Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
14
THE CULTURAL GROWTH
OF THE 1920S & 1930S
The economic expansion, w ealth, and
sense of po wer Argentina had during this
time laid the gr oundwork for str ong cul-
tural gr owth b y the 1920s and 1930s.
During this period, traditions that had
always existed among the lo wer classes
within B uenos Air es bubbled to the sur-
face and came into international r ecogni-
tion. Tango has its r oots in slav e culture,
and immigrants (mostly I talian) adopted
the dance as they mo ved to Argentina.
While the dance had always been associ-
ated with the slums of the lo wer classes,
one man changed all of that. I n 1917,
Carlos Gardel, who began his car eer sing-
ing as a child in B uenos Air es's A basto
Market, r ecorded what is consider ed the
first impor tant tango song—“M i N oche
Triste,” which launched him to star dom.
Throughout the 1920s, G ardel toured in
France. S eeing that P arisians accepted
tango, the upper classes within Argentina
began to embrace it as well. By the middle
of the 1920s, tango became the countr y's
most impor tant musical form; its histor y
and eventual acceptance internationally is
akin to the rise of jazz in the United States.
Gardel r ecorded numer ous songs and
toured E urope, S outh America, and the
United S tates, making musical mo vies
along the way. He died y oung, at the age
of 44, on J une 24, 1935, in a plane crash
in Colombia, which solidified his status as
one of Argentina's most important cultural
icons.
The same period saw a flo wering of lit-
erature and liv e theater. Jorge L uis Borges
published short stories that often spoke of
the str uggles of the gangsters and lo wer
classes in B uenos Air es and other par ts of
Argentina. Along with other colleagues,
which opened in 1893 and would ser ve as
the go vernment pr ocession r oute, linking
the Casa R osada or P residential Palace on
its eastern end with the ne w Congreso on
its western terminus. Lined with Beaux Arts
and Art Nouveaux buildings, accor ding to
the styles of the time, it became the cultural
and nightlife center of the city . D iagonal
Norte and Diagonal Sud were also laid out
(though not completed for many y ears
later). The widest boulevard in the world, 9
de Julio, was planned in 1888 as w ell, but
its constr uction didn 't begin until 1937.
Technically, it remains incomplete.
The majority of B uenos Air es's most
iconic structures were built at this time—
the Teatro Colón, the Water P alace, the
Subway System, Congreso, Retiro Station,
and the innumerable palaces and man-
sions that still line the streets in the north-
ern sector. For nearly 30 years, the city was
an ongoing constr uction site, as it for ce-
fully rebuilt itself with a E uropean image.
While Argentina had the w ealth and
resources to pay for the massiv e r ebuild-
ing, however, it lacked the know-how and
had to impor t its talent, labor , and ev en
materials from Europe. The capital's plan-
ners, architects, and engineers came fr om
the O ld World, bringing with them the
beautiful str uctural materials that no
2
w
grace the city . A sticking point for many
years was the fact that the British built and
controlled the railroads.
Today, as a visitor mindful of Argen-
tina's past sev eral decades of political and
economic chaos, it is difficult to make
sense of the ostentatiously built infrastruc-
ture that remains from this earlier time. In
essence, between 1880 and 1910, Argen-
tina assumed the height of its w ealth and
power. B uilt at gr eat expense of labor ,
money, and determination, B uenos Air es
was the imperial capital of a countr y hun-
gry to asser t its impor tance on the world
stage. Indeed, at the turn of the last cen-
tury Argentina was one of the 10 w ealthi-
est countries in the world.
Borges launched the shor t-lived literar y
magazine
Proa
in 1924. By the 1930s, amid
political chaos, eminent civil war , and
repression in S pain, B uenos Air es became
the preeminent center of S panish-language
