Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tracks and rolling stock. By 1940, half of their locomotives were more
than 50 years old. A British diplomat observed, “The railway authorities
are themselves to blame . . . for the state of affairs that has been allowed
to arise” (Brown 1997, 138-139).
Rather than improving railway services themselves, the British
railway companies resorted to petitioning the Argentine government.
They requested protection against the growing motorcar competition,
sought tax exemptions, and requested permission to raise freight rates
and passenger fares. The government did not always see fit to comply.
The British ambassador himself attempted to explain the government's
ambivalence: “It must be borne in mind,” he said, “that most of the
landowners who constitute the real governing classes here, are bound
to have small personal grievances [poor services and high freight
charges] against the particular railways which they may use” (Brown
1997, 141). The government, therefore, resisted the requests of the
railway interests—except on labor issues.
The growth of the state's power to regulate the foreign interests, of
course, opened up new forms of corruption. The remaining British
meatpackers profited due to government favoritism after the Roca-
Runciman Treaty was signed in 1934. They benefited from government
tax rebates and enjoyed favorable exchange rates that other foreign
enterprises did not. The relationship did not result in high profits for
landowners, who were averaging less than 4 percent on their meat
sales in the 1930s. And a congressional investigation revealed that the
British-owned
frigoríficos
also falsified their account books in order to
escape additional taxes while the government looked the other way.
Why? Because the minister of agriculture, himself an
estanciero
, had
nurtured a special relationship with the British owners. They bought all
the steers coming from the minister's
estancias
at a price 10 times higher
than that paid to other cattlemen. The situation illustrated once again
the economic prerogatives of those with political power.
The Social Question
What was possible politically and socially in the era of Juan Perón was
due to Argentina's transformation from a primarily agricultural soci-
ety to an industrial one. The industrial workforce had expanded from
roughly 430,000 in 1935 to more than 1 million in 1946 in a nation of
16 million people. The population of Greater Buenos Aires, home to
more than 70 percent of these workers, had grown from 3.4 million to
4.7 million between 1935 and 1947. Migrants from the nation's rural
