TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES
Tucuman and the road to Chile--The climate and the cultivation
of the sugar-cane--The problem of manual labour--Irrigation at
Mendoza--Water-rights--Viticulture--Protection and the natural
conditions.
The great industrial forms of cultivation, the sugar-cane and the
vine, gave a new aspect to the scenery of Tucuman and Mendoza at the
end of the nineteenth century. The increase of population and wealth
which they entailed was so sudden, the economic advance so swift,
that the owners of vineyards and the sugar-makers have now lost all
recollection of the primitive industries which gave life to colonial
Tucuman and Mendoza, and were maintained until the last generation.
Nevertheless, if one compares Tucuman or Mendoza with some centre of
irrigated tillage in north-west Argentina, one quickly perceives the
original features which three centuries of history have given them. The
system of land-tenure, water-rights, the distribution of the cultivated
zones, and a thousand other features, show that the colonization is
old. The exploitation of the soil and utilization of the water have
not proceeded on a methodical plan, conceived in advance, which would
make each piece of work--the dams and channels of distribution, for
instance--subordinate to the whole. The engineers who constructed the
great modern dams of Mendoza, San Juan and Sali, had not to create a
region of new estates, but merely to improve the water-supply, which
was used wastefully by the existing estates. There is nothing more
suggestive than the contrast between these stone dams, built according
to all the rules of hydraulics, and the network of irregular channels,
following the accidental variations of the land and the slope, which
preceded them, and to which they have been accommodated as far as
possible. In some cases the primitive _acequias_ could not be altered
so as to start from the dam. The accumulations of water succeed each
other down the slope, held up by a simple barrier of branches and earth
which is periodically destroyed by floods. The modern flood-proof dam
(_dique nivelador_), which cuts the torrent in its entire width, and
enables them to make use of its whole volume, allows a certain amount
of water to pass, for the use of the _acequias_ lower down. This falls
back into the broad, stony bed, exposed to evaporation and infiltration
as it was before.
* * * * *
Long before the development of the sugar industry on a large scale,
there was a typically urban life, added to the common fund of pastoral
life, at Tucuman. The neighbouring cantons of the scrub--Trancas,
Burruyacu, and Graneros--sent cattle and mules to Peru and Chile, like
the other Argentine plains. But Tucuman drew still greater profit from
its position as chief stage on the high road to Peru, at the point
where the plain passes into the mountain. Primitive Tucuman was an
excellent type of high-road village. The road determined its position
at the point where the Sali had to be crossed. The first site of the
town, near Monteros, was abandoned in the eighteenth century, when
the high road to Peru settled in the sub-Andean region and ceased
to run through the Calchaqui valley. The road sustained its chief
industries, tanning and harness-making for the muleteers of the Andes,
and waggon-making for the _troperos_ of the plain. The road and the
people travelling along it afforded an outlet for its wheat and flour,
and facilitated the export of its tobacco to the coast-provinces. The
waggon-owners were really contractors, conveying stuff at their own
cost. Moreover, part of Bolivia came to make its purchases at the shops
(_tiendas_) of Tucuman, and the merchants of the town took in exchange
Bolivian ore for export. Thus the road built up a nucleus of available
capital at Tucuman. This capital was invested, at the close of the
nineteenth century, in sugar; and it has increased a hundredfold. Most
of the works still belong to old families of the town.
The sugar-region is comparatively small. It covers an area which
has exceptional climatic features, owing to the vicinity of Mount
Aconcagua. While the higher chains of the Andes further north are
separated from the Chaco plain by lower ranges, on which the east winds
leave their stores of moisture less freely, Tucuman has on its west the
great mass of Aconcagua. It rises, a giant landmark, at the beginning
of the plains, from which there is nothing to separate it, and gathers
the clouds round it.
[Illustration: THE VALLE OF SANTA MARIA, NORTH-WEST OF MOUNT ACONCAGUA.
_At the bottom of the valle one can see the sandy bed of the river as
a white line in the foreground. Zone of torrential terraces, which
follows the edge of the valle._ Photograph by the Author.]
[Illustration: THE OASIS OF ANDALGALA.
_At the western foot of Aconcagua, the snowy crest of which can be
seen._ Photograph by the Author.
PLATE VI. To face p. 70.]
On the eastern slope of Aconcagua is the limit of the crescent of
tropical forest, which begins about three thousand miles away, on the
flank of the Venezuelan and Colombian Cordilleras, and is connected
in the centre, in the equatorial zone, from Guaviare to Mamore, with
the forests of the Amazon region. At its two ends it is reduced to a
narrow belt which does not reach, in the east, the alluvial plains,
the savannahs of the Orinoco and the scrub of the Chaco. The humid
forest of the Argentine Andes is nowhere more luxuriant than near its
southern limit, above Tucuman. There are no palms or tree-ferns, but
the convolvulus abounds, and the evergreen trees are covered with
epiphytes. Aconcagua is one of the sharpest climatological limits in
the world. In the latitude of Salta one has only to go about 150 miles
to pass from the moist forests of the sub-Andean chain of the Lumbrera
to the arid valley of Cachi. On both sides of Aconcagua there are less
than fifty-five miles between the sugar-cane fields won from the forest
and the oasis of Andalgala, or that of Santa Maria, which are right in
the desert zone. According as one approaches Aconcagua from the east or
the west, one finds, from base to summit, either the successive stages
of vegetation of the humid Andes--from forest to grain-sown prairie
(_paramo_ or _pajonal_)--or those which are characteristic of the arid
Andes, from the spiny scrub of the valleys to the fields of resinous
_tola_ of the Puna. The contrast of climates is repeated in the
character of the soils. Aconcagua contains in itself the entire Andes
in miniature. At the foot of the narrow zone of Alpine crests, in the
few square miles of the elevated valleys of Tafi and Pucara, there is a
small agricultural and pastoral world, in a temperate climate, that has
nothing quite like it elsewhere, narrowly confined between the forest
and the desert.[32]
[32] The higher valleys of Aconcagua offer inexhaustible
interest to the visitor. At Sancho (Pucara valley) there is a
group of Italian colonists who grow maize and wheat: a unique
fact, I believe, in the whole of this part of Argentina. The
Tafi valley is mainly pastoral, the pastures of the valley
being used in summer and the forest for winter pasture.
The sugar district of Tucuman is not, properly speaking, an oasis; that
is to say, it is not an irrigated canton in the midst of a desert, but
a moist patch in the heart of a less favoured region. The traveller who
comes from the Chaco finds that the dust disappears from the moister
air as he approaches Tucuman. The rainfall approaches 974 millimetres
at Tucuman. Irrigation is a valuable aid to the farmer, but it is not
indispensable. Maize is generally raised without watering, and part
even of the sugar-cane crop is raised on land that is not irrigated. It
is not the relatively heavy rainfall that has led to the development of
the sugar-cane estates at Tucuman, but the evenness of the temperature,
together with the atmospheric moisture and the rareness of frost.
The mists which develop at the foot of Aconcagua form a protecting
mantle above Tucuman which prevents nocturnal radiation. The nearer
one gets to the mountain, the later, rarer, and lighter the frosts
are. If, on the contrary, one goes out some distance westward toward
the plain, the frost becomes more severe, and it is impossible to grow
sugar-cane. Not only the humidity, but the contour also, has some
influence on the changes of temperature and the distribution of frost.
The depressions in which the cold air accumulates, in virtue of the
well-known meteorological phenomenon of inversion of temperature, are
more exposed than sloping districts, where the air circulates regularly
and freely. The eastern limit of the zone spared by the frosts passes
about thirty-five miles from the foot of Aconcagua. It has only been
made clear by experiment, and one can still see there the traces of
abandoned plantations.
The water-supply in the Tucuman district consists, primarily, of
numerous evenly flowing streams which come down the eastern flank of
Aconcagua (Lules, Famailla, Angostura, Gastona, Medinas, etc.). They
join the Sali to the south of Tucuman. The Sali is an irregular torrent
which rises in the sub-Andean depression to the north and Tucuman,
and, after squeezing Aguadita between the north-eastern extremity of
Aconcagua and the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu, enters the plain
at Tucuman. It then flows southward, meandering over a large bed of
shingle in which it has not had force enough to excavate a valley, and
the inclination of the land on its left bank (to the east) is toward
the east and south-east. The lands on the right bank of the Sali are
consequently better provided with water than those on the left bank.
The difference is so marked that, as the estates on the right bank get
most of their supply elsewhere, the water of the Sali nearly all goes
to the left bank. In 1912 a siphon was actually constructed underneath
the bed of the Sali to convey the unused water of the Rio Lules to the
right bank. Lastly, to the north of Tucuman the Sierra de Burruyacu
provides a few intermittent streams of water, which the _estancias_
(ranches) formerly conducted, with great labour, to their _represas_.
These do not suffice for irrigation on a large scale.
The sugar-cane was first grown at the gates of the town and, to the
east, at Cruz Alta, on the left bank of the Sali. These were some
distance from the mountain because, as there was less rain and the
soil was fairly dry, the natural vegetation was less luxuriant, and
it cost less to prepare the ground.[33] The Central Cordoba Railway,
which passes along the right bank of the Sali south of Tucuman, is the
axis of another zone of cultivation and of old factories. Colonization
afterwards went further west. A new provincial railway, describing a
section of a circle, was grafted at Tucuman (1888-90) and Madria upon
the Central Cordoba line. It keeps close to the foot of the range, the
_falda_, and enables farmers to settle on it. The new estates have not
confined themselves to the alluvial plain; they have crept up the foot
hills, and are constantly going higher. In the latitude of Tucuman
the mountain approaches within eight or twelve miles of the Sali, and
the possibilities of extension westward are strictly limited; indeed,
they are already exhausted. Further south, on the contrary, the plain
extends more than fifteen miles to the east of the provincial railway.
West of Monteros, Concepcion, and the existing line of works, there
is a reserve of available land; there is room for a fresh advance
westward. There is also room for expansion to the north-east, at the
foot of the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu, where the frosts are slight.
It is in this direction that most of the clearing is now going on.
[33] In 1894 it was calculated that ground that was not yet
cleared was worth 100 to 150 piastres a hectare at Cruz Alta,
and the cost of clearing 150 to 200 piastres, whereas in the
moist forest at the foot of the Sierra the land was worth only
75 to 100 piastres, the cost of clearing it was double (300 to
350 piastres).
These various districts do not offer quite the same conditions to the
farmer. The _Falda_ is the most suitable, not only on account of the
rareness of frost, but because of the fertility of the soil, as the
tropical forest has accumulated inexhaustible stores of humus. The
sugar-cane returns are higher there than anywhere else. Irrigation
is not necessary, but, on the other hand, the humidity reduces the
proportion of sugar in the cane. Irrigation is the rule in the next
belt, between the local railway and the Central Cordoba line (on the
right bank of the Sali). On the left bank a large number of the estates
must still do without watering.
The most original feature of the organization of the sugar industry
at Tucuman is the maintenance of a class of independent cultivators,
the _caneros_, side by side with the large enterprises. This survival
of small and medium properties is a fact to which we find no parallel
in the other sugar districts of tropical America.[34] Everywhere
else, in Brazil and in the Antilles, the farms which worked up their
own produce, on primitive methods, have been absorbed by the central
works. The home-worker has lost his land as well as been ruined in
his industry by the competition of the modern factory. At Tucuman, on
the contrary, the sugar industry never passed through the stage of
domestic production. It was set up in full development, some devoting
their capital to building works, others to growing the cane. Irrigation
seemed from the first to dictate a concentration of ownership; the
refineries at Cruz Alta constructed costly special canals to bring the
water of the Sali. It is only large proprietors who have the resources
needed to carry out work of this kind, and sufficient influence to
secure permission to conduct the water over adjoining estates. However,
the law of 1897 reorganized irrigation and withdrew the water-supply
from the control of a few privileged big capitalists. Public works,
undertaken by the provincial authorities, brought the water within the
reach of every farmer. Since 1897 the number of water-concessions has
risen from 230 to nearly 2,000.
[34] Except, perhaps, in Barbadoes.
The interests of the factory (_ingenio_) and the farmers (_caneros_)
are not indissolubly connected. Their respective parts in the final
product of the sugar industry are not invariable. The increase in the
number of factories means an increase in the number of cane-buyers,
and so tends to raise the price. During the years antecedent to 1895
the refineries improved their machinery, and their productive capacity
increased faster than the cultivated acreage. The price of the cane
then rose to about twenty piastres a ton. As this figure is far above
the net cost, the refineries endeavoured to profit themselves by the
advantages that accrued to the _caneros_, and they bought land for
cultivation. It is to this period that the big concerns of Cruz Alta
belong. Afterwards the production of cane increased, and nearly met
the demands of the refineries, so that their competition relaxed. They
ceased to buy land, and the price of cane was lowered.
The refineries now deal with cane which they grow themselves, with
paid workers of their own; with cane that they buy at a reduced price
from tenants (_colonos_), who grow it on their own estates; and with
cane sold them by _caneros_ who own their own fields. The range of the
country absorbed by each refinery is often very extensive. The Sugar
Congress of 1894 estimated that half the cane-harvest was transported
by rail, and that freight from one canton to another in the sugar
district brought the railways more than a third of what they got for
conveying sugar from Tucuman to the coast. Each railway company tries
to keep along its own line the cane it carries to the refineries, so
that the transport of the sugar when it is made will fall to itself.
Thus the cane-market is divided into two separate compartments, with
very little exchange between them. The first comprises the zone that
depends on the Central Argentine and the State Railway; the second is
the zone of the Central Cordoba and the old local line bought by the
Central Cordoba.
Certain parts, such as Cruz Alta and the district round the town, have
too many works in proportion to their production of cane, and they are
centres of import. The price of the cane is always higher here than
in the agricultural districts. Each works has its customers. At the
stations it instals weighing machines for receiving and weighing the
cane. It is only the more important _caneros_ who have the privilege
of selling by the truck-load, or selling to distant works. The small
growers are compelled to deal with the local refinery. They sell it
their canes direct, or, sometimes, through agents and dealers. In the
days when the works were competing for cane it became the custom to
sign the purchase-contracts as early as possible; sometimes at the
beginning of October, as soon as the harvest of the year is over. In
order to make sure of the loyalty of the _canero_ the manufacturers
advance money to him, in proportion to their difficulty in getting cane.
_Caneros_ and mill-owners have had to work together to settle the
problem of labour. There was not enough at hand, and it had to be
recruited elsewhere. Agents were sent all round--to Catamarca and
Santiago del Estero, and even to the province of Cordoba--to collect
and bring gangs of workers. They were a mixed, unsteady, undisciplined
lot. The owners of the works advanced them money in order to keep
them, and then, fearing to lose the money advanced, would not dismiss
them for laziness and irregularities. These troubles are not felt as
much now as they were at the time when the industry was expanding.
The population of immigrant workers has settled down and taken root.
Besides creoles it includes a small number of Italians and Spaniards;
but while the creoles have been definitely incorporated in the sugar
industry, the European immigrants use their savings to buy a bit of
land and take to farming.
In normal times Tucuman has all the labour it requires, but the harvest
always compels it to seek help in other provinces. In May and June
the agents, well supplied with money, set out for the Salado, the
districts round the Sierra d'Ancasti, etc. The temporary attraction of
Tucuman at this season is felt over a considerable distance. At Santa
Maria, on the far side of Mount Aconcagua, 600 people--men, women,
and children--emigrate for five months, and live on the cane-fields.
The merchants of Santa Maria make them advances, in the name of the
refiners, to the amount of about sixty piastres per worker. Further
north the Tucuman _enganchadores_ come into collision with those from
Salta and Campo Santo, and they divide the available labour between
them. Some of the temporary immigrants settle down permanently every
year, and swell the normal population of the sugar industry.
Outside the Tucuman district an unfortunate attempt was made to plant
the sugar industry at Santiago del Estero, and large works were
constructed. But the frost is severe there. For some years they tried
to keep the Santiago works going with cane brought from Tucuman, but
the freight was too heavy, and the works had to be abandoned, or else
dismantled and set up elsewhere. The valley of the Rio Grande, from
Jujuy to 200 miles north of Tucuman, in the sub-Andean depression
between the Sierra de Zenta and the Lumbrera, has, on the other hand,
suitable conditions for the cultivation of the cane. Frost is rare.
The climate is warmer than at Tucuman, the canes ripen more quickly,
and the average return is higher. The water-supply also is good. There
have long been plantations in this region. Their first market was
the region of the tableland and the valleys, where they chiefly sold
brandy: a traffic of long standing, which one always finds round the
cold districts of the Andes, from Colombia to the north of Argentina.
The modern refineries of Ledesma and San Pedro took the place of the
primitive mills as soon as the railway approached Jujuy, and even
before it entered the valley of the Rio Grande. They then sent their
sugar by waggon in November and December, between the close of the
sugar season and the commencement of the rains, which spoil the roads.
The sugar district of Jujuy now has a very different economic
and social organization from that of Tucuman. Here there are no
farmer-proprietors. Each centre is a large estate, in the midst of the
forest, where the workers are lodged and fed by the works that employs
them. The contractors who clear the ground for them are obliged by
the terms of their contract to import their workers directly from the
south, so that they will not take any away from the farming. There is
no available labour, no free market, on the spot. Since the completion
of the Quebrada de Humahuaca line, however, there has been a good deal
of immigration, to settle or temporarily, of the mountaineers of the
tableland. The sphere of influence of San Pedro now extends as far as
Bolivia. For the harvest, which, like that of Tucuman, requires a good
deal of additional manual labour, the works look to the wild Indians
of the Chaco. This curious stream of seasonal migration, which the
sugar campaign of Jujuy provokes every winter outside the zone of white
colonization, is of very old date, going back more than sixty years.
Belmar notices it about the middle of the nineteenth century. The
recruiting agents of San Pedro and Ledesma set out from Embarcacion,
where the railway ends, and enter the Chaco, from which each of them
brings a troop of some hundreds of natives between March and June.
The number of these temporary immigrants seems to be about 6,000. The
Chiriguanos of the north leave their families on the Chaco, and the men
come alone. The Matacos immigrate in whole tribes. They camp in huts
like those of their own villages, under the shelter of the works, and
are paid in maize, meat, and cigars. In October, when the _algarroba_
flowers and makes them dream of their own country, they receive the
remainder of their pay in money, and spend it in brandy, clothing,
knives, and firearms.
The history of Mendoza resembles that of Tucuman in many ways. In the
province of Cuyo, as at Tucuman, urban life has been precocious. In
the middle of the eighteenth century Mendoza and San Juan exported
wines, dried fruit (_pasas_ and _orejones_), and flour to the coast
and to Paraguay. Part of the so-called "Chilean flour" consumed on the
Pampa, really came from Jachal and Mendoza. This trade ceased in the
nineteenth century, but San Juan and Mendoza found another source of
wealth in fattening cattle and sending them to Chile. Belmar, in 1856,
estimates the extent of the lucerne farms of Cuyo to have been 150,000
_cuadres_(440,000 acres).[35] As at Tucuman, the present period is
characterized by a rapid expansion of cultivation and a rapid growth
of population. But, whereas at Tucuman the neighbouring provinces
have provided the whole of the manual labour required, and the actual
population is essentially creole, at Mendoza there has been a larger
number of foreign immigrants. In 1914, foreigners were 310 per 1,000
of the entire population of Mendoza: a larger proportion than for the
whole country. The immigrants going straight to Mendoza from the ports
numbered 12,000 in 1911, and 15,000 in 1912; almost as much as for the
province of Santa Fe, and more than for the province of Cordoba. Thus
Mendoza plays a part of its own in the charm which Argentina has for
the imagination of Europe. When we examine a chart of the population
of South America, we notice that the oases of Cuyo contain the only
important groups of European population at any distance from the coast.
[35] A few convoys of cattle still use the Uspallata road,
especially over the Espinacito pass in the Cordillera de San
Juan.
The prosperity of Mendoza to-day depends upon the cultivation of the
vine, just as that of Tucuman depends upon sugar. The cultivation of
the vine is possible in the greater part of Argentina. In the early
days of colonization there were vineyards as far as the Paraguay.
They still flourish at Concordia on the Uruguay and at San Nicolas
on the lower Parana. But the wet summers of the eastern provinces
are not suitable for them. The climate for them improves as one goes
westward, and there is less rain. The dry zone of eastern Argentina
is the special field of the vine. There it has spread over nearly
twenty degrees of latitude, and it depends, like other cultivation,
upon irrigation. In the Andean valleys of the north-west it rises to
a height of 7,500 feet. South of Mendoza the higher limit of the vine
sinks rapidly, and there are no vineyards in the mountainous district
itself. On the other hand, its range increases; in the east it spreads
as far as the Atlantic coast, in the valley of the Rio Negro.
The former centres of viticulture in the north-west, in the oases
of the _costas_ of La Rioja, Catamarca, and Salta, have scarcely
been affected by the advance; and, in any case, their extent is very
limited. The vine-district of the Rio Negro is only in process of
creation, and its output is still small. Thus the area of production
on a large scale is limited to the three oases of San Juan, Mendoza,
and San Rafael, which in 1913 yielded 4,750,000 hectolitres, out
of the total Argentine production of 5,000,000 hectolitres. These
three centres differ from each other to-day rather in their economic
development than in their physical conditions. At San Juan, the
transformation of the earlier methods of production and the traditional
creole industries is only now taking place. At Mendoza it is quite
finished. The San Rafael centre, on the other hand, is of recent
origin; it was created on the site of a fortress which guarded the
Indian frontier until 1880. Cultivated areas have appeared on virgin
soil, in the midst of the desert. These different circumstances account
for diversities which, though they will disappear in the course of
time, are still obvious to the traveller. The general scene is the
same everywhere. Arid and desolate mountains close the horizon in the
west; at their feet spreads the immense alluvial deposit on which the
vineyards, surrounded by rows of poplars, grow wherever water is to be
found.
There are so few gaps in the lower slopes of the Cordillera that the
available water is gathered at a small number of points. The Rio San
Juan alone drains a belt of the Cordillera at least 140 miles broad.
Each of the two oases, Mendoza and San Rafael, has two streams of water
to feed it. The Mendoza and the Tunuyan at Mendoza, and the Diamante
and the Atuel at San Rafael, approach each other, when they leave
the mountains, so closely that the estates they water blend into a
continuous area. Then, however, instead of uniting, they diverge and
are lost, separately, in the plain. These streams have less fall than
the thinner torrents of the oases of the north-west, and the average
inclination of the dejection-cones which bear the vineyards is slight.
The upper slopes of the cone, where thin beds of clay lie upon shingle,
give clear wines of excellent aroma. Hence, in the Mendoza district,
the vineyards of Lujan and, further down, of Godoy Cruz, Guaymallen,
and Maipu produce choice brands. On the plain, to the east of Mendoza,
at San Martin and Junin, the harvest is larger, but the wine is rough,
and one can often taste the saltpetre of the clayey soil. There is the
same difference between the upper and lower district at San Juan and
San Rafael.
The oases of San Juan and San Rafael spread evenly over the most
suitable parts of the alluvial talus, but the oasis of Mendoza has a
peculiar shape which can only be explained by historical causes. The
cultivated belt is a narrow strip along the Tunuyan, for more than
sixty miles, as far as the heart of the plain, out of sight of the
Cordillera. It is one instance, out of a thousand, of the influence of
traffic on colonization. As a matter of fact, the road from Mendoza
to the coast, by which the cattle convoys of San Luis went to the
_invernadas_, passes along the Tunuyan. The estates grew up by the
side of it. The villages of Santa Rosa, Las Catitas, and La Paz, which
mark the various stages of it, are all of ancient origin. Strangers
are rarely found there. One still sees in them very old houses, built
before the railway was made, dating from the days of the _carril_ or
waggon-road. The importance of this line of water across the desert is
clearly seen on the Woodbine Parish map.
The use of irrigation in this district raised different technical
problems from those of the north-western provinces. In this latitude
the torrents of the Andes are formidable when the snows melt, at the
beginning of summer. The flood is all the greater and more sudden as
the heat is late. From all the ravines of the mountains the muddy
waters then converge toward the valley. The flood scours the bed of
the river, erodes its banks, and threatens to find a way amongst the
estates. Even the towns of Mendoza and San Juan have more than once
been in danger. The fear of diverting the flood and of bringing it
upon themselves compelled them to be content with raising only light
and frail dams in the path of the torrent. At San Juan they used, for
a long time, the waters of the Arroyo del Estero, a small brook fed by
infiltration from the Valle de Zenda, and it was some time before they
ventured to draw upon the river itself.
[Illustration: THE OASIS DEL RINCON, BELOW SAUJIL (ANDALGALA LINE,
PROVINCE OF CATAMARCA).
_The dejection-cone, at the foot of which is the very small oasis, is
seen resting against the Sierra d'Ambato._
Photograph by the Author.]
[Illustration: THE MONTE AT EL YESO.
_Zone of clay hills at the foot of the Sierra de San Antonio, at
the edge of the Chaco. Corral (cattle park) made from tree-trunks._
Photograph by the Author.
PLATE VII. To face p. 82.]
Another problem, which the smaller oases of the north-west hardly
know--the problem of drainage--is of paramount importance at San
Juan and Mendoza, as far as a large part of the irrigated surface is
concerned. The water infiltrating into the soil forms a subterranean
sheet which approaches more or less to the surface according to the
topography. It comes to the surface at the foot of the cone, where
the slope diminishes and the cone gradually passes into the plain.
Hence the cone has, at its base, a belt of marshes (_cienagas_), and
sometimes a line of good springs (_barbollon_). At San Juan, if you
move far enough away to get a comprehensive view of the whole of the
estates, you see that they occupy the middle belt, half-way down the
cone, the top of which is composed of coarse shingle, while the bottom
is too wet. The advance of the plots upward and the steadily increasing
use of the available water tends to raise the level of the underground
sheet and enlarge the area of marsh.
There is a fine black soil, very fertile when it is drained, and no
irrigation is needed; as it is possible, according to the depth of the
drainage-trenches, to regulate the level of the underground water so
as to make it reach and feed the roots. The draining of the marshes,
again, opens up a field for the further expansion of the estates,
especially at San Juan, where it has scarcely begun. Moreover, the
water that is obtained by draining the marshes enables them to create
new irrigated estates further on. At Mendoza there is already a
considerable area irrigated by drainage-canals (_desague_).
The level of the water in the marshes sinks in the summer and rises
in winter, at the time when the irrigation of the upper districts is
suspended or greatly reduced, and when the surplus of the _acequias_,
which the fields no longer take, flows or infiltrates downward in any
way that it can. Thus, contrary to the torrent itself, it is in winter
that the drainage-canals are at their fullest. At Barriales (Mendoza),
and on the lower course of the Zanjon canal, thousands of acres,
watered by the drainage-canals and exposed to drought in the summer,
have the right to take water from the river or the canal during the
three summer months, from November to January. During the remainder of
the year they are restricted to the use of the drainage-canals. This
sort of concession seems to provide a means of using the surplus of the
river during the summer.
With this exception there are no temporary rights limited to the
high-water season and enabling them to raise quick crops, that ripen
in a few months, round the area of perennials. At least, the expansion
of the estates and the wish to use the full water-supply have led to
the creation of eventual rights, besides the definitive rights. They
do not come into play, theoretically, until the definitive rights
have had their full supply, and then only in a fixed order. They are
subordinated to the ordinary rights, and the market value of land with
eventual water-rights is much lower than that of land with definitive
rights.[36] At San Rafael, where colonization preceded the systematic
inventory of the natural resources, the concession of eventual
water-rights was a means of facilitating the development of estates;
though they were very badly informed as to the surplus of the Atuel and
the Diamante and the area that the new land might cover.
[36] There are at present in the Mendoza province 275,000
hectares with a definitive right, and 303,000 with an eventual
right. The concessions fed by the Diamante and the Atuel at
San Rafael, which amount to 120,000 hectares with a definitive
right and 150,000 with an eventual right, are not yet entirely
developed.
In practice, the co-existence of eventual and definitive rights
presents many difficulties, and more than one pretext for fraud.
Sometimes the owners of eventual rights have access to the river
higher up than the older intakes, which ought to be served first. A
whole group of canals feeding land with eventual rights is in this
way grafted upon the Tunuyan above La Paz, the rights of which are
definitive and ancient.
At Mendoza and San Juan the water-rights, codified in provincial laws
which date, like the dams, from the end of the nineteenth century, are
very different from the water-rights which hold in the Andean provinces
of the north-west. The variety of the physical conditions is reflected
in the institutions. Here water is not an object of private ownership
independently of the soil. The concession of water is assigned to a
definite estate, and it is formulated in superficial measurements. The
law fixes the volume of water that goes with each unit of surface.
If the output of the river is not large enough to provide the volume
stated in the law to the whole of the irrigated district, all the
lands with definitive rights receive at least an equal amount, and the
available water is shared by the canals in proportion to the extent of
the surface they irrigate.
No law could secure for the farmers of Cuyo, even those with definitive
rights, a constant supply of water, or save them from suffering in
common from the variation in the volume of the torrents, and it was not
even possible to guarantee them water in any permanent fashion. The
_turno_ is used everywhere when the water is low. Lower down, where the
drought lasts nearly the whole year, the _turno_ is the standing rule.
At La Paz, on the fringe of the irrigated area, it has to be applied
rigorously. The turn of each owner comes every eight, ten, or twelve
days. In normal times he receives the _suerte de agua_; that is to say,
the output of a sluice of a fixed size during a half-hour for each
hectare (a little over two acres) of land. But if the river runs low,
it becomes impossible to supply several neighbours simultaneously, and,
in order to avoid making the interval between supplies too long, the
duration of the _suerte de agua_ is reduced by half or three-quarters.
The oases of Cuyo are like the small oases of the north-west as
regards the function of those who are engaged in the administration of
irrigation. The water-laws give the provincial functionaries general
directions. Below them, however, to arrange the distribution of the
water and the upkeep of the canals in detail, they have allowed to
survive, and have merely regulated, certain primitive democratic
organisms. At San Juan the superintendence of the irrigation is
entrusted to elected municipal councils and the governor of the
department. At Mendoza, the owners appoint a council of three delegates
and an inspector for each canal, and these settle the annual budget of
the canal, submit it to the provincial authorities, receive the taxes,
carry out the necessary repairs, and so on. The great subdivision of
property and the large number of electors make these little republics
very lively; and they are very jealous of their autonomy.[37]
[37] There are more than 6,000 owners at San Juan to 91,000
hectares, and more than 9,000 at Mendoza (zone of the rivers
Mendoza and Tunuyan) to 130,000 hectares (statistics compiled
in 1899).
Even within the narrow limits of the Cuyo district the climatological
conditions, which control the growth of the vine, are not everywhere
the same. The opening of the vineyards varies by several weeks,
according to the locality.[38] The northern slope of the cone, exposed
to the sun and protected from the southern winds, is more precocious.
Some districts, poorly sheltered from the southern winds, and very
liable to have late frost, have not been planted with vines (district
of the Tucuyan below San Carlos, to the south of Mendoza). Everywhere
the dryness of the atmosphere causes the ripe grapes to remain long
on the vine, so that the harvest may last two months or more without
any harm. It thus requires a relatively small supplement of manual
labour, and does not necessitate seasonal migrations. The length of the
harvest, moreover, facilitates the trade in grapes, which is one of the
special features of the Argentine vine-industry.
[38] The difference is much greater at a distance from the
Cuyo province. Catamarca, which specializes in the production
of grapes for the table, is invaded by buyers from Buenos
Aires, and begins to send grapes in December, two full months
before the harvest begins in Mendoza.
The climate is not so suitable for making wine as it is for growing
vines. The temperature is high at the time of the harvest, and it
retards fermentation in the cellars. The grapes have too much sugar
and too little acid for the transformation of the must to proceed of
itself. Hence it is necessary to have an expensive equipment, improved
cellars, and skilled workers. This industrial organization is beyond
the reach of the small cultivators. The cultivation of the vine and
the making of wine are, therefore, not always associated. They are
taken up by two different classes of the population. Tucuman has its
_caneros_ and factories, and Mendoza, by a division of labour which
seems to the European visitor as strange as the climate which partly
explains it, has its vine-growers (_vinateros_) and its manufactures
(_bodegueros_).[39]
[39] While the cultivation of the cane has, for the most part,
become dependent upon the sugar industry, which represents
large capital, wine-making is, on the contrary, usually
regarded as merely an annex of wine-growing.
Each of these two classes has had its share in the common work. The
_vinatores_ have created the vineyard. The creole vine, imported into
Peru from the Canaries and spreading over the whole of the southern
Andes, yields great quantities of a sugary, but rough fruit, which
does not lend itself to imitating the wines of Europe. At Mendoza it
has almost entirely disappeared, though it survives at San Juan. It
is grown on trellis-work, wooden frames resting on forked branches of
_algarroba_; though sometimes the strong stems rise without support to
a height of about six feet and are crowned with shoots and leaves. The
new vine has been grown from French cuttings. While the creole vines
look like orchards, the French vines are grown in rows of iron wire.
The plantations were first made by creole workmen, who were paid by
the day. Afterwards, as immigration from Europe increased, long-term
contracts came into vogue, in virtue of which the colonist received
the bare land and undertook to have it planted with vines at the end
of three, four, or five years. The owner supplied the material, and
at the end of the contract the colonist received a few _centavos_ for
each vine, or sold the whole or part of the first harvest. On account
of these contracts there were always a great many foreigners in the
districts where vineyards were in course of formation. The proportion
is now less at Mendoza than at San Rafael, where colonization is more
recent. Whenever they could, the owners left to the colonists, not only
the business of planting the vines, but the upkeep of adult vineyards.
In those cases the colonist receives a fixed sum per hectare (100
piastres, for instance), and has to dig, prune, irrigate, etc. A large
number of these agricultural workers and small contractors have saved a
small capital, and purchased land of their own. This they have planted,
and they thus form a new class of working owners.
While the _vinatores_ were multiplying vineyards, the _bodegueros_ were
transforming the methods of making wine. The weakness of imperfectly
fermented wines, which turn sour and evaporate quickly, was all the
worse for the growers of the colonial period because transport was
slow, and there was no protection against the sun, which cooked the
_algarroba_ casks or the leather bottles on the backs of the mules.
The vineyard-owners often preferred to distil their wine and export
brandy, flavoured with aniseed, to the Andean tablelands or the coast.
The climate and the risks of transport had brought into existence an
astonishing variety of methods of treating the must. Sometimes it was
concentrated by boiling until it became a thick syrup (_arrope_),
something like, apparently, the thick wines of the Mediterranean in
former times. At other times the must was cooked without thickening
it, to prevent immediate fermentation, as is done with the _chicha_ in
Chile to-day; or sour wines were mixed with boiled must and ashes of
the shoots, which masked the acidity.
These traditions are now lost, but it is curious to see the
_bodegueros_ still endeavouring to meet the taste of the creole
population of the north-west, which has retained the preference for
sweet and fruity wines. San Juan, which caters to these customers,
manufactures _mistelas_--fresh boiled must with an addition of
alcohol--which are mixed with mature wines in order the imitate the
imperfect fermentation of earlier days. Perhaps there is no part of
the world where the art of wine-making has been pushed so far as in
the _bodegas_ of Mendoza. The correction of the must, and the analysis
and treatment of diseased wines, follow the most modern of methods.
The _bodegas_ produce a very steady wine, which is guaranteed by their
trade marks. The wine of the Mendoza type, which they endeavour to
produce, is a strong red wine, of heavy colour, with twelve or thirteen
per cent. of alcohol. It may euphemistically be called a blended wine,
but is in reality diluted wine. Argentina does not produce very light
wines, and has no use for diluted wine.
The number of wine-making cellars in 1913 was 997 at Mendoza and 336
at San Juan. But they differ very much from each other in size. Most
of them have only a small equipment and modest capital. Some, on the
other hand, are large enterprizes which could produce enough to supply
a city: vast constructions of brick or _adobe_, with light roofs as a
precaution against earthquakes.
The owners of the cellars almost always have their own vineyards, but
they also buy the harvests of cultivators who have not cellars. In 1908
it was calculated that 140,000 tons of grapes were sent to the press
by the owners and 175,000 tons bought by the _bodegueros_.[40]
[40] More recent statistics are not to hand. The proportion
differs a little every year according to the prices of wine
and grapes.
The conflicts of the interests of the _vinateros_ and the _bodegueros_
are the very woof of life at Mendoza. The price of grapes is infinitely
more variable than that of wine, and the _vinatero_ who has no cellar
is at the mercy of the _bodeguero_. If he does not want to see his
harvest go to waste, he has to accept unconditionally the price that is
offered him. The _bodeguero_ has, moreover, the advantage of disposing
of the grapes grown on his own estates. If the circumstances do not
encourage him to produce all he can, he sends to the press merely
his own harvest and will not buy any other. Thus the whole burden of
commercial crises falls upon the vineyard with no cellar.
The prices paid for the grapes differ a little for different parts
of the vineyard, but the variation is more due to the number of
_bodegas_ in the district and their capacity than to the quality
of the grapes. Transport of the grapes to a great distance is very
expensive. In exceptional times grapes have been brought from San
Rafael to the Mendoza cellars, but each _bodega_ gets its supply as
far as possible from its own district. At San Juan the capacity of the
cellars is proportionately less than at Mendoza, and the _bodegueros_
have imposed very hard conditions on the growers. The price fixed in
the purchase-contract does not of itself give a complete idea of the
benefits which the _bodeguero_ enjoys. The grapes are purchased by
weight, but the _bodeguero_ reserves the right to say at what date
they are to be delivered. He begins to harvest his own vines when the
fruit is scarcely ripe, but he puts back the harvesting of the grapes
he buys as far as possible, even to April or May. These grapes exposed
on the plant to the heat of the sun, become overripe; they gain in
sugar and lose in weight. They make wines with a higher percentage of
alcohol, and with these he can correct the lighter wines made during
the preceding weeks. Finally, the _bodeguero_ does not advance money to
the _vinatero_, as the manufacturer does to the _canero_ in the sugar
industry.
The only safeguard of the vine-growers is the lack of understanding
between the _bodegueros_ and the competition between them. Although
there are conventions amongst the _bodegueros_ which lay down
officially, before the vintage, the basis of all transactions, they
are not respected except in so far as they serve a man's interest.
If it is expected that the wine will easily be sold, and that grapes
will be short, buyers are abundant, and contracts are signed before
the fruit appears. It is a sort of gamble, as in the case of wheat and
cotton. Bulls and bears struggle for the market. If the bulls win, the
_vinateros_ grow rich.[41]
[41] Besides the causes of a geographical nature which I have
indicated, the separation of cultivation from wine-making has
other economic grounds, but they do not fall within the range
of this book. The large _bodega_ is better situated than the
small cultivator for organizing the sale of his wines on the
distant market of Buenos Aires. Also, the _bodegueros_ alone
are able to meet the competition of Buenos Aires merchants who
import European wines and make adulterated wines.
When we compare the diagrams which show the production of wine and
sugar in Argentina during the last thirty years, we see that they
clearly illustrate the condition of dependence of the vineyard industry
and the sugar industry as regards the home market. The prosperity of
the region of the Pampas, especially during the years before 1914,
is reflected at Mendoza and Tucuman. The expansive movement of the
estates is similarly bound up with the construction of railways to
connect them with the coast. Industry, on a large scale, began at
Tucuman in 1876: that is to say, at the opening of the Central Cordoba
line. The area planted with cane rose from 2,200 hectares in 1876 to
14,800 in 1886. The production of sugar was trebled in four years,
from 1876 to 1880. But the Central Cordoba was a narrow-gauge line,
expensive to use and necessitating a transfer of goods at Cordoba. In
1891 the broad-gauge line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was extended to
Tucuman; and in 1892 the narrow-gauge line from Rosario to Santa Fe,
San Cristobal, and Tucuman was also brought into use. The following
years were marked by rapid advances of the sugar industry. From 1891 to
1895 the area planted with canes rose from 14,200 to 40,700 hectares,
and the manufacture of sugar from 31,000 to 135,000 tons. At Mendoza,
also, the development of the vineyards dates from the completion of the
San Luis Railway in 1885. Plantations were at once started, and three
years later they came into touch. In 1887, the railway carried 27,000
hectolitres of wine from Mendoza to the coast; in 1890-91 it carried
268,000 hectolitres. Production had increased tenfold in that short
space of time.
As the home-production of wine and sugar increased, the imports from
abroad fell. As early as 1885 Tucuman was able to meet the home demand
for raw sugar, and refined only was imported. In 1888, a refinery was
erected at Rosario to deal with Argentine sugar which came by rail,
and foreign sugar which came up the river. Import ceased at this date,
or there have since only been occasional years of import, to meet a
scarcity. The imports of ordinary foreign wines continued to increase
until 1890 (800,000 hectolitres), or as long as the wine produced at
Mendoza did not suffice to meet the demand. They have steadily declined
since that date (350,000 hectolitres in 1913), and are now only seven
per cent. of the national production. We should add that, even in
regard to ordinary wines, the Mendoza and the imported wine are not
strictly comparable, that the competition between them is not simply
a matter of price, and that some customers continue to prefer foreign
wine.
[Illustration: A VINEYARD AT SAN JUAN.
_Trellissed creole vines._
Photograph by Boote, Buenos Aires.]
[Illustration: A VINEYARD AT MENDOZA.
_French vines on wire. An irrigation-trench along the path. In
the foreground (left) a wine-cellar_(bodega).
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados, Buenos Aires.
PLATE VIII. To face p. 92.]
The elimination of foreign wines and sugar and the development of
Mendoza and Tucuman were facilitated by a Protectionist tariff. The
details of this are very curious, as they had to be adjusted to the
natural conditions. The need of protection is chiefly due to the
distance of the market from the productive centres. Mendoza is 650
miles from Buenos Aires, Tucuman more than 750 miles. Freightage
on the railways is dear. It is thirty-five piastres a ton for wine
between Mendoza and Buenos Aires, or nearly double the normal maritime
freight for the European wines sent from Bordeaux or Genoa. The charge
for sugar is about thirty piastres a ton between Tucuman and Buenos
Aires. Thus the cost of transport is nearly one sixth the entire cost
of production. In spite of this common burden, the need of protection
is not at all the same in Mendoza and Tucuman. The climate of Mendoza
is excellent for the vine. The dryness of the atmosphere keeps down
cryptogamic diseases, and the risks of cultivation are slight. The crop
is abundant, the frosts late, and not serious. Hail is frequent, it is
true, at the mouths of the Cordillera valleys, but it is never general;
it affects only a small part of the harvest. The curve of production
is very regular. It rises every year very gradually, and in proportion
to the increase of the cultivated area. As a result of all this, the
wine market has a stability which the vine-growing countries of Europe,
with their less reliable climate, do not enjoy. The protective tariff,
therefore, remains fixed. The duty on foreign wines in the cask--eight
centimes (gold) per litre--has not been altered since the introduction
into Argentina of the wine-industry on a large scale.[42]
[42] Mendoza is further protected by law against fraud.
This legislation is partly national and partly provincial.
The national law, which takes into account the interests of
the merchants of Buenos Aires, permits the manufacture of
artificial wines. The provincial law, in the special interests
of the productive districts, is more stringent. It prohibits
the manufacture of artificial wines. It also fixes the minimum
percentage of alcohol, and prevents the dispatch from Mendoza
to Buenos Aires of alcoholic wines to mix with must. Finally,
it defends the _vinatero_ against the _bodeguero_ by fixing
the quantity of grapes to be used in making a hectolitre of
wine and so prevents fraud at the _bodega_.
The curve of sugar-production is just as irregular as that of
wine-production is regular. From one year to another the output may
vary by as much as 100 per cent., and the changes cannot be predicted:
147,000 tons in 1912, 335,000 tons in 1914, 150,000 tons in 1915. The
reason is that the sugar output depends upon the season. Canes which
have been touched by frost go sour and ferment in the ground. They
have to be milled quickly, and the harvest must not be prolonged. Even
in good years the costly equipment of the works is active during only
three months (July to September, but at Jujuy, July to October).
This irregularity of production, which makes protection inevitable,
also complicates it infinitely in practice. Sometimes the harvest
is not large enough to meet home demands, and imports have to be
permitted. Sometimes production is far beyond the home demand, and
the sugar-manufacturers have to export the surplus so as to prevent
a slump in prices on the overloaded home market. In order to meet
these very different situations, the protecting tariff has had to be
repeatedly modified and complicated. But it is impossible for us to
give the history of it in detail here. The duties on foreign sugar were
fixed, in successive instalments, between 1883 and 1891; and special
protective measures were taken in the interest of the refiners in 1888.
Over-production appeared for the first time in 1895. Export at a loss,
to relieve the home market, was at first organized by an association
of the producers themselves (in 1896). But in 1897 the Government
developed it by putting a premium on export. The export period lasted
from 1897 to 1904. The law of 1912, which gives its latest form to
the Protectionist regime, gives the Government the right to suspend
for a time the duties on imports and allow foreign sugar to come in.
As at Mendoza, the provincial Government intervenes as well as the
national. The alternation of bad and exceptionally good harvests leads
to the appearance of all sorts of unforeseen laws, modifying the bases
of taxation, regulating production in the works, and restricting the
acreage of cultivation.[43] Thus Tucuman has lived in an atmosphere of
storm and uncertainty and unceasing discussion, of discouragement and
insecurity; the price of its geographical position at the extreme limit
of the area in which cane can be grown.
[43] Especially during the crisis of 1902-3.