Chapter I: Introduction

In the following chapters I have endeavoured to indicate the essential aspects of colonization in modern Argentina: the conquest of the soil by man, the exploitation of its natural resources, the development of agriculture and cattle-breeding, and the growth of the population and enlargement of the urban centres.

For a new country like Argentina it is not convenient to adopt the strictly regional plan which seems to be the best means of giving a complete and methodical description of the historic countries of western Europe, where it is the only way to keep in close touch with the geographical facts. In western Europe each region is really an independent unity. It has for ages lived upon its own resources; each population-group has its horizon definitely limited; and the complex action of the environment upon man, and of man upon the country, has proceeded in each district rather on the lines of an isolated and impassioned dialogue between the two. It is quite different in Argentina. There, many of the facts which we have to record consist in an expansion of the population, a spread of methods of exploitation from zone to zone of the country, and the influence upon colonization of commerce and of the varying needs of the markets of the world.

It may be well to reply in advance to a criticism which my Argentine friends are sure to make. They will complain that I have paid no attention to the people of Argentina, the creators of the greatness of the country. It is true that I have deliberately refrained from any reference to the political and moral life of the Republic, the national character and its evolution, the stoicism of the gaucho, the industry of the colonist and the merchant, or the patriotism of the Argentinians generally. My work is not a study of the Argentine nation, but a geographical introduction to such a study.

I began the work during a stay in Argentina which lasted from April 1912 to August 1914. In the course of these two years I was able to visit most parts of the country; and, as the information I gathered during my travels is one of my chief sources, I give here a summary of my itineraries.

_October-November 1912_: Rosario--Region of the
colonies of Santa Fé--Forestry-industries of the Chaco
Santiagueño--Bañados of the Rio Dulce--Salta--Jujuy--Sierra de
la Lumbrera.

_November-December 1912_: Tucumán--Valley of Tapi--Santa Maria
to the west of Aconcagua--Cafayate (Valley of Calchaqui).

_December 1912-January 1913_: Catamarca--Andalgala--Valley of
Pucara--Córdoba--Villa Maria.

_January-February 1913_: Region of the Pampas (Province of
Buenos Aires, south of Córdoba and of S. Luis, district of the
Central Pampa).

_March 1913_: Corrientes--Posadas--Asunción--Forest-industries
of the Chaco of Santa Fé.

_August 1913_: Region of the Pampas (Province of Buenos Aires).

_March 1914_: Lake Nahuel Huapi--Valcheta--San Antonio--The
Rio Negro.

_April 1914_: Rioja--Sierra de los Llanos--San Juan--Mendoza.

_July 1914_: Entre Rios.

These journeys, by rail or on well-known roads, were not supposed to be for the purpose of exploration or discovery. Their one object was to enable me to make a provisional classification of the chief types of country and forms of colonization, and to draw up a methodical programme for more thorough research. The work which I trusted to do in a more leisurely way was, however, suspended in 1914, and, in spite of my very strong desire to do so, I was unable to resume it on the spot in 1919. I have therefore been compelled to publish my first observations, completing them, as well as I could, by a bibliographical study of the country. I have made use of some fragments of a popular work which I began, at the request of the Argentine Commission, for the International Exhibition at San Francisco, of which several chapters were published in my absence by the University of Tucumán (Pierre Denis, _Modern Argentina: Chapters of Economic Geography_. Publications of the University during the Centenary of the Congress of Tucumán of 1816. Buenos Aires, 1916).[1]

[1] I take the opportunity to thank M. J. B. Teran, who
undertook to edit these chapters, and to express, with him, my
satisfaction that events have falsified his rather pessimistic
predictions as regards the author.

My knowledge of the publications on Argentina has two conspicuous gaps. The first is deliberate. I declined to study at second hand the documents and chronicles which are our sources, to the end of the eighteenth century, for the history of the various provinces that were to form Argentina. Hence the historical data on colonization which will be found in the following chapters relate almost entirely to the nineteenth century.

The second gap I was, to my great disappointment, unable to fill up. A large part of the local publications--official or other--maps, statistics, etc., never reached Europe, and Buenos Aires is the only place where one can make a thorough study of them. These publications were available to me until 1914. Since then I have been restricted to the resources of the Paris and London libraries, which are very scanty; and less has been sent from Argentina since the war. I have not the complete statistics up to date.

I trust, however, that this picture of Argentina has much more than a retrospective character; that it is not out of date before it is published. I may add that no statistics would enable one to solve the problem which Argentina in 1920 presents to an observer. Has the European War merely retarded the economic evolution of the country, or has it given that evolution a new direction? Will or will not the relations which Argentina is now resuming with the rest of the world be of the same character as the pre-war relations?

The effects of the war upon the life of the country must not all be put on the same footing. That some of the exporters to Argentina have gained by the war and others lost--that the share of the United States, and even of Japan, has greatly increased--is a fact that may be regarded from the Argentinian point of view as of secondary importance. The war has, moreover, had the effect of disorganizing marine transport and bringing about a sort of relative isolation which is not yet quite over. The reduction in the imports of English coal has made the petroleum wells of Rivadavia of greater value to the country. It has compelled the Argentinians to make a hurried inventory of their natural resources in the way of fuel. Local industries have tried to meet the needs of the Argentinian market, where they had no longer to bear the competition of European goods. The grave disturbance of prices has enabled them to export certain products which had hitherto been confined to home markets. The war has, moreover, not interfered with the existing streams of export on a large scale from Argentina. The Republic continues to send its cereals, meat, hides and wool to Europe; and there is no reason to suppose that the competition of buyers is likely to diminish, or that the cultivation of wheat and lucerne must become less profitable.

The two essential effects of the war seem to have been the stopping of the stream of immigration and the progressive reduction of the support which Europe gave to the work of colonization in the form of advances of capital.

From 1914 to 1918 only 272,000 immigrants landed at Buenos Aires, while 482,000 emigrants left the country. In 1918 the figure of immigration and emigration was only 47,000, less than a tenth of what it was in a normal year before the war. The withdrawal of European capital was felt from the very beginning of the war, and it has gone on uninterruptedly, capital from North America not being enough to supply the deficiency entirely. At the same time the extraordinarily favourable balance of trade has led to the storing of an ample reserve of capital in the country. Argentina has, in a very short time, won a financial independence which, in normal conditions, would have entailed long years of work and prosperity.

However it may seem, these two facts--the interruption of immigration and the accumulation of capital--cannot be considered independently of each other. The inquiry opened by the Social Museum of Argentina (_La inmigración después de la guerra_, Museo Social Argentino, "Bol. Mensual," viii, 1919, nos. 85-90) show that a speedy restoration of immigration is expected in the Republic. Certainly it seems clear that the political and social insecurity in Europe, the misery of the old world, will probably enhance the attractions of Argentina. We must remember, however, that the stream of emigration from Europe to the Republic in the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth, century was provoked by a complex combination of economic conditions which were closely related to each other. High wages in Argentina were connected with the high interest on money; that is to say, in other words, with the scarcity of capital. The future will decide whether immigration, and the rapid progress of colonization and production, which characterize pre-war Argentina can be adjusted to the policy of accumulation of capital to which the war has condemned the country.

CONTENTS

PAGE
INTRODUCTION 5

CHAPTER I
THE NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA 17
The physical environment--Colonization and the natural
regions--The struggle with the Indians--Argentine
unity--Argentina and the world.

CHAPTER II
THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST 36
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.

CHAPTER III
TUCUMÁN AND MENDOZA 68
Tucumán and the road to Chile--The climate and the cultivation
of the sugar-cane--The problem of manual labour--Irrigation at
Mendoza--Water-rights--Viticulture--Protection and the natural
conditions.

CHAPTER IV
THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS 96
Manual labour on the _obrajes_--The land of the _bañados_
and the agricultural cantons of Corrientes--The timber-yards
of the Chaco and the tannic-acid works of the Paraná--The
exploitation of the _maté_--The forestry industry and
colonization.

CHAPTER V
PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING 119
The arid tableland and the region of glacial lakes--The
first settlements on the Patagonian coast and the indigenous
population--Extensive breeding--The use of pasture on the
lands of the Rio Negro--Transhumation.

CHAPTER VI
THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS 161
The limits of the prairie--The rains--The wind and the
formation of the clay of the Pampas--The wind and the
contour--The zones of colonization on the Pampas--Hunting
wild cattle and primitive breeding--The sheep-farms--The
ranches--The region of "colonies"--The region of lucerne,
maize, and wheat--The combination of agriculture and
breeding--The economic mechanism of colonization--The
exchanges between the different zones of the Pampas.

CHAPTER VII
ROADS AND RAILWAYS 209
Roads on the plain--The salt road--The "trade
route"--Transport by ox-waggons--_Arrieros_ and
_Troperos_--Railways and colonization--The trade in
cereals--Home traffic and the reorganization of the system.

CHAPTER VIII
THE RIVER-ROUTES 234
The use of the river before steam navigation--Floods--The
river plain--The bed of the Paraná and its changes--The
estuary and its shoals--Maritime navigation--The boats on the
Paraná.