CÓRDOBA
Córdoba is the third province of Argentina in population, it having had
in 1914, 732,727 inhabitants. In area it contains 62,160 square miles.
It is the heart of Argentina, being situated in the center of the
republic. The eastern part is pampa while the western part is a high,
dry plateau, traversed from north to south by mountain ranges notably
among which are chains of Pocho and Ischilin. These mountain ranges
which are two hundred miles in length are isolated from the Andean
system; their southernmost extremities are named the Sierra de Córdoba
and are a veritable karst like the Kuestenlande of Austria, gray
granite boulders being everywhere. The eastern slopes of this karst
are covered with a thick vegetation of mesquite and other shrubs due
to the moist Atlantic winds, while their western slopes are destitute
of vegetation. The air here is dry and refreshing and the Sierra de
Córdoba enjoys the same rôle in Argentina that Colorado does in the
United States, being the haunt of consumptives. Likewise the Sierra
is the playground of many wealthy Buenos Aires families, for it is a
treat to them to get away from the level monotonous plain upon which
their city is built. West and northwest of the isolated mountain chain
is a vast barren desert, part of it being called the Salinas Grandes
on account of the white surface of the soil due to saline deposits.
Córdoba is watered by five rivers named the Primero, Segundo, Tercero,
Quarto, and Quinto (which means First, Second, Third, Fourth, and
Fifth). These rivers are used for irrigating purposes, for water power,
and for electricity. The whole province is noted for the pureness of
its well water, artesian wells abounding. Every few years the locust or
grasshopper plague hits Argentina, and when it comes it strikes Córdoba
unusually hard. One of the frontispiece photographs shows a locust trap
on a Córdoba farm. This is the catch of two days, the corrugated iron
plates having been spread with honey mixed with poison. I consider this
one of the most remarkable photographs ever published.
The trip from Tucumán to Córdoba is an 11 hours' trip of 340 miles
by the Central of Córdoba Railroad. The track is narrow gauge, but
the sleepers, dining car, and service are the best that I have ever
chanced on in Argentina. All trains between the two cities make the
trip by night, for in the daytime the heat and glare of the sun on the
Salinas Grandes, a great salt desert midway between the two cities, is
unbearable. This desert abounds with rattlesnakes, called "cascabel."
I met a tramp who walked from Tucumán to Córdoba; he was afraid to lie
down by the wayside to rest on account of these reptiles. In one day he
killed over fifty of them.
The first eighty miles of the journey crosses about as pleasant a
country as can be found anywhere, passing through the cities of Bella
Vista, La Madrid, and San Pedro. At the latter place, the first town
in the Province of Catamarca, desolation begins and continues until
daylight the next morning when the traveler awakes at the large town of
Dean Funes, the junction for San Juan, capital of the province of the
same name. Low rocky hills now rise in every direction; the soil, dry,
parched, and somewhat stony is overrun with pampa grass. It is cool and
a wind is invariably blowing. The nature of the country continues this
way almost to Córdoba, although before reaching that city, the hills to
the southwest take the form and acquire the height of mountains.
Córdoba, the third city of Argentina, has a population, exclusive of
its suburbs, of one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants. It was
founded in 1573 by Luis Geronimo de Cabrera, and has always been noted
as a seat of learning and of religion. Its university, which vies
with that of San Marcos in Lima in being the oldest in the Western
Hemisphere, was founded June 19, 1613, by a Jesuit father, Fernando de
Trejo y Sanabria. The first printing press in Argentina was brought
to this university from Lima in 1765. Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia,
Paraguay's able dictator, was a graduate of Córdoba's university. The
churches, cloisters, convents, and religious institutions of the city
are innumerable, and it is estimated that over six thousand of its
inhabitants are connected with the religious orders and organizations.
Córdoba is one of the cleanest cities in America, and it is difficult
to find a place where civic pride, park system, cleanliness of house
exteriors, public buildings, pavement, hotels, cafés, department
stores, banks, residences, religious edifices, and water supply taken
as a whole can equal that of it. Many cities may excel it in one or
two of the above mentioned institutions but not in the majority.
Personally I would not care to live there unless engaged in some
business, as there are too many "lungers," and the surrounding country
is but a dry and rocky karst; the diversion of street life would soon
become irksome, for with the exception of cafés, moving picture shows,
theaters, and an occasional horse race, no Argentine city possesses any
real live amusement places, excepting those that are synonymous with
lights seen through carmine transoms, and they happily are not in my
line.
[Illustration: Northern Market, Córdoba]
I can see no reason for Córdoba's existence and growth. The soil of
the country is poor and rocky, while the rainfall is slight. In the
year 1915, seven months elapsed without a drop falling. The city is
situated to the west of the productive part of the province, and from
it westward to San Juan at the foot of the Andes, the country is the
poorest in the republic. Yet Córdoba has had a rapid growth recently.
In the manufacturing line, it has three breweries, that of Pollak and
Brueck, generally called the Córdoba Brewery; that of the Ahrens, and
the main brewery of the Rio Segundo Company. There is a large flour
mill owned by Minetti, an Italian, and several brickyards. Here are
also located the shops of the Central of Córdoba Railroad.
The chief industry of Córdoba is brewing, this being largely due to the
remarkable pureness of its well water which is artesian. Señor Nicolas
J. Oderigo, manager of the bank of the Argentine nation, wrote me a
letter of introduction to Mr. C. Davis, president of the Rio Segundo
Brewing Company, which I visited in the company of Señor Stange, an
employee of Oderigo's bank, and whom he had the kindness to send with
me to accompany me. This large brewery has a branch at the town of
Rio Segundo, which was the original brewery. The Rio II. Brewery is
an independent brewery, not being allied to the Quilmes outfit as is
generally supposed. Mr. Davis received me courteously and after having
shown me the establishment invited Stange and myself to his house where
he entertained us at dinner. Señor Stange is either a German or of
German descent, but when I asked him about it he denied it, and also
told me he could not speak a word of that language. A day or two later
I passed by him while he was seated in animated conversation in a café
with two other men, and the language he was conversing in was German.
As Mr. Davis is an Englishman, Stange evidently had private reasons
to cover his nationality. The brewmaster of the Rio II. Brewery told
me that brewing was not a profitable industry in Argentina, because
the Quilmes company was a trust and its members being affiliated
with the political party that is in power, it has the capital and
the means to drive the smaller breweries to the wall, by stringent
legislation and usurious taxation. This Rio II. Brewery is smaller than
the large breweries of Detroit, yet it pays more taxes than does the
Anheuser-Busch Brewery or the Pabst or Schlitz breweries.
The Córdoba Brewery as I have mentioned is owned by Pollak and Brueck.
Pollak is an Austrian Jew who married a Córdoba woman, and who turned
Roman Catholic to get prestige, but like most people who are members of
the race he abjured, his business methods are not considered synonymous
with good faith.
His beer, to my idea, is the most palatable of any of the Córdobese
beers. Amber is the name of his light product, while Muenchen is that
of his dark. With the townspeople his product is the most popular,
notwithstanding his personal unpopularity.
The approach to Córdoba by rail is similar on a small scale to that
of La Paz, Bolivia, for both cities lie in a pocket in the hills and
their presence is not visible until the ground of the plain above them
drops away, and they are seen below you. The pocket which contains La
Paz is ten times deeper, the surprise of the traveler on first viewing
the city being that of astonishment; but here in Córdoba, although
the scale is exceedingly miniature, the conditions are analogous. The
growth of Córdoba has been such that there is no more room left for
building in the pocket, so now the new resident who wishes to build
a home of his own is obliged to do so on the plain above the city.
Several suburbs have sprung up and go by the names of Alta Córdoba,
Alberdi, and Nueva Córdoba.
Alta Córdoba can be likened to the station Alto de La Paz, although
here there is quite a large town. Here is situated the Central of
Córdoba railroad station with the railroad workshops, and a market
named Mercado del Norte. A fine, broad avenue winds from Alta Córdoba
in big curves, down a cleft in the hillside, passes under a stone
railroad bridge, and reaches the river bottom at the beautiful shady
park of Las Heras. It now crosses the Rio Primero over a new stone
bridge, named the Centenario, at whose end is the Avenue General Paz.
This is where begins the city proper, which on the floor of the valley
is twenty-one blocks wide by thirty-one blocks long, and which does not
include the other suburbs in the pocket which are named San Vicente at
the eastern and Villa Paez at the western ends of the original town.
The Plaza San Martin is in the center of Córdoba and is the nucleus of
the city life. From here run straight streets east and west, and north
and south which are the busy ones of the capital. On the plaza is the
cathedral, two of the leading banks, and the best hotels. The business
arrangement of this particular section is like that of Tucumán. The
great show street is the aristocratic and superbly beautiful Avenida
General Paz, beginning at the plaza of the same name at the Centenario
Bridge and continuing ten blocks southward to the Plaza Velez
Sarsfield. This street is the handsomest in Argentina. From the Plaza
Velez Sarsfield there is a continuation of it to the heights beyond the
city proper, and which is here named the Avenida Velez Sarsfield.
[Illustration: Cathedral of Córdoba]
From the Plaza Velez Sarsfield the new Avenida Argentina, destined to
become the most exclusive residential street of the city on account of
the high price of the terrain, ascends to the plazas Centenario and
Dean Funes at the entrance of Sormiento Park, Córdoba's playground.
Halfway up the Avenida Argentina on the left-hand side stands a
magnificent and imposing mansion, that of Señor Martin Ferreyra. It is
a landmark, and seen from the plain at the opposite end of the city,
it looms up as if it dominates over the city and no other building
seems as large. It has already cost its owner over three million pesos
($1,281,000) and is not yet completed.
"How did Señor Ferreyra make his money?" I asked the chauffeur.
"His father left a large sum of money which had been handed down from
several generations. Martin Ferreyra was made administrator of his
father's estate and cheated the other heirs out of their share," was
his answer.
[Illustration: Residence of Martin Ferreyra, Córdoba]
The zoölogical garden at the Parque Sarmiento lies in a cleft of the
ridge and was laid out in 1914 by a German engineer. It is open to
the public Thursdays and Sundays and is entered by descending in a
funicular or by a circuitous way on foot. Although it is planned to
house many animals, the only large mammals there at present are some
seals which sport beneath the spray of an artificial cascade, and a
pair of lions which a Montevideo gentleman presented to an ex-governor
of Córdoba, who has loaned them to the city, probably at the expense of
the latter.
[Illustration: Church of Santa Teresa, Córdoba]
Debreczen, Hungary, is nicknamed locally, "Rome of the Protestants";
Córdoba is nicknamed "Rome of Argentina" on account of its numerous
churches, convents, monasteries, other religious institutions, and
multitude of priests. There are several thousand of the latter body of
men; they and the soldiers are not reckoned in the national census of
urban population for they are constantly moving from place to place.
There are fourteen large churches including the cathedral, and sixteen
other Catholic Houses of God which would be considered large in the
United States, but which are here classed as mediocre. In contrast
with the churches of all the rest of South America, excepting those
of Brazil, those of Northern Argentina are much more beautiful with
their splendid façades, domes, and towers, the latter being roofed with
variegated porcelain tiles; blues predominating. Córdoba, Tucumán, and
Salta are especially rich in the appearance of their churches, Tucumán
taking the lead in the ornateness of the tiles. In Córdoba are the
large churches of Merced, Jesuit Fathers, and Santo Domingo, but by far
the largest and finest church in all Argentina is the cathedral, three
centuries old, its architecture being that of the current Spanish style
that was in vogue at the time it was built. There are a few cathedrals
in America larger, those of Montreal, Mexico City, Lima, New York,
Santiago, Bahia, Montevideo, and Rio de Janeiro in order of their size,
but none excel that of Córdoba in proud richness.
It is one of the finest churches in America with the best mural
paintings of any. In this latter respect it is only exceeded by those
of Italy. Its towers and dome are not tiled, as that art was copied
from the Portuguese and Brazilians only during the last century.
Decadent Romanesque, it has a solemn dignity of its own.
[Illustration: Zoölogical Garden, Córdoba]
Of the hotels, the Plaza is the best. It is on the northeast corner of
the Plaza San Martin, and is new. It is a solid four-story structure,
with good rooms, and is well furnished but poorly managed. There is
a sunparlor on the second floor. The manager told me that most of
the rooms have baths in connection, but in this he lied. I do not
believe that any of the rooms have a private bath. This same manager,
an Engadine Swiss, was formerly the head portier of the Hotel Savoy
in Rosario. I knew him of old, and crookedness is, with him, second
nature. The restaurant of the Plaza Hotel is the best in the city. It
is on the ground floor and has a street entrance; in connection with it
is a café and a confectionery store. The meals are _à la carte_, but
I understand that people staying at the Plaza for any length of time
may get _pension_. The café is a large one, on the Viennese style, and
connects with the restaurant by a passageway under a platform on top of
which are stationed the orchestra, so that the musical wants of both
the eaters and drinkers can be satisfied at the same time. The bar is
on the United States style, and as is seldom the case in South America
and not frequent enough in North America, the back bar is deep enough
to give the bartenders working space, and allows them enough room to
reach for a bottle without getting into each other's way.
[Illustration: Corner of Plaza San Martin, Córdoba]
Across Calle San Geronimo from the Hotel Plaza is the Hotel San Martin,
a good house, and managed by the former manager of the Plaza. This
manager holds the unenviable reputation of cheating his foreign help.
In Argentina, a native or a naturalized citizen always wins out in a
lawsuit. When I asked some of the ex-employees of the San Martin why
they did not sue the manager for their back wages which they claimed
were deliberately withheld, they said:
"We would look fine as Spaniards and Austrians going up against an
Argentino in court here. The manager would trump up some lie, and have
us arrested on some false charge and it would work."
Another good hotel is the Roma, two stories high and built on the patio
system.
The Central Argentina Railroad and the Central of Córdoba both print
luxurious illustrated folders and do much advertising relative to the
beauties and charming mountain scenery of the Sierra de Córdoba, an
uninteresting range of quasi barren hills in the neighborhood of the
city. My advice to strangers is to pay no attention to these deceptive
advertisements and not to go there, for the person that "bites" feels
afterwards like "the fool with his money parted." This last might apply
to pecuniary losses that are apt to befall him at the green cloth
tables in Alta Gracia. This Sierra de Córdoba is an irregular mass
of rocky hills, which in some places attains the form of mountains.
The summits are over four thousand feet high and where this altitude
is reached in the mountains to the west, the Córdobese call them Los
Gigantes (The Giants) for they have never seen any mountains that are
greater. They are covered with brush, while here and there is a small
tree. As for scenic beauty they are not worth three cents.
Alta Gracia is a great gambling establishment licensed by the
provincial authorities, and as these railroad companies know the bend
of the native mind, advertise this place which besides the gambling
house is nothing but a large hotel, a hamlet, and an old mission
church. I visited all the advertised places which include Dique San
Roque, Cosquin, La Falda, Tanti, and Capilla de Monte and found none
worth the while. Dique San Roque is a dam somewhat similar to the
Sweetwater Dam near San Diego, California, where a greenish lake
empties its waters into the Calera River to supply electrical power. It
is twenty miles from Córdoba, the last five being the only part of the
trip that can come anywhere near to being classified under the title
scenery. The hills here are wooded with small trees, and the dangerous
automobile road runs around promontories on ledges where the slightest
mishap with the steering would shoot both passenger and chauffeur into
eternity.
[Illustration: Bridge on Road to Dique San Roque
Beneath the arch of this bridge some gipsy families have taken their
abode]
To go to Cosquin, thirty-seven miles from Córdoba, keep straight ahead
until you reach the stone marked kilometro 28, which is the turning-off
place for Dique San Roque. Keep straight ahead and you will come to
the hamlet of San Roque where is a church and the residence of the
jefe politico. A road to the left leads to Alta Gracia, but that to
the right goes to Cosquin. After a long drive over the rocky karst, the
village of Villa Bialet Masset is reached. It consists of a long dusty
street flanked by sordid one-story houses. A National Consumptives Home
on a grandiose scale is here. The scenery has become better as there is
a green, although dusty valley watered by the Cosquin River. Cosquin is
an unattractive town of three thousand inhabitants. The Hotel Mundial
serves good meals but there is no diversion for its guests, who pass
the time of day reading novels on the veranda or slumber in the garden.
The inhabitants of the Province of Córdoba talk in a sing song manner
and are known by their fashion of articulation in any part of the
republic they may chance to find themselves in.
It is a ten hours' ride on the accommodation train from Córdoba to
Rosario, although the express trains which run by night only shorten
the time by a couple of hours. The country is a dry but productive
plain, and is fairly thickly settled; every few miles there is a town.
These range from a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants. In the
summer of 1916 the whole region had been planted to corn, but the
locust pest had been so busy that there was nothing left but the bare
stalks. This disaster reached to the outskirts of Rosario. The locusts
had even eaten all the leaves off the trees, their naked branches
having the appearance of their winter garb. Millions of dollars had
gone to waste on account of them, and I know an _estanciero_ in the
Province of Buenos Aires who in a single year had destroyed by them
sixty-five thousand dollars' worth of crops. They attack everything but
the garden truck, and by their sputum poison the streams. A man should
never buy land for crops in Argentina without reckoning on this plague.
The Province of Santa Fé had, according to the last census, a
population of 1,111,426, ranking in this line the second of the
Argentine provinces. Its area is 50,916 square miles and has as its
capital city, Santa Fé, which has a population of 91,636. Rosario,
frequently called Rosario de Santa Fé to distinguish it from Rosario
de La Frontera in the Province of Salta, is the largest city. Its
population is 316,914, it being the second city of Argentina, and the
sixth in South America, those larger in order being Buenos Aires, Rio
de Janeiro, São Paulo, Santiago, and Montevideo.
Rosario was founded by Francisco Godoy in 1725, but its growth dates
from recent years. Although its aspect was practically the same as
when I saw it three years previously, I could not help noticing that
now there were much greater crowds on the streets than formerly, and
that the principal business street had changed from the Calle General
San Martin to its intersector, Calle Córdoba. It is the outlet to a
grain country superior to that behind Buenos Aires, and is the livest
commercial city in Argentina. There are quite a few local industries
such as car shops, a sugar refinery, grain elevators, flour mills, and
breweries. The largest importing house in Argentina, that of Chiesa
Brothers, is located here as well as the largest drug firm. The city is
essentially Italian, its influence predominating, although numerically
the other foreigners and natives together have a larger population than
the immigrants from the Lavinian shores. Rosario is also a center for
artisans, their sculptors vying with those of Genoa in the chiseling
of marble for tombs and statuary in Buenos Aires and in different
parts of South America. The city is by no means beautiful nor can it
ever be on account of the flatness of its location. There are eight
small plazas but none of them are near the center of business. The
streets are narrow, and are solidly lined with buildings many of which
are imposing. This with the absence of plazas as breathing spaces,
together with the street crowds give to Rosario an entirely commercial
atmosphere. The courthouse is a large, long pile with a high domed
tower surmounting the center, and is one of the most imposing buildings
in Argentina. It is on the north side of the Plaza San Martin about
a mile from the hub of activity of the city. On the east side of the
same plaza, and just completed, is the Police Headquarters covering an
entire block and undoubtedly the most modern and largest of its kind in
the world. Two other fine buildings are the Jockey Club and the Centro
Español, both also recently completed.
[Illustration: Courthouse, Rosario]
[Illustration: Street Scene, Rosario]
The Hotel Italia is the best, although its situation on a side street,
the Calle Maipu, between Calles Rioja and San Luis is poor. The Savoy
where I stopped, was formerly Rosario's Blackstone, but it has greatly
deteriorated in all respects. The only thing attractive about it is the
chambermaid on the second floor, a pretty giggling Spanish damsel. The
Hotel de Mayo is a good second-class house and serves the best meals
of any of the hotels, its restaurant rivaling that of the Rôtisserie
Sportsman which is above the Bar Victoria. This Bar Victoria is the
finest refreshment parlor in South America. Its walls are decorated
with tapestry, its furniture is of mahogany, and its fixtures are of
brass, kept well-polished. It gave one of the Catalan waiters great
pleasure to see me cross its threshold after an absence of three years
and enjoy a glass of foaming Germania in the dull cathedral light of a
waning day.
[Illustration: Plaza 25 de Mayo, Rosario]
[Illustration: Street Scene, Rosario]
Tributary to Rosario, which is their shopping center, and inland
some distance in the heart of good farming lands, are three towns:
Pergamino, seventy miles to the south, Casilda, thirty-three miles
to the southwest, and Cañada de Gomez, forty-one miles to the west.
Pergamino, the largest of all, is in the Province of Buenos Aires,
being directly across the provincial line and is a railroad town. It
is the junction of several branch lines of the Central of Argentina
Railroad and is on the main line of the narrow gauge General Railroads
of the Province of Buenos Aires. It has a population of twenty-eight
thousand inhabitants and owes its prosperity to stock raising and corn
growing.
[Illustration: Calle San Nicolas, Pergamino
The building at the right is the Hotel Roma]
This city I visited, choosing it as a good example of _campo_ town
for such is styled the Argentine prairie, and stopped over night at
the excellent Hotel Roma, which is not only remarkable as being one
of the finest buildings in the city, but strange to say is one of the
few hotels in Argentina, excluding Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Tucumán,
which has private baths in connection with the sleeping-rooms.
[Illustration: Plaza 25 de Mayo, Pergamino]
Viewed from the housetops, Pergamino appears a city of windmills; they
rise everywhere. Water being scarce makes them a necessity. The city
which is compactly built is fundamentally Italian. It is compactly
built but has only one main street, that named San Nicolás, which
is paved with wooden creosote blocks. The buildings are mostly but a
single story high, and the nomenclatures over the store entrances savor
of the River Po or the Etruscan Hills. With the exception of Calle
San Nicolás, the other thoroughfares are unpaved. The edifices that
flank them are of reddish brown brick with a minimum of mortar or lime
between the cracks. Like the outskirts and side streets of most of the
small towns of Argentina, the aspect is hideous and dismal, for the
edifices are mere brick hovels bordering dusty lanes, abounding with
mongrel curs that munch offal and garbage thrown from the front windows
of the morgue-like habitations. There is in Pergamino a plaza, named
25 de Mayo, several blocks from the business section. It is large and
poorly kept up, and is bordered on all sides by double rows of pine
trees, which have attained a tall but slender growth, large enough
however to make saw timber. These trees were planted thirty years ago;
at home it would take them one hundred years to have attained the same
proportions.
[Illustration: Street in Mercedes]
From Pergamino to Buenos Aires, 166 miles by the General Railroad of
the Province of Buenos Aires, only two towns are passed that have
any pretext for importance. They are Salto, thirty-six miles from
Pergamino, and Mercedes, sixty-nine miles from Buenos Aires. Mercedes
has a population of more than thirty thousand inhabitants, and strange
to say its streets are numbered instead of being named. This system
is different from ours for 1st Street crosses 25th Street, and 34th
Street crosses 16th Street, and so forth. It is so arranged that
the high-numbered streets are in the center of the town while the
low-numbered ones are on the outskirts. When the trains make their
first stop it is at the 25th Street station. The stranger traveling
through is apt to say: "Gee, but this is quite a town," judging by
the high numbers of its streets, while in reality 1st Street is way
out in the meadows far from the activity of central life. Mercedes
was formerly the stamping ground of Irish immigrants. Many of these
have become rich and powerful, and to-day retain their Hibernian names
without speaking a word of English. I met a girl in Buenos Aires whose
patronymic was O'Grady, yet she was conversant in no language but
Spanish. Some of the Irish settlers did not prosper as well as the
minority of the rich landed proprietors of Mercedes; this is testified
by the native born whiskered Irish bums who immigrated from Mercedes to
Buenos Aires who are seen wandering about the streets of the Argentine
capital, garbed in rags and invariably drunk on ginevra, a low-grade
gin.