ARGENTINE ALL-SORTS
Argentina, the Land of the Silver River, is, after Brazil, the next
Republic in size in South America. It is the most progressive from a
worldly point of view, and from a spiritual standpoint also it is going
forward steadily.
This is not strange, seeing that the people who live in Central and
Southern Argentina are mainly European, and British people have
an enormous commercial and financial interest in that land; but
nevertheless we cannot get away from the fact that this Land of the
Silver River lacks in many places the streams of Living Water which God
is so patiently waiting to flood through human channels to hundreds of
girls and boys who do not know Him. We should really, therefore, take a
very great interest in Argentina for more than one reason.
From Paraguay we will make a journey into Northern Argentina.
Travelling through the sugar plantations, we finally reach San Pedro,
where the sugar-crushing mills are at work, for it is harvest time and
hundreds of Indians are employed cutting the cane.
Everything is in full swing, and dusky forms are flitting here, there,
and everywhere, some cutting the cane with long knives, while the
Indian women carry it away and lay it in heaps. Here, after the leaves
and top ends are cut off, the cane is thrown into trucks, which are
taken to the factory by a small engine drawing twelve or thirteen
trucks. We will go and see how the cane goes in at one end and nice
white sugar comes out at the other end. The sugar, after being sewn up
in bags, is taken away in big, heavy carts, with high broad wheels.
At another sugar plantation 3000 Indians are employed. They come from
Southern Bolivia and the Gran Chaco to work from three to five months
among the sugar cane, and then return to their own country. There are
several tribes, the most civilized being the Chiriguards from Bolivia,
who are cleaner and more intelligent than the rest. There are the
Tobas, another warlike tribe, who go about almost naked. They are dirty
and savage looking. Also the Matacos, who are sadder looking than the
rest.
The South American Missionary Society is endeavouring to reach these
people in San Pedro and San Antonio. Mr R. J. Hunt says, of his second
visit amongst the Indians in the Argentine Chaco:--
“A day or two after my arrival I went to the village seeking my
assistant, Sixto, and found the house deserted and the household goods
removed. Glancing in and out among the trees, I found all the huts
likewise vacated, but presently I espied two solitary little girls
of six or seven years of age playing near one of the huts; and on
approaching, instead of scampering away like frightened animals, they
remained quite still, and shyly but very clearly explained to me, with
many gestures, that the man whom I sought had built another house on
the other side of the road. Only those who have attempted to tame one,
know the wild, shy nature of a little Indian girl!
“The other day I went to visit the Mataco Camp at Mira Flores, and at
the sound of my voice a young fellow came forward with a broad smile on
his face and saluted me. A little girl instantly sidled up to me, and
immediately from several huts came the women to smile recognition of me.
“Then the men flocked round. I speak specially about the women, because
their rule is that when a stranger visits their camp the women keep in
the background, or peep out through their well-ventilated grass-huts;
but these people were from Tres Pozos, and they had seen me squatting
round their fires, and moving freely in and out among their friends. I
was no longer a stranger but one of themselves.”
We will now make our way southward through Argentina, travelling for
many miles from one city to another by mule back. They are inhabited
by children of all nations, but speaking the one common language of
Spanish. These cities have their churches, convents and cathedrals, and
everywhere you see priests and so-called “holy” women.
In Cordoba, the Brethren are doing a splendid missionary work. Mr and
Mrs Will Payne and their children, with Miss Emily Reynolds, and others
are seeking to win the children to Christ.
A priest was holding a service at one of the Roman Catholic churches.
Amongst other things he promised everyone present that evening seven
years’ release from purgatory for their attendance at the service! A
rich young lady promised candles to one of the Virgins, if her prayers
were answered.
In the Sunday-school work only the better-class children are being
reached, as for the most part the poor children live so far away.
In San Martin, a village near Cordoba, a little Sunday-morning school
has been started. There are always a few listeners at the door, who are
afraid to come in. When invited to enter they say: “No, I must not, you
are heretics!” One of the Sunday-school boys, who attended a day-school
under the supervision of Roman Catholics, was expelled because it was
discovered that he attended the little morning Sunday-school.
How helpless the missionaries are in matters like these! For the power
of Rome is very great in these fanatical places. But this little
difficulty was speedily removed, for a Spanish woman who had recently
come from Spain had been a day-school teacher before her marriage in a
missionary school in Spain! She felt constrained to open a day-school
here, and so the children who attended the Sunday-school went also to
the day-school.
Best of all the Word of God is read and taught every morning for half
an hour. How true the proverb is: “What you put into the life of a
nation, you must put into its schools.”
There was an orphan school kept by a few Christians who loved little
children, a few miles out of Cordoba. A little boy was very ill,
dying of consumption; and he was brought to a hospital in the city.
The little fellow knew the Gospel, and had his Testament with him.
His precious Book was taken away from him; and although he was so ill
he was given no peace till he was driven to confess to a priest and
renounce the Gospel.
Then they tried to stop the missionary’s visits, but, in defiance of
the Catholic nurse, and on the ground that the missionary had brought
up the orphan child, she got through to see him before he died.
Children take part in the religious festivals of the Roman Church,
especially the feasts of the Virgin, of which there are very many. One
of the chief festivals is that of the “Virgin Mercedes.” The image is
taken out of the great Church that bears her name, in order that,
according to an ancient custom, she may release four prisoners.
This Virgin is reckoned to be very miraculous. She is supposed,
years ago, to have given special victory in an Argentine battle. In
commemoration of this, every year she is solemnly taken down from her
niche, and paraded with great pomp to release any four prisoners she
chooses.
Let us turn aside and see this great sight. The route of the procession
is lined, almost packed, with people. Cordoba being a large and
so-called religious city, practically everybody is out to watch with
us. At last we see the procession; it is slowly returning to the
church. How long it is! For we find by our watches that it has taken
twenty minutes to pass.
[Illustration: A CONVENTILLO IN THE ARGENTINE CAPITAL]
Heads are bared as the robed priests and choir boys, with lights and
lanterns, come into view. Such crowds of women follow! Little children
dressed in white follow on, carrying silk banners. At length, to the
muffled sound of the drum, and well protected by armed soldiers, comes
the Virgin, carried aloft.
The excitement is now at its highest. Women are throwing flowers from
the balconies to the Virgin. All are anxious to catch sight of the four
prisoners at whose feet the Virgin had been made to drop a free pardon.
Then follow in the rear more soldiers as a further escort.
In spite of all these feasts, the priests feel they are losing their
hold upon the people, especially the women; and in order to revive
religious sentiment cinematograph pictures are being shown in one of
the churches to attract more worshippers. To lose the women is also to
lose the children, the men they have already lost.
On our way to the capital of Buenos Aires, we pass miles of waving
corn, with great expanses of grassland upon which graze hundreds of
sheep and cattle. Here and there, too, we see ranches where the owners
of the wheat-fields and cattle live.
Who are these people? Not foreigners, but our own British men and
women, miles away from any city and from civilization.
There is no church for them to go to, so Sunday is the same as any
other day; but occasionally they receive a visit from the chaplain of
the South American Missionary Society. More often than not, they are
without any spiritual help whatever, and yet how much we owe to them!
Supposing we had no church or Sunday-school, no one to tell us of the
beautiful things of God--how we should miss it all! And yet here are
these people living out on the plains of Argentina, with their little
children, tending the sheep, and reaping the corn, all of which is for
our material benefit.
The sheep and cattle are killed and put into the freezing-houses in
Buenos Aires; the wheat is harvested and made into flour, and all is
shipped from the docks every week, to England and other parts of the
world. Shall we not send them news of the Bread of Life which perisheth
not, so that the boys and girls of Argentina may know about the Lord
Jesus Christ?
Now we are in _the_ city of the whole continent, Buenos Aires. The
houses are flat-roofed and have no chimneys, for the very simple
reason that they have no fires. Most of the cooking is done either on
a charcoal brazier or on a gas or oil stove. Most of the streets are
very narrow, especially the older ones. The newer streets are made much
wider, and down the centre are avenues of trees.
House rent here, as in every other South American city, is very, very
high, so that the poor people live in “conventillos” such as you see
here. “This is a form of slum peculiar to South America consisting of a
square, or courtyard surrounded by buildings one or two stories high.
A ‘conventillo’ sometimes contains as many as a hundred families, each
one crowded into a single room, opening on to the common square. Here
the women wash, and cook, and sew, and gossip and drink ‘maté’ with
their friends (the native tea of the continent is grown in Paraguay).
Here also the children swarm and quarrel at their games.”
Buenos Aires is a most cosmopolitan city, full of life, gaiety, and
commercial activity; and yet so full of wickedness that many a mother’s
boy has been ruined for eternity.
There are numerous factories of various kinds in the city and
neighbourhood, in which hundreds of girls and boys are employed. In the
richer homes the girls are kept very secluded by their mothers, having
no purpose in life but just to dress up and make themselves look nice.
In the hot months everyone rises with the sun, and the first
substantial meal, called “almuorzo” (breakfast) is taken at 11.30. The
hottest part of the day is spent in “siesta” (sleep), under a mosquito
net, on a shady verandah, after which you have a cold bath and dress
ready for visitors, or go visiting yourself.
To speak of work amongst children in the Province of Buenos Aires would
fill a book. The Christian workers of the Evangelical Union of South
America are doing noble work in the Sunday-schools. We have not time
to visit Tres Arroyos, where each Sunday two hundred children listen
to the “Old, Old Story of Jesus and His Love,” or Las Flores, Coronel
Suarez, Campana, or San Fernando, where the children are gathered
together Sunday by Sunday.
The difference between these Argentine children and ourselves is just
this, that everything here in Britain is done to help the children, and
to surround them with a pure atmosphere and holy influences. Out there
it is not so; everything is against the children growing up to be even
morally good men and women.
They are so familiar with sin that their sense of sin is destroyed, and
they are therefore harder to reach than pure pagans. If ever a city
needed a “Blossom Home,” it is Buenos Aires, where we find children of
all nations.
One of the finest institutions for children and young people in the
whole of this continent is, however, to be seen here at the present
day. We cannot leave Argentina without paying a visit to the suburb
of Palermo, where are situated the schools superintended by the Rev.
William Case Morris, the “Dr Barnardo of South America.”
While in business, in the Boca district of the city, some years ago, Mr
Morris saw the poverty and ignorance of the children about him, and he
longed to see something done for them. Of his own accord, and with his
own private funds, he commenced a school for poor children. Upon this
he spent years of labour and much money, seeking to better the lot of
his juvenile friends.
With the South American Missionary Society at his back, he established
day-schools, Sunday-schools, and schools of industry, through which
hundreds of Spanish-speaking children have passed since their
foundation.
Who are the scholars? With the exception of a very small number we find
they are children of the poorest class. Many are children of invalid
parents, others of widowed mothers. In the case of several, the father
is serving a long term of imprisonment for crime. Some are almost alone
in the world; many are quite alone--“nobody’s children,” waifs, to whom
life is a dreary, desolate solitude.
Numbers of the children had been surrounded by an atmosphere of
ignorance and sin, and would a few years later have been a cause of
trouble to the police, had it not been for such an institution as
this. It is not only a training place for the mind, but a school for
character, where the children’s souls are lifted out of the mire and
trained in the atmosphere of heaven.
What sweetening influences must now be at work, where every youth
and maiden is who has passed through this school! Think of the five
thousand who are being trained to be witnesses for Christ to their
own people in this continent, where we see still so much darkness,
degradation, and superstition.
The whole secret of successful work amongst Spanish-speaking children
is splendidly summed up by Mrs Strachan, an E.U.S.A. missionary in
Tandil. She says:--
“Our work in the Sunday-school makes us feel more than ever the
pressing and immediate need of day-schools. It seems impossible in one
short hour to make an impression on the children.
“How can you teach a child that a lie is a lie, when lies are told at
home and in day-school? How can you make him understand that to steal
is a sin when everybody else tells him that the only sin about it is to
be found out?
“The child of South America is up against all that sort of thing; it is
the very air he breathes during the week.
“He comes to us for an hour on Sunday; how much do you think can be
done to press home these powerful influences? We are more than ever
convinced that if we are to do in this country a work that will take
deep root downward, and bear fruit upward, the children must be got
hold of, placed in the right atmosphere, and taught on the right lines.
For this we must get the day-schools and get them quickly.”