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

by J. A. Hammerton

But many British workpeople are there under conditions very different from those of the other emigrants. They are chiefly railway engineers, employed as foremen or as expert workers in the great workshops of the different railway companies, or as locomotive drivers. Their conditions of life, although I fail to see wherein they are greatly superior to those obtaining in their native land among their class, having regard to the different purchasing value of the wages earned, are at least made agreeable by association with fellow-workers of their own race, and the possibility of saving more money than they would be likely to do at home. For example, where a working man in England might be able to save £20 ($100) per year, he can at least contrive to save the same relative proportion from his wages in the Argentine, and as his wages will not be less than double, and perhaps two and a half times what they would have been in England, by the same ratio may his savings be increased. These workmen have also security of employment, and, in fine, must not be confounded with the emigrant class. They find grievances, none the less, and even went on strike in the year 1911.

A Modern “Estancia” Homestead built of Concrete.

Owing to the little communities in which they live being almost entirely British, they do not assimilate with the natives, and few of them, even after many years in the country, have picked up more than some odd words of the language. A friend of mine, who was rather shaky in his Spanish, was waylaid at a railway station in the interior and wished to have a train stopped at a point along the line where there was no station, to enable him to reach a certain estancia. He managed to explain this in Spanish to the station-master, but the latter was unable to interpret it to the engine-driver, who turned out to be English and did not know a word of what he called “their blooming lingo!” These sturdy and skilled artisans naturally do not count in the British Colony of Buenos Ayres, and most of them live in the railway centres of the provinces, and come only occasionally to the capital for a trip.

What must strike the British visitor in Buenos Ayres with a curious air of home is the railway bookstall at Retiro, Once, or at Constitución. The former looks as familiar as a London suburban bookstall, with all sorts of English periodicals, from the Strand Magazine to Comic Cuts, bundles of “sixpenny” and “sevenpenny” novels, The Times, weekly edition, Lloyds’ News, and many another familiar title, though the prices charged are naturally two or three times those printed on the periodicals. These are evidence of the large English community residing in the various suburbs served from the stations named. The English bookshops in the heart of the city are also well-known centres, being entirely patronised by the “colony,” but the English grocers drive a large business with the native population, and employ many assistants who only speak Spanish. Still, British housewives have no need to acquire the language, as they may transact all their business in their native tongue, and it is no rare thing to meet a lady who in twenty years of Buenos Ayres has not even got to know the Spanish names of the common objects of the dinner table. In the provinces, however, most foreign lady residents have to acquire at least a smattering of the native lingo.

A further element in the “colony” may be described as the floating population of British visitors who make periodical journeys to the Argentine in pursuit of business. The stay-at-home has no faint notion of the extraordinary trafficking of his race in foreign parts. Veritable battalions of commercial travellers representing British houses visit the Argentine each year, staying from two to six months at a time, and the hotels are always sheltering Englishmen who seem to have nothing to do beyond taking their meals and playing billiards for weeks on end, but who are really waiting the signing-up of contracts. One gentleman I knew had put in nearly nine months of this strenuous work, and eventually left in despair. The contract for which he had been waiting so long was fixed up about three weeks afterwards, and went to a German firm whose representative had perhaps been more patient in waiting, or more liberal (or more discreet) in his bestowal of backsheesh.

Those visitors whose stays are short do not fare badly in the Argentine capital, and as a rule retain rather pleasant memories of the place, although not a few with whom I conversed really dreaded the necessity of having to return, as they found time hang so heavily on their hands. Then there comes occasionally one of the scribbling fraternity, who fixes a little round of engagements, hurries to see the sights of the place, and flits away again to entertain a public quite as well-informed as he or she may be by the little that he or she has seen in the few days’ stay. I spent some time with an American correspondent, who did not know a word either of French or Spanish, and yet had the fortitude to contribute a series of articles to one of the local papers, giving his valuable impressions of a country and a people into whose mind he was not able even to peep. His articles, of course, were written in English and translated into Spanish, and were published with great fanfarronada, although his literary reputation was unknown even to me, whose business it has been for many years to keep in touch with literary reputations on both sides of the Atlantic.

The regulation course for the “globe-trotter” who flits through the Argentine for a week or so, to write a book thereon, is to motor round the various public buildings, interview a few of the official heads, endeavouring, if possible, to have a talk with the President,—a comparatively easy matter in all South American Republics, the President being sort of ex-officio Chief of Publicity,—engineer an invitation to a model estancia to stay overnight, and an interview with a reporter from the Standard to announce the gestation of the great work that will later see the light in London or New York. The usual practice of the more or less distinguished visitor is to deliver himself of the most fulsome flattery of all that he has seen, and to lay on the butter with a trowel. To this rule there are occasional exceptions, and I gather that the Princess of Pless, who paid Buenos Ayres a visit in August of 1913, when I was staying in Chili, was one of these exceptions. The Buenos Ayres correspondent of La Union of Santiago sent to his paper an amusing little article on the Princess, which I think worthy of translating, as it will make an acceptable tailpiece to this chapter. He wrote:

She has gone! A wandering star, seeking a constellation wherein she may shine with due refulgence and without suffering eclipse from other stars of greater brilliance. She had a glimpse of the Argentine in her dreams as the ideal land of aristocracy by having read in the “British Cyclopædia” (sic) that in this country there are no titles of nobility other than those of the wash-tub.

Yesterday she stated in one of her farewell confidences: “I go away horribly disappointed! Not a sauvage (sic), not a tiger, not a Paraguayan crocodile!”