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

by J. A. Hammerton

Returning to the Argentine at home, we have to consider for a moment that patriarchal system of living, to which I have already made reference as one of the legacies of the remote past. Formerly universal in Spain, had it not existed in the mother country before the colonising days, it would almost certainly have been forced upon the colonial pioneers. For protection against the marauding Indians, the colonists, even for many years after gaining their national independence in 1810, had to maintain themselves in closely banded communities. Even so recently as the year 1860, the now thriving city and port of Bahía Blanca, which may yet rival Buenos Ayres as a great centre of shipping, was no more than a military outpost to keep the Indians from penetrating too near the townships in the province of Buenos Ayres. Thus we might have attributed to the influence of environment the system of one family with all its connections, interested in the work of a large estancia, as extensive, perhaps, as an English county, living together under the one paternal roof, did we not know that it has a remoter origin. Now that the conditions which justified it have entirely passed away, its true origin is not only forgotten, but would probably be denied by those who observe the custom, which survives in the very heart of the metropolis, and among the best families of the land. I remember well how impressed we were with some of the private palaces in Buenos Ayres, many of which rival in size and architectural ostentation the great public buildings. It was a matter for wonder how any ordinary family could tenant a house large enough to serve as the town hall of an important city. But all was made clear when we knew that in many of these private palaces there was not merely one solitary family nestling away in some corner of the huge building, but probably anything from six to a dozen related families, living under one roof, so that I used to think of the head of the family in Gilbertian rhyme, abiding in peace, not only with wife and children, but with

His sisters and his cousins,

Whom he reckons up by dozens,

And his aunts!

To Britishers especially, it is a surprising fact that there are brethren in the world who can dwell together in harmony, to whom propinquity does not lead to family bickerings. That would be notoriously impossible in Great Britain, and I suspect equally so among the Anglo-Saxons of America. Our nature prompts to the independent life and an early good-bye to the parental roof. Surely, then, there must be something radically different in the Argentine character which can enable half a dozen or more interrelated families to live harmoniously in the same house. Of course, each family unit has its own particular quarters, and in some of the more stately residences each family is really self-contained as to its house accommodation, but more usually they will have common dining-rooms and sitting-rooms, the women folk passing practically all their time in each other’s company. As a people they must either be abnormally good-natured, family affection must be developed beyond anything familiar among us, or their racial inclination to indolence makes them so tolerant of one another that they do not have the spirit to quarrel. I suspect that something of all three, interacting on their lives, makes possible the existence of this unusual condition of happy family life.

The system is one that has much to be said for it, and fostering, as it does, an intense feeling of family pride, which is reflected in the patriotism of the country, it must be regarded as a valuable asset of national character. If it happens that any member of the composite family meets with misfortune, he can be sure of the immediate sympathy and practical help of his relatives within the domestic circle, for they would deem it an indignity that one of their family should be known to be in difficulties. If one of the married sons dies, leaving a widow with several children, there will never be a moment’s doubt as to what the widow will do. She will continue in precisely the same position within the family, and even if her husband has left no money at all, his brothers will consider it their bounden duty to maintain her and her children in the same comfort as her husband would have done. Nor is there any charity in this, as there would be with us. It is a natural concomitant of the family system. What we should consider generosity, the Argentine brother-in-law regards as a simple duty, and there is hardly a limit to what he will do in the shape of service to the family of his dead brother.

In this connection, I recall a very interesting illustration of the racial differences between Argentine and English. An English settler in Buenos Ayres had five daughters born there, four of whom married British residents or the children of British residents. The one exception married an Argentine gentleman, and so narrowly British were her relatives that at first they looked with disfavour on the match. After some years, the English husband of one of the daughters died, leaving her with four children and an empty purse, having wasted all his wife’s patrimony in foolish speculation—there is no Married Women’s Property Act, the husband becoming sole arbiter of his wife’s fortune! Her English brothers-in-law and her own sisters were more or less sympathetic, but the despised Argentine brother-in-law immediately made a home for her and her children with his own family, and, as one of her relatives told me, seemed to think he was only doing his bare duty. This is a very pleasant trait of character, and from all that I was able to gather it is entirely characteristic of the better-class Argentine. Certainly, wherever I found that British women had married natives, they had good reason for happiness, and too often were able to commiserate with their own sisters and women friends who had married Englishmen.

Another noteworthy resultant of the strength of the family bond is its influence for good on the men. In a country where, thanks to the cosmopolitan rabble of rogues and tricksters who swarm in every quarter, dishonesty abounds in all its guises, the temptations to most men are greater than in the older and more firmly established countries of the world. Pride of family very often keeps a man in the straight path. It is a little reminiscent of the ancient system of the Japanese, which involved the entire family in the disgrace and punishment of any one member who transgressed the laws of honour. The strongest deterrent to one tempted towards a wrong course is not what the community at large will think of him, but how his action will embarrass and humiliate his whole family. And when a member of one of these composite family circles is guilty of embezzlement or any misdeed which can be rectified by the self-sacrifice of the others, the matter seldom reaches the public; his father and his brothers and other relatives willingly make good his defalcations. Quite a number of cases of this kind came to my personal knowledge, and I believe it is a fact that the law has seldom to be appealed to when any one has suffered a loss through an employee, or a partner who is “well connected.” For this reason, astute business men are always careful to inquire into the family connections of any person with whom they purpose having transactions, these connections being their best guarantee. It will usually be found that the most barefaced swindlers are either foreigners, or of foreign parentage, and not seldom have they a good deal of British blood in their veins.

A “Ramada,” or Shaded Resting-place for Men and Horses in the Argentine “Camp.”