Still, the chivalrous and courteous Argentine to be found to-day not only in the National Senate (and in the Presidential chair), but also in the maize fields and sugar plantations of the far Western and Northern Provinces cannot be overlooked either as very important prime material for the coming race or as possessing many qualities the dilution of which can only be viewed with a sincere, if partly sentimental, regret.
Are you a travelling stranger? The gaucho will offer you of the very best his humble ranch affords with the same native charm and dignity of manner which will strike you on your arrival and welcome on the estancia of his ancestral overlord.
There are still corners of Argentina where the patriarchal system has not yet died out, where every peon and vaquero considers himself a child of the great house whose señora sees to the creature comforts and small luxuries of his wife and children on feast-days and in the time of need.
No stately old-world courtesy could ever have surpassed that of an Argentine host of the old school. Truly, on his estancia, all is yours, and he will frequently make you a daily offering of fruit, chosen by him, picked with his own hand, especially and exclusively for you, his guest. The aristocratic Argentine of the old school is a very dignified gentleman indeed, notwithstanding a century of democratic profession. I say “profession,” for though I believe the leading families of the Republic are quite sincere in a conviction that they rank among the world’s most advanced democrats, the government of the country has remained almost exclusively in their truly patrician hands since the days of the Declaration of Independence. What may happen in the present newly commenced era of compulsory exercise of a universal franchise no one can well say, but most of the landed influence still belongs to the great historic Argentine families; who, moreover, form a caste which keeps even the plutocracy of more recently foreign origin at a quite respectful distance. It will be a long time, at any rate, before the prestige of these families ceases to make its influence felt in the capital as well as in the districts over which they have ruled for, practically, at least a century. The apparent familiarity which exists between them and their dependants or humbler provincial neighbours is the outcome of the loyal affection which at one time existed in England between squire and farmer or villager. A feeling born of and sustained by the patriarchal system and very widely different to the “I am as good as you are” pretensions of new democracy.
The true Argentine, be he patrician, estanciero or gaucho peon is never boorish even when he seeks to pick a quarrel with studied insult; and if his humour and language would, at times, severely shock European ears polite, he is studiously careful to keep that sort of talk for the intimacy of his own household and associates. If you are admitted to that intimacy, well, so much the worse for you, if you are of a prudish disposition, but you can console yourself that your privilege is a very special and rare one; bestowed on you by virtue of some exceptionally sympathetic quality with which your host’s kindly imagination has endowed you. He is a kindly, charitable man, the real Argentine: an odd mixture of infantile vanity and strong common sense, hospitable to anyone arriving at his house through force of circumstance or if he can find a reasonable excuse to himself for breaking through the rule of almost hareem-like privacy of his home and intimate family affairs. Courteous himself, he expects courtesy, and will not brook clumsiness of speech or manner. Leisurely in his ways, he will not be hustled over any business. Try to hurry him, and he not only resents your lack of good manners but also suspects that you are endeavouring to lead him into some kind of sharp-dealing trap. Anyway, he not only will not budge an inch from his own deliberate attitude but most probably will oppose the inertia of a closed front door to all your further endeavours to approach him. This Argentine characteristic is a rock on which many a Yankee hustler has seen his best thought-out propositions founder.
In any business or other intercourse with a true Argentine you must not expect him to keep verbally made appointments nor to apologize subsequently for not having done so. Usually you need not trouble to keep them yourself. Whatever you have in hand with him will prosper better and progress just as, or even more, quickly if you are content to take the matter up where you left it at your last interview, the next time you happen to meet him by chance at any at all convenient place or time. Do not talk him to death about it, he is very quick at understanding your wishes and proposed plans from the merest hint. If not, he will ask you very plain questions.
But he must conduct the negotiations, he must clothe your ideas until they bear a respectable appearance of being of his own originating. That is his vanity; but only then may you venture to strip them of certain new features which on close examination will be seen to be more favourable to his interests than your own.
During the changes which your propositions will inevitably undergo in the course of negotiations, he may, if you are not careful, get the better of you in the deal. That also is his vanity; a vanity to guard against without ever committing the solecism of a too bluntly apparent discovery of his aim. If he finds you always politely firm as a gentleman should be, you will have gained his friendship and respect—often valuable assets even if your original business should not go through.
In a word, in Argentina, as elsewhere, one must respect the native customs and conventionalities unless one wishes to encounter opposition. And the vis inertia of the opposition which an Argentine can and does offer to persons and ideas with which he is out of sympathy is invincible.
Such persons or schemes will be remitted by him to a “Mañana” which never comes.