Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the demands for participation in national affairs forced the oligarchs to
open the political system to a more democratic voting system. It was to
cost the elites their political supremacy, though not their wealth.
Liberalism refers to an ideological program that dominated two gen-
erations of oligarchs and politicians who consolidated national power
and ruled from 1880 to 1916 and a more socially diverse group of
politicians from 1916 to 1930. In broad terms, their brand of liberal-
ism stood for economic progress, open trade and open markets, foreign
investment, and a strong central government. The Argentine brand
of liberalism, which today might be called conservative economics in
some countries, should not be confused with broadening political par-
ticipation and instituting social reforms. For the most part, this was a
regime of the elites and for the elites.
But the oligarchs could not hold back the tide of social and political
change at the same time that they benefited from economic transfor-
mation and expansion. In Argentina, economic modernization meant
immigration, the formation of a middle class, and the mobilization of
labor. The landed oligarchy that benefited most from the liberal age was
forced to make significant concessions to the new political and social
forces their self-serving economic policies had generated. Nonetheless,
no period of Argentina's history before or since has equaled the liberal
age for political stability and material growth.
Roca and the Generation of Eighty
First and foremost, Argentine politicians had to settle the festering
issue of the status of Buenos Aires.
Porteños
in the 1870s retained their
control over trade at the port, took charge of collecting customs duties
there, and sustained their prerogatives with the largest provincial
militia of the republic. Presidents Domingo F. Sarmiento and Nicolás
Avellaneda, both from the provinces, governed from the national
capital in the 1870s almost as guests of the Buenos Aires provincial
governor. Finally, General Roca's defeat of a
porteño
in the presiden-
tial election of 1880 helped to settle the issue of federalization. When
the
porteño
militia revolted at the prospect of yet another
provinciano
president, General Roca, with the support of the federal army, crushed
the rebellion.
President Roca then “federalized” the city and port of Buenos Aires
by placing them under direct rule of the central government and forc-
ing the governor of Buenos Aires to relocate the province's capital to
the city of La Plata. Not only did the federal government assume
