Читать книгу Across South America - Hiram Bingham - Страница 9

AVENIDA DE MAYO, BUENOS AIRES

salaries to tempt the best performers to leave Europe. Variety shows are popular and carried to an extreme with which we are not familiar in the United States. Some of them are poor copies of questionable Parisian enterprises. But even these are not as bad as the moving picture shows that have captured Buenos Aires. Public opinion is astonishingly lax in the southern capital. Exhibitions of shocking indecency are countenanced, that would no longer be tolerated in Europe or North America. In this matter Buenos Aires also offers a marked contrast to Santiago de Chile where morals are on a much higher plane, thanks to the Catholic Church, which unfortunately seems to have lost its grip here.

The Porteño has not only forgotten his religion, he seems also to have lost the pleasing manners of his Castilian ancestors. I have been in eight South American capitals and in none have I seen such bad manners as in Buenos Aires. Nowhere else in South America is one jostled so rudely. Nowhere else does one see such insolent behavior and such bad taste. Santiago, Lima, Bogotá, and Caracas seem to belong to a different civilization. To be sure, none of them are as rich and prosperous. But in all of them good society is a much more ancient concern than in this overgrown young metropolis.

Here the newly rich are in full sway and their ideas and instincts seem to predominate. On Sunday afternoon, all the world dashes madly out to the race course, where it exercises its passion for gambling to the fullest capacity. In the Jockey Club inclosure are gathered the youth and beauty, the wealth and fashion of the city. And yet the ladies carry the artificial tricks of feminine adornment to such an amazing extent that it is almost impossible to realize that they belong to the fashionable world and not to the demi-monde. The races that I attended drew an audience of thirty thousand. One race had a first prize amounting to fifteen thousand dollars. The horses seemed to be of a rather heavier build than ours but they did not interest the spectators. Facilities for betting were provided on an elaborate scale. There were no bookmakers, and the odds depended entirely on the popular choice, as is commonly done in Europe. The gate receipts and the proceeds of the “percentage” are enormous and have enabled the Jockey Club to build one of the most luxurious and extravagant club houses in the world.

After the races, hundreds of motor cars and carriages promenade slowly up and down that part of the parkway which society has decreed shall be her rendezvous. Here one sees an astonishing display of paint and powder illuminating the faces of the devotees of a fashion which decrees that all ladies must have brilliant complexions. The effect is very unpleasant. I suppose it is simply another evidence of the newness of modern Buenos Aires. Very few wealthy families have a long-established social position. Culture and refinement are at a discount. Otherwise it is difficult to imagine how any society can tolerate such artificiality. This garish Sunday parade is quite a swing of the pendulum from the old days when Creole ladies, modestly attired in lovely black lace mantillas, walked quietly to church and home again, as they still do in most South American cities.

It is hardly necessary to speak of the more usual evidences of great wealth, palatial residences that would attract attention even in Paris and New York, charming parks beautifully laid out on the shores of the great Rio de la Plata, and a thousand luxurious automobiles of the latest pattern carrying all they can hold of Parisian millinery.

One does not need to be told that this is a city of electric cars, telephones, and taxis. These we take for granted. But there is a characteristic feature of the city that is unexpected and striking: the central depots for imported thoroughbreds. Only a few doors from the great banks and railway offices are huge stables where magnificent blooded horses and cattle, sheep and pigs, which have brought records of distinguished ancestry across the Atlantic, are offered for sale and command high prices.

These permanent cattle-shows are the natural rendezvous of the wealthy ranchmen and breeders who are sure to be found here during a part of each day while they are in town. So are foreigners desirous of purchasing ranches and reporters getting news from the interior. The cattle-fairs offer ocular evidence of the wealth of the modern Argentino and the importance of the pastoral industry. There are over a hundred million sheep on the Pampas. Cattle and horses also are counted by the millions.

The problems of Argentine agriculture and animal industries are being continually studied by the great land-owners, who have already done much to improve the quality of their products.

During my stay in Buenos Aires, it was my privilege to visit an agricultural school in one of the neighboring towns. The occasion was the celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. The festivities were typically Spanish-American. An avenue of trees was christened with appropriate ceremonies, being given the name of the anniversary date. To each tree a bunch of fire-crackers had been tied. At the beginning and end of the avenue a new sign-post bearing its name had been put up and veiled with a piece of cheese cloth. A procession consisting of the officials of the school and of the National University of La Plata, with which the school is affiliated, alumni and visitors, formed at the school-buildings after the reading of an appropriate address, and marched down the new avenue following the band. As we progressed, the signs were unveiled and the bunches of fire-crackers touched off. At the far end, in a grove of eucalyptus trees, a collation was served, and we were entertained by having the fine horses and cattle belonging to the school paraded up and down. The school has an extensive property, is doing good work, and shows a practical grasp of the needs of the country.

Argentina has worked hard to develop those industries that are dependent upon stock-raising. The results have amply justified her. The exportation of frozen meat from Argentina amounts to nearly twenty million dollars annually. Only recently one of the best known packing-houses of Chicago opened a large plant here and is paying tribute to the excellence of the native stock. Every year Argentina sends to Europe the carcasses of millions of sheep and cattle as well as millions of bushels of wheat and corn, more in fact than we do. Of all the South American republics, she is our greatest natural competitor, and she knows it. Nevertheless, she lacks adequate resources of iron, coal, lumber, and water power, and notwithstanding a high protective tariff, can never hope to become a competitor in manufactured products. Argentina exports more than three times as much per capita as we do, and must do so in order to pay for the necessary importation of manufactured goods. It also means that she will always find it to her advantage to buy her goods from England, France, and Germany, where she sells her food-stuffs. Brazil can send us unlimited amounts of raw materials that we cannot raise at home, while at present Argentina has little to offer us. Yet we are already buying her wool and hides, and before long will undoubtedly be eating her beef and mutton, as England has been doing for years.

The banks of Buenos Aires have learned to be extremely conservative. For a long time this city was a favorite resort of absconding bank cashiers from the United States, and stories are told of many well-dressed Americans who have come here from time to time without letters of introduction but with plenty of money to spend, who have been kindly received by the inhabitants, only to prove to be undesirable acquaintances. What we consider “old-fashioned and antiquated” English bank methods are the rule, and it frequently takes a couple of hours to draw money on a letter of credit even when one has taken the pains to notify one’s bankers beforehand that the letter was to be used in South America. Personally, I have found American Express checks extremely useful in all parts of South America and have had no difficulty in getting them accepted in Buenos Aires. In the interior it is more difficult unless one comes well introduced. But the necessity for letters of introduction is quite generally recognized all over the continent. Strangers who have “neglected to supply themselves with credentials,” frequently turn out to be fugitives from justice.

Another local peculiarity noticeable also in Chile, is that many of the citizens bitterly begrudge us our attempted monopoly of the title of “Americans.” They catalogue us at all possible times under “N” instead of “A.” They also speak of us as North Americans or as “Yankis,” and they call our Minister the “North American Minister,” quite ignoring the existence of Mexico and Canada.

Certain Americans who are desirous of securing an increase of our trade with South America and of placating in every possible manner the South Americans, overlooking the practical side of the question, have acquiesced in the local prejudice and speak of themselves as North Americans, even though they do not address their letters to the “United States of North America.”

The fact that the South American refuses to grant us our title of “Americans” is really an indirect compliment. It is chiefly owing to the industry and intelligence of the citizens of the United States, that the word “American” has come to have a complimentary meaning—far more complimentary in fact than it had fifty years ago when distinguished foreigners were wont to use that adjective as a peculiarly opprobrious epithet. With this change in the significance of the term has come a natural desire on the part of the South Americans to apply it to themselves. They reason that they have as good a right, geographically, to the term as we have, and they wilfully forget that each of their republics has in its legal title a word which conveniently and euphoniously characterizes its citizens. The people of the United States of Brazil are called Brazilians, and those of the United States of Mexico are Mexicans by the same right that those of the United States of America are Americans. To be sure, the world generally thinks of our country as the United States, quite forgetful that there are several other republics of the same name. It is a pity that a euphonious appellation cannot be manufactured from one or both of those two words. We cannot distinguish ourselves by the title “North American,” as that ignores the rightful claim to that title which the denizens of the larger part of this continent, the Mexicans and Canadians, have in common with us. It is difficult to see how we are to avoid calling ourselves Americans even if it gives offence to our neighbors. It is not a point of great importance and it seems to me that in time, with the natural growth of Chile and the Argentine Republic, their citizens will be so proud of being called Chilenos or Argentinos that they will not begrudge us our only convenient and proper title.

There is another point, however, in their criticism of us which is more reasonable and on which they might be accorded more satisfaction. I refer to that part of our foreign policy known as the Monroe Doctrine. Many a Chileno and Argentino resents the idea of our Monroe Doctrine applying in any sense to his country and declares that we had better keep it at home. He regards it as only another sign of our overweening national conceit. And on mature consideration, it does seem as though the justification for the Monroe Doctrine, both in its original and its present form, had passed. Europe is no longer ruled by despots who desire to crush the liberties of their subjects. As is frequently remarked, England has a more democratic government than the United States. In all the leading countries of Europe, the people have practically as much to say about the government as they have in America. There is not the slightest danger that any European tyrant will attempt to enslave the weak republics of this hemisphere. Furthermore, such republics as Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru no more need our Monroe Doctrine to keep them from being robbed of their territory by European nations than does Italy or Spain. If it be true that some of the others, like the notoriously lawless group in Central America, need to be looked after by their neighbors, let us amend our outgrown Monroe Doctrine, as has already been suggested by one of our writers on international law, so as to include in the police force of the Western Hemisphere, those who have shown themselves able to practice self-control. With our lynchings, strikes, and riots, we shall have to be very careful, however, not to make the conditions too severe or we shall ourselves fail to qualify.

The number of “North Americans” in Buenos Aires is very small. While we have been slowly waking up to the fact that South America is something more than “a land of revolutions and fevers,” our German cousins have entered the field on all sides.

The Germans in southern Brazil are a negligible factor in international affairs. But the well-educated young German who is being sent out to capture South America commercially, is a power to be reckoned with. He is going to damage England more truly than Dreadnoughts or gigantic airships. He is worth our study as well as England’s.

Willing to acquaint himself with and adapt himself to local prejudices, he has already made great strides in securing South American commerce for his Fatherland. He has become a more useful member of the community than the Englishman. He has taken pains to learn the language thoroughly, and speak it not only grammatically but idiomatically as well; something which the Anglo-Saxon almost never does. He has entered into the social life of the country with a much more gracious spirit than his competitors and rarely segregates himself from the community in pursuing his pleasures as the English do. His natural prejudices against the Spanish way of doing things are not so strong.

His steamers are just as luxurious and comfortable as the new English boats. It is said that even if the element of danger that always exists at sea is less on the British lines, the German boats treat their passengers with more consideration, giving them better food and better service. No wonder the Spanish-American likes the German better than he does the English or American. Already the English residents in Buenos Aires, who have regarded the River Plate as their peculiar province for many years, are galled beyond measure to see what strides the Germans have made in capturing the market for their manufactured products and in threatening their commercial supremacy. And neither English nor Germans are going to hold out a helping hand or welcome an American commercial invasion.

Meanwhile the Argentinos realize that their country cannot get along without foreign capital, much as they hate to see the foreigner made rich from the products of their rolling prairies.

Politically, Buenos Aires and Argentina are in the control of the native born. They have a natural aptitude for playing politics, and they much prefer it to the more serious world of business. This they are quite willing to leave to the foreigner.

They realize also that they greatly need more immigrants. The population is barely five per square mile, and as a matter of fact, is practically much less than that for so large a part of the entire population is crowded into the city and province of Buenos Aires. Consequently they are doing all they can to encourage able-bodied immigrants to come from Italy and Spain.

And the immigrants are coming. My ship brought a thousand. Other ships brought more than three hundred thousand in 1908. Argentina is not standing still. Nor is she waiting for “American enterprise.” During 1908 considerably more than two thousands vessels entered the ports of the republic. Four flew the American flag.