James Scobie has added another volume to his valuable series of social histories of Argentina. Based on an extensive review of census information and other contemporary sources, this book describes the flowering of Buenos Aires from a large village into the modern city described early in the century with justified local pride as “the Paris of South America.” This exuberant florescence, in which the population grew from 180,000 to 1,232,000, required only 40 years, as it was linked to Argentina’s period of maximum economic growth and fed by heavy immigration from Europe. Scobie concentrates on the period from 1870 to 1910 and compares the city’s ecology and social conditions as they existed at those dates. “The ecology of the city changed dramatically,” he finds, “yet the city’s social structure showed remarkable stability and continuity” (p. 12).
Although the site was unpromising in some respects, three ecological forces accounted for the location of modern Buenos Aires: the construction of an artificial port amid the mud flats of the Río de la Plata, the consolidation under British management of four trunk railways radiating into the fertile pampas, and the decision to make Buenos Aires the seat of national authority. A particularly interesting part of the narrative is the struggle between rival supporters of Luis A. Huergo and Eduardo Madero to design the new port. Even today the problem has not been wholly solved.
Scobie offers a perceptive description of the life-styles of the gente decente and the gente de pueblo, who formed the two classes of urban society, with virtually no middle group, during the growth period. Activity in the upper-class residential, cultural, and business zone around the Plaza de Mayo is contrasted with the miserable existence of the working class in the tenements (conventillos) and outlying neighborhoods (barrios and cuadras). The sudden wealth of the upper class widened the social division while it simultaneously attracted new immigrants.
Although advances in education gave Argentina the lead in general literacy within Latin America, Scobie believes that the two-class society warped the educational system, encouraged a disdain for manual work and technical training, and enhanced admiration for viveza criolla, or native cunning, so characteristic of the porteño outlook.
Thus the values of Argentine culture, as reinforced in the great metropolis, ultimately did not encourage porteños or other Argentines to make major changes in their economy or society. Indeed, Argentina was hindered in its general development by the premature success of its principal city as a commercial-bureaucratic center.
Scobie’s account is enlivened by well-selected contemporary photographs of changing Buenos Aires, as French and Italian architects transformed it to express Victorian and Edwardian ostentation. The book will interest students of comparative urban development as well as Latin Americanists. It is also sufficiently detailed to serve as a useful guide to any visitor who wishes to take a walking tour of the city and imagine how it was.
