They must study thoroughly the problems of our social evolution, and they must form a clear idea of the necessary solutions. Towards this they must steer with undiverted eye. The necessity of further exploitation of our national resources, the successive expansion of enterprise over zone after zone of our territory, the assimilation of the foreign immigrants by the creole population, the slow formation of a national spirit in the new generation, all these monopolize for the present the national energies and prevent them from turning to other problems. The country is converted, as it were, into a giant boa constrictor. It is entirely given over to the task of converting its food into nourishment, of abstracting the juices from the hard and resisting substances, of passing a multitude of different elements through its living organs so that they may later form a new tissue, adapted to the present and future needs of the country.

From this point of view the present moment in the evolution of Argentine is of immense sociological interest. We are permitted to be present at the visible transmutation of a society, too weak even to direct itself, and absorbed in the fusion of different influences. The direction of this process has been handed over without counter-check to public men who are obliged to dictate and put into practice legislation and administrative rules of every kind, as though they enjoyed absolute power. Furthermore, by the very nature of things, the administrative functions in such periods have to discount the future and effect in the present a series of public works or social regulations which will weigh upon future generations not only from the point of view of the general finances but even from the point of view of national character. The national transformation of the land with ports, canals, railroads, telegraphs and every sort of means of communication, indeed, with every kind of public work, cannot be accomplished with present resources. A call must be made upon those of the future, by means of loans which will be a burden upon coming generations. If such a governmental policy is not accompanied by a skillful and prudent financial management, the burdens of our descendants will be considerably increased. They may even be committed to a policy that will cause eventual bankruptcy and an inevitable retrogression in the national development. The intellectual metamorphosis of the nation by a proper system of primary, secondary and higher education and by special schools of technical training, in order to form the national spirit of the future type of Argentine citizen, is certainly our most difficult governmental problem, because it is a question of molding the very soul of the nation. To teach different and contradictory systems, to do and then undo, each day changing the courses of study to successively adopt antagonistic standards and show a real lack of fixity in pedagogic methods, is to commit the greatest of all crimes, because it is not a crime against the exchequer of posterity but against its very soul. To accomplish a fusion of the currents of foreign immigration, to sort out the best from them, and to direct the formation of the new type which is being evolved, melting it in the crucible of the school, of the army, and of public life, is perhaps, to-day our task of transcendent difficulty. Such a problem is greater than that of directing the stream of foreign capital which, while fructifying the national soil, clings to it like the countless tentacles of a gigantic octopus and absorbs a great part—sometimes too great a part—of the riches produced only to transmit them through the arteries of the Republic, to foreign nations who employ it to their exclusive profit.

Perhaps no moment in the history of our nation requires a greater combination of qualifications in its public men. The student may contemplate this most interesting transformation, displayed before his eyes like the moving film of a gigantic cinematograph which permits him to grasp at once the different phases of the social problem which it presents. Rarely in the history of humanity has it been possible to contemplate a like spectacle. The United States presented it a half century ago, to the astonished gaze of men of that day who were but little familiar with social problems. The Argentine Republic is repeating now the same phenomenon, with this difference that it can observe itself and be guided by the experience acquired elsewhere. Other countries of the world, in the future will, no doubt, in their turn repeat a similar evolution, though perhaps in a different environment. But the interesting part of the present moment is that the Argentine Republic is sailing upon the same course in the twentieth century that the United States did in the nineteenth. Our evolution is proceeding with greater care because it is being worked out amid better conditions. We can now take advantage of the costly experience gained by our brothers of the north and so by avoiding many of their errors, seek to escape the shoals upon which they stranded and the mistakes which they involuntarily committed, even though we have in our turn special problems which they did not have. Thus the tremendous politico-social crisis of the North American War of Secession will not be repeated in the southern hemisphere and the Argentine social evolution will not have to solve the profound anthropological problem of the rivalry of races, which, in the United States, arises from the white, black and yellow races, living together side by side.

In Argentine there are no ethnic problems. The social antagonism raised by an arrogant plutocracy on the one hand and poverty stricken proletariat on the other, is not presented as an Argentine problem, because riches are still in process of formation there, and easily pass from one hand to another. A monopoly of riches cannot be prolonged beyond a single generation because with the system of compulsory division of descendants' estates, it soon returns to the common mass of the population. Social conditions in our evolution, present distinct problems from those which characterize other nations and demand, therefore, a direct study on the ground and must not be viewed through the doctrines developed in other nations and amid other conditions. The molding of the national spirit by uniform and compulsory schools and the slow adaptation of the mass of the immigrants to historical traditions and to future national aims, demand much time and they are now in the full process of being worked out. The celebration of the Centenary of our independence has made prominent the fact that such an evolution is much more advanced than one would think. There still remains, nevertheless, not a little to be done in this direction, though the national compulsory school system and the army conscription are factors of great importance which are working for fusion. But, in the country districts and in those places where the error has been committed of permitting the formation of settlements, homogeneous in race and religion, which regard themselves as autonomous offshoots of their mother country, resisting the Argentine school or any intermingling with the mass of neighboring population—in such districts, the fusion, though inevitable, will be necessarily slower.

All these sociological problems might and should have been exhaustively studied in the history of the United States during the nineteenth century, a history which, as I have said, the Argentine Republic is repeating in the twentieth. Foreign immigration at this time has no outlet more profitable than the River Plate. The doors of North America are gradually being closed, and the other regions do not yet present the same advantages as those offered by our country. The same thing that happens with the excess of population of other nations also occurs with its surplus capital; no other quarter of the globe offers better prospects for the investment of capital and for a greater rate of return. The "manifest destiny" of Argentine depends for the present entirely upon the development of its commercial relations with the rest of the world. It must convert itself into the granary and the meat market of Europe.

The closest bonds of mutual interest unite Argentina with Europe, because being producers of unlike commodities, the European markets consume our exportation and our markets consume theirs. With the rest of America our interchange of trade must be upon a smaller scale, because for more than a century to come we shall be countries producing similar commodities. Therefore, our respective markets will not reciprocally serve to buy the excess of production, but only that which by reason of climate or industrial development is to be found or manufactured in any other country than our own. This has happened to us notably in the case of the United States with its tremendous industrial expansion. In order to fulfill this "manifest destiny," we need pax multa with the whole world. We need to give attention exclusively to our development without intermeddling in that of others. In this is summed up everything. Hence our international policy has to be pacific and neutral; we must be every man's friend, and shun imperialistic fancies. The "splendid isolation" of England fits her condition and her inclination. We must work and we must be allowed to work. Our social evolution still requires a century to acquire a definite contour. Though results may be foreseen from their beginnings, it is not possible to foretell what will be the future Argentine type, physically, mentally or materially.

For the present, the only proper thing for us to do is to devote ourselves exclusively to the exploitation of our resources for we have seen how much effort will be required to assimulate our population, to form a national spirit, to build up a great future nation, to develop an administration which shall be a model of honesty and scientific preparation, and to adapt the republic to its future needs by public works and institutions, and by showing ourselves firm in faith and effective in works.

The present social tendencies in Argentine evolution give promise of a great future for the country. The nation is not hesitating or vacillating before the realization of its manifest destiny. It follows with profound interest the new and colossal social experiment, which is unfolding to the view of the world the different phases of the formation of a nation in whose development the shoals are being avoided where others were wrecked, and which is putting into practice the improvements suggested by the experience of the other nations in order to realize the new evolution easily, prudently, and successfully.