Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and its fascination with all things European; they remained suspicious
of first-generation immigrants who “mangled” Argentine Spanish and
formed trade unions; and they became a reservoir of resentments
against the power of foreign capital—particularly that of British rail-
road tycoons and American oilmen. Although current officers were not
a threat to the government of the elite (there were no military coups
between 1880 and 1930), a trend was developing in which officers in
the future would identify with public order and nationalism but not
with continued rule by the oligarchs.
Not Everything Changes
If a young Argentine had left the country in 1870 and returned 35 years
later, he or she would have been amazed by how radically national life
had changed. The indigenous peoples had been eliminated from the
frontier regions, and gringo farmers harvested wheat where once only
cattle had roamed. More than 1 million people lived in the capital, and
one out of every three
porteños
was foreign-born. The skyline and mod-
ern port facilities revealed few traces of the colonial origins of Buenos
Aires. The tree-lined paved avenues looked like Paris. Even the cattle
estates of the Pampas had changed; Herefords and English shorthorns
grazed on alfalfa pastures behind barbed wire fences.
And yet things below the surface were much the same. Social discrim-
ination prevented native-born people of color from getting ahead, and
educated whites and the foreign-born monopolized the middle-sector
occupations that provided opportunities for social mobility. The landed
oligarchy still remained aloof; in fact, the first families of Argentina had
become wealthier and even more remote. While the phenomenal export-
led development between 1880 and 1916 had expanded the nation's
wealth, it had done nothing to equalize the distribution of income. The
rural and urban working classes contributed to exports but did not
share enough of the nation's income to eliminate poverty. Moreover, the
returning Argentine would recognize in his nation's politics the corrup-
tion and the rigged elections of a previous age.
Argentina, nonetheless, was not the same country, and national
politics had taken on new constituencies. An emerging middle class
was demanding participation in public affairs, and so was a boisterous
urban working class. These new contestants for power did succeed in
gaining entry to political life before the end of the liberal age, even
though in the long run their enfranchisement did not sustain the politi-
cal stability guaranteed by the Generation of Eighty.
