Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
13
Argentina's ethnic makeup was fur ther
altered in the late 1870s b y General Julio
Argentino Roca's Campaign of the Desert.
Essentially, he dr ew a line out fr om Bue-
nos Air es and slaughter ed vir tually ev ery
Indian within it. H e claimed to do so in
the name of national defense and the
economy, in light of the fact that some
Indian populations stole cattle and
result of a deliberate government policy of
genocide.
BUENOS AIRES,
THE CAPITAL
Genuine unification of Argentina did not
occur until 1880, 300 y ears after the per-
manent founding of Buenos Aires. On this
anniversary, the city was officially made
the capital. The r eturn of S an M artín's
body that y ear, to a permanent tomb
within the Catedral Metroplitano on Plaza
de M ayo, solidified and symboliz ed the
city's absolute authority.
From then on, B uenos Air es experi-
enced a period of explosiv e gr owth and
wealth, laying the foundations for the
glory days that Argentines r emember
about their countr y. Trade with E urope
expanded, with cattle and grain fr om the
newly conquer ed hinterlands ser ving as
the main expor ts. Millions of immigrants
came fr om I taly, S pain, and other coun-
tries, filling the city 's slums, primarily in
the southern sections of La Boca and S an
Telmo. To this day , ther e ar e almost as
many I talian last names as S panish in
Argentina. E ven the language spoken in
Argentina seems almost like I talian-
accented S panish, with its rhythm and
pitch.
Lunfardo,
the str eet dialect associ-
ated with tango, owes many of its words to
immigrant Italian.
The exponential gr owth of this time
means that Buenos Aires—unlike in Salta,
Córdoba, and other old Argentine cities—
retains fe w colonial buildings besides its
churches. I n fact, b y the late 1800s, the
capital made a conscious effor t to com-
pletely rebuild much of its cityscape, fol-
lowing a pattern loosely based on
attacked the v arious
estancias
and for ts
within the P ampas and U pper Patagonia.
The destr uction of the nativ e population
further consolidated B uenos Air es's con-
trol of the hinterlands, and led to a wav e
of ne w ranches and
estancias,
and the
unimpeded development of the railr oads.
Now only within the nor th and the v ery
south of Argentina (ar eas untouched b y
Roca) do I ndians exist in any substantial
numbers.
It was these two specific genocidal
policies—toward descendants of African
and indigenous S outh American folk—
that laid the gr ound for the largely white
and European culture that Argentina was
to become. N eedless to say , ho wever,
Argentines hav e a sensitiv e r elationship
with this period and often gloss o ver it in
historical accounts. M any historians
account for the lack of an African popula-
tion by arguing that blacks died out natu-
rally or simply intermarried with the
2
millions of white immigrants until pur
e
Africans no longer existed.
The fact that Africans existed in Argen-
tina is most evident, ho wever, in the
nation's most important cultural contribu-
tion to the world—the tango . Like all
musical and dance forms nativ e to the
Americas, it owes its roots to slave culture.
Photographs of gauchos fr om the late
1800s also show that many were clearly of
African descent. The o verwhelmingly
white society of gr eater Buenos Aires that
tourists see today was not simply the
proud r esult of millions of I talians and
Spaniards descending fr om boats after a
long Atlantic voyage, but was instead the
Haussman's plans for r ebuilding P aris
under S econd E mpire F rance. M uch of
this was to be done in time for the 1910
Independence Centennial celebrations.
Developers laid ne w boulev ards o ver
the original S panish colonial grid. The
most impor tant was A venida de M ayo,