Santiago Estrada was a representative of the Argentine “Generation of Eighty.” Auza, dean of the School of History and Literature at the University of Salvador, argues that this group has not received from historians sufficient credit for its genuinely optimistic view of Argentina’s future and that Estrada deserves a place among the heroes of Argentine nationalism.
Estrada was born at Buenos Aires in 1842 and died in 1891. Rigorously self-educated, he early became an intellectual whose life revolved around a love of literature. As befitted a member of the Generation of Eighty, his interests were never parochial, for he traveled widely, wrote novels, and was a theater and literary critic. It was in 1869, while he was in Santiago, that he first became interested in the Chilean-Argentine boundary disput which centered on the ownership of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and the Straits of Magellan. After investigating the question, he resolved that “la Patagonia es Argentina,” and the boundary issue became an obsession with him.
In 1878, when it appeared that the boundary question might be settled, Estrada feared that an agreement would prejudice Argentina’s future. In that year he assumed the editorship of the porteño newspaper, La América del Sur. The author argues that Estrada’s journalism eventually awoke Argentines to the importance of the southern territories. By May 1879 Estrada had written three hundred articles dealing with the issue. He had criticized the proposed Fierro-Sarratea and Balmaceda-Montes de Oca pacts as products of sentimental diplomacy. He opposed President Nicolás Avellaneda of Argentina, who for domestic political reasons wanted an accord with Chile. Estrada’s was the one voice among eighteen Buenos Aires newspapers which criticized the proposed treaties. On June 27, 1879, the treaties were defeated by the Argentine Senate, the triumph of his heroic campaign.
The author makes a strong case for Estrada’s importance in this crucial episode of Argentine diplomatic history, but to explain the failure of the treaties as the work of one man is overdoing it. The reviewer hopes that in Auza’s forthcoming larger study of the entire boundary issue, he will discuss more fully how the War of the Pacific affected Argentina’s attitude toward the boundary issue. At the same time he might well evaluate the role of Peruvian and Bolivian agents in stirring up Argentine opposition to Chile. One must quarrel with his conclusion here that Argentina rejected the boundary settlement not out of passion or political partisanship, but because of “reflection, intelligence, and the sentiment of national dignity” (p. 85). The author needs to consider further the evidences of social unrest in Buenos Aires which led to the Revolution of 1880 and the final federalization of the city. He might also explore the power relationship which existed between Brazil and Argentina. And finally the reviewer must question Auza’s saintly picture of Santiago Estrada. Did the man have any weaknesses?
