Читать книгу Argentina and Her People of To-day - Nevin O. Winter - Страница 6

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“What is the Camp?” I asked of a Buenos Airean one day.

“Everything outside of Buenos Aires,” was his reply.

“Is Rosario a part of the Camp?” I questioned, for Rosario is the second municipality in the Argentine Republic, and is a city approaching two hundred thousand inhabitants.

“Yes, but we would not say so in Rosario.”

This little conversation reveals the pride of all Porteños, as they call themselves, in their city, for the term Camp is used as country is with us. Buenos Aires contains the wealth and culture of the republic, and is the centre of the political as well as national life. One-fifth of the entire population dwell there, for the head has outgrown the body. “Paris is France,” says the Parisian, but the importance of that capital to France is outclassed by the significance of Buenos Aires to Argentina.

Buenos Aires is a wonderful city, and its inhabitants are a remarkable people. Italians and Spanish abound there in great numbers; thousands of French, British and Germans have found a haven on the low bank of the Rio de la Plata, and it would be difficult to find a race in Asia or Africa that has not its representatives in that cosmopolitan metropolis. On the street almost any tongue may be heard, and nearly every European language is represented by its own newspaper. It is not a tropical city, such as Rio de Janeiro, nor an indolent one, but a city of business and enterprise with a great deal of the Latin love of pleasure in evidence. Women have become open competitors of men in the offices and stores, and the old conservatism of Spain has been compelled to yield to a broader cosmopolitanism.

“There is nothing in any other city that cannot be found here,” is the boast of the Porteño. In a general sense the claim is true. The skyscraper, the elevated railway and the “tube” are missing, but there are few conveniences or luxuries that cannot be purchased, if one only has the price. The price is usually high, for Buenos Aires is a very expensive city in which to live. Nearly all articles pass through the custom house and have a certain percentage added to the original cost in the foreign markets.

There are almost a million and a quarter of these busy people who make their homes in Buenos Aires. In the New World it is exceeded in population by only three cities of the United States. It is as cosmopolitan as New York, and is the hub and centre of the whole republic. On the vast pampas grow the grain and meat which sustain the energies of the factory workers of Europe, who, in turn, send to Argentina the product of their looms and machine shops. It is upon the fertility of these broad leagues, which produce such great quantities of cereals, meat, wool and hides, that the people live. There is little manufacturing in the city and the absence of smoke-stacks is the most striking aspect, when viewed from a height by an American.