South America: Observations and Impressions / New edition corrected and revised

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

In this immense fertile and temperate country with hardly six people to a square mile, what limit can we set to the growth of wealth and population? Already the nation is larger than the Dutch or Portuguese or Swedish. Within thirty years it may equal Italy. Within fifty years it may approach France or England, even if the present rate of its increase be reduced. It may one day be the most numerous among all the peoples that speak a tongue of Latin origin, as the United States is already the most numerous of all that speak a Teutonic one. Many things may happen to change its present character, yet the unformed character of the youth before whom such a future seems to lie is well worth studying.

First a few words about the race. No other Spanish-American state, except Uruguay, has a people of a stock so predominantly European. The aboriginal Indian element is too small to be worth regarding. It is now practically confined to the Gran Chaco in the extreme north, but elsewhere the influence of Indian blood is undiscernible among the people to-day.[82] The aborigines of the central Pampas have disappeared,—nearly all were killed off,—and those of Patagonia have been dying out. We have, therefore, a nation practically of pure South European blood, whose differences from the parent stock are due, not to the infusion of native elements, but to local and historical causes.

Till thirty or forty years ago this population was almost entirely of Spanish stock. Then the rapid development of the Pampas for tillage began to create a demand for labour, which, while it increased immigration from Spain, brought in a new and larger flow from Italy. The Spaniards who came were largely from the northern provinces and among them there were many Basques, a race as honest and energetic as any in Europe. So far back as 1875 one used to see in the French Basque country between Biarritz and the pass of Roncesvalles plenty of neat and comfortable houses erected by men who had bought back their savings from the River Plate. The Italians have flocked in from all parts of their peninsula, but the natives of the north take to the land, and furnish a very large part of the agricultural labour, while the men from the southern provinces, usually called Napolitanos, stay in the towns and work as railway and wharf porters, or as boatmen, and at various odd jobs. In 1909, out of 1,750,000 persons of foreign birth in the republic,[83] there were twice as many Italians as Spaniards, besides one hundred thousand from France, the latter including many French Basques, who are no more French than Spanish. Between 1904 and 1909 the influx of immigrants had risen from 125,000 annually to 255,000. The Spaniards, of course, blend naturally and quickly with the natives, who speak the same tongue. The Italians have not yet blent, for there has hardly yet been time for them to do so, but there is so much similarity, not indeed in character but in language and ways of life, that they will evidently become absorbed into the general population. Children born in the country grow up to be Argentines in sentiment, and are, perhaps, even more vehemently patriotic than the youth of native stock.

Here, as in the United States, the birth-rate is higher among immigrants than among natives. In the case of Italians it is twice, in that of Spaniards one and a half times, as great.

What effect upon the type and tendencies of the future nation this Italian infusion will have it is hard to predict, because no one knows how far national character is affected by blood admixture. We have no data for estimating the comparative importance of heredity and of environment upon a population which is the product of two elements, the foreign one injected into a larger native element whose prepotent influences modify the offspring of new-comers.[84]

In considering the probable result of the commingling, and as a fact explaining the readiness with which Italian immigrants allow themselves to be Argentinized, one must remember that these come from the humblest and least educated strata of Italian society. They are, like all Italians, naturally intelligent, but they have not reached that grade of knowledge which attaches men to the literature and the historical traditions of their own country. Thus, the scantiness of their education prevents them from making either to the intellectual life or to the art of their adopted country those contributions which one might expect from a people which has always held a place in the front rank of European letters, art, and science. It may be expected, however, that in the course of a generation or two inborn Italian capacity will assert itself in the descendants of the immigrants.

The other foreigners, French, English (business men and landowning farmers), and German (chiefly business men in the cities) are hardly numerous enough to affect the Argentine type, and the two latter have hitherto remained as distinct elements, being mostly Protestants and marrying persons of their own race. They occupy themselves entirely with business and have not entered Argentine public life; yet as many of them mean to remain in the country, and their children born in it become thereby Argentine citizens, it is likely that they, also, will presently be absorbed, and their Argentine descendants may figure in politics here, as families of Irish and British origin do in Chile.

The social structure of the nation is the result of the economic conditions already described. In the rural districts there are two classes only,—landowners, often with vast domains, and labourers, the native labourers settled, the Italians to some extent migratory. In the cities there exists, between the wealthy and the workingmen, a considerable body of professional men, shopkeepers, and clerks, who are rather less of a defined middle class than they would be in European countries. Society is something like that of North American cities, for the lines between classes are not sharply drawn, and the spirit of social equality has gone further than in France, and, of course, far further than in Germany or Spain. One cannot speak of an aristocracy, even in the qualified sense in which the word could be used in Peru or Chile, for though a few old colonial families have the Spanish pride of lineage, it is, as a rule, wealth and wealth only that gives station and social eminence. Manners, which everywhere in South America have lost something of the courtliness of Castile, are here rather more "modern" than in Mexico or Lima, because the growth of wealth has brought up new men and has made money the criterion of eminence, or at least of prominence. Here, as in England and the United States, one sees that though the constitution is democratic, society has some of the characteristics of a plutocracy.

The little that I have to say about the political life of the country must be reserved for another and more general chapter, so I will here note only two facts peculiar to Argentina. It is, of all the Spanish-American republics, that in which the church has least to do with politics. Though Roman Catholicism is declared by the constitution to be supported by the state, and the president and vice-president must profess it, that freedom of religious worship which is guaranteed by law is fully carried out in practice, and all denominations may, without let or hindrance, erect churches and preach and teach. The legislature has shewn itself so broad-minded as to grant subventions to a system of Protestant schools founded originally as a missionary enterprise by a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, and many of the Roman Catholic families of Buenos Aires send their children to schools provided by the American Methodist Episcopal Church. In liberality of spirit, Argentina is rather more advanced than either Peru or Chile, not to speak of bigoted Ecuador. Still more noteworthy is it that there seems to be little or no effort on the part of the church to influence public affairs. No political party is allied with the clergy, no clerical influence is felt in elections. The happy detachment of the two spheres which travellers observe and admire in North America deserves even more credit when found in a country where intolerance long reigned supreme.

The other phenomenon which no one will connect with religious freedom, inasmuch as it has appeared in nearly every country of Europe and of North America, whatever be the religious conditions that prevail, is the emergence here and nowhere else in South America of a vehement anarchist propaganda. Among the immigrants from Italy and from eastern Spain there have been enough persons engaged in this movement to cause great alarm to the government. Not long ago the chief of the police was killed by an explosive thrown by a Russian anarchist, and in the summer of 1910 a bomb was exploded in the great Opera-house during a performance, wounding a number of persons. These occurrences led to the proclamation of a state of siege which was maintained for many weeks. The police is said to be efficient,[85] and the Executive did not hesitate to use powers which it would be less easy to obtain or use in the United States or in England. Our age has seen too many strange incidents to be surprised that these acts of violence should be perpetrated in a country where, though no doubt there is an ostentatious display of wealth, work is more abundant and wages are higher than in any other part of the world. Such acts are aimed not at oppression, nor at bad industrial conditions, but at government itself.