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

by J. A. Hammerton

There is everywhere in South America to-day an unmistakable reaching out for better things. Alongside the sheer brutality, unhappily still existing, the tender plant of intellectual culture has been growing, and with it true humanitarianism must make progress. It is, however, the defect of virtue ever to be less interesting than vice; not only in the Argentine, but also among ourselves, the baser elements of society have a knack of thrusting themselves in front of the worthier, so that the observer is liable to get his perspective askew. That is why it is easy to overestimate the importance of these baser elements of Argentine social life, though not to overdraw the picture of actual conditions. It may fairly be said that the baser elements of social life touch a higher percentage of the whole in the Latin-American civilisation of to-day than in that of Europe or North America, but that the more elevating factors are present and, if less in degree, are similar in kind to those of the older nations, and will eventually produce a worthy social system, in which intellectualism and humanitarianism will triumph over the brute forces of self-seeking and indifferentism. But the time is not yet.

The Argentine is credited with expending more on the education of its people than any other country in the world, with the exception of Australia, and if the truth must be told, it is not getting the best value for its expenditure. Since the days when Sarmiento,—who took part in the insurrection against the notorious Rosas in 1829, and some twenty years later had a hand in overthrowing that gaucho tyrant,—established in 1856, the first department of public education, the public schools of the Argentine have been regarded as one of the first considerations of every statesman. Sarmiento spent his life in the cause of education, which he had studied in the United States and in Europe before rising to power in his native land, and during his presidency he achieved great things in the founding of schools and colleges throughout the country.

A visitor to Buenos Ayres, and especially if he be one of official distinction in his own country, will be shown some most admirable educational institutions in the federal capital, and among these the splendid Colegio Sarmiento, which perpetuates the memory of the wisest and most humane of Argentine presidents. So far good, but he will not be told, especially if he be under official guidance, that probably the school teachers throughout the country are four, five, or six months in arrears with their salaries, the appropriation for public education having somehow fallen short of the requirements. Just as an immense amount of the corruption and criminality among the police is due directly to the infamously low rate of remuneration, which in 1912 was practically the same as it had been some fifteen or twenty years before, though the cost of living had meanwhile doubled, if not trebled, so is school-teaching rendered one of the most despicable of callings by reason of the shamefully low wages paid to those engaged in it. In a country where the commonest forms of manual labour are highly rewarded, the rank and file of teachers are not so well paid as they are in the United States or in England, and thus, in financial standing, fall into the meanest class of workers. Nay, it is by no means unusual for their wretched salaries to be as much as six months in arrears, and in any case the average teacher seldom has the satisfaction of handling his or her income, owing to a check system worked under the immediate auspices of the Educational Department itself.

The school teacher, being quite without resources and living from hand to mouth, wishes to buy, let us say, a sewing machine for his wife, or some household necessity. He obtains this on the instalment system, and the Educational Department becomes his fiador, or guarantor, for the transaction. It does more; it actually pays the instalments and marks them off against his salary! In such wise many teachers do all their shopping, even to the purchase of their eatables, and rarely have the satisfaction of handling their actual salaries. No wonder that the poor pedagogue, who ought to be the hope of his country, is more often despised and contemned for his inability to acquire money in a country where the possession of it is the sole measure of a man’s ability.

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there is a genuine desire for knowledge among the Argentine people to-day, a willingness to be instructed, only second to that of the North American, whose advanced ideals of education first fired Sarmiento to emulation. The works of an informative character sold in the bookshops would, I am confident, greatly outnumber those of light reading, were statistics available. There is throughout the Press the same evidence of a serious interest in subjects which in England would be considered “heavy” or “dull.” In a word, the good Argentine is a man very much in earnest, given to pondering the problems of life in the light of the best criticism he can find, and if he is still overshadowed by his worser compatriots, he is by no means a negligible quantity, nor is he rarely to be met with.

Suburban and Rural Roads in the Argentine.

The photograph on the left was taken in the suburb of Quilmes, and shows a typical suburban road in dry weather; that on the right, the main road through the town of Azul in the south of the Province of Buenos Ayres.

In many ways the country seems to be passing through much the same social development as the history of the United States presents, always remembering, however, that it is based on a civilisation that differs radically from the Anglo-Saxon. A further evidence of this is the extraordinary popularity of the lecture as an instrument of education. In the course of a single year, the procession of lecturers who invade Buenos Ayres assumes proportions that are almost comic. Not a week passes but the newspapers herald the coming of some European celebrity, whose portrait is published broadcast, whose life is written up in every journal, and whose lectures (for which a high fee is usually charged) are pretty sure to be well attended. The subjects on which these lecturers discourse are often of the most forbidding seriousness, and only people famishing for knowledge, or utterly at a loss otherwise to dispose of their time, could provide audiences for them. These conferencistas come indiscriminately from France, Spain, and Italy, the languages of these countries being so widely represented in the Argentine that a gathering capable of understanding any or all of them is not difficult to get together. Some of the lecturers are officially invited by the Government, who pay their fees and expenses, others—the majority—are quite as much interested in filling their pockets as in furthering the intellectual development of the Argentine, and very willingly invite themselves, any lecturer of the Latin race being a gifted self-advertiser. A good many ladies, chiefly Spanish novelists of reputation or political agitators, also grace the lecture platform in Buenos Ayres and the large provincial centres. A reception committee is usually formed to meet the distinguished visitor at the boat, and there is the usual banquete, with the equally inevitable copa de champaña, and the ubiquitous photographers from Caras y Caretas and the other pictorial papers.