THE TUCUMAN EXPRESS
For nearly three centuries the most important trade-route in South
America was the overland trail from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of the
silver mines of Potosí. The system of travel for both passengers and
freight was well established. In 1773 there was published a little book
called “El Lazarillo,” “The Blind Man’s Guide,” which contains full
information for travellers going from Buenos Aires to Lima with exact
itineraries and “with some useful notes for those new business men who
traffic by means of mules.” The road with its post-houses, its relays of
mules, and its provisions for the comfort of man and beast is well
described. Buenos Aires is credited with having twenty-two thousand
souls, of whom “ninety-nine are orphans and sixty-eight are in jail!”
I should have liked nothing better than to have been able to follow “The
Blind Man’s Guide” from post-house to post-house along the entire
distance. But alas, since the days of railways, many of the road-houses
that formerly offered “good accommodations to travellers,” have
disappeared, and it is necessary to go as the world goes and take the
train--when there is one.
On November 13, 1908, accompanied by Mr. Huntington Smith, Jr., I left
Buenos Aires for Bolivia. The first stage of the journey, seven hundred
and twenty miles, was by train to Tucuman, over the tracks of the Buenos
Aires and Rosario R. R., one of the oldest and richest railways in
Argentina. Our train was made up entirely of vestibuled sleeping and
dining cars.
Among the first-class passengers was a newly arrived Spanish mercantile
clerk and a French commercial traveller. I noticed more French in
Argentina and Brazil than on the West Coast or in the northern
countries. Especially in the large cities, they, with the Germans and
English, have been very active in promoting local enterprises.
In the first fifteen miles out from Buenos Aires we saw numbers of
villas shaded by groves of eucalyptus trees standing in the midst of the
owner’s broad acres. There is considerable evidence of market gardening
and general agriculture. So far as we could see from the train, the
roads are very bad and have not improved since the days of the
woe-begotten travellers who had to cross these plains in ox-carts.
When Edmund Temple, the breezy secretary of the Potosí, La Paz &
Peruvian Mining Association, crossed Argentina on his way to Bolivia in
1825, he was struck with the immense number of “hoppers” that they
passed on the Pampas. He says the locusts covered the road and adjacent
parts for miles. In those days, pasturage was plenty, and cultivated
fields were scarce, so nobody cared very much. It is only with the
increasing importance of crops that the Argentinos have come to regard
the swarms of locusts as a great pest, and have spent many thousands of
dollars fighting them. They are now planning to build a fence of sheet
zinc, costing several million dollars, to keep back the “hoppers.” Some
modern travellers have had their trains delayed by locust swarms on the
tracks, but we saw comparatively few.
Our first stops were at suburban towns, which are more attractive than
one would suppose in a country that is so flat. At one of them, on the
River Tigre, the English colony has made boating fashionable, with
festivals like those at Henley. We had showers in the course of the
morning, but the country over which we passed looked rather dry.
A characteristic feature of the Pampas are the modern windmills with
their steel frames. Most of them are of American make, for despite our
backwardness in some lines, we have been peculiarly successful in
supplying Argentina with windmills. In fact, we have almost monopolized
that particular business. Fortunately, our manufacturers seem also to
excel in the production of small and inexpensive motors, such as are
particularly desired on farms and ranches where, owing to the extreme
difficulty of getting workmen, there is an excellent market for
labor-saving machinery. Notwithstanding this encouraging feature, for
every million dollars’ worth of goods which Argentina imports from the
United States, she imports six millions from Europe.
Many of the interior towns have their own electric lighting plants. The
agents of German manufacturers have been far-sighted in following up
new concessions and in getting large contracts for the installation of
German machinery. It takes a good many windmills to equal one electric
lighting plant.
Our train made a short stop at Rosario, the second largest city in
Argentina. Owing to its advantageous situation at the bend of the Paraná
River, it has become a most important port.
Accessible throughout the year to vessels drawing sixteen feet, it is
the terminus of many trans-Atlantic lines which bring European
manufactured goods here in exchange for wheat and cattle. Some ore from
Bolivia is also shipped from here. On our mule trip in Southern Bolivia
we saw hundreds of animals laden with huge packing-cases from Europe
marked “via Rosario.”
The other important new port in Argentina is Bahia Blanca, which is
situated several hundred miles south of Buenos Aires and is connected by
railways with the newly opened regions in northern Patagonia. There is
no scarcity of good agricultural land as yet undeveloped. Were the
government of Argentina as well managed for the interests of the
individual farmer as the governments of our western states, there is no
question that Argentina would secure a much higher grade of immigrant.
The opportunities are truly magnificent, but I was repeatedly told by
foreign residents who are engaged in farming, that there are many
unpleasant features. The truth of the matter is that the Argentino is
too fond of keeping political power in his own hands. He does not
understand all that is meant by a constitutional democratic form of
government. It is not his fault, for his race history, as we have seen,
has given him other inheritances and prejudices. Nevertheless he is
learning.
Leaving Rosario we plunged into the heart of a great agricultural and
pastoral region. The heat and dust were rather trying. The humidity was
considerable, being about eighty per cent in our car. In truth, we
experienced all the various annoyances to which one is subject when
crossing our western plains, in a moderately slow train. We had been
told that this Tucuman express was “the finest train in America.” Some
of the young Englishmen on our steamer were extremely enthusiastic over
it and assured us that we could have nothing so fine in the United
States. Consequently we were somewhat disappointed to find the standard
of comfort not any greater than it was on our western trains fifteen
years ago.
There is one thing, however, in which the “B. A. and R.” is ahead of
most American railroads. At each station are one or two very large
sign-boards conveniently placed so that the stranger has no difficulty
in ascertaining whether he has reached his destination or not. And there
are other little things along the line that make one feel the presence
of railway officials carefully trained in English railway methods. It
goes without saying that the road is largely owned in England and has
Anglo-Saxons for its principal officers.
Argentina has about thirteen thousand miles of railway operated under
some twenty companies. One thousand seven hundred miles are owned by
the government, but by far the larger part of the railway system is
controlled by British capitalists. A little more than half of the
mileage consists of the very broad five and a half foot gauge. The
remainder is one metre or less. The three gauges necessitate
considerable transferring of freight and passengers.
To one who is accustomed to thinking of Argentina as a rich but
undeveloped region, it seems incredible that she should have fifty
thousand freight-cars and two thousand passenger-coaches. It is still
more astonishing to learn that every year her railways carry thirty
million passengers, and thirty million tons of freight, of which about
one third are cereals. During the year 1906, the receipts from the
passenger traffic amounted to more than $18,000,000, and from freight
traffic to something over $55,000,000. Statistics are dry and
uninteresting except as they open our eyes to conditions of which we
have formed but a small conception. The extremely rapid growth of the
Argentine railways is shown by the fact that while in 1884 the capital
invested did not amount to $100,000,000, it now amounts to over
$700,000,000.
So far as killing people is concerned, the Argentine railways do not
come up to our record, although they do fairly well. In 1905 they
killed, all told, two hundred and eighteen persons, and in 1906, two
hundred and fifty. This is a heavier percentage per passenger carried
than in the United States.
Towards evening we left the farming country and entered a barren region
where great stretches of perfectly flat land seemed to promise splendid
results if it could be irrigated.
The dust increased, and we were glad enough to be hauled over these dry
pampas of Santa Fé and Santiago del Estero in a night, instead of being
obliged to spend a fortnight on them following a slow-moving Spanish
caravan.
When we looked out of the car window the next morning all was changed.
Sugar-cane fields waving attractively in the sunlight, big wheeled carts
lumbering noisily along drawn by oxen or mules, lithe horsemen riding
strong little ponies through thickets of dry scrub, had transformed the
scene from the everlasting prairies of the pampas into the highlands of
the northwest. The hills beyond the fields of cane were covered with a
scrubby growth. To the north-west and north arose green mountains that
seemed to be forested to their tops. Some of the trees were in bloom
with brilliant yellow flowers.
The contrast between the dry, barren pampas and the green cane-fields of
Tucuman is so striking that Argentine writers have been accustomed to
speak of the latter in terms of the most extravagant praise. Even the
well-travelled Sarmiento called it the “Eden of America,” “where nature
had displayed its greatest pomp!” As a matter of fact Tucuman is
admirably situated in a very fertile and highly cultivated plain, and is
the centre of the most important sugar-growing region in Argentina. In
its immediate vicinity we counted a dozen tall chimneys of sugar
factories.
We reached the city about ten o’clock.
It was founded about the time that Sir Walter Raleigh was looking for
Eldorado. Here in 1816, the Argentine Congress passed their Declaration
of Independence. Here Belgrano won a great victory over the Spanish
armies that had descended from Peru to crush the Argentine patriots.
The Tucuman station, a large modern affair, was chiefly interesting
because of the picturesque character of the luggage that was lying about
the platforms. Chairs and cots, pots and pans, spring mattresses, and
hen-coops, all bore evidence to the fact that this is still a young
country into which new settlers are coming, and that the Railroad
Company has the good sense to make it easy for people to travel with all
their possessions. Everything was checked and went in the luggage-van,
as a matter of course, instead of being handed over to “slow-freight” or
rapacious express companies, as with us.
Most of the immigrants were Italians from Genoa and the north of Italy.
A few came from Galicia, the home of Spain’s most sturdy peasantry.
Neither immigrants nor residents wore picturesque costumes. Even the
Gauchos are dressed in civilized raiment and bear little resemblance to
the South American Indian of our dreams. It is too progressive a country
to allow its clothes to get in its way.
The facts relating to Buenos Aires and Argentina are at every one’s
elbow so it is all the more astonishing how ignorant the average
American is regarding the great metropolis of the southern hemisphere.
We are very fond of telling stories of our English cousins who imagine
that our western states are overrun with wild Indians and desperadoes.
And we think it inexcusable in them to judge from the frequent press
reports of lynchings and “hold-ups” that we are an uncivilized, lawless
people. Yet we judge the Argentino just as hastily. Not only are we
quite ignorant of his material progress, we also frequently slander him
for having an “unstable government.” “Revolutions” or struggles for
governmental control occur, it is true, but they do not amount to much
and hardly deserve the exaggerated reports of them which are published
abroad. In a country that has been bound together by such a network of
railroads as Argentina, making it possible for the government in power
to send its troops rapidly wheresoever it will, the habit of playing
with revolutions is sure to die out. In the old days when transportation
was slow and difficult, it was possible for a popular leader to gather a
considerable band of followers and prepare to march on the capital
before the government knew of his existence. Such uprisings, however,
are necessarily the work of days or weeks, and it is becoming more and
more difficult to bring them to a successful issue. As an evidence of
the more stable condition of the government and as showing how Argentina
has recovered from the setback which it got at the time of the failure
of the Baring Brothers, it is well to note that in the ten years between
1895 and 1905, the foreign trade of Buenos Aires more than doubled,
growing to more than half a billion dollars annually.