The unsettling location of a settler nation: Argentina, from settler economy to failed developing nation

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 107, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 755-789

  Salvatore, Ricardo D ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950589968     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-2008-016     Document Type: Review

References (108)

1. See, for example, Roberto Cortés Conde and Ezequiel Gallo, La formatión de la argentina moderna (The Making of Modern Argentina) (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1973);
2. Roberto Cortés Conde, El progreso argentino, 1880-1914 [Argentine Progress, 1880-1914) (Buenos Aires: Ed. Sudamericana, 1979);
3. Vicente Vázquez-Presedo, El caso argentino: migratión defac-tores, comercio exterior y desarrollo, 1875-1914 (The Argentine Case: Factor Migrations, Foreign Trade, and Development, 1875-1914) (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1971);
4. and Francis Korn, Buenos Aires: Los huéspedes del 20 (Buenos Aires: Guests of the Twenties) (Buenos Aires: Ed. Sudamericana, 1974).
5. Though John Barrett was the chief promoter of South America as a "land of opportunity," travelers and businessmen echoed this view. See, for example, Francis E. Clark, The Continent of Opportunity: The South American Republics (New York: Revell Co., 1907).
6. See, for example, Hubert Herring, Good Neighbors: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Seventeen Other Countries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1941);
7. J. Fred Rippy, Percy Alvin Martin, and Isaac Joslin Cox, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile since Independence, vol. 3, ed. A. Curtis Wilgus (Washington, DC: George Washington University Press, 1935);
8. and Allan W. Eister, The United States and the A.B.C. Powers, 1899-1906 (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1951).
9. See Ricardo D. Salvatore, "Early American Visions of a Hemispheric Market in South America," in Transnational America: The Fading of Borders in the Western Hemisphere, ed. Berndt Ostendorf (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2002).
10. That is, it was their view that these nations were only forty-five to sixty years behind the United States in material progress, showing an even shorter distance in relation to European civilization. Business reporter James H. Collins writes, "The Latin American lives in a continent much like our own West after the Civil War." James H. Collins, Straight Business in South America (New York: Appleton and Co., 1920), 271.
11. Early expressions of this concern for Indian oppression, latifundia, and vast social inequalities were expressed by Chicago sociologist Edward Ross and Yale geographer Isaiah Bowman. See Edward A. Ross, South of Panama (New York: Century, 1915);
12. and Isaiah Bowman, The Andes of Southern Pent (New York: Henry Holt, 1916).
13. This theme was replicated in numerous travel narratives later on. See, for example, Harry A. Franck, Vagabonding down the Andes (New York: Century, 1923).
14. U.S. motorists Paul Pleiss and Herbert Lanks found in 1942-43 that mining and petroleum enclaves were the only regions where roads and railway transportation were adequate. See Ricardo Salvatore, "Imperial Mechanics: South America's Hemispheric Integration in the Machine Age," American Quarterly 58.3 (2006): 680-84.
15. See Emilio Frers, American Ideals: Speeches of the President of the Museo Social Argentino, Dr. Emilio Frers, and of Col. Theodore Roosevelt at the Banquet Given in the Colon Theatre (Buenos Aires: Museo Social Argentino, 1914).
16. Clarence H. Haring, South American Progress (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), 27.
17. Mark Jefferson writes: This is the modern culture that the Republic has acquired - more significant than Palermo parks or the underground railway of Buenos Aires or the great avenues to be opened up through that crowded city at vast expense: the widespread facilitation of the practical modern arts and industries in a hundred cities, small and large, throughout the country. I have traveled over great stretches of it when it was a cow country without milk; now the Spaniards of Galicia have scattered creameries everywhere. Every city has foreigners engaged in business, gathering the products of the country for exportation and supplying the food and tools and clothing of the people. Commerce has not merely won its materials through foreign hands but is very largely carried on by foreign firms, and in its smaller branches by thousands of individual foreigners. Mark Jefferson, Peopling the Argentine Pampa (New York: American Geographical Society, 1926), 78.
18. Clarence H. Haring, "Race and Environment in the New World" (1936), papers of Clarence H. Haring, Harvard Archives, HUG 448.8.
19. On elite views of European immigration after 1890, see Carl Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism, Argentina and Chile, 1880-1314 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970);
20. and Lilia Ana Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolistas y nacionalistas. La constructión de la nacionali-dad argentina a fines del siglo XIX (Patriots, Cosmopolitans, and Nationalists: The Building of Argentine Nationhood at the End of the Nineteenth Century) (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Culture Económica, 2001).
21. See Julia Rodriguez, Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
22. See Oscar Terán, Nuestos an̄os sesenta: La formatión de la nueva izquierda intelectual en la Argentina, 1956-1966 (Our 1960s: The Formation of the Intellectual Left in Argentina, 1956-1966) (Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1991).
23. See Gabriela Nouzeilles, Ficciones somiticas: naturalismo, nacionalismo y pohíticas médicas del cuerpo (Argentina 1880-1910) (Somatic Fictions: Naturalism, Nationalism, and Bodily Medical Policies) (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2000).
24. The fear of ethnic degeneration permeated the literature of this period. This fear was implicit in Jose María Ramos Mejía's Las multitudes argentinas, which applied Gustave Le Bon's psychology of crowds to a country whose politics had been continuously affected by the presence of crowds. Jose Maria Ramos Mejia, Las multitudes argentinas (The Argentine Crowd) (1898; Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1952).
25. Among the most salient works of Argentine positivists are Carlos O. Bunge, Nuestra América: Ensayo de psicología social (Our America: Essays on Social Psychology) (Buenos Aires: Vaccaro, 1918);
26. Eugenio Cambaceres, En la sangre (In the Blood) (Buenos Aires: Minerva, 1924);
27. Estanisiao Zeballos, La conquista de las quince mil léguas (The Conquest of the 15,000 Leagues) (Buenos Aires: Tipográfico La Prensa, 1878);
28. and Estanislao Zeballos, Viaje alpais de los Araucanos (Travel to Araucano Lands) (Buenos Aires: Anaconda, 1880).
29. Key European texts to these authors were Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (Essay on the Inequality of Human Races) (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1884);
30. Max Nordau, Psico-fisiología del genio y del talento (Psycho-Physiology of Genius and Talent) (Madrid: Daniel Jorro, 1910);
31. Max Nordau, Degeneration (London: Heinemann, 1898);
32. Ernest Renan, Le réforme intellectuelle et moralle (Intellectual and Moral Reform) (Paris: Michel Levy Frères, 1872);
33. Cesare Lombroso, L'homme criminelle: étude anthropologique et médico-légale (Criminal Man: An Anthropological and Medical Study) (Paris: F. Alcán, 1887);
34. Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (New York: Appleton and Co., 1899);
35. and Herbert Spencer, Social Statistics (New York: Appleton and Co., 1893).
36. See Oscar Terân, Vida intellectual en el Buenos Aires de fin de siglo (Intellectual Life in End-of-Century Buenos Aires) (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000), 156.
37. Zeballos writes, "La barbarie esta maldita y no quedarán en el desiesto ni los despejos de sus muertos" ("Barbarism is doomed and there will remain not even the remains of their dead"). Zeballos, Viaje alpaís de los Araucanos, 226.
38. Not all Indians whose bodies were taken to the museum (chiefly the La Plata Museum of Natural History) were dead. Perito Moreno, the pioneer adventurer and land demarcator in northern Patagonia, brought live Indians to be exhibited in the museum. Vanni Blen-gino. La zanja de la Patagonia (The Patagonian Ditch) (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005), ch. 4.
39. Quoted in Terán, Vida intellectual, 170.
40. Graham-Yooll writes: "When the prince visited Argentina in 1931, the country was considered a far-away colony of special rank, and the members of government behaved as colonial functionaries." Andrew Graham-Yooll, La colonia olvidada: Tres siglos de presencia británica en la Argentina (The Forgotten Colony: Three Centuries of British Presence in Argentina) (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2000), 290; translation by author.
41. Even those who disagree with the application of the label "informal empire" to British-Argentine relations tend to concede that the British played a dominant role in the Argentine economy. See Henry S. Ferns, "Argentina: Part of an Informal Empire?" in Alistair Hennessy and John King, eds., The Land that England Lost: Argentina and Britain, a Special Relationship (London: British Academic Press, 1992), 49-61.
42. See Henry S. Ferns, Great Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
43. See Rory Miller, Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Longman, 1993);
44. and Colin M. Lewis, British Railways in Argentina, 1857-1914 (London: Athlone, 1983).
45. The attempt to return to the prewar "special relationship" with Britain generated tension with the United States, then already an important supplier of Argentine imports. See Mario Rapoport, "El factor politico en las relaciones internacionales: Politica interna-cional versus teoría de la dependencia" ("The Political Factor in International Relations: International Policy versus Dependency Theory"), Desarrollo Económico 23.92 (1984): 617-29.
46. The military coup of 1943 and the rise of Perón turned British representations of Argentines quite hostile. After 1943, the Foreign Office considered Argentina to be governed by "unstable" and "irrational" military leaders. See Klaus-John Dodds, "Geopolitics in the Foreign Office: British Representations of Argentina 1945-1961," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 19.3 (1994): 273-90.
47. See Callum A. MacDonald, "End of Empire: The Decline of the Anglo-Argentine Connection, 1918-1951," in The Land that England Lost, 79-92.
48. See Graham-Yooll, La colonia olvidada; Hennessy and King, The Land that England Lost; and David Rock, "The British in Argentina: From Informal Empire to Postcolonialism" (paper read at University Torcuato Di Telia seminar on history, October 2007).
49. Graham-Yooll, La colonia olvidada, 9-12.
50. See John Lynch, Massacre in the Pampas, 1872: Britain and Argentina in the Age of Migration (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
51. See John King, "The Influence of British Culture in Argentina," in The Land that England Lost, 159-72.
52. John Walker, "British Travel Writing and Argentina," in The Land that England Lost, 183-200.
53. See David Rock, Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, Its History, and Its Impact (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), ch. 4.
54. See José Mun̄oz Azpiri, Rosas frente al imperio inglés (Rosas Confronts the British Empire) (Buenos Aires: Theoria, 1960).
55. The revisionists, according to Mark Falcoff, "depicted Argentina as a sort of gigantic estancia whose agricultural and stock-raising capacities were being mercilessly exploited by Great Britain through a pliant Argentine elite." Mark Falcoff, "Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz: The Making of an Argentine Nationalist," Hispanic American Historical Review 52.1 (1972): 74-101, 78.
56. See also Alberto Spektorowski, "The Ideological Origins of Right and Left Nationalism in Argentina, 1930-40," Journal of Contemporary History 29.1 (1994): 155-84.
57. For a brief account of Scalabrini Ortiz' works, see Falcoff, "Raul Scalabrini Ortiz."
58. In Política británica en el Río de la Plata, Scalabrini Ortiz writes about colonial railroads, the colonial situation, and Argentine citizens as (economically) colonial subjects of Britain. Raul Scalabrini Ortiz, Política británica en el Río de la Plata (British Policy in the River Plate) (1940; Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1981).
59. The Irazusta brothers mention that, although the Argentine oligarchy wished to become part of the British Commonwealth, in the 1930s Britain was not disposed to make additional imperial commitments. Argentina was not a strategic colony, as were South Africa and India. Rodolfo Irazusta and Julio Irazusta, La Argentina y el imperialismo británico: Los eslahones de una cadena, 1806-1833 (Argentina and British Imperialism: The Links of a Chain, 1806-1833) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, 1933).
60. He mentioned Australia and Canada only to underscore the fact that these countries had nationalized most of their railroads in the twentieth century, while British capital still controlled most of Argentina's railroads. Scalabrini Ortiz, Politica hritánica, 264-65.
61. On Indian policy during the Rosas era, see Silvia Ratto, Indios amigos e indios aliados: Orígines del 'negocio pacífico' en la provincia de Buenos Aires (1829-1832) (Friendly Indians and Allied Indians: Origins of the 'Peaceful Deal' in Buenos Aires Province, 1829-1832), Cuadernos del Instituto Ravignani, no. 5 (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, 1994).
62. See Adrian Gorelik, "Buenos Aires y el país: Figuraciones de una factura" ("Buenos Aires and the Country: Representations of a Fracture"), in Carlos Altamirano, ed., La Argentina en el sigh XX (Argentina in the Twentieth Century) (Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1999), 136-61.
63. See also Félix Luna, Buenos Aires y el país (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1982).
64. Among the nationalists, Scalabrini Ortiz was the one who registered the arrival of U.S. investment to the meatpacking industry and to oil exploration. He also saw that U. S. capital came with new technologies and products: the automobile, the radio, and the movies. Scalabrini Ortiz, Política británica, 163-75.
65. The term refers to the influential work of John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, "The Imperialism of Free Trade," Economic History Review 6.1 (1953): 1-15.
66. See Celso Furtado, The Economic Development of Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
67. See Octavio Ianni and Marcos Kaplan, America Latina y Estados Unidos: relaciones politicas internationales y dependencia (Latin America and the United States: Political International Relations and Dependency) (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1973).
68. See James F. Petras and Thomas C. Cook, "Argentina: dependencia y burguesia industrial" ("Argentina: Dependency and the Industrial Bourgeoisie"), Revista latinoamericana de economía 3.10 (1971): 19-56.
69. This particular development was due to Fernando H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, the alleged founders of dependency theory. Peter Evans calls this "associated dependent development." Fernando H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependencia y Desarrollo en America Latina (Dependency and Development in Latin America) (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1976);
70. Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).
71. See Joseph L. Love, Crafting the Third World: Theorizing Underdevelopment in Rumania and Brazil (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).
72. For a general discussion of dependency theory, see Ronald Chilcote, "Dependency: A Critical Synthesis of the Literature," Latin American Perspectives 1.1 (1974): 4-29;
73. and Cristóbal Kay, Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment (London: Routledge, 1989).
74. On the notion of dependent development, see Evans, Dependent Development.
75. See Néstor Kohan, De Ingenieros al Ché (From Ingenieros to Che) (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2000), 219-29.
76. See William Katra, Contorno: Literary Engagement in Post-Peronist Argentina (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1988).
77. See Terán, Nuestros an̄os sesenta; and José Aricó, La cola del diablo: Itinerario de Gramsci en América Latina (The Devil's Tail: Gramsci's Itinerary in Latin America) (Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1988).
78. See Richard Gillespie, J. W. Cooke: El peronismo alternativa (J. W. Cooke: The Alternative Peronism) (Buenos Aires: Cântaro, 1989).
79. La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces), dir. Fernando Pino Solanas, written by Fernando Pino Solanas and Octavio Gettino, 1968. Strange as it sounds (particularly for those who thought of Argentina as a "Europe in America"), this framework of comparison was not wholly unreasonable. This was at a time when the military dictatorship in Argentina began to implement counterinsurgency tactics reminiscent of these other colonial situations.
80. In addition, the local landowning bourgeoisie (1880-1910) imitated the lifestyle of European elites, helping to consolidate the paradigm of the inferiority of mestizos and Indians. Gonzalo H. Cárdenas, Las luchas nationales contra la dependencia (The National Struggles against Dependency) (Buenos Aires: Edic. Macchi, 1974), 287.
81. In his comprehensive review of the New Left in Latin America, Hennessy does not mention any variant allied with indigenismo. Alistair Hennessy, "The New Radicalism in Latin America," Journal of Contemporary History 7.1-2 (1972): 1-26.
82. On the early connections between Peruvian indigenismo and the Argentine intelligentsia, see Horacio Tarcus, Mariálegui en la Argentina (Maridtegui in Argentina) (Buenos Aires: El Cielo por Asalto, 2002).
83. Interestingly, the Santucho brothers, founders of the Ejército Revolutionario del Pueblo, had started their activities as an indigenista group interested in the readings of José Carlos Mariátegui and Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre. See Julio Santucho, Los últimos guevaristas: Surgimiento y eclipse del Ejército Revolutionario del Pueblo (The Last Guevaristas: The Rise and Fall of the People's Revolutionary Anny) (Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1988), 110-11.
84. See David Vinas, Indios, ejército y frontera (Indians, the Anny, and the Frontier), 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Santiago Arcos, 1983).
85. Ragnar Nurske, ed., Conferencia International sobre el Desarrollo de las Areas Nuevas (International Conference on the Development of New Areas) (Buenos Aires: Instituto Torcuato Di Telia, 1977).
86. John Fogarty, one of the participants in this debate, in particular, stressed the participation of Australia in World War I as an asset that allowed the colony to negotiate important trade agreements with Britain, at a time of shipping shortages. Both countries emerged out of the war with bigger industrial sectors, but Australia, thanks to British help, had cemented the basis of a strong métallurgic industry. The seminar and its debate are reported in Pablo Gerchunoff, ¿ Por qué Argentina no fue Australia? ( Why Was Argentina Not Australia?) (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2006), 16.
87. See also John Fogarty et al., Argentina y Australia (Buenos Aires: Instituto Torcuato Di Telia, 1979).
88. Guido Di Telia, "Rents, Quasi-Rents, Normal Profits, and Growth: Argentina and the Areas of Recent Settlement," in Argentina, Australia, and Canada: Studies in Comparative Development, 1870-1965, ed. D. C. M. Platt and Guido Di Telia (Oxford: MacMillan, 1985), 40.
89. James Scobie, Revolution on the Pampas: The Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860-1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964).
90. See Gary Wynia, Argentina in the Postwar Era: Politics and Economic Policy Making in a Divided Society (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978);
91. and Donald C. Hodges, Argentina, 1943-1976; The National Revolution and Resistance (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976).
92. See Carlos H. Waisman, Reversal of Development in Argentina (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
93. Carlos Escudé, La Argentina frente a las grandes potencias [Argentina Facing the Great Powers) (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1986).
94. See Rudiger Dornbush and Sebastian Edwards, eds., The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
95. See, for example, Jose Vazeilles, El fracaso argentino: sus raices en la ideologia oligarquica (The Argentine Failure: Its Roots in Oligarchic Ideology) (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 1997);
96. Miguel A. Asencio, Argentina y los otros: historia economica del fracaso y el éxito (Argentina and the Others: The Economic History of Failure and Success) (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1995);
97. Carlos Socci, El fracaso del social-estatismo en la Argentina (The Failure of Social-Statism in Argentina) (Córdoba: Edic. Boulevard, 2003);
98. Graciela Scheimes, Las metáforas del fracaso: Desencuentros y Utopias en la cultura Argentina (The Metaphors of Failure: Misencounters and Utopias in Argentine Culture) (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1993);
99. and Flavia Fiorucci, "Fascinated by Failure," in Flavia Fiorucci and Marcus Klein, eds., The Argentine Crisis at the Turn of the Millennium (Amsterdam: Alésant, 2004), 165-71.
100. Enrique Mases, Estado y cuestión indígena: El destina final de los indios sometidos en el sur del territorio, 1878-1910 (The Stale and the Indian Question: The Final End of Subjected Indians in the Southern Territory, 1878-1910) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2002).
101. Zeballos, La conquista.
102. Irina Podgomy, Arqueologia de la educatión: textos, índices, monumentos (Archeology of Education: Texts, Indices, Monuments) (Buenos Aires: Soc. Argentina de Antropología, 1999).
103. George Reid-Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980).
104. Arturo Jauretche, El medio pelo en la sociedad argenlina (The Middle Brow in Argentine Society) (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1996).
105. See Alejandro Solomianski, Identidades sécrétas: La négritude argentina (Secret Identities: The Argentine Blackness) (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003);
106. and Mases, Estado y cuestión indígena.
107. See Abraham Matthews, Crónica de la colonia galesa de la Patagonia (A Chronicle of the Welsh Colony of Patagonia) (Buenos Aires: Ed. Alfonsina, 1995).
108. An exceptional work in this regard is Kristin Ruggiero, And Here the World Ends: The Life of an Argentine Village (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).