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

by J. A. Hammerton

This is the attitude of the average Argentine, so that the Italian labourer who has had to move about the country in quest of employment comes to know the Republic better than its natural citizens, while the European engineers, commercial travellers, and business men in general, can tell the Argentine native a great deal more about his country from personal observation than he himself is ever like to know. He has heard so much about it, too, from foreign writers, and he is so frequently treated to the dazzling products of the National Department of Statistics, that he is given to take its wonders for granted and leave it to others to perform the task of personal inspection. Myself, I had planned to go as far afield as Tucumán, merely to have a glimpse of the sugar cane and orange-growing district, so different in character and climate from the agricultural regions of the Centre and the South, but being assured by three different gentlemen who had their business headquarters in that thriving city of the North that half a day would be ample in which to exhaust its interests, while the journey thither and back again would consume some four or five days, I decided to range myself with the native, and take Tucumán for granted. But opportunity serving, during my stay, to visit a number of provincial centres between the River Plate and the Andes, I shall now set down a few recollections of some of these visits.

A very acute American gentleman of my acquaintance, carrying on an important export business with South America, disputed an assertion of mine, based entirely on something that I had read years before, that the city of La Plata in the province of Buenos Ayres was a more important centre of population than Bahía Blanca, the rising southern port of the province. He was perfectly satisfied that I was in error, and even went so far as to doubt the very existence of such a city, suggesting that I was confusing it with the fashionable holiday resort on the Atlantic seaboard, Mar del Plata. That a town of fully 100,000 inhabitants could exist anywhere near Buenos Ayres and on the very banks of the River Plate seemed to him impossible, especially as he had just returned from a business visit to the country. This I mention merely as a passing illustration of the lack of knowledge among even the most intelligent people as to the topography of the Argentine.

Not only was I confident of the existence of La Plata, concerning whose famous museum I had frequently read, but it was one of the cities I intended to give myself the pleasure of visiting. So, one fine day I hied me hither, forty minutes from Plaza Constitucion. This is one of the pleasantest little train journeys in the province, passing through some of the oldest settled country, where woods and water combine to form many a little landscape like the reproduction of some old-world scene.

La Plata is essentially a thing of the New World. It is not a town that has grown. It has been made, or, more correctly, it has been nearly made, and stopped short temporarily for lack of funds. It is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Ayres, which in 1881, under the policy of President Roca, became a distinct entity from the newly created federal district of Buenos Ayres. The explanation of this in due detail is matter for the historian, and involves the tracing of the growth of the Republic, its evolution from the Confederation of the River Plate, and the ultimate settling of political rivalry by the creation of Buenos Ayres as the federal capital, in which struggle Córdoba had fought a fierce fight against heavy geographical odds and against “the Fox” of modern Argentine politics, General Roca. Córdoba still looks with jealous eye on Buenos Ayres as a usurper city.

Before the 19th of November, 1882, the site of La Plata, twenty-four miles southeast of Buenos Ayres, and inland some five miles from the south shore of the River Plate, was a barren waste, but on that day the corner stone of the new capital of the province was laid. The plan adopted for the making of the city was sufficiently ambitious, following that of Washington, with great diagonal avenues ninety-seven and a half feet wide, streets of fifty-eight and a half feet in width, and many spacious public squares. Ten million pounds went to the laying out of this model provincial capital and the erection of its public buildings. Its importance may be judged from the fact that the provincial legislature having its seat here controls territory as large as the British Isles, and a population to-day numbering upwards of two millions.

So quickly was the work of construction pushed forward, that in less than three years from the date of its foundation, La Plata had already a population of thirty thousand, and in addition to the splendid public buildings which had sprung up on what so lately was a barren waste, there were nearly 4,000 houses erected or in course of construction. For a time the building went on merrily, and then the funds began to give out, so that to-day we find the city at once an evidence of a great outburst of energy and an earnest of what it may become when the provincial treasury is again sufficiently well filled to permit of finishing much that has lain for years incomplete.

The province having lost control of the port of Buenos Ayres by the Federal Act, set about another great undertaking in which four million pounds more were spent. This was the building of a port at Ensenada, about five miles away on the River Plate, connecting that by means of a canal and railroad with La Plata. Ensenada is now the port for several lines of steamships engaged in the frozen meat traffic, and carrying many thousands of passengers annually to and from the River Plate.

The railway station of La Plata is a very tasteful and commodious building, which gives the visitor an agreeable first impression on arrival, while the spacious streets, villainously paved though many of them remain, offer a welcome sense of freedom and airiness to one who has been cooped up for any length of time in the choking byways of Buenos Ayres. There is none of that eddying and surging traffic of the metropolis. The current of life flows with an old-world leisure; everywhere there is a sense of “ampler air.” The public buildings are numerous and imposing, the Government House, the Capitol, the Treasury, the Law Courts, and all the other departments of the provincial legislature being housed in handsome quarters, though naturally much that looks as if it had been built forever is really found on inspection to be in keeping with the universal “sham” of Argentine architecture. French influence predominates, and while there is much in the city that recalls a French provincial capital, there is nothing beyond its ground plan and the width of its streets to liken it to the splendid capital of the United States.