The Argentine Republic: Its Development and Progress — Edition Insights

s of Argentina. The consuming capacity of the Pampa increased simultaneously with its wealth and population. It absorbed the products of the neighbouring provinces and in turn made customers of them, distributing amongst them, according to the services they rendered, part of the gold it obtained from beyond the Atlantic. One after the other the provinces lost the relations which had hitherto connected them with foreign lands. There was the same development all over the zone of cereals and lucerne--the direction of the stream of commerce was reversed. In some places, as at Tucumán and Mendoza the change was accomplished a generation ago. In other places, as at Salta and San Juan, it is still going on. In yet other places, the more remote valleys, like Jachal and Santa Maria, it will occur in the near future. By a singular anomaly the Far West of North America, which sprang up half a century ago, tends to withdraw more and more from the influence of the eastern States, which provided it with capital and immigrants, while the Far West of Argentina, which is just as old as the east and by no means a creation of the east, since it developed in isolation and freedom, and was already adult and rich when they came into contact, has nevertheless fallen into complete dependence upon the east in the course of a few years.

The life of the whole country depended upon the great colonization movement which transformed the plain of the Pampas. This brought about an economic unity which was at once reflected in the political world. The railway from Buenos Aires reached Tucumán before 1880; Mendoza, San Juan, Salta, and Catamarca before 1890; and La Rioja before 1900. The establishment of closer economic relations between the coast and the provinces of the interior has nearly always inaugurated a period of great prosperity for the latter. In every case the influence of Buenos Aires vitalized them, put an end to their slumbers, and made them rich.

Not only did the coast take for itself the products of the western provinces, which had hitherto found their way to other markets, but new centres of production had to be created to meet its needs. The forests of the Chaco received a great influx of wood-cutters, to provide the sleepers for the railways. The valley of the Rio Negro was planted with vines, to provide the wines of the colonies in the district of Bahía Blanca. The attraction of the Pampa was felt as far as the frontiers. Paraguay competed with Corrientes in the supply of tobacco and oranges; with Misiones in the supply of _yerba maté_. Each district chose the particular crop which was best suited to its climate, in order to secure the highest possible advantage from its relations with Buenos Aires.

The two most brilliant satellites of the Pampa, the most important productive centres of the interior, are Tucumán and Mendoza. All the other important towns of Argentina belong themselves to the region of the Pampas. Tucumán and Mendoza, which live by supplying the Pampa with sugar and wine, have become in turn secondary centres of attraction. They are a sort of regional capitals, and they have their own spheres of economic influence. A network of commercial streams has developed about them, and this has led to the formation of new roads. These lines of local interest are easily recognized on a map of the railways, where one sees them superimposed upon the regular fan of lines which converges toward Buenos Aires. La Rioja provides the props for the vines of San Juan and Mendoza. From the north of Córdoba to Salta, a distance of about 250 miles, the wood is cut for the fuel of the sugar-works of Tucumán. Santiago dries the fodder for its troops of mules. The prairies of Catamarca, which once fattened the cattle that were intended for Chile, and often came even from Tucumán, now sell their beasts to the butchers of Tucumán. The wines of San Juan find their best customers at Tucumán. Even the nearest portions of the plain of the Pampas, to the north-east of Santa Fé and the south of San Luis, supply maize and wheat to Tucumán and Mendoza, instead of sending them to the ports for export.

While Argentina lives on the Pampa, the Pampa lives on export. It has been developed through the inflow of European immigrants, and Europe pays by sending its manufactured products and capital. Except as regards emigration, the United States had, before the war, much the same relation to Argentina as the countries of Western Europe. Thus the economic prosperity of the Republic binds it more and more closely to the life of the whole world. Its position in the temperate zone of South America had retarded its entrance into world-commerce, and this explains the slowness with which its colonization proceeded at first. Its climate and products were too similar to those of Spain. Not only the mining and metallurgical centres of the Andes and of Mantiqueria, but even the sugar and cotton regions of Brazil, the Antilles, and the Guianas, were developed before the plains of the Pampas.

The turn of the Argentine Republic did not come until the growth of population in the industrial countries of Europe made them dependent upon foreign lands for their food, and until the application of steam to ships made it possible to export wool, meat, and cereals on a large scale.

When we compare the economic organization of Argentina with that of the United States, we see that it is both less complex and less capable of being self-contained. The difference is due to the architecture of the country. I said at the beginning of this chapter that Argentina has no equivalent for the zone of the Atlantic tablelands, which is now the great industrial region of North America. The industrial prosperity of eastern North America provides a safe home market for the farmers of the west, and relieves them of the need of exporting their produce. Moreover, the Atlantic tablelands, the original centres of population, where the first generations of colonists lived on land that was often poor, have seen the gradual formation of reserves of labour and capital which were afterwards used in colonizing the west. The east sifted, in a sense controlled, the influence of modern Europe in the colonization of the United States. It classified and assimilated the new emigrants who set out for the west, mingled with the troops of native pioneers on their way to the prairies. In the same way, when European capital flowed into the United States, it found in the eastern cities a large treasury and a body of financiers in whose hands it had to remain.

In Argentina, on the contrary, everything speaks of the close and direct dependence of the country upon oversea markets. The soil itself bears the marks of this solidarity. It is seen in the network of the railways, the concentration of the urban population in the ports, and the distribution of the cultivated districts in concentric circles which are often limited, not by a physical obstacle, but by the cost of freightage between the productive centre and the port. Thus we get a geographical expression of facts which seem at first sight to belong to the purely economic or sociological order.

THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST AND PASTORAL LIFE IN THE SCRUB

The inhabited zones of the Andes in the north-west--_Valles_, _Quebradas_, _Puna_--The irrigation of the _valles_--The historic routes--Convoys of stock--The breeding of mules and the fairs--The struggle of the breeders against drought--The Sierra de los Llanos.

The whole life and wealth of the arid provinces of north-western Argentina depend upon irrigation; the water-supply definitively settles the sites of human establishments. The water resources are irregularly distributed. They are especially abundant in the south (San Juan, Mendoza, and San Rafael), where the torrents of the Cordillera are fed by the glaciers, and on the outer fringe of the hills above the Chaco, at the foot of Aconcagua, which gathers masses of cloud and rain on its flanks (Tucumán). In the intermediate district, on the contrary, in the regions of La Rioja and Catamarca, and in the interior of the hilly zone to the north-west of Tucumán, the amount of available water is small; the oases shrink into small spots far removed from each other.

This natural inequality was not felt at first. For a long time the spread of cultivation and the progress of wealth were restricted only by the scarcity of population, the difficulties of transport, and the inadequacy of the markets. The best endowed oases paid no attention to the surplus supply of water, for which they had no use. We have to come down to the close of the nineteenth century to find men reaching the limits which nature has set to colonization, and mapping out their domain. It is not until then that La Rioja ceases to compete with Mendoza, or Catamarca with Tucumán. While large industrial enterprises develop at Mendoza and Tucumán, strong centres of urban life arise, the population increases, and immigrants stream in, the oases of the interior scarcely change. Their population does not keep its level. Life has an archaic character that one finds nowhere else in Argentina. The physical conditions have retarded, one would almost say crystallized, the economic development. The living generation exploits the soil in ways that to some extent go back as far as the indigenous tribes, the masters of their Spanish conquerors in the art of irrigation. The industry of fattening and convoying cattle, which was once the chief source of wealth of the whole country, is still alive in those districts.

The zone of the elevated tablelands of the Andes without drainage toward the sea--the Puna--has still, below 22° S. latitude on the northern frontier of Argentina, a width of about 250 miles. This breadth steadily contracts southward as far as 28° S. latitude, where the Puna ends about the level of the road from Tinogasta to Copiapo.

To the east and south of the Puna the Argentine Andes are cut from north to south by a series of long gullies and large basins, between which there are lofty and massive chains with steep flanks. Some of these lie in the heart of the mountains, while others often open like gulfs upon the edge of the plain. These depressions with rectilinear contours are a common feature of the topography of the Andes in this latitude. The central plain of Chile is closely related to them. In the Argentine speech they are called _valles_: Valle de Lerma, Valle Calchaqui, Valle de Iglesias, de Calingasta, d'Uspallata. They are, however, not "valleys" in the sense of hollows made by erosion by running water. They owe their formation to tectonic movements, subsidences of the surface. The scanty rivers of the arid Anacs are not capable of doing work of that kind. When they enter the already formed bed of a _valle_, they seem to be lost in the immense space. Often they dry up in it, leaving behind the sediment and salts with which the water was laden. In other places they cut at right angles across the _valle_, escaping by narrow breaches in it, while the depression continues its course on either side, taking in sections of a number of independent streams.

Opposed to the _valle_ is the eroded ravine, carved out by water, the _quebrada_. It opens upon a _valle_ with a V-shaped mouth, which widens out at the top, and one can recognise at sight the various slopes and the successive stages of erosion. Narrow and winding, a level bed of shingle filling the entire base of the valley, it rises rapidly toward the mountains and provides a route from the _valle_ to the _puna_. These _valles_, _quebradas_ and _puna_ are the three inhabited zones of the Andes. The first is the richest. The inhabitant of the _valle_, proud of his comparative comfort, has for his neighbour in the _quebrada_ or the _puna_--the _coyada_--a contempt such as one finds the inhabitants of the good land in Europe feeling for the people in poorer districts.

The narrower the _valle_, the less rain there is. The observations give 112 millimetres of rain per year at Tinogasta, 290 at Andalgala, and 200 at Santa Maria. Salta and Jujuy have a much moister climate, and have no less than 570 and 740 millimetres of rain annually. This is because the eastern chain of the Andes, which stretches from the Sierra de Santa Victoria on the Bolivian frontier to Aconcagua, sinks lower at the latitude of Salta, and lets in the moisture of the Chaco to the heart of the zone of the Andes. The rains of Salta and Jujuy are suspended during the winter, but they are so heavy during the summer months (November to March) that maize, which needs only the summer rain, can be cultivated without irrigation. But when we follow the Valle de Lerma southward from Salta the maize harvest becomes more and more uncertain, and it is no longer sown in dry soil when we get to about twenty miles from Salta, in the latitude of the confluence of the Arias and the Juramento. However, the summer rains, which are good for maize, are very injurious to the vine; they spoil the grapes. Thus the southern limit of the cultivation of maize in dry soil almost coincides with the northern limit of the vine. At that point we have the real beginning of the typical scenery of the _valles_.

The need of irrigation is due to the scarcity of rain, but it is accentuated by a number of causes which tend to increase the aridity. The _valles_ are the scene of scorching day-winds, the _zonda_, like the _Föhn_ of the Swiss Alps, which, there being no snow, dry up the water of the springs and of the irrigation trenches, or use the deposits left by the waters to form dunes, which they push southward, sometimes like veritable glaciers of sand. Moreover, the soil of the _valles_ is generally composed of coarse and permeable alluvial deposits, which absorb the rain-storms immediately. There is at the foot of both sides of the hills which enclose each _valle_ an immense and far-lying bed of imperfectly rounded shingle. This double zone of detritus is strangely desolate, for the vegetation on it is restricted to isolated bushes of _jarilla_ and _tola_. From the sheepfolds on the mountains to the oases in the valleys one hardly meets a single house. The bed of the valley is not so desolate. A broad ribbon of sand marks the dry bed of a torrent, and on the clays of its banks, if the sheet of water underground is not too deep, one finds, in spite of the goats and asses and charcoal-burners, little forests of _algarrobas_, which the foundries use for fuel.

The modern alluvial beds, gravel and sand, represent the upper stratum of a considerable series of continental deposits which lie on the Paleozoic crystalline rock of the Andes.[16] They chiefly consist of red sandstone and coloured marls, which crop up here and there through the alluvial covering and give the landscape a rugged character, worn by water and wind. There is no trace of humus: nothing to soften the vivid colours of the rock. Bodenbender, to whom we owe the first general attempt to classify the series, points out the importance of distinguishing the different strata in connection with the question of water supply and the conditions of human life.[17] A complete geographical study would have to follow the geological description in detail. In places--on the eastern edge of the Sierra de los Llanos--the fine modern clays are in contact with the granites of the hills and form above them a thick bed that is rich in fresh water. In other places--south-westward of the Sierra de la Famatina, as far as the Bermejo--the outcrop is of red sandstone only. The tablelands of Talampaya and Ischigualasta, which are cut across by the gorges of the tributaries of the Bermejo, form one of the most conspicuously desert regions in the whole Republic. Wherever the gypsiferous marls of the Calchaqui are near the surface, the springs are saline. The undulations of the impermeable rocky substratum bring to light the water that gathers in the alluvial beds. Thus the streams which come down the Famatina range in the west disappear in the alluvial beds on the fringe of the Sierra, but re-appear presently in the oasis of Pagancillo.

[16] This series, stretching from the Permian to the Tertiary, also includes, especially in the region of the sub-Andean chains, on the fringe of the Chaco, a number of marine strata (see Bonarelli, _Las sierras subandinas del Alto y Aguaragüe y los yacimientos petroliferos del distrito minero de Tartagal_ "Ann. Min. Agric.," Seccion Geologia, Mineralogia, y Mineria, viii. No. 4: Buenos Aires, 1913).

[17] G. Bodenbender, _Parte meridional de la Provincia de la Rioja y regiones limitrofes_ (Ann. Min. Agric., Seccion Geol., Minerol., y Mineria, vii. No. 3: Buenos Aires, 1912).

Hence the _valles_ are by no means wholly productive. The oases represent only a limited portion of them. It would be impossible to imagine a more striking contrast than that of the freshness and life of the oases compared with the surrounding desert. Screens of poplars shelter them from the _zonda_. The water runs along trenches paved with round pebbles under the spreading vines, at the foot of which, to economize water and space, lucerne is sown. Each garden feeds a family. Near the raw-brick houses there are large earthenware vessels, as tall as a man, in which the corn is kept. The hammering of the cooper fills the air.

In places the oasis is watered by a stream. In those cases there is on each side of the bed of the stream a narrow fringe, a continuous ribbon, of smiling gardens, which hide the path. Above and below Santa Maria a trench is opened every mile in the wet sands of the Rio. The water rises in it and fills it, and is directed by it toward one of the banks, where it is jealously collected and distributed. The water which flows from the irrigated fields and returns to the river, as well as that which the porous side of the trench has permitted to escape, goes to fill another trench and supply other fields farther on. The region of Los Sauces, in the northern part of the province of La Rioja, to the south of Tinogasta, shows a different type of irrigated cultivation, on account of the sandy course of the stream. The fields follow the feeding artery for about fifty miles. It is bled at the beginning of each bend, the waters remaining underground like hidden wealth.

In most cases however, the _valle_ has no running water. What reaches it from the lateral _quebradas_ is lost in the alluvial beds accumulated at the point where the _quebrada_ enters the _valle_. In order to make use of it the cultivated areas are grouped on the cone of deposition; at least, that is the position in the great majority of the oases. A _costa_ is a line of separate oases with their backs to the same slope. When the _valle_ is narrow, the _costas_ on either side of the sterile depression face each other, like two parallel roads. The water of the _quebrada_ is never sufficiently abundant to irrigate the whole of the cone of the torrent. In order to create an oasis there, they have selected the most easily cultivable zone, which is usually the foot of the cone, where the deposits are finer and more fertile, retain the moisture better, and require less watering. The summit of the cone is composed of coarse stones, the first to be dropped by the torrent as it loses its strength. These are bad lands, where the water is wasted.