ROADS AND RAILWAYS
Roads on the plain--The salt road--The "trade
route"--Transport by ox-waggons--_Arrieros_ and
_Troperos_--Railways and colonization--The trade in
cereals--Home traffic and the reorganization of the system.
The chapter devoted to primitive breeding and the transport of cattle
contains a sketch of the network of routes over the Andes. One cannot
expect to find in the scheme of routes over the Argentine plains the
stern and obvious influence of natural conditions. The surface of these
plains is, as a whole, broadly open to traffic. Still, the map of the
roads bears much evidence of geographical exigencies.
The hills which rise like islands out of the alluvial plain are not all
incapable of being crossed, and the roads do not always skirt them. The
road from Buenos Aires to Peru runs north of 30 deg. 40' S. lat. on the
very axis of the granite peneplain which forms the northern part of the
Sierra de Cordoba. The Dean Funes ridge, which begins with an altitude
of 2,500 feet between the Sierra Chica and these tablelands, has always
been used for communication between Cordoba and the north-western
provinces. There the railway has taken the place of the primitive
track. Another important track crosses the Sierra de Cordoba in the
north of the Pampa de Achala, and used to join Cordoba with Villa
Dolores and the north of the San Luis province. The southern part of
the Sierra de Cordoba and the Sierra de San Luis are, on the other
hand, an insurmountable obstacle, which diverts southward the high road
to Chile _via_ Achiras, San Jose, del Morro, and San Luis.
The sierras of the Buenos Aires province are not so high and extensive.
They are, moreover, broken into isolated hills with the plain passing
between them. As early as 1822 Colonel Garcia pointed out the
importance, in connection with the migrations of the Indian tribes,
of the passage between the Sierra Amarilla and the Sierra de Curaco,
that is to say, the Olavarria ridge. It is there that the first railway
between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca crosses the line of sierras. It
then skirts the Sierra de la Ventana, to the north, by the Pigue ridge,
between the mass of Curumalan and the Puan hills. The dunes of the
western Pampa also are an impediment to traffic, not so much because
of their height as because of the looseness of the ground. The strip
between General Acha and Toay was very trying for the stage-coaches.
Travellers had to cross the dunes on foot during the winter season,
when the horses were in a bad condition.[105]
Natural supplies of water increase in number as one gets away from the
Andean zone toward the east. Still, the chief work, often the only
work, to be done in making a road is the arrangement of permanent
supplies of water. Martin de Moussy mentions the digging of wells on
the new road from Cordoba to Rosario, which was opened about 1860.
The _aiguade_ was generally a _represa_, a reservoir, where the water
accumulated behind a barrier of earth raised across the course of an
intermittent stream. The upkeep of the _represa_ is the chief duty of
the post-master. The edge of the sierras and the opening point of the
ravines which come down them is a good place for making _represas_,
and the roads frequently keep to these (variant of the road from
Cordoba to Tucuman _via_ Totoral, Dormida, Rio Seco and Sumampa, on
the eastern edge of the Sierra de Cordoba, etc.) Long stages with no
water supplies, the _travesias_, are not found on the made roads, as a
rule, except west of the meridian, of Cordoba. However, the direct road
from Santa Fe to Santiago del Estero by the lagoon of Los Porongos,
which was used in the eighteenth century, seems to have been abandoned
afterwards, as much on account of the difficulty of supplying water as
because it was exposed to attack from the Indians.
[105] J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viaje a la Pampa central," _Bol.
Instit. Geog. Argent._, xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368.
[Illustration: AN OX WAGON.
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.]
[Illustration: THE MAIL COACH.
_The horses saddled with the_ cincha.
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.
PLATE XVIII. To face p. 210.]
The only difficulty which the caravans encountered on the roads over
the plain was the crossing of the rivers. They were forded. Fords with
a muddy bottom on the lower course of the rivers, such as that on the
Saladillo near the confluence of the Rio Tercero, were more difficult
for wagons than the fords with sandy bottoms in the upper course, near
the fringe of the mountains, such as those of the Rio Tercero on the
Cordoba road, or of the Rio Cuarto on the road to Chile. After rain,
certain parts of the plain are flooded and impassable. That is the case
in the district to the south of the lower Salado, at the very spot
where Pere Cardiel notices the lack of water in the dry season (1747).
The direct road from Buenos Aires to the sierras was at that point
exposed, alternately, to drought and flood. The line of the Southern
railway, which crosses this low district, is still cut periodically on
both sides of Las Flores by floods. The lack of an organized network of
streams, the irregularity of the rains, the difficulty of ascertaining
the inclination, and the flow of the waters over a plain which seems to
the eye to be perfectly level, have led to more than one miscalculation
on the part of the railways, which were constructed hurriedly, and
before the general survey of the Pampa was finished. Some lines, on the
Pampa or on the Chaco, have had to be partially reconstructed, and
raised higher, after a series of rainy years.[106]
[106] Certain duplications in the actual scheme of the
railways are due to this need to correct a line that had
been planned hastily and was useless. The line from Justo
Daract to La Paz (1912), on the Pacific railway, avoids the
steep inclinations of the first line, which followed the
course of the wagon-road _via_ San Luis. The interpretation
of the relief is particularly difficult in a country which
has not been shaped by normal erosion. Blunders detected by
later topographical inquiries were similarly committed in
constructing the Patagonian railways.
The colonization of that part of the plain which actually constitutes
the province of Buenos Aires was late. It belongs to the era of the
railways. There is only one historic road crossing this area, which
remained until the last third of the nineteenth century in the hands
of the Indian tribes. This is the salt road. We do not know exactly
when it began to be used. In the eighteenth century, in spite of the
competition of salt from Cadiz and Patagonia, imported by sea, the
Pampa salt was the main part of the supply of Buenos Aires. The salt
road was not abandoned until after 1810. We still have the diary of
several journeys from Buenos Aires to the salt-pits. They were military
expeditions. Hundreds of wagons, with a strong escort, collected at
Lujan and Chivilcoy, and they reached Atreuco, west of the Guamini and
Carbue lakes, after a fifteen to twenty-five days' march.
The itinerary was fixed in detail. In 1796 D'Azara noticed the wells
sunk by the salters, north of the Palentelen lagoon (Bragado), when
they found the lagoon dry. From Palentelen south-westward the salt
road followed the track used by the Indians of the south-west in their
expeditions against the ranches of the Buenos Aires frontier. Near Lake
Epecuen, north of Carbue, it was joined by another track which came
from Olavarria, the stages of which were marked by the streams that
came from the Sierra de Curumalan. The Carbue district, the cross-roads
of the tracks, was one of the places where the tribes collected. "This
place," says the diary of the 1778 expedition, "is the first point
where the hostile Indians meet and rest when they leave the Sierra
and on returning from their invasions. They not only rest there, but
have their winter pasture there" (in the dry season).[107] Zeballos
has described the Indian track, the _rustrillada_, between Epecuen,
Atreuco and Traru Lauquen, where the _travesia_ on the road to Chile
began.[108] It was not less than 1,000 feet in width. At the foot of
the dunes there were deep parallel grooves made by the feet of the
raided cattle, which were taken away by the "Chilenos."
[107] Coll. de Angelis, v.
[108] Est. Zeballos, _Descripcion amena de la Republica
Argentina_, vol. i, "Viaje al pais de los Araucanos" (Buenos
Aires, 1881).
The two main roads of the colonial period are the roads to Chile and
Peru. On leaving Buenos Aires there was one road for a distance of
about 320 miles. The "trade road" passed through Lujan, Areco and
Sauce, and reached the Carcarana, or Rio Tercero, at Esquina. It
therefore kept at some distance from the Parana (32 to 16 miles), on
the tableland, crossing the valleys which were embedded in it and
represented so many bad parts. It then ascended the Tercero on the
right bank as far as the Paso Fereira, at the spot where Villa Maria is
to-day. At Esquina de Medrano (Villa Maria) the road to Chile branched
off to the south-east, reached San Luis by following the Rio Cuarto,
going through Achiras and San Jose del Morro, and, after a _travesia_
seventy-eight miles in length, came to the Rio Tunuyan at La Paz, and
ascended the river to Mendoza.[109]
[109] Martin de Moussy says that a more direct route, avoiding
the detour to the north by the Rio Tercero, was followed in
the eighteenth century between Buenos Aires and San Luis, by
way of Salto and the Rio Quinto as far as the latitude of
fort Constitucion (Villa Mercedes). Woodbine Parish's map
(1839) and Napp's map (1876) both show a road by way of Salto
and Melincue to the Rio Cuarto, where it joins the ordinary
road. However that may be, these roads were never used
regularly, from fear of the Indians or--which comes to the
same thing--because the area they cross, in the south of the
actual territory of the provinces of Santa Fe and Cordoba, was
not yet colonized.
From Esquina de Medrano the Peru road made for Cordoba in the
north-west. From the tablelands which continue the Sierra de Cordoba
northward it descended toward the Rio Dulce, which it reached west of
Atamisqui, and which it followed as far as Santiago del Estero, where
it crossed to the north bank. It crossed the Sali in the latitude of
Tucuman, and, passing through Tracas and Metan, followed the depression
which separates the Andes from the sub-Andean chains. From Salta it
went north to Jujuy, and passed through the Quebrada de Humahuaca to
reach the Puna.
The influence of rivers is not much seen in the scheme of the primitive
roads. There were in the sixteenth century many routes from Peru to
the Paraguay, across the Chaco, but not a permanent road in the strict
sense. In the eighteenth century there was a direct road from Santa Fe
to Tucuman, by the north of the Los Porongos lagoon and the course of
the Rio Dulce. There was another from Santa Fe to Cordoba. These roads
were not exclusively used for conveying cattle. The river route which
they joined at Santa Fe provided them with a certain amount of traffic
coming from the higher provinces. Paraguayan _mate_ reached the Andean
regions by this road, and in return the boatmen at Santa Fe loaded
up with the wines and dried fruit of the Andean provinces to take to
Asuncion.
The question of joining the road on to a river was not of very great
importance until the time when the Parana began to be used for
Argentine imports and exports, and to maintain the communication of
the interior provinces with Europe. This question of connection with a
river controls the history of the construction of the railway system.
But the great importance of it can be seen from the first half of
the nineteenth century. D'Orbigny had a presentiment of it. Speaking
of the future of Santa Fe, he says: "When peace is restored, it is
certain that the wares of Cordoba may, instead of going by land from
that town to Buenos Aires, be sent to Santa Fe, where shipping them to
the Argentine capital will reduce to one-third the journey by land,
which is always more costly than going by water." Martin de Moussy,
foreseeing the making of a road across the Chaco from Tucuman to the
Parana, in the latitude of Corrientes, calculates that Corrientes may
later serve as port for part of the west and north of Argentina. At the
date of the publication of his book, however, it was neither Santa Fe
nor Corrientes, but the new town Rosario, that began to play the part
of interior port, and led to the construction of a new system of roads.
Traffic between Rosario and Cordoba at first followed the old road
from Buenos Aires to Peru, which one struck after leaving Rosario and
making a detour to the south-west, on the right bank of the Carcarana
(at Rio Tercero). But this itinerary was presently replaced by a direct
road to the west-northwest, following the line which the railways would
adopt.[110]
[110] Between 1852 and 1862, during the period when relations
were suspended between the Argentine Confederation and Buenos
Aires, there was a beginning of a general reorganization of
the roads in harmony with the new political conditions. The
road from Santa Fe and Parana to Concepcion (in Uruguay)
across the Entre Rios tablelands, and from there to
Montevideo, had owed its initial importance to the closing of
the lower Parana under Rosas, and Woodbine Parish records that
there was already a good deal of smuggling there. This road
became an essential artery when Parana made itself the federal
capital under Urquiza. He intended to connect Parana with the
western provinces, and he created a mail service from Santa Fe
to Cordoba. Ephemeral as the good fortune of Parana was, its
influence on the organization of the roads of Argentina was
too material to be ignored by the geographer.
In the greater part of Argentina transport was by means of wagons
before railways were constructed. The limit between the area of
wagon-transport and the area in which goods were conveyed on the backs
of animals is quite stable. It is still of some significance, in
spite of the development of the railways; wagons and mules are used
at each station to collect and distribute goods. The area of farming
and of selective breeding on the Pampa, the sheep-area in Patagonia,
and the timber belt on the Chaco, still make use of wagons; and goods
are carried on the backs of mules in the Andean area. The Peru road
was, broadly speaking, fit for wagons as far as Salta, but it is rough
between Tucuman and Salta, and wagons that used it generally stopped
at Salta. In this way wagons avoided the ford of the Sali, which was
easier for mules. On the plain itself the water-sources were often so
distant from each other, and the stages so long, that mules had to
be used instead of wagons. Wagons could easily get to Mendoza by the
road along which the Tunuyan runs at its driest section, but all the
convoys from Cordoba to San Juan, or Rioja to Catamarca, were composed
of mules. Hence Cordoba was, like Tucuman, a station for changing on
the road from Buenos Aires to the north-west. Lastly, while the scrub
presented no insuperable obstacle to wagons, they could not enter the
humid tropical forest, where the soil never dries. On the fringe of the
Misiones forest, the wagons that came from San Tome unloaded at San
Javier, and mules took the goods on to the _yerbales_.
The two areas of different kinds of transport were not sharply
distinct. The muleteers (_arrieros_) sometimes avoided the domain of
the wagoners, and competed with them as far as the banks of the Parana.
In 1860 (Hutchinson) the muleteers carried about a fifth, in weight, of
the goods from the interior to Rosario, and they got more than a third
of the transport from Rosario to the interior. They had, however, to
offer to carry goods at two-thirds the price charged by the wagoners.
It appears that this invasion by the muleteers is connected with
a transport-crisis in the Andean area, which left a number of the
San Juan muleteers without work. It did not last. By 1862 mule-back
transport between Rosario and the interior was almost over.
The wagons of the Argentine plain have often been described by
travellers. They were heavy vehicles, carrying 150, sometimes 180,
_arrobes_ (1,725 to 2,070 kgs.), covered with a leather hood stretched
on hoops. A long spur decorated with ostrich feathers was balanced
on a ring fixed in the roof, and was used to guide the front pair of
oxen. An earthenware pot containing water enough for each stage hung
between the rear uprights. As a rule, three pair of oxen were yoked to
it, one pair being in the shafts. At Corrientes it was necessary to
cross the marshes and _esteros_, and a special type of wagon had been
evolved. It had a sort of horizontal division forming an upper story,
and the driver sat in this. Everywhere, on the Pampa as well as at
Corrientes, the wheels were enormous; sometimes, as Darwin says, ten
feet in diameter. They were, therefore, able to get through the bad
parts. Mud was, as a matter of fact, the worst enemy of the convoys.
The soil of the Pampa is clayey and soft in the districts near the
river. As the road was not limited in width, the wagons turned to the
right or the left when the ruts became too deep, and the track in time
covered a broad belt of ground. This, however, could not be done in the
vicinity of towns, where the traffic was concentrated. Buenos Aires
came to be surrounded by formidable quagmires that dried up only in the
summer. The paving of the streets and environs was becoming a problem
of national importance when the construction of the railway began.
Wagons did not travel singly. The _tropero_, or contractor for
transport, organized caravans. In peaceful districts, where no military
escort was required, the convoys could be split up; they consisted,
as a rule, of from fifteen to fifty wagons. Besides the six oxen
yoked to the wagon, there had to be others for relief as well as
horses for the staff. Usually they allowed ten oxen to each wagon; in
exceptional cases twenty.[111] The convoy to the salt-lakes in 1778
had no less than 12,000 oxen to 600 wagons. There was a driver to each
wagon, but there had also to be drivers for the starting animals, and
carpenters to make repairs. The leader of the caravan, the _capataz_,
was generally a master-carpenter. He looked after the interests of the
_tropero_. There were about three men to each wagon. The _carreros_
were an original type, nomadic, and very different in costume and
character from the _gauchos_ (breeders) of the plain. At the close of
the eighteenth century Buenos Aires had more than a thousand wagons
employed in the traffic to Mendoza and Tucuman (Borrero).
[111] According to the details given us by De Angelis (1837,
Introduction to the _Diario del viaje al Rio Bermejo de Fray
Francisco Moritto_, Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi) a convoy of
fourteen wagons from Salta to Tucuman required three relays of
oxen. The first, comprising a hundred animals, went from Salta
to Tucuman; the second, of 130 animals, went from Tucuman to
the Buenos Aires frontier; the third (84 animals), went on to
the capital. The first and last relays were hired animals, the
second alone being the property of the _tropero_.
The stages were rarely more than four or five leagues of five
kilometres each (thirteen to sixteen miles). At this rate it took a
convoy forty to fifty days to go from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, thirty
days from Rosario to Tucuman, three months (with the necessary rests)
from Buenos Aires to Salta.[112] When water ran short, the journey
might be greatly prolonged, as the animals could do less work, or not
work at all if the _aiguades_ had dried up. The season was a matter for
consideration. In the Buenos Aires district the winter made the ground
sodden and traffic difficult. Farther north, winter is the dry season,
so that pasture was scarce, and it was difficult to feed the _tropas_.
The summer had difficulties of its own. In January and February the
floods of the Rio Dulce often made it impossible to cross the ford at
Santiago. The carriers preferred to start from the northern provinces
about the end of the summer, in April or May. The best season for
leaving Buenos Aires was the spring, from August to November. In this
way each _tropa_ could make the double journey once a year.
[112] Thirty days from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, and seventy
days from Buenos Aires to Jujuy, says Barrero (F. Barrero,
_Descripcion de las Provincias del Rio de la Plata_, end of
the eighteenth century, published by the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Buenos Aires, 1911).
There had been attempts to speed up the transport before the railways
were made. The _galera_ (diligence), with its swarm of horses harnessed
with the _cincha_ (saddle to which the lasso was attached), did
not carry goods. It did not replace the convoy of wagons, but the
_tropilla_ of spare horses which travellers on the plain drove before
them. The _galera_ went from Rosario to Cordoba in three days and to
Mendoza in ten days, and from Cordoba to Salta in fourteen days. About
1860 a quicker goods service was organized, light wagons drawn by mules
replacing the ox-wagons. They made the journey from Rosario to Cordoba
in six days. Similarly, on the Pampa, the ox-wagons had been replaced
before 1889 by quicker wagons, drawn by horses, to convey wool from the
ranches to the railway stations.
The cost of transport by wagon was, naturally, high. It also varied
a good deal, but we cannot possibly go into these variations here.
It will be enough to give, by way of illustration, the details which
Hutchinson gives for the year 1862. The freightage was fixed either for
a complete load of 150 _arrobes_ (1,725 kgs.) or so much per _arrobe_
(11-1/2 kgs.). Conveying a load from Rosario to Cordoba cost forty
to fifty piastres (eight to ten pounds). The cost of carrying an
_arrobe_ from Rosario to Mendoza was five to six _reales_ (about two
shillings to two-and-six); from Rosario to Tucuman nine _reales_ (three
shillings and fourpence); from Rosario to Salta eighteen _reales_
(seven shillings and sixpence). The tropas were, therefore, quickly
ousted by the railways. In a few places they made a very unequal fight
against the railways. The _Memoria del departemento de Ingenieros de la
Nacion_ of 1876, quoted by Rebuelto, mentions the competition of the
_tropas_ with the Andino railway, opened from Villa Maria to the Rio
Cuarto in 1873 and to Villa Mercedes in 1875. The merchants of San Juan
and Mendoza continued to use them. The railway had to sign a contract
with the _troperos_ by which wagons were to bring goods as far as Villa
Mercedes, where they could be entrained. The total freight was fifty
Bolivian _centavos_ (about two shillings) per _arrobe_ from Mendoza to
Rosario, and sixty _centavos_ from San Juan. Of this the share of the
railway was fifteen _centavos_.
* * * * *
The first Argentine railway was opened in 1859, between Buenos Aires
and Maron, a distance of about thirteen miles.
In 1870 the Argentine railways formed two independent systems. The
first radiated fan-wise from Buenos Aires (Western line, open as far
as Chivilcoy in 1870, and Southern line, open as far as Chascomus
in 1865). Farther north a line (the Central Argentine) started from
Rosario, and reached Bellville in 1866 and Cordoba in 1870.
[Illustration: THRESHING ON THE PAMPA.
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.]
[Illustration: SACKS OF WHEAT READY FOR LOADING ON THE RAILWAY.
_There are elevators only in a few of the ports._
Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.
PLATE XIX. To face p. 220.]
The political isolation of Buenos Aires between 1852 and 1862, during
the time when the first concessions were issued, made upon the railway
system an impression that would not be effaced until twenty-five years
afterwards. It was not until 1886 that Rosario was connected by rail
with Buenos Aires. The line to Mendoza and Chile, begun in 1870 (F. C.
Andino), joins the line from Rosario to Cordoba. It reached Mendoza
at the foot of the Andes before going on to Buenos Aires; and it was
in 1888 that the Pacific railway was completed between Buenos Aires
and Villa Mercedes, and established direct communications between the
capital and the province of Cuyo.
The line from Rosario to Cordoba is, therefore, the chief branch
round which the Argentine system developed. It is remarkable that at
the time of the original concession in 1855 a westward extension was
contemplated, and that there was some idea of making it a stage in
a trans-Andean. The first concessionaire, Wheelwright, had made the
oldest railway in South America, from Caldera to Copiapo, in Chile in
1851. The 1855 concession authorized Wheelwright to extend the Cordoba
line westward and link it with the Copiapo line. When he opened the
Cordoba station in 1870, Wheelwright, not suffering himself to be
discouraged at the slowness with which the line had crossed the Pampa,
still said that the goal was the Pacific, by way of Rioja, Copacabana
and the San Francisco pass. This ambitious programme deserves to be
recalled, if only as a reminiscence of the former orientation of the
trade of Rioja and Tinogasta toward the Pacific, and as a proof of the
importance, in the imagination of the men of that generation, of the
old trans-Andean roads from north-western Argentina.
Even before the Rosario line had reached Cordoba, it had been continued
northward as far as Tucuman. The work was pushed vigorously, and
Tucuman was reached in 1875. The Cordoba-Tucuman line was the first to
be constructed entirely in the region of the scrub, and _quebracho_
sleepers were then used for the first time. The earliest lines of the
Buenos Aires province and the Argentine had, on the model of the Indian
railways, a gauge of 5 feet 8 inches, but the Central Cordoba, from
Cordoba to Tucuman, had a narrow gauge of forty inches. Hence goods
coming from Tucuman had to be transferred at Cordoba. At the same time
(1875) the line from Concordia to Monte Caseros was opened, and this
made it possible to avoid the rapids of the Uruguay, which was to be
a source of supply to the whole Mesopotamian system. Its gauge was
fifty-seven inches. Differences of gauge are, and will continue to be,
one of the characteristics of the Argentine system.
During the period from 1875 to 1890 were constructed the main lines
which took the place of the old roads from province to province. The
Andean railway reached San Luis in 1882 and Mendoza and San Juan in
1885. Branches of the Central Cordoba reached Santiago del Estero in
1884 and Catamarca in 1889. In 1891 the Central Argentine opened a new
direct broad-gauge line from Rosario to Tucuman; and almost at the
same time the narrow-gauge line of the Central Norte, from Santa Fe to
Tucuman, was finished further north. The Tucuman line was continued
northward to the foot of the Andes as far as Salta. In the province
of Buenos Aires the Bahia Blanca line was opened in 1884. Since 1900
the railways have pushed on to the frontiers and are linked in various
directions with those of the adjoining countries. The Cumbre tunnel on
the Mendoza trans-Andean was completed in 1910, and traffic with Chile
by rail is now permanent. The Salta line was continued in 1908 to the
Bolivian tableland. In Mesopotamia, in fine, the north-eastern line
reached Posadas in 1911 and effected a junction with the Paraguay line.
These details, however, give a very imperfect idea of the history of
the development of the Argentine railway system. It has not merely been
superimposed upon the old roads, but has, on the other hand, helped
to open up and develop new lands, which could not have been colonized
without it. As early as 1883 Valiento Noailles, examining the general
plan of the system, noticed the profound difference between the
railways of Argentine and those of Europe. "In Europe," he said, "the
railways are constructed to serve existing centres of production and
consumption.... Our Argentine railways are to facilitate colonization."
Corresponding to each occupation of a new area of the Pampean plain by
the farmer or the breeder is the construction in that area of a new
network of lines which are fed by its traffic and in turn help it to
increase its production. The more productive the region is, the closer
are the meshes of this network. They are wider in the pastoral than in
the agricultural areas. The period of the development of the southern
lines in the province of Buenos Aires corresponds with the expansion
of breeding when the Pampa had been pacified. The railway reached Azul
in 1876. The Ayacucho branch was opened in 1880, and continued as far
as Tres Arroyos in 1887. The completion of the Bahia Blanca line, via
Azul and Olavarria, in 1884, is itself merely one of the dates in this
colonizing period. The great period of agricultural colonization at
Santa Fe and the construction of the system of lines that serve it
begin a little later, and last from 1880 to 1890 (extension of the
Central Argentine system, the railways of the province of Santa Fe, and
the narrow-gauge railway from Rosario to Cordoba).
The part that the railway has played in colonization is plainly seen
in the present completion of the system which has developed freely on
the even surface of the Pampean plain. The lines radiate round the
port of Buenos Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports of Rosario
and Bahia Blanca. What seems at first sight to be the symmetry of the
railway map will be found on closer examination to be less perfect;
while the Atlantic coast between La Plata and Bahia Blanca has no
ports, the Parana has quite a number of suitable places for shipping
cereals. La Plata, San Nicolas and Villa Constitucion are served by
lines which cut across the lines going to Rosario and Buenos Aires.
This complexity of the system west of the Parana continues to the north
of Rosario, where the lines that go to Santa Fe cut across all the
lines going to Rosario. The lines which run along the southern frontier
of the province of Buenos Aires (at Juancho, Necochea, etc.) have,
unlike the lines serving the secondary parts of the Parana, all their
traffic directed toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to
Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanco the crops of the districts they cross.
They are dependencies of the main lines of the southern system, and not
rival lines.
When the most fertile part of the Pampean plain, on which there is a
regular rainfall to guarantee the crops, had been completely colonized
and covered with railways, the national Government took up the policy
of colonization by rail in the national territories. The minister Ramos
Mejia has attached his name to this work. It has been suspended since
the beginning of the war, but it filled the last period of construction
of the Argentine railways. Ramos Mejia's railways include the lines
penetrating the Chaco opened toward the north-west from Resistencia
and Formosa, and the lines leading to the interior of Patagonia from
the ports of San Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Rivadavia. We must add
the line from Neuquen to the Andes, made by the Southern Company, but
with a Government subvention.[113] These lines, serving districts with
little population and inadequate resources, will not for a long time
make any profit.[114]
[113] The line from Bahia Blanca to the Rio Negro, of which
the Neuquen line is a continuation, was constructed in 1896.
[114] The continuation of many of these lines was contemplated
for the future, so as to secure for them at a later date a
long-distance traffic. The Resistencia and Formosa lines,
which reach the Andes, may compete for traffic with the
Rosario and Tucuman lines. In Patagonia, the continuation
across the Andes of the line from San Antonio to Lake Nahuel
Huapi has been considered. A pass has been found at a height
of 4,000 feet. When this plan is carried out, the Trans-Andean
from Nahuel Huapi would be in a position to compete
successfully with the Trans-Andean from Uspallata, which is
condemned by its elevation to remain a passenger line. These
plans, still far from realization, do not deprive the Ramos
Mejia lines of their character as colonization lines, entirely
devoted at present to conveying the timber of the Chaco and
the wool of Patagonia.
Hence railway construction must be regarded in modern Argentina as
one of the aspects of the problem of developing the soil. The railway
companies have been compelled to intervene directly in the work
of colonization. In 1863 the Central Argentine received from the
Government a strip of land three miles wide on each side of the line it
was making, between Rosario and Cordoba, on condition that it colonized
the land. The company had its own immigration agents and its colonizing
staff, and it opened its first colonies west of Rosario between 1870
and 1872. This kind of concession is exceptional in Argentina. On the
other hand, the irrigation law of 1909 obliges the railway companies to
undertake, on behalf of the Government, the work that is necessary to
develop irrigation in the areas they serve, such work being immediately
reflected in an increase of population and traffic. In compliance with
this law the Southern railway is constructing a canal which will water
the whole valley of the Rio Negro below the confluence of the Neuquen.
The Central Argentine and the Pacific also have undertaken to construct
dams on the Rio Tercero and Rio Quinto, in the provinces of Cordoba and
San Luis.
As it is the essential function of a railway to convey the produce of
the area it serves to the exporting port, the problem of the relations
between the administration of railways and the administration of
ports is of primary importance. The chief ports served by different
companies, such as Rosario and Buenos Aires, may maintain their
independence, but a secondary port will be at the mercy of the single
line which conveys goods to it. In such circumstances the ports have
become, in many cases, mere dependencies of the railways. The port of
Colastine belongs to the railways of the Santa Fe province. The port
of Bahia Blanca consists of a number of distinct ports constructed by
the different railway companies, and run by them. Each of them ships
the goods which it brings. The port Ingeniero White, which belongs to
the Southern Company, was constructed in 1885, immediately after the
opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahia Blanca. Puerto Galvan
belongs to the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port of the line
from Rosario to Bahia Blanca. At Buenos Aires the Southern Railway
Company has acquired control of the Buenos Aires Southern Dock Company.
At La Plata it manages the docks.
The spread of agricultural colonization was at first hampered by the
cost of freightage which cereals could bear over an area with a radius
of about 200 miles from the ports. That is the figure given by Girola
in the _Investigacion Agricola_ of 1904. The period 1895-1905 saw the
birth of a series of plans for making canals in the Pampean region
for the purpose of transporting grain in the area which the railway
did not seem able to serve economically. Not one of them was carried
out, but the railways quickly enlarged their sphere of influence in
the interior. There is, however, a reminiscence of this pause in
colonization in what Argentinians call "the parabolic tariffs." The
Argentine railways practically, apart from cases of competition with
rival lines, use proportional tariffs up to a distance of 218 miles,
and degressive tariffs beyond that limit. In this way the railways have
helped in the conquest of the west. Degressive tariffs have certainly
played a part in the spread of colonization during the years antecedent
to 1912. They have helped to mask the inferiority of the new land to
the better land in the east.[115]
[115] J. Lopez Manan, _El actual problema agrario_ (Buenos
Aires, 1912, Ministerio de agricultura, Direccion General de
agricultura y defensa agricola).
[Illustration: MAP VI.--THE RAILWAYS.
_It is impossible to give the entire system. Only the main lines are
given. Of the narrow-gauge lines of the Pampean region only those which
connect the system of northern Argentina with Buenos Aires are given.
The map shows the double direction of the Pacific system from Villa
Mercedes, to Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca. It gives only an imperfect
idea of the way in which the lines ending at the ports of the Parana
and the Rio de la Plata (Santa Fe, Rosario, San Nicolas, Buenos Aires
and La Plata) overlap and cross each other._
To face p. 226.]
The rise in the value of land and the advance of colonization led,
at each of those crises of development which characterize the recent
history of Argentina, to a multiplication of railway concessions
granted by the national Government and the various provincial
authorities. These have to be bought up by the leading companies, as
each of them wanted to keep exclusive control of the region in which it
had established itself. This concentration could not be accomplished
in a perfectly methodical way, and the various systems now overlap,
which is not to the interest of the companies. Thus Villa Maria, on
the Central Argentine line from Rosario to Cordoba, is also served by
a line belonging to the Santa Fe railways and by a line of the Pacific
Company which puts it in communication with Buenos Aires. On the other
hand, the Central Argentine penetrates to the very heart of the area of
the Pacific at Junin.
However, competition between the various companies has had the
effect of dividing the Pampean plain into three great spheres of
influence. The first, in the north, is that of the Central Argentine
and the Buenos Aires y Rosario line. In 1908 the Argentine Government
officially sanctioned the fusion of the two companies, though it had
really been accomplished a few years before. The second sphere, in
the south, is that of the Pacific, the attraction of which was the
line from Buenos Aires to Villa Mercedes, and which in 1907 bought the
line from Villa Mercedes to Mendoza and the Trans-Andean, a natural
continuation of its system. Moreover, in 1904 the Pacific absorbed the
line from Bahia Blanca to the north-west, which has been linked up
once more with its original system at Villa Mercedes. It thus has two
outlets, to Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca, and completely encloses the
third sphere with its branches. The third sphere, which comprises the
centre and south of the Pampean plain, is the domain of the Southern
and Western Companies. In 1912 these two companies asked the Argentine
Government to authorize them to amalgamate. Although they withdrew
their proposal in 1914, in face of the conditions imposed upon them,
they are still closely associated. Part of the traffic of the western
lines of the Western passes over Southern lines at Carbue, and is
shipped at the port Ingeniero White. At Buenos Aires also, and at La
Plata, part of the Western Company's traffic in cereals and cattle uses
the premises of the Southern Company. The Western and the Southern,
jointly, bought in 1908, before it was finished, the narrow-gauge
Midland of Buenos Aires line at Carbue, which was to cross their sphere
of influence. It was opened in 1911.
The importance of the transport of cereals in the life of the leading
Argentine systems will be seen from the following figures. In
percentages of the total of goods carried, both from the interior to
the ports and _vice versa_, the tonnage of exported cereals was:--
---------------+--------+--------+--------+----------
| 1913 | 1914 | 1916 | Average.
---------------+--------+--------|--------|----------
Southern | 31.0 | 34.3 | 32.5 | 32.6
Western | 58.3 | 61.7 | 55.1 | 58.4
Pacific | 29.0 | 41.8 | 33.8 | 35.0
Central | 36.5 | 46.6 | 34.8 | 39.5
---------------+--------+--------+--------+----------
The figures are rather less for the Southern, which covers an area
that has remained chiefly pastoral and, by means of its Rio Negro
line, serves for part of the transport of cattle from Patagonia
(cattle-transport on the Southern, average for the years 1913, 1914
and 1916: 17.2 per cent. of the total tonnage, 19 per cent. of total
receipts; 1.4 per cent. of tonnage and 6.5 per cent. of receipts). They
are higher for the Western, the only system that lies entirely in the
Pampean region and has no continuations beyond it, as the Pacific has
to Mendoza and the Central to Tucuman.
The share of each company in the total traffic varies from year to year
according to the harvest. Of the four to ten million tons of cereals
carried every year, the greater part--about a third--falls to the
Central Argentine, and one-sixth to the Southern. The Central Argentine
carries the greater part of the maize and flax, the maize alone
representing 26 per cent. of the total tonnage carried by the line, and
the flax 5.6 per cent. Of the other lines the Western alone carries
any appreciable quantity of maize, which comes from the Junin district
(19 per cent. of its tonnage, but only 12 per cent. of its receipts,
because of the slight distances the stuff is carried). The transport of
wheat is about equally divided amongst the four leading lines, but the
proportion of it to total traffic is highest in the case of the Western
(34.4 per cent. of total traffic). The Southern is the chief carrier of
oats (9.8 per cent. of the total tonnage). The tonnage carried annually
is particularly irregular in the case of the Central, on account of
the irregularity of the maize crops, and the Pacific, because its
lines north-west of Buenos Aires serve a wheat-area that is exposed to
drought (wheat carried by the Pacific in 1913, 15.9 per cent. of the
total tonnage; in 1914, 27.2 per cent.).
The clearing of the cereals gives the Argentine railways a delicate
problem in the organization of traffic. The crops of flax, wheat and
oats must be cleared in the four to six months following the harvest
(December-January). The maize harvest, which is later, is also much
slower; it lasts the whole of the autumn. Hence the removal of the
maize is spread over a long period, and sometimes the work of one year
runs into that of the next. This gives the Central an advantage over
the other lines. The wool also must, on account of its great value, be
transferred to the ports speedily after the shearing; but this is only
a matter of about a hundred thousand tons.[116]
[116] The war and the difficulties of marine freightage have
lessened the seriousness of the problem of carrying goods
rapidly by rail in Argentina.
Export, however, is by no means the one source of traffic on the
Argentine railways. Transport of goods for home consumption is chiefly
a question of a large part of the wheat crop. Building materials
also--bricks, lime and stone--are an important item on the various
lines which link Buenos Aires with the Sierra de Cordoba and the
Sierra de Tandil. In 1913 the Southern line carried 1,134,000 tons of
minerals, including 997,000 tons of stone and 101,000 tons of lime
from the Sierra de Tandil and 34,000 tons of salt from the salt-mines
of Lavalle, between Bahia Blanca and the Colorado. In the same year,
the Pacific, Central Argentine, Central Cordoba and State railway
carried 880,000 tons of minerals (half being lime) from the Sierra
de Cordoba.[117] All the timber carried on the lines of northern
Argentina, except the _quebracho_ from the banks of the Parana, is
for home use: sleepers, fence-posts, firewood and charcoal are the
chief items on most of the lines in the scrub. The war has checked
railway construction and reduced the use of sleepers, but it has also
deprived Argentina of combustible minerals and increased the transport
of firewood. Even on railways like the Pacific and Central Argentine,
which have very few of their lines on the scrub, the tonnage of wood
carried is 6 per cent. of the whole (average for 1913, 1914 and 1916),
and the proportion rises to 30 per cent. of the total tonnage on the
Central Cordoba. For several companies the sugars of Tucuman and the
wines of Mendoza are an important element of their receipts, not so
much on account of the tonnage as the high cost of freightage and the
great distance to the centres of consumption in the Pampean region. The
carriage of wine and casks brings the Pacific 38.3 per cent. of its
receipts (1913-14-16). The transport of sugar on the Central Argentine
in a normal year amounts to 5 per cent. of its receipts. On the Central
Cordoba the tonnage of sugar-cane and sugar carried amounted in 1914,
a year of exceptional harvest, to 42 per cent. of the total tonnage,
and was still 20 per cent. in 1916, a year of very poor crop. The
supplying of meat to the market of Buenos Aires and the Pampean area,
with its dense population, means a good deal of long-distance traffic
in cattle; the refrigerators taking the better cattle of the adjoining
region for the foreign market, and the slaughter houses of Buenos Aires
being forced to content themselves with inferior beasts reared in the
provinces and the adjoining districts.
[117] The transport of mineral stuff, apart from salt, has
been greatly reduced by the war. In 1916 it was only 637,000
tons for the Southern and 157,000 tons for the whole of the
lines of the Central Argentine, Pacific, Central Cordoba, and
State.
The importance of these currents of internal traffic has made
itself felt in the organization of the Argentine system. It has
made it necessary for each system to have not only an outlet to an
exporting town, but a direct connection with the chief centre of home
consumption, Buenos Aires. The narrow-gauge system, which until the
end of the nineteenth century had been restricted to the northern half
of Argentine territory, north of the latitude of Rosario, developed in
the province of Buenos Aires after 1900, and ventured to compete in
the carriage of cereals with the broad-gauge system (Company of the
Province of Buenos Aires and Provincial railway of La Plata). This
system connected with the narrow-gauge lines of the north. The Central
Cordoba, which had reached Rosario in 1912 and so had escaped the
need to transfer its export-traffic at Cordoba to the broad-gauge,
began immediately afterwards to effect a direct communication with
Buenos Aires (Central Cordoba, extension to Buenos Aires, opened in
1913). The line from Rosario to Buenos Aires of the Province of Buenos
Aires Company also serves to carry trains of the Province of Santa Fe
Company, which is closely associated with it. The medium-gauge lines
of Mesopotamia also have effected a communication with Buenos Aires
by means of a ferry-boat that plies on the Parana between Ibicuy and
Zarate, and by using a section of the Buenos Aires Central.
The concentration of narrow-gauge and medium-gauge lines seemed to be
issuing in a complete fusion of their interests in 1913. The Argentine
Railway Company got control of the lines of Entre Rios, Corrientes and
the Paraguay. It promoted the development and extension of the Central
Cordoba, and it also had large interests in the French companies of the
Buenos Aires and Santa Fe provinces. All the narrow-gauge lines would
have concentrated in its hands if it had been able to get the State
railway. The broad-gauge line from Rosario to Puerto Belgrano had, as
its interest conflicted with those of the great broad-gauge English
systems, joined the narrow-gauge group engineered by the Argentine
railway. But the amalgamation attempted by the Argentine railways did
not succeed, and, after its failure, the companies it had temporarily
brought together resumed their independence.
The river-route of the Parana has sometimes been an auxiliary, at other
times a rival, of the railways.
Until the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was opened in 1886, the
navigation of the Parana was the only link between the system of
northern Argentina and that of the Buenos Aires province. Before the
line was completed, the company had established a service of boats on
the Parana, and in this way it kept up a traffic in goods consigned to
stations on the Central Argentine, to be transferred at Rosario. These
combinations of railway and river service disappeared when the line
from Buenos Aires to Rosario was finished.
In regard to export traffic the railways have not attempted to compete
with the river anywhere where it is open to maritime navigation; they
have merely been concerned to connect with it. On the other hand, the
railway and the river are rivals for the home traffic and the traffic
of the upper districts which sea-going boats do not reach. Before the
time of the railways the river had taken all the goods traffic, but had
tolerated on its left bank a post-road between Santa Fe, Corrientes and
Asuncion. The railway still has the advantage over the river in regard
to speed (in carrying passengers between Rosario and Buenos Aires, and
live cattle from the Chaco and the Paraguay for Buenos Aires or the
salting works of the lower Uruguay). Even in regard to certain kinds of
heavy goods--_quebracho_ timber--the river has not secured a monopoly,
and there is a good deal of transport by rail.