CHAPTER XIV
“THE BRITISH COLONY” AND ITS WAYS
All the different nationalities represented in the population of the Argentine are known as “colonies,” excepting the Spaniards and Italians, who are at once so numerous and so involved in the life of the country that it is scarcely possible to think of them merely as colonial groups. The Republic, with a total population of seven and a half-millions, contains vast numbers of Italians and Spaniards, but reliable returns as to the various nationalities included in the population are difficult to come by, if not impossible to secure. It is stated that there are upwards of 800,000 Spaniards in the country, while the Basques, both French and Spanish, are said to exceed a quarter of a million; the Germans number nearly 50,000, the total of German speaking persons, which includes Germans, Austrians, and Swiss, being upwards of 120,000. The British residents throughout the Republic probably do not total 40,000, but that is thought a fair estimate. As for Italians, their name is legion. In Buenos Ayres alone there are some 350,000 of them. But all figures must be regarded as approximate only, as the re-emigration movement is considerable. For example: in the year 1911 the total immigration into the Republic was 225,772, but the emigration from it amounted to 120,709, leaving an immigration balance of 105,063. Race statistics are easily obtained as to the incoming population, but of the settled residents and those who leave the country, there is a good deal that is speculative in all estimates, official and otherwise.
The Spaniards and Italians are split up into many subsections, such as the Basques, Asturians, Andalusians, Neapolitans, Tuscans, Lombards, Sicilians, and so forth. It would thus be correct to talk of “the Asturian colony,” but scarcely so of “the Spanish colony”; of the Neapolitan colony, but not of the Italian.
To a remarkable degree do these communities preserve their racial distinctions, as I have already explained, this applying more particularly to the cosmopolitan centres of population, such as Buenos Ayres, Rosario, La Plata, and Mendoza. In the smaller country towns, where the nationalities thin out, there are not the same inducements to maintain distinctions of race; thus, paradoxical though it may seem, the process of “Argentinising” the Gringo proceeds apace more rapidly in the Camp than in the larger towns, or even in Buenos Ayres, which might be thought the hottest part of the “melting pot.”
Naturally, the capital contains the major portion of the British colony, yet, not even the ubiquitous Italian, though always overwhelming the British in sheer numbers, finds his way to remoter parts, for everywhere throughout the vast territory of the Republic the British have penetrated, either as lonely overseers or “construction engineers,” in little groups as prosperous estancieros, or managers of divers concerns. In Rosario there is a very considerable colony of them, in Bahía Blanca, in Junin, Mendoza, Tucumán—wherever there are banks to be managed, railways to be maintained, machinery to be sold, there you will find the enterprising sons of Albion busy, and usually prosperous; though it must be confessed that the figure I have just used may not quite apply, as the most familiar names borne by these self-exiles from Britain are Scots and Irish.
In many respects, the Irish Argentine was one of my most interesting studies. As a journalist, it was something of a revelation to find two comparatively prosperous weekly newspapers, the Southern Cross and the Hiberno-Argentine Review, both printed in English and very much alive, dedicated exclusively to the interests of the Irish Catholic families of the country. The Irishman is well-known for the part he has played in the development of South America. In that wonderful statesman and governor, Ambrosio O’Higgins, and his no less brilliant son Bernardo, the liberator and first President of Chili, did not Ould Ireland give to South America two of the noblest men of action whose lives illumine its history? In the Argentine also, the Hibernian has played no mean rôle in the development of the young nation. His influence in her counsels to-day is considerable. Prepared as one may be by previous reading to discover him prominent in its life, it is none the less strange to meet eminent men of business, in every fibre of their being fervid Argentines,—using the Argentine tongue with all the nuances of the native,—who speak our own language with the most pronounced Irish brogue.
Comparatively few of these Irish Argentines, moreover, have ever crossed the seas to the green isle of their ancestors. Almost without exception they are bitterly anti-English in sentiment. Originally sprung from the lower class Irish peasantry, to whom the miserable conditions of emigrant life in the Argentine, a generation or two back, were far less forbidding than to the average British emigrant, the dress-suit and silk-stockinged stage of luxury attained by the many who have gathered a bit of fortune from the generous soil, is to them a satisfaction that might not appeal so strongly to the classes which England and Scotland are pouring into Canada at the present time. His religion also fitting in with that of the country is another factor that has helped to make the Irishman at home in the Argentine.
Under the British Treaty with the Argentine, the children born in the country of British parents occupy a somewhat curious position as regards nationality. While their parents remain British subjects, unless—and this rarely indeed—they deliberately renounce their birthright to become nationalised Argentines, children born in the country are reckoned as Argentines and amenable to the laws of the Republic so long as they continue to live therein, but they become British subjects on entering British territory. Thus, the native son of British parents must conform to the law of military service, while the native-born daughter ranks with all other Argentine women in her disabilities as to the personal control of her property in the event of her marrying in that country. Yet, on going to London, that son and daughter cease, for the time being, to be Argentine subjects, so far as British law is concerned, and are there accepted as native-born Britishers.