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A City and a Nation
A set of powerful dualisms characterizes Argentine history. Argentina is the city of Buenos Aires, the port capital, a sprawling immigrant-filled Chicago on the pampa—only much larger. And Argentina is the pampa, a limitless flat horizon of fertile, well-watered agricultural land (one of the world's great bread baskets) and beyond, the wide arid plains sweeping to the Andes. During much of the 1800s, Buenos Aires was politically a land apart from the rest of Argentina, and in social and cultural terms, the contrast remains striking. Buenos Aires looks and feels like Europe to visitors from the United States, while the Argentine interior is more unmistakably Latin American. The Argentine accent most U.S. students have heard is really the porteño accent of Buenos Aires, shared (approximately) with Uruguayans but not with Argentines in the interior. The accents of Tucumán or Jujuy, for example—like the faces of the people who live in those localities—would not seem out of place elsewhere in Latin America.
Another duality important to Argentine history contrasts the entire coastal region, or Litoral, to the Andean region, or Northwest. In the colonial period, Northwestern Argentina was the most colonized area of the country, an economic support zone for the great mines at Potosí, in what is now Bolivia. Therefore, the Argentine Northwest has an Andean flavor, both physically and culturally. Córdoba, home of the country's colonial university, as well as wine-rich Mendoza and San Juan, are southern outposts of this region, as is sugarcane-growing Tucumán. The Litoral, on the other hand, was home to cattle herds and gaucho herdsmen, then to the wheat-farming Italian immigrants and their tango-dancing urban descendents, who compose the more familiar international profile of Argentina. The Litoral region eclipsed the Northwest economically at independence and has remained ever since the more developed and prosperous part of the country.
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Themes:
Questions for Analysis and Further Reflection:
- The duality that has placed cosmopolitan Buenos Aires in contrast to the rural interior since the 1800s was very much the reverse during the colonial period. Up to the late 1700s, Buenos Aires was a backwater city with a small population. What led to the growth of the city—in terms of both population and economic activity—around 1800, and how did these factors allow Buenos Aires to become a leader of the wars of independence?
- What are some of the political, social, and cultural manifestations of progress in Argentina of the late nineteenth century? (To address this question, think about institutions, policies, and literary or other artistic creations that appear around the turn of the century.)
- Immigration plays a big role in Argentine history, but so does a sometimes-nasty reaction to immigration that surfaced in the early 1900s and fed the rise of a new nationalism in Argentina. Nationalism has positive and negative aspects. Can you identify both in Argentine history?
Country Bibliography: (Titles with ** are good starting places.)
** Bethell, Leslie, ed. Argentina Since Independence. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
This edited volume draws from the extensive Cambridge History of Latin America to present a concise, accessible look at Argentina since the early nineteenth century. While it contains essays that are scholarly treatments of problems in Argentine history—primarily related to politics and economics—they are useful for the undergraduate reader seeking to pursue these problems in greater depth. Bibliographical essays for each chapter are included.
Brown, Jonathan C. A Brief History of Argentina. New York: Facts On File, 2003.
Lewis, Colin M. Argentina: A Short History. Oxford: Oneworld, 2002.
This clearly written survey deals primarily with Argentina in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, touching only briefly on the colonial period in the introduction. Students will find useful Lewis's interpretation of events leading up to the recent economic crisis in Argentina, as well as that of the politics of violence that overshadowed Argentina in the last quarter of the twentieth century. A short bibliographical essay and index are included after the text.
Lewis, Daniel K. The History of Argentina. Greenwood Histories of Modern Nations.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Luna, Felix. A Brief History of Argentina. Translated by Judith Ravin. Buenos Aires: Planeta,
1995.
Luna is one of the most prolific and widely read historians of Argentina. This historical overview takes the nonspecialist reader from colonial Argentina to the 1950s. The narrative style is casual; and rather than privileging political history, emphasis is placed on the story of the formation of Argentina as a nation through the blend of politics, economics, and sociocultural forces.
** Rock, David. Argentina, 1516-1982: From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War.
London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 1986.
A clearly written, effectively organized general history of Argentina with a strong political emphasis and extensive bibliography. Undergraduates may want to consult this book especially for further reading on a particular period of interest. Includes a glossary of Spanish terms, numerous statistical tables, and a series of maps and photographs.
** Scobie, James R. Argentina: A City and a Nation, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1971.
Though an older work, Scobie's survey of Argentine history will hold students' attention better than many others. The lead story is political, but Scobie does not neglect to explore social and cultural developments. Includes clear, informative maps and tables, a detailed political chronology, and a bibliographical essay.
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