BUENOS AIRES
We left Santos late on a Tuesday afternoon, and after two pleasant days
at sea entered the harbor of Montevideo on Friday morning. It was
crowded with ships of all nations, and we were particularly delighted to
see the American flag flying from three small steamers. Could it be
possible that the flag which had been so conspicuous for its absence
from South American waters, was regaining in the twentieth century the
preëminence it had in the early years of the nineteenth? Alas, no; the
boats were only government vessels in the lighthouse service, towing
lightships from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. They had stopped here
to coal, for Montevideo is a favorite port of call for steamers bound
through the Straits of Magellan. Ever since the days when it was the
home of active smugglers, who were engaged in defying Spain’s
restrictive colonial policy, Montevideo has been a prosperous trading
centre. To-day, clean streets, new buildings, electric cars, fine shops,
elaborate window displays, well-dressed people, and excellent hotels
mark it as modern and comfortable.
It is difficult to realize that this is the capital of Uruguay, “one of
the most tumultuous of the smaller revolutionary states of South
America.” The American is chagrined to find that the Uruguayan gold or
paper dollar is worth two cents more than our own. And the Englishman is
most annoyed to find the “sovereign” at a discount. But chagrin gives
way to frank amazement at the high prices which the Montevidean is
willing to pay for his imported luxuries.
The republic is small but there is no waste land, and the railroads
bring in quantities of wool and food-stuffs destined for the European
market. More than three thousand steamers enter the port annually. Most
of them belong to the eighteen British lines that touch here. No wonder
the city is wealthy and has attractive shops and boulevards. To be sure,
the harbor improvements, not completed yet, have been greatly retarded
by the most flagrant kind of political graft. But what American city,
from New York to San Francisco, has a clean record in this particular?
Splendidly equipped steamers, resembling our Fall River boats, ply
nightly between Montevideo and Buenos Aires, in order to accommodate the
increasing numbers who wish to do business in both cities.
A generation ago the traveller to Buenos Aires was obliged to disembark
in the stream seven or eight miles from the city, proceed in small boats
over the shallow waters, and then clamber into huge ox-carts and enjoy
the last mile or two of his journey as best he could. Since then,
extraordinary harbor improvements, costing millions of dollars, have
been completed, and ocean steamers are now able
[Illustration: THE DOCKS OF BUENOS AIRES]
to approach the city through dredged channels. Yet such has been the
phenomenal growth of the port that the magnificent modern docks are
already overcrowded and the handling of cargo goes on very slowly,
retarded by many exasperating delays. The regular passenger and mail
steamers are given prompt attention, however, and the customs house
examination is both speedy and courteous, in marked contrast to that at
Rio. In years to come, the two other important ports of
Argentina--Rosario, higher up the Rio de la Plata, and Bahia Blanca,
farther down the Atlantic coast--are destined to grow at a rapid rate
because of the better docking facilities they will be able to afford.
Bahia Blanca in particular is destined to have a great future, as it is
the natural outlet for the rapidly developing agricultural and pastoral
region of southern Argentina.
Buenos Aires, however, will always maintain her political and commercial
supremacy. She is not only the capital of Argentina, but out of every
five Argentinos, she claims at least one as a denizen of her narrow
streets. Already ranking as the second Latin city in the world, her
population equals that of Madrid and Barcelona combined.
Hardly has one left the docks on the way to the hotel before one is
impressed with the commercial power of this great city. Your taxicab
passes slowly through crowded streets where the heavy traffic retards
your progress and gives you a chance to marvel at the great number of
foreign banks, English, German, French, and Italian, that have taken
possession of this quarter of the city. With their fine substantial
buildings and their general appearance of solidity, they have a firm
grip on the situation. One looks in vain for an American bank or agency
of any well-known Wall Street house. American financial institutions are
like the American merchant steamers, conspicuous by their absence. The
Anglo-Saxons that you see briskly walking along the sidewalks are not
Americans, but clean-shaven, red-cheeked, vigorous Britishers.
In England they talk familiarly of “B.A.” and the “River Plate”;
disdaining to use the Spanish words Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and
Buenos Aires. To hear them you might suppose they were speaking of
something they owned, and you would not be so very far from the truth.
What Mexico owes to American capital and enterprise, the countries and
cities of the Rio de la Plata owe to Great Britain. British capitalists
have not been slow to realize the possibilities of this great
agricultural region. They know its potentiality as a food-producer, and
they have covered it with a network of railways much as we have covered
the prairies of Illinois and the plains of Kansas. Of the billion and a
quarter dollars of British capital invested in Argentina, over seven
hundred millions are in railways. Thousands of active, energetic young
Englishmen, backed by this enormous British capital, have aided in the
extraordinary progress which Argentina has made during the past
generation.
In some ways this is an English colony. The majority of the people do
not speak English, except in the commercial district, and the
Englishman is here on sufferance. But it is his railroads that tie this
country together. It is his enterprises that have opened thousands of
its square miles, and although the folly of his ancestors a century ago
caused him to lose the political control of this “purple land,” the
energy of his more recent forebears has given him a splendid heritage.
Not only has he been able to pay large dividends to the British
stockholders who had such great faith in the future of Argentina, he has
made many native Argentinos wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.
Land-owners, whose parents had not a single change of clothes, are
themselves considering how many motor cars to order. Their patronage
sustains the finely appointed shops which make such a brave display on
Florida and Cangallo Streets. These streets may be so narrow that
vehicles are only allowed to pass in one direction, but the shops are
first class in every particular and include the greatest variety of
goods, from the latest creations of Parisian millinery to the most
modern scientific instruments. Fine book shops, large department stores,
gorgeous restaurants, expensive to the last degree, emphasize the wealth
and extravagance of the upper classes.
On the streets one may hear all of the European languages. In the
business district it is quite as likely to be English as Spanish, and in
the poorer quarters Italian is growing more common every day. The speech
of the common people is nominally Spanish, very bad Spanish. In reality
it is a hybrid into which Portuguese, Italian, and Indian words and
accents have entered to disfigure the beautiful Castilian.
When Rio cut her Avenida Central through the middle of her business
district, she had in mind the Avenida 25 de Mayo of Buenos Aires, a
typical imitation Parisian Boulevard that was opened not many years ago
to facilitate traffic and beautify the city. On the Avenida, as in Rio,
the leading newspaper has its luxurious home.
All the world has heard of “La Prensa” and its marvellously
well-appointed building where distinguished foreigners are entertained,
lectures are given, and all sorts of advertising dodges are featured. It
was “La Prensa” that had the news of President Taft’s election two
minutes after it was known in New York. Many Porteños, as the people of
Buenos Aires are called, think the columns of “La Prensa” are too yellow
and that its business methods are almost too modern. They prefer the
more dignified pages of the “Nacion.”
The hotels on the Avenida are not up to the standard of three of those
on the narrower thoroughfares. In fact, it would be hard to find more
comfortable hostelries than the Grand or the Palace. The new Phœnix
Hotel, one of the first skyscrapers to be erected here, promises even
greater comforts and is to be the rendezvous of the British colony.
There are many theatres and they have a brilliant season, which begins
in June. The pleasure-loving Porteños are willing to pay very high
prices for the best seats, and managers can offer good
[Illustration: AVENIDA DE MAYO, BUENOS AIRES]
salaries to tempt the best performers to leave Europe. Variety shows are
popular and carried to an extreme with which we are not familiar in the
United States. Some of them are poor copies of questionable Parisian
enterprises. But even these are not as bad as the moving picture shows
that have captured Buenos Aires. Public opinion is astonishingly lax in
the southern capital. Exhibitions of shocking indecency are
countenanced, that would no longer be tolerated in Europe or North
America. In this matter Buenos Aires also offers a marked contrast to
Santiago de Chile where morals are on a much higher plane, thanks to the
Catholic Church, which unfortunately seems to have lost its grip here.
The Porteño has not only forgotten his religion, he seems also to have
lost the pleasing manners of his Castilian ancestors. I have been in
eight South American capitals and in none have I seen such bad manners
as in Buenos Aires. Nowhere else in South America is one jostled so
rudely. Nowhere else does one see such insolent behavior and such bad
taste. Santiago, Lima, Bogotá, and Caracas seem to belong to a different
civilization. To be sure, none of them are as rich and prosperous. But
in all of them good society is a much more ancient concern than in this
overgrown young metropolis.
Here the newly rich are in full sway and their ideas and instincts seem
to predominate. On Sunday afternoon, all the world dashes madly out to
the race course, where it exercises its passion for gambling to the
fullest capacity. In the Jockey Club inclosure are gathered the youth
and beauty, the wealth and fashion of the city. And yet the ladies
carry the artificial tricks of feminine adornment to such an amazing
extent that it is almost impossible to realize that they belong to the
fashionable world and not to the demi-monde. The races that I attended
drew an audience of thirty thousand. One race had a first prize
amounting to fifteen thousand dollars. The horses seemed to be of a
rather heavier build than ours but they did not interest the spectators.
Facilities for betting were provided on an elaborate scale. There were
no bookmakers, and the odds depended entirely on the popular choice, as
is commonly done in Europe. The gate receipts and the proceeds of the
“percentage” are enormous and have enabled the Jockey Club to build one
of the most luxurious and extravagant club houses in the world.
After the races, hundreds of motor cars and carriages promenade slowly
up and down that part of the parkway which society has decreed shall be
her rendezvous. Here one sees an astonishing display of paint and powder
illuminating the faces of the devotees of a fashion which decrees that
all ladies must have brilliant complexions. The effect is very
unpleasant. I suppose it is simply another evidence of the newness of
modern Buenos Aires. Very few wealthy families have a long-established
social position. Culture and refinement are at a discount. Otherwise it
is difficult to imagine how any society can tolerate such artificiality.
This garish Sunday parade is quite a swing of the pendulum from the old
days when Creole ladies, modestly attired in lovely black lace
mantillas, walked quietly to church and home again, as they still do in
most South American cities.
It is hardly necessary to speak of the more usual evidences of great
wealth, palatial residences that would attract attention even in Paris
and New York, charming parks beautifully laid out on the shores of the
great Rio de la Plata, and a thousand luxurious automobiles of the
latest pattern carrying all they can hold of Parisian millinery.
One does not need to be told that this is a city of electric cars,
telephones, and taxis. These we take for granted. But there is a
characteristic feature of the city that is unexpected and striking: the
central depots for imported thoroughbreds. Only a few doors from the
great banks and railway offices are huge stables where magnificent
blooded horses and cattle, sheep and pigs, which have brought records of
distinguished ancestry across the Atlantic, are offered for sale and
command high prices.
These permanent cattle-shows are the natural rendezvous of the wealthy
ranchmen and breeders who are sure to be found here during a part of
each day while they are in town. So are foreigners desirous of
purchasing ranches and reporters getting news from the interior. The
cattle-fairs offer ocular evidence of the wealth of the modern Argentino
and the importance of the pastoral industry. There are over a hundred
million sheep on the Pampas. Cattle and horses also are counted by the
millions.
The problems of Argentine agriculture and animal industries are being
continually studied by the great land-owners, who have already done
much to improve the quality of their products.
During my stay in Buenos Aires, it was my privilege to visit an
agricultural school in one of the neighboring towns. The occasion was
the celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. The festivities were
typically Spanish-American. An avenue of trees was christened with
appropriate ceremonies, being given the name of the anniversary date. To
each tree a bunch of fire-crackers had been tied. At the beginning and
end of the avenue a new sign-post bearing its name had been put up and
veiled with a piece of cheese cloth. A procession consisting of the
officials of the school and of the National University of La Plata, with
which the school is affiliated, alumni and visitors, formed at the
school-buildings after the reading of an appropriate address, and
marched down the new avenue following the band. As we progressed, the
signs were unveiled and the bunches of fire-crackers touched off. At the
far end, in a grove of eucalyptus trees, a collation was served, and we
were entertained by having the fine horses and cattle belonging to the
school paraded up and down. The school has an extensive property, is
doing good work, and shows a practical grasp of the needs of the
country.
Argentina has worked hard to develop those industries that are dependent
upon stock-raising. The results have amply justified her. The
exportation of frozen meat from Argentina amounts to nearly twenty
million dollars annually. Only recently one of the best known
packing-houses of Chicago opened a large plant here and is paying
tribute to the excellence of the native stock. Every year Argentina
sends to Europe the carcasses of millions of sheep and cattle as well as
millions of bushels of wheat and corn, more in fact than we do. Of all
the South American republics, she is our greatest natural competitor,
and she knows it. Nevertheless, she lacks adequate resources of iron,
coal, lumber, and water power, and notwithstanding a high protective
tariff, can never hope to become a competitor in manufactured products.
Argentina exports more than three times as much per capita as we do, and
must do so in order to pay for the necessary importation of manufactured
goods. It also means that she will always find it to her advantage to
buy her goods from England, France, and Germany, where she sells her
food-stuffs. Brazil can send us unlimited amounts of raw materials that
we cannot raise at home, while at present Argentina has little to offer
us. Yet we are already buying her wool and hides, and before long will
undoubtedly be eating her beef and mutton, as England has been doing for
years.
The banks of Buenos Aires have learned to be extremely conservative. For
a long time this city was a favorite resort of absconding bank cashiers
from the United States, and stories are told of many well-dressed
Americans who have come here from time to time without letters of
introduction but with plenty of money to spend, who have been kindly
received by the inhabitants, only to prove to be undesirable
acquaintances. What we consider “old-fashioned and antiquated” English
bank methods are the rule, and it frequently takes a couple of hours to
draw money on a letter of credit even when one has taken the pains to
notify one’s bankers beforehand that the letter was to be used in South
America. Personally, I have found American Express checks extremely
useful in all parts of South America and have had no difficulty in
getting them accepted in Buenos Aires. In the interior it is more
difficult unless one comes well introduced. But the necessity for
letters of introduction is quite generally recognized all over the
continent. Strangers who have “neglected to supply themselves with
credentials,” frequently turn out to be fugitives from justice.
Another local peculiarity noticeable also in Chile, is that many of the
citizens bitterly begrudge us our attempted monopoly of the title of
“Americans.” They catalogue us at all possible times under “N” instead
of “A.” They also speak of us as _North_ Americans or as “Yankis,” and
they call our Minister the “North American Minister,” quite ignoring the
existence of Mexico and Canada.
Certain Americans who are desirous of securing an increase of our trade
with South America and of placating in every possible manner the South
Americans, overlooking the practical side of the question, have
acquiesced in the local prejudice and speak of themselves as North
Americans, even though they do not address their letters to the “United
States of North America.”
The fact that the South American refuses to grant us our title of
“Americans” is really an indirect compliment. It is chiefly owing to the
industry and intelligence of the citizens of the United States, that the
word “American” has come to have a complimentary meaning,--far more
complimentary in fact than it had fifty years ago when distinguished
foreigners were wont to use that adjective as a peculiarly opprobrious
epithet. With this change in the significance of the term has come a
natural desire on the part of the South Americans to apply it to
themselves. They reason that they have as good a right, geographically,
to the term as we have, and they wilfully forget that each of their
republics has in its legal title a word which conveniently and
euphoniously characterizes its citizens. The people of the United States
of Brazil are called Brazilians, and those of the United States of
Mexico are Mexicans by the same right that those of the United States of
America are Americans. To be sure, the world generally thinks of our
country as the United States, quite forgetful that there are several
other republics of the same name. It is a pity that a euphonious
appellation cannot be manufactured from one or both of those two words.
We cannot distinguish ourselves by the title “North American,” as that
ignores the rightful claim to that title which the denizens of the
larger part of this continent, the Mexicans and Canadians, have in
common with us. It is difficult to see how we are to avoid calling
ourselves Americans even if it gives offence to our neighbors. It is not
a point of great importance and it seems to me that in time, with the
natural growth of Chile and the Argentine Republic, their citizens will
be so proud of being called Chilenos or Argentinos that they will not
begrudge us our only convenient and proper title.
There is another point, however, in their criticism of us which is more
reasonable and on which they might be accorded more satisfaction. I
refer to that part of our foreign policy known as the Monroe Doctrine.
Many a Chileno and Argentino resents the idea of our Monroe Doctrine
applying in any sense to his country and declares that we had better
keep it at home. He regards it as only another sign of our overweening
national conceit. And on mature consideration, it does seem as though
the justification for the Monroe Doctrine, both in its original and its
present form, had passed. Europe is no longer ruled by despots who
desire to crush the liberties of their subjects. As is frequently
remarked, England has a more democratic government than the United
States. In all the leading countries of Europe, the people have
practically as much to say about the government as they have in America.
There is not the slightest danger that any European tyrant will attempt
to enslave the weak republics of this hemisphere. Furthermore, such
republics as Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru no more need our
Monroe Doctrine to keep them from being robbed of their territory by
European nations than does Italy or Spain. If it be true that some of
the others, like the notoriously lawless group in Central America, need
to be looked after by their neighbors, let us amend our outgrown Monroe
Doctrine, as has already been suggested by one of our writers on
international law, so as to include in the police force of the Western
Hemisphere, those who have shown themselves able to practice
self-control. With our lynchings, strikes, and riots, we shall have to
be very careful, however, not to make the conditions too severe or we
shall ourselves fail to qualify.
The number of “North Americans” in Buenos Aires is very small. While we
have been slowly waking up to the fact that South America is something
more than “a land of revolutions and fevers,” our German cousins have
entered the field on all sides.
The Germans in southern Brazil are a negligible factor in international
affairs. But the well-educated young German who is being sent out to
capture South America commercially, is a power to be reckoned with. He
is going to damage England more truly than Dreadnoughts or gigantic
airships. He is worth our study as well as England’s.
Willing to acquaint himself with and adapt himself to local prejudices,
he has already made great strides in securing South American commerce
for his Fatherland. He has become a more useful member of the community
than the Englishman. He has taken pains to learn the language
thoroughly, and speak it not only grammatically but idiomatically as
well; something which the Anglo-Saxon almost never does. He has entered
into the social life of the country with a much more gracious spirit
than his competitors and rarely segregates himself from the community in
pursuing his pleasures as the English do. His natural prejudices against
the Spanish way of doing things are not so strong.
His steamers are just as luxurious and comfortable as the new English
boats. It is said that even if the element of danger that always exists
at sea is less on the British lines, the German boats treat their
passengers with more consideration, giving them better food and better
service. No wonder the Spanish-American likes the German better than he
does the English or American. Already the English residents in Buenos
Aires, who have regarded the River Plate as their peculiar province for
many years, are galled beyond measure to see what strides the Germans
have made in capturing the market for their manufactured products and in
threatening their commercial supremacy. And neither English nor Germans
are going to hold out a helping hand or welcome an American commercial
invasion.
Meanwhile the Argentinos realize that their country cannot get along
without foreign capital, much as they hate to see the foreigner made
rich from the products of their rolling prairies.
Politically, Buenos Aires and Argentina are in the control of the native
born. They have a natural aptitude for playing politics, and they much
prefer it to the more serious world of business. This they are quite
willing to leave to the foreigner.
They realize also that they greatly need more immigrants. The population
is barely five per square mile, and as a matter of fact, is practically
much less than that for so large a part of the entire population is
crowded into the city and province of Buenos Aires. Consequently they
are doing all they can to encourage able-bodied immigrants to come from
Italy and Spain.
And the immigrants are coming. My ship brought a thousand. Other ships
brought more than three hundred thousand in 1908. Argentina is not
standing still. Nor is she waiting for “American enterprise.” During
1908 considerably more than two thousands vessels entered the ports of
the republic. Four flew the American flag.