Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
allowed the bluebloods to admit a limited number of very successful
immigrants and sons of immigrants into their inner circles as well as
people whose fortunes were made in politics or through politically
connected businesses. Many wealthy British and other foreign mer-
chants had married into Creole elite families throughout the century.
Names like Bunge, Santamarina, Cambaceres, Gowland, Tornquist, and
Armstrong connoted considerable status. The second generation of
these wealthy families aspired to join the country's elite in their most
prestigious social and economic organizations. The big landowners
were members of the Rural Society (Sociedad Rural), which lobbied
for their interests in public forums. Socially, the elite families gathered
at the very exclusive Jockey Club, located in the stylish Barrio Norte
of Buenos Aires. The Rural Society and the Jockey Club served as two
powerful symbols of the country's influential oligarchy. Newly wealthy
families could only expect membership in these organizations in the
second generation, for only inherited wealth distinguished a family; the
nouveau riche were held to be undeserving.
While the export expansion had made them wealthy, the landown-
ing elite turned out to be poor entrepreneurs. They preferred to
invest their money in certain ventures—land and cattle, joint stock
companies. Few Argentines invested in railway building. They left
this risky business to foreigners, especially the British, and to the
government. However, the Argentine elites did aspire to trade their
family prestige and political influence for seats on the boards of for-
eign companies operating locally. One could do this without risking
the family's fortune in modernization projects.
In 19th-century Argentina, there were other prerequisites for elite
status besides mere wealth. Coming from the correct family, maintain-
ing an effete bearing, and being educated and cosmopolitan counted
more than ability in gaining status in society. Anyone who was non-
white, illegitimate, or from dubious family origin could not hope to
penetrate elite circles. These principles of exclusivity even extended
to the rising middle class. Members of immigrant families on the rise
tended to marry within their French, Spanish, or Italian social circles
and seldom into Creole working-class families. Respectable families,
whether elite or bourgeois, guarded their racial status closely over sev-
eral generations.
The dominant elite utilized its sociopolitical status to capture the
largest increments of the wealth created by economic progress. At the
beginning of the 19th century, the elite families had lived in the center
