Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
JUAN BAUTISTA ALBERDI'S
ECONOMIC BLUEPRINT
FOR A PROSPEROUS ARGENTINA,
1853-1884
O
n government:
“Government represents consumption, not pro-
duction.” “There is no worse agriculturist, merchant, or manu-
facturer than government.”
On immigration:
“Every European who comes to our shores will bring
us more civilization in his habits, which later will be communicated to
our inhabitants, than numerous philosophy books could. The perfection
that one cannot see, touch, or grasp is not well understood. A hard-
working man is the most edifying catechism.”
On foreign trade:
“To disdain the countryside and treat it as brut-
ish because it produces only raw materials is proper to an idiotic and
suicidal charlatanism that does not take into account that raw material
is the entire means by which South America can acquire and enjoy the
manufactured products that commerce with Europe scatters about in
its cities that lack machines and factories.”
On individual rights:
“There is neither security nor confidence in the
promises of a merchant whose person can be assaulted in an instant
and flung into prison or exiled. . . . It is impossible to conceive of rural,
agricultural, or mining production where men can be carried away from
their labors in order to form the ranks of the army.”
On building railways:
“In this way, [U.S. engineer William] Wheelwright
wanted to deliver the locomotive of civilization not only to Córdoba
but also to La Rioja, to bring the minerals of the Famatina [mines in
the Argentine Andes] to the ports of the Río de la Plata, to pass his
locomotives of iron over the Andes that San Martín crossed with light
artillery pieces, to give the western Argentine provinces as their own
the ports and markets of the Pacific Ocean, to make of the Argentine
soil the royal road of intercourse between Asia and Europe, to unite
Chile with the Argentine Republic by chains of gold more durable than
all the bonds of diplomacy.”
Source:
Brown, Jonathan C. “Juan Bautista Alberdi y la doctrina del
capitalismo liberal en Argentina.”
Revista Ciclos
3, no. 4 (1993):
61-74.
