The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise

Nothing that the Riviera has can outvie the esplanade, broad, well made, with miles of bright gardens and statues – and the motor-cars whiz along at the maddest, breakneck pace. There is one exquisite avenue lined with nothing but palm trees. Many of the houses, designed surely by someone who has built palaces for pantomimes, are half buried behind splashes of prodigal tropical vegetation. Everything is ornate, showy. From the standpoint of British comfort the buildings are gaudy palaces, lacking real ease. But always one has to remember one is in the tropics.

I know no place so dazzling as Rio. Behind all the glitter, however, there is gold. There is commerce, abounding speculation, the devil-may-care assurance of the gambler. Broad ways, electric car services, hundreds of expensive motor-cars, extravagant restaurants, ladies laden with jewels, the men eager, all tell the opening chapter in the story of Brazil's future. In the cool Strangers' Club I met men of the Saxon breed, quiet Englishmen, quiet Americans, representatives of syndicates with millions of money at their backs, negotiating, wire-pulling, securing concessions for railroads, for developing stretches of that great back country of Brazil, as little explored as Central Africa, but the possibilities of which the world is realising and will scramble hungrily to turn into profit. What Brazil has accomplished so far is but the turning of the key in the door.

The morning comes with a gasp, and a flavour of old oil is in the air. The heavy stillness makes one recite the agony of the Ancient Mariner. We are leaving the ocean, and the steamer is churning a way up an ochreish river, banked on one side, but with a stretch of malarious jungle on the other. We are making for Santos, and an old German who rests his elbows on the rail tells how he has known this coast for thirty years, and how, in the old days, it reeked with yellow fever; how whole ships' crews went down before the scourge, and how no passenger boats dared lie at Santos for the night, but always slipped down to the mouth of the river in the evening so that fresh air could be obtained.

Now drainage has done wonders, and Santos, a great export town for Brazilian coffee, is improving itself. I get into conversation with the man who has been engaged to settle in Santos and see that the place is improved. The river is deep, serviceable, and runs far inland. Casting my eye over the flat lands, matted with vegetation, and dotted with many a wretched nigger shanty, I have a vision of the time when docks will be delved and many of the riches of Brazil will find their outlet to the world by this gateway. Great wharves are on the river front at Santos.

The town, however, is in a hugger-mugger of change. The Brazilians seem to lounge round, but they are forging for the future. Men who have been with us for a fortnight hasten ashore. They have eagerness. They are off by the quaint hill-climbing railway to San Paulo, high perched, healthy, throbbing with trade. Others are bent for the interior, away from their kind, to seek their fortunes.

"And that's the end of my six months' leave," says a red-faced Englishman with a sorrowful smile. "I lived away back there for three years, and never saw or talked to another Englishman. I've been home for my holiday, and now it will be another three years before I come back from the plantations. Good-bye. I'll hunt you up when I'm in London again." Off he goes – one of the brave men of the world.

A peep at Monte Video, the neat capital of the miniature Republic of Uruguay, and then the black-green of the ocean we have been travelling for three weeks is left behind, and we are forcing a way up the yellow waters of the River Plate. A river; but for hours there is no land in sight, so wide is the mouth of this great stream. And shallow, for at intervals the steamer shivers as she bumps on the bottom.

"That is all right," says the captain, "for we do not mind a couple of feet of mud."

The journey of the new adventurers is nearing its end. Shipboard friendships are sworn to be eternal. The ship's sports are long over, and the prizes have been distributed. The fancy dress ball on deck is a memory. There is the distribution of largesse amongst those who have made things pleasant. Cabin passengers are light-hearted. The throng of Spaniards and Italians in the steerage are silent and strangely impressed. They were sad when they left the old lands; they were happy during the voyage; now the mystery of the unknown is laying hold of them. We pass a crowded emigrant ship from Italy, and cheers are exchanged.

Out of the haze of the hot day rises the low land, Argentina. We see the buildings of La Plata, once intended to be the capital of the country. The ship makes strange zigzags, for it is following a channel known only to the pilot. There rises a bank of smoke. As we get nearer we run into shipping. From the background emerge tall buildings, white mostly, and recalling the skyscrapers of the United States. So slowly, laboriously, the good ship Avon, which has behaved so well, is brought to rest in front of Buenos Aires. It is night, but the wharves are all commotion. There is the shrieking of tugs. There is the shout of excited Argentines, but their garb is south European. Beyond the Custom House can be seen hastening motor-cars and whizzing electric tramcars. And here is a newspaper man, wanting an interview. We are entering "the amazing Argentine."

CHAPTER II

SOME ASPECTS OF BUENOS AIRES

The Argentines call their city of Buenos Aires the Paris of the southern hemisphere. It has a population nearing a million and a half, which is greater than that of any other town below the line of the Equator. The people promise that in time it will overtake London.

You insult an Argentine if you mix him up with Chilians, Brazilians, and other South Americans. He does not thank you for being reminded his father sailed from Italy, or his grandfather from Spain. He has no affection for any old land from which his sires came. The beginning of the world for Argentina was in May, 1810, when the Republic was set up.

He has no pride of historic race. When he makes money and visits Europe it is not to find the ancestral home in Spain or Italy. It is to have a good time in Paris. When he takes his family to Paris it is not to spend three, five, or six months. It is to spend three, five, or six hundred thousand pesos – and the value of a peso is one shilling and eightpence. When the pesos have flown he returns to Argentina and makes more.

The Argentines are a dignified people. They accept the English because in round figures five hundred millions of British capital in gold have aided in developing the country. They dislike the citizen of the United States because the big brother Republic of the north patronises them, and they need nobody's help. They have a contempt for all other Latins beneath the Isthmus of Panama, particularly the Brazilians. They are conscious of their own qualities.

And the visitor blinks, and rubs his eyes, and admits the wonders of Argentina. If his acquaintance with geography is casual he has shrugged his shoulders at South American Republics, where they have revolutions every six weeks, and where tawny Spaniards in quaint costumes drive mules and die from difference of opinion with other Spaniards.

Then he goes to "B.A." – the familiar description of Buenos Aires – and he finds he has landed in a rampantly modern American-cum-European city. There is none of the sloth of the Southern, no checking of business between noon and three to pass in siestas.

It is a busy city. The port is thronged with shipping, mostly British. High-shouldered elevators stick out long tongues, and streams of wheat, grown on the plains of the interior, pour food for Europe into the holds. Trucks of cattle grunt through the noisy railway yards. There are huge killing establishments, and animals go to their death by the many thousand every day with a celerity which would awaken a Chicagoan. There are mighty avenues of chilled and frozen meat. Labour-saving machinery carries it on board the steamers which hasten across the Atlantic, carrying cheap beef to the London and Liverpool markets. Commerce is conducted on the latest scientific lines. The North Americans have nobbled the meat trade, and the Jews have control of the wheat market.

Buenos Aires is the mart where the produce of the rich back-lands is bartered. It levies a heavy toll. The most imposing business buildings are the banks – national banks, British, German, French, Spanish, and Italian banks. In and about Reconquista are these banks, ever busy. Near by are the rival shipping offices, a glut of them. The offices of the great railway companies are enormous. Wide-spreading premises exhibit the latest and best agricultural machinery that Lincolnshire and Illinois can produce. There is the hustle of commerce. The streets are as narrow and as crowded and as vital as within the City of London. There is earnestness about the men.

The Argentine is sombre in manner. He dresses in conventional black. A light waistcoat, a gay tie or fancy socks, is bad form. You cannot tell the difference between a millionaire and one of his clerks, except that the former has an expensive motor-car and the latter hires a taxi or a victoria, or travels by electric tramcar. At every corner you see evidence of prosperity, of successful money-making. And money speaks in "B.A." as loudly as it does in New York.

Folk of the Saxon breed tend to scoff at the decadence of the Latin race. But there is something revivifying in the transplanting of a people. We have evidence in our own colonies. The man of Spanish descent in the Argentine is not always the spry fellow he thinks himself; but he has dropped the cloak of sluggishness which enwraps Spain. He is often rich; he lives in a gorgeous residence; his extravagances are beyond those of a Russian archduke. He is polite and hospitable.

But the wealthy Spanish Argentine is not the creator of his own wealth. I heard of only one case of a Spanish Argentine owing his great fortune to commercial enterprise. The fortunes of most of these Argentines come from land. Their grandfathers got immense areas by the easiest means. Properties were so enormous that extent was not reckoned in acres, or even square miles, but by leagues. But a hundred leagues, however good for cattle or sheep, or wheat growing – what was its value a couple of hundred miles from a port? Then came British railways. They pierced the prairies. The land bounded in value, tenfold, a thousandfold. Other people came in; first shrewd Scotsmen; then industrious Italians; then Englishmen bent on becoming estancieros. Their children are Argentines. But the mighty fortunes are mostly in the possession of the early Argentines – those who were settled fifty and more years ago. They have sat still and seen their land blossom in value. They pay no income tax; there is no tax on unearned increment. Mr. Lloyd George was once in the Argentine, associated with a land development company. That, however, is another story.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants pour into the Republic every year. They come from every land on earth. Mostly do they come from Spain and Italy. Italy provides the greatest number, and splendid colonists they are. Though the language will always be Spanish, the race is rapidly becoming Italianised. There is a commingling of the sterner stuff from Europe. So in this rich land – rivalling Canada and Australia in productiveness – there is being blended a new people, keen, alert, successful, ostentatious, pagan – a people that has a destiny and knows it.

The Argentines are town proud. You are not in Buenos Aires a couple of days before you are bombarded with the inquiry, "Don't you think this is a beautiful city?" It is not that; but it is an interesting city.

In the oldest quarters the streets are narrow, after the Spanish style. So narrow are they that, with electric cars jingling along them, vehicles are allowed to journey only one way. To reach a shop by carriage it is sometimes necessary to drive along three and a half sides of a block of buildings. Funny little policemen, brown faced, blue clad, and with white gaiters and white wands, direct the traffic. In the Florida – the Bond Street of "B.A." – all wheeled traffic is prohibited between the hours of four and seven in the afternoon, so that shoppers may have an easier way.

Most of the streets are called after Argentine provinces, or neighbouring republics, or national heroes, or some politician or rich man who can influence the authorities. When a popular man has lost his popularity the remnant of his fame is obliterated by the street called after him being named after someone else. It is as though the Government at home decided to change Victoria Street, Westminster, into the Avenida Asquith, with the prospect of its being altered later on to the Calle Bonar Law.

Wide plazas decorate the city. Vegetation is luxuriant, and statues are numerous. The Plaza Mayo is not called after an Irish peer, but after the month of May, 1810. The shops are as big as those in London. Argentina manufactures practically nothing, and all the lovely things have to be imported from Europe. The hotels are imitations of those in Paris. The restaurants are on a par with the best we have in London. A Viennese band plays whilst you have Russian caviare and the waiter is asking your choice in champagne. But everything is expensive. A man needs three times the salary in Buenos Aires to live the same way he would live in London. If you calculate exchange rates you go mad. It is best to count the peso (1s. 8d.) as a shilling, and then remember that you are spending your shilling in South America, where things are dear. You can get a modest luncheon for 10s.; but you will pay 2s. for a bottle of beer, and 3s. 6d. for a cigar worth smoking.

Yet nobody minds. Immense sums are being spent on improving the city. It is built on the American T-square plan. But it is to be subjected to the plan of Haussmann, with great tree-girt avenues radiating diagonally from the Plaza Mayo. An underground railway, honeycombing beneath the town, is in rapid construction. The railways have a great suburban traffic, and are being electrified. There are British colonies at Belgrano and Hurlingham, and you have a choice of three golf courses. In the summer months – December, January, and February – there is river life on the Tigre, the Thames of the Argentine. A charming spot is Palermo, a combination of Hyde Park and the Bois de Boulogne – open sweeps and charming trees, a double boulevard with statues and commemorative marbles in the middle, well-cared-for gardens, radiant flowers and the band playing.

A drive through Palermo at the fashionable hour causes one to gasp at the thought that one is six thousand miles from Europe. Nowhere in the world have I seen such a display of expensive motor-cars, thousands of them. Ostentation is one of the stars of life in the Argentine. Appearances count for everything. You must have a motor-car, even though you have not the money to pay for it, and you owe the landlord of your flat a year's rent. The ladies are exquisitely gowned, but they have not the vivacity of the French women nor their daring in dress. There is a demureness, a restraint which reminds one that the atmosphere of far-away Castile is still upon them.

On Sundays and Thursdays there are races at Palermo. The price Argentines pay for horseflesh has become a proverb. It is a good race-course. We have nothing in England, neither at Epsom, Ascot, nor Goodwood, so magnificent as the grand stand. It is a glorified royal box. The restaurant is like the Ritz dining-room. Everybody dresses as they would at Ascot. There are no bookmakers. The totalisator is used. Betting is officially conducted by the Jockey Club, and there is constant announcement of the amount of money put on the horses. Those who have backed the winners share the spoil, less ten per cent. As this ten per cent. is deducted from the total amount put on each race, the income of the Jockey Club runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds. So the Club maintains a good race-course, offers capital prizes, has a house in "B.A." – undoubtedly the most palatial club-house in the southern world – and distributes the remainder amongst the hospitals. The income of the Jockey Club is so large it is really embarrassing. The members are proceeding to build an Aladdin's palace of super-gorgeousness.

But at the races at Palermo I noticed that no ladies attended, except in the members' enclosure. Even there they did not mingle with the men-folk. There was no mirth, such as we are used to in Europe. They kept themselves to little groups. Moving from wonder to wonder, I was present at a gala performance at the Colon Theatre. I have seen all the great theatres in the world, and this is the loveliest – a harmony of rose and gold. The audience was as fashionably dressed as at the opera in London, though I missed the dazzling display of diamonds which had been promised. Most of the audience were ladies; there were boxes of them, and most of the men were in the stalls. There was one gallery reserved for women.

I began to discern a strange Orientalism in the relations between the sexes. The Argentine women are amongst the best mothers in the world. But there is practically none of the good fellowship between young fellows and young girls which is so happy a feature of our English life. For a man and a woman to take a walk together would shock the proprieties. There are brilliant receptions, but dinner parties, as we know them, are rare. An Argentine seldom introduces a friend to his wife. Except amongst the poorest a woman scarcely ever goes into the streets alone. If she does she runs risk of being insulted. There are Argentines, who would be offended if refused the name of gentlemen, who think it excellent sport to walk in the Florida in the evening and mutter obscenities to every unprotected woman who passes. Buenos Aires is the most immoral city in the world. So the Argentine guards his women-folk from contact with other men. His attitude is a relic of the days when the Moors had possession of Spain.

I have called Buenos Aires a pagan city. So it is. The men are frankly irreligious. In conversation I have been told of the tolerance to all religions. What is really meant is indifference to any religion.

Money-making and flamboyant display – these are the gods which are worshipped. The houses in the wealthier districts are exotic in architecture. I remember driving along the Avenida Alvear, a street of palaces, reminiscent of the Grand Canal at Venice if it were a roadway. But the fine stone blocks are nothing but stucco. The ornamentation, the floral decorations, are not carved stone; they are stucco. Imitation, pretence, showiness, the flaunting of wealth, are everywhere.

Yet this city, which has grown in a generation on the muddy flats by the side of the muddy Parana River, has something that is weird in its fascination.

CHAPTER III

ROUND AND ABOUT THE CAPITAL

The way not to see a city is to be trotted round and shown all the "sights." I have an idea I may have missed some of the "sights" of Buenos Aires. I did not "do" the churches. Acquaintances who knew I went to South America to pursue my trade of writer sometimes asked me what I was going to write about, and the reply was, "I do not know." But I was not believed.

Anyway, I may say that I drifted about "B.A." I presented my letters of introduction, made friends, lunched out and dined out, had motor trips, went here and there as suggestion provided the inclination; maybe to a theatre, or to smoke a cigar in one of the clubs with men who are of account in Argentina or no account at all, or to spend a Sunday with an Argentine family; maybe to idle an hour in one of the cafés; maybe to have a serious talk with a Minister; maybe do nothing but idle round. That is no scientific way to study a city. But it just happens to be my way.

The conclusions I draw may be wrong, for I may have met the wrong people and seen the wrong things, especially as I had no system. Yet out of the confused jumble of impressions and experiences something coherent evolves, and that is the substance of my remarks when I am asked, "Well, what do you think about Buenos Aires?"

It is not my wish to accentuate the point, but open-handed extravagance is one of the traits of the people. It is a fault of democratic countries that, having no aristocracy of birth, they proceed to create one of wealth. Argentina has fine old Spanish families; but, though esteemed, they are in the background. In the wrangle-jangle of frenzied progress they are not to be counted amongst the moderns. So garish is the display of money that the idea left is that you have had your attention called to it by the constant blaring of a bugle.

But I would shrink from saying the display is vulgar. Keeping in mind that the people are Latins, and are fonder of colour than we of the cold and moral north, I would write there is a sort of ostentatious restraint. Argentines glory in spending money, but amongst the older settled people other things besides money have their place. They are fond of music, and pride themselves that they discovered Tetrazzini and Kubelik long before London. Here, as in Paris, London, and New York, there is the mob which goes to the opera because it is "the thing" to have an expensive box, and to wear lovely gowns and loads of diamonds. The prices paid make the charges for a gala night at Covent Garden seem like those of a twopenny show. It may be said that a well-known artiste is sure of a kindly reception. Yet Buenos Aires has its moods; it has its vagaries, and is petulant. For some undefinable reason it will take a dislike to some performer who arrives with a European reputation. Perhaps half a dozen ladies who lead the fashionable world will say the artiste is overrated. "She may be all right for Paris, but she does not come up to Buenos Aires standard" – that is the attitude. For anybody to praise the poor singer after that is to advertise their inartistic taste. There is a boycott. So a European singer or instrumentalist who goes to the Argentine aglow with the prospect of a dazzling success sometimes returns with the saddest of experiences – neglect.

With such a people, Latin in race and living in the sunshine, life is something of a holiday. One hears stories of the looseness of life amongst the men – on the boats running between France and Argentina can be seen the girls going out to meet the requirements of the hundreds of houses of ill-fame – but the Argentine women themselves are beyond reproach. Indeed, their regard for correctness is often amusingly prudish. Public opinion is so strong that no lady, if she wants the esteem of her neighbours, dare show the slightest originality in costume or conduct. Plays with the faintest hint of suggestiveness about them are barred. Performances which would pass muster in a London West-end theatre are shunned; plays to which the most innocent of girls cannot go are taboo. The consequence of this is that there are other places of amusement especially catering for men, which no respectable woman can enter. Just outside the boundaries there are cinematograph shows "for men only," which for indecency cannot be outdone in Port Said or Havana.

I have mentioned how the visitor to Argentina soon begins to be aware of the low position of women in the minds of men, the way in which there is no real friendship between the sexes outside the family circle, and how no Argentine will trust another Argentine in regard to his ladies. With all their finery and jewellery and expensive motor-cars and boxes at the Colon Theatre, you are prone to remark, "How un-European!" when you see the segregation of the women.

Yet with all their frivolity, dress, bridge, amusements, you make a mistake if you fancy the Argentine lady a guarded, slothful doll – though the description applies in thousands of cases. I had the opportunity of seeing the other side of the picture. On two days, under the guidance of ladies themselves, I visited the establishments of Las Damas da Beneficencia and several Government hospitals. A noble work is being done. I saw how the poor are cared for. There was the nurturing of the old. There was tending the sick in buildings worthy of any city in the world. There were the homes where the wives of poor folk could come to bring their babies into the world. There is much illegitimacy, and formerly there was much infanticide. So there was a kind of casement where, at dusk, mothers could bring their unwanted offspring and deliver them. No questions were asked, but the infant, because it was a helpless little child, was cared for. The same work is done to-day, but without the mystery of the casement. Foster-mothers are engaged to nurse the children. As one went through the rooms, and saw the tiny morsels of humanity, many of them feeble, with a shape of head which roused wonder as to the future, it was hard to keep the tears away.

Poverty, as we understand it in Europe, does not exist in Argentina. But there are men who are stricken down in early manhood, unable to earn anything, and who need help. There are widows and the fatherless to be cared for. There are poor folk, but their trouble is due to misfortune and not to economic causes. Charity, however, is great, and funds are numerous and the Government provides handsomely, and there is no distress such as we know it. But all this good work, hospitals, looking after the aged, providing for the fatherless, is carried on by the women of Argentina. Except to serve as doctors, no men have any voice in the control or management. Ladies, with their presidents and boards of management and committees, have the work placed entirely in their hands. It is set apart for them, and no man interferes. Yet the suffrage question has not extended to Argentina.

Life is taken lightly and showily by this new nation. But when anybody dies all the relatives go into mourning, to the fourteenth cousin. And in death the display is just as rampant as in life. The Recoleta is a strange cemetery, bizarre, ghoulish, tawdry. To own a tomb in Recoleta is one of the necessities if a family wants to be in the swim. These tombs are like chalets, occasionally of Italian marble, generally of the Buenos Aires stucco – the capital surpasses all other cities in the world in the amount of stucco – and they are ornate. There are streets upon streets of them, and you take a walk through a town of the dead. The doors are open, and you can step in and see half a dozen coffins ranged round the shelves. Occasionally there are photographs of the dear departed. On All Saints' Day it is usual for the living family to gather in the tomb, have tea, and munch cakes. After a number of years the coffins have to be removed, or a heavy sum paid, and the tomb is "to let." The whole thing is repulsive to the Englishman, but the Argentine loves it.

The capital of Buenos Aires province is La Plata, about fifty miles away. I went down one day by the luncheon train, which runs out of the Plaza Constitution just after midday and does the journey in an hour. It was a fine train, and the luncheon car was bigger, and the food better than we have on English lines. The car was crowded with a sallow-skinned, black-moustached, black-garbed lot of gentlemen, and I gathered they were all Government officials. Nobody in Government employ thinks of doing any work in the morning. The men go to the office late and leave early. It was almost like home.

La Plata is a town that has missed its way. Full of grandiose ideas, and taking the United States as a model, it was decided to build La Plata as the federal capital on the Washington plan. Gorgeous buildings were erected; magnificent avenues were constructed; the loveliest of public gardens were laid out; a fine museum was founded; a great municipal theatre was piled up. In the public square bandstands were provided and statues to national heroes hoisted. It was to be the flower of Argentine towns. And every Argentine town, when it sets out to beautify itself, must have an avenida and a plaza and an equestrian statue of San Martin; the matters of water supply and drainage come later.