The real Argentine: Notes and Impressions of a Year in the Argentine and Uruguay

by J. A. Hammerton

The lax organisation of the police is largely to blame for the lack of social sweetness throughout the Argentine. The officials of the force embrace every type of mankind from honest devoted servants of the public to the lowest of “grafters” and murderers. They are constantly swaying between excess of zeal and absolute indifference, or active participation in criminality. Here is a typical case as reported in the daily press:

The Buenos Ayres 17th police have been accused of a serious abuse of authority. According to the accusers, a young couple engaged to be married were arrested in the Plaza Francia because they were seated on a bench talking. Conveyed to the comisaría, the two prisoners were confined in separate rooms, and one of the two police officials, it is alleged, assaulted the young woman in a most cowardly and repulsive manner. The case has been referred to the Chief of Police.

That is all I ever heard of the matter. Almost daily all sorts of police scandals come to light in the press, show their ugly heads for a moment, as it were, then slip out of sight, “no more being heard of the matter.”

A similar case to that just quoted came to my knowledge, in which two Gringos figured unhappily. A young lady arrived from England to marry her sweetheart, who was employed in Buenos Ayres. On the second night of her arrival, they strolled to the Plaza San Martín, and, forgetful of the strange amenities of local society, behaved in the “spoony” fashion of a loving couple in a London park. They were promptly arrested and passed the rest of the night in prison. The creature who would arrest them might be a half-breed Indian, himself capable of any crime, but not understanding that Gringos are accustomed to do their love-making in the open!

Quaintly enough, the police are often the ravishers of helpless women. Once during our stay a young woman was forcibly taken by two men in a taxicab to the woods at Palermo and there criminally assaulted by them, while a vigilante “kept the coast clear.” The men then decamped, and the zealous agent of Argentine law himself committed a further criminal assault on the unfortunate woman. The police have even been known—though this predated our stay in the town—to seize a woman in the street, conduct her to a house and assault her!

With the police as active agents in wrong-doing, the social life of the country could not be other than it is. Nay, when one has listened to many stories of official turpitude, the surprise is that so much approximating to modern civilised conditions should be able to survive in the Argentine. Although probably more in place in my chapter on the Emigrants, I am tempted to relate here, for the lurid light it throws on certain sections of Argentine society, one of several stories told to me by an Italian doctor, who had practised for some twelve years, first in a provincial town and afterwards in the Federal capital.

A countryman of his came to the Argentine, with his young wife and infant daughter. In Italy he had been a small market-gardener, and in the new Land of Promise he started in a humble way as a cultivator of potatoes and vegetables near a country town some thirty-five miles from Buenos Ayres. Modest prosperity attended his efforts, and in their rudely built and sparely furnished little rancho, the couple lived happily and contentedly with their little daughter. Some years of increasing prosperity passed in this way, and the Italian was able to acquire a little more land. Meanwhile, a slight friendship had sprung up between him and the local comisario, who, in riding past, would occasionally dismount and enter the rancho, or take a seat in the shade of the rude verandah, to share a bottle of wine with the Italian and his wife. Indeed, the story as told to me by the doctor, with the warm, imaginative touch which the Italian imports from his native tongue into the Spanish, was quite idyllic up to this point, but here enters the element of tragedy.

It so happened that the young wife, her husband’s junior by some eight or ten years, was even more beautiful than the average woman of her class, admittedly the most beautiful of peasant women. At first the Italian was flattered by the friendship of the police officer, whose good-will it was desirable to retain, if all sorts of oppressive restrictions hampering the development of the ranchero’s work were to be avoided—but later, he began to wonder whether this friendship sprang entirely from good feeling towards himself, or whether the comisario was casting an envious eye upon the young wife. Suddenly awakened to the possibilities of this, and being, in common with most of his race, a man of passionate nature, the Italian forthwith determined to remove from the district to some place where he hoped his wife might be free from any possible persecution and he from being tempted to the usual extreme of the Italian husband whose honour has been assailed.

Selling his plots and belongings for much less than he might have secured had he cared to wait a favourable offer, he removed some forty miles away, leaving no clue as to his address. In this new locality he acquired a similar piece of land, set about the erection of a new rancho and the preparation of his soil. Here he opined his wife would at least be safe from the attentions of the official, and he determined he would exercise greater care in preventing the comisario of the new district from setting eyes on her, for he had now realised, what all his countrymen in the Argentine come speedily to understand, that a good-looking wife is one of the most dangerous possessions an emigrant can take with him to the new land. Quietly the couple went about their business for a time, the wife actively assisting in the work of the little farm. The shadow of the evil comisario seemed to have passed. But it was not so. Annoyed at being baulked of his prey, that ruffian had carefully followed up the disappearance of the Italian couple and traced them to their new place of abode. This he managed by the simple process of sending out an official description to all the surrounding comisarías, describing the couple and asking for news of them to be forwarded to him, as though they were fugitives from justice! And so it happened that, after a few more months of peaceful industry, the Italian was horrified one day to see his wife’s persecutor riding down the main street of the town, in company with the local chief of police. Scenting evil afoot, he hastened home to warn his wife, and make preparations for eventualities.

That very evening the comisario, accompanied by a local vigilante, called at the house and demanded admission, declaring they held an order for the arrest of the Italian. The latter’s response was to discharge a revolver point blank at the police agent, whom he grievously wounded,—the officer keeping out of range. The latter then withdrew, only to return with two more agents, and several roughs from a neighbouring café. Acting on his instructions, the gang attacked the house, the two vigilantes being killed by the Italian before he was overpowered and bound to the rough wooden posts of the inner wall. The comisario and the scoundrels who accompanied him now criminally assaulted the young wife and daughter before the eyes of the helpless man, and eventually left, carrying away with them the mother and child, only when the outraged husband seemed to have been rendered raving mad.