The Argentine Republic: Its Development and Progress

by Pierre Denis

The question of joining the road on to a river was not of very great importance until the time when the Paraná began to be used for Argentine imports and exports, and to maintain the communication of the interior provinces with Europe. This question of connection with a river controls the history of the construction of the railway system. But the great importance of it can be seen from the first half of the nineteenth century. D'Orbigny had a presentiment of it. Speaking of the future of Santa Fé, he says: "When peace is restored, it is certain that the wares of Córdoba may, instead of going by land from that town to Buenos Aires, be sent to Santa Fé, where shipping them to the Argentine capital will reduce to one-third the journey by land, which is always more costly than going by water." Martin de Moussy, foreseeing the making of a road across the Chaco from Tucumán to the Paraná, in the latitude of Corrientes, calculates that Corrientes may later serve as port for part of the west and north of Argentina. At the date of the publication of his book, however, it was neither Santa Fé nor Corrientes, but the new town Rosario, that began to play the part of interior port, and led to the construction of a new system of roads. Traffic between Rosario and Córdoba at first followed the old road from Buenos Aires to Peru, which one struck after leaving Rosario and making a detour to the south-west, on the right bank of the Carcaraña (at Rio Tercero). But this itinerary was presently replaced by a direct road to the west-northwest, following the line which the railways would adopt.[110]

In the greater part of Argentina transport was by means of wagons before railways were constructed. The limit between the area of wagon-transport and the area in which goods were conveyed on the backs of animals is quite stable. It is still of some significance, in spite of the development of the railways; wagons and mules are used at each station to collect and distribute goods. The area of farming and of selective breeding on the Pampa, the sheep-area in Patagonia, and the timber belt on the Chaco, still make use of wagons; and goods are carried on the backs of mules in the Andean area. The Peru road was, broadly speaking, fit for wagons as far as Salta, but it is rough between Tucumán and Salta, and wagons that used it generally stopped at Salta. In this way wagons avoided the ford of the Sali, which was easier for mules. On the plain itself the water-sources were often so distant from each other, and the stages so long, that mules had to be used instead of wagons. Wagons could easily get to Mendoza by the road along which the Tunuyan runs at its driest section, but all the convoys from Córdoba to San Juan, or Rioja to Catamarca, were composed of mules. Hence Córdoba was, like Tucumán, a station for changing on the road from Buenos Aires to the north-west. Lastly, while the scrub presented no insuperable obstacle to wagons, they could not enter the humid tropical forest, where the soil never dries. On the fringe of the Misiones forest, the wagons that came from San Tome unloaded at San Javier, and mules took the goods on to the yerbales.

The two areas of different kinds of transport were not sharply distinct. The muleteers (arrieros) sometimes avoided the domain of the wagoners, and competed with them as far as the banks of the Paraná. In 1860 (Hutchinson) the muleteers carried about a fifth, in weight, of the goods from the interior to Rosario, and they got more than a third of the transport from Rosario to the interior. They had, however, to offer to carry goods at two-thirds the price charged by the wagoners. It appears that this invasion by the muleteers is connected with a transport-crisis in the Andean area, which left a number of the San Juan muleteers without work. It did not last. By 1862 mule-back transport between Rosario and the interior was almost over.

The wagons of the Argentine plain have often been described by travellers. They were heavy vehicles, carrying 150, sometimes 180, arrobes (1,725 to 2,070 kgs.), covered with a leather hood stretched on hoops. A long spur decorated with ostrich feathers was balanced on a ring fixed in the roof, and was used to guide the front pair of oxen. An earthenware pot containing water enough for each stage hung between the rear uprights. As a rule, three pair of oxen were yoked to it, one pair being in the shafts. At Corrientes it was necessary to cross the marshes and esteros, and a special type of wagon had been evolved. It had a sort of horizontal division forming an upper story, and the driver sat in this. Everywhere, on the Pampa as well as at Corrientes, the wheels were enormous; sometimes, as Darwin says, ten feet in diameter. They were, therefore, able to get through the bad parts. Mud was, as a matter of fact, the worst enemy of the convoys. The soil of the Pampa is clayey and soft in the districts near the river. As the road was not limited in width, the wagons turned to the right or the left when the ruts became too deep, and the track in time covered a broad belt of ground. This, however, could not be done in the vicinity of towns, where the traffic was concentrated. Buenos Aires came to be surrounded by formidable quagmires that dried up only in the summer. The paving of the streets and environs was becoming a problem of national importance when the construction of the railway began.

Wagons did not travel singly. The tropero, or contractor for transport, organized caravans. In peaceful districts, where no military escort was required, the convoys could be split up; they consisted, as a rule, of from fifteen to fifty wagons. Besides the six oxen yoked to the wagon, there had to be others for relief as well as horses for the staff. Usually they allowed ten oxen to each wagon; in exceptional cases twenty.[111] The convoy to the salt-lakes in 1778 had no less than 12,000 oxen to 600 wagons. There was a driver to each wagon, but there had also to be drivers for the starting animals, and carpenters to make repairs. The leader of the caravan, the capataz, was generally a master-carpenter. He looked after the interests of the tropero. There were about three men to each wagon. The carreros were an original type, nomadic, and very different in costume and character from the gauchos (breeders) of the plain. At the close of the eighteenth century Buenos Aires had more than a thousand wagons employed in the traffic to Mendoza and Tucumán (Borrero).

The stages were rarely more than four or five leagues of five kilometres each (thirteen to sixteen miles). At this rate it took a convoy forty to fifty days to go from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, thirty days from Rosario to Tucumán, three months (with the necessary rests) from Buenos Aires to Salta.[112] When water ran short, the journey might be greatly prolonged, as the animals could do less work, or not work at all if the aiguades had dried up. The season was a matter for consideration. In the Buenos Aires district the winter made the ground sodden and traffic difficult. Farther north, winter is the dry season, so that pasture was scarce, and it was difficult to feed the tropas. The summer had difficulties of its own. In January and February the floods of the Rio Dulce often made it impossible to cross the ford at Santiago. The carriers preferred to start from the northern provinces about the end of the summer, in April or May. The best season for leaving Buenos Aires was the spring, from August to November. In this way each tropa could make the double journey once a year.

There had been attempts to speed up the transport before the railways were made. The galera (diligence), with its swarm of horses harnessed with the cincha (saddle to which the lasso was attached), did not carry goods. It did not replace the convoy of wagons, but the tropilla of spare horses which travellers on the plain drove before them. The galeriagalera went from Rosario to Córdoba in three days and to Mendoza in ten days, and from Córdoba to Salta in fourteen days. About 1860 a quicker goods service was organized, light wagons drawn by mules replacing the ox-wagons. They made the journey from Rosario to Córdoba in six days. Similarly, on the Pampa, the ox-wagons had been replaced before 1889 by quicker wagons, drawn by horses, to convey wool from the ranches to the railway stations.

The cost of transport by wagon was, naturally, high. It also varied a good deal, but we cannot possibly go into these variations here. It will be enough to give, by way of illustration, the details which Hutchinson gives for the year 1862. The freightage was fixed either for a complete load of 150 arrobes (1,725 kgs.) or so much per arrobe (11½ kgs.). Conveying a load from Rosario to Córdoba cost forty to fifty piastres (eight to ten pounds). The cost of carrying an arrobe from Rosario to Mendoza was five to six reales (about two shillings to two-and-six); from Rosario to Tucuman nine reales (three shillings and fourpence); from Rosario to Salta eighteen reales (seven shillings and sixpence). The tropas were, therefore, quickly ousted by the railways. In a few places they made a very unequal fight against the railways. The Memoria del departemento de Ingenieros de la Nacion of 1876, quoted by Rebuelto, mentions the competition of the tropas with the Andino railway, opened from Villa Maria to the Rio Cuarto in 1873 and to Villa Mercedes in 1875. The merchants of San Juan and Mendoza continued to use them. The railway had to sign a contract with the troperos by which wagons were to bring goods as far as Villa Mercedes, where they could be entrained. The total freight was fifty Bolivian centavos (about two shillings) per arrobe from Mendoza to Rosario, and sixty centavos from San Juan. Of this the share of the railway was fifteen centavos.