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The Argentine Republic: Its Development and Progress

Chapter 31: INDEX
By Pierre Denis
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About This Book

A geographical study of Argentina's economic development, focusing on colonization, land settlement, and the exploitation of natural resources alongside the growth of agriculture, cattle-breeding, population, and urban centres. The author combines travel-based observations with bibliographical research to classify regional types of country and forms of colonization, and to survey transport, forestry, and local industries. Chapters describe diverse landscapes and provincial contrasts, track shifts in export markets and local industrial responses, and assess wartime disruptions to trade and resource use. Maps, illustrations, and a supplementary chapter accompany statistical and historical material while noting gaps in available data.

63 J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viage a la Pampa central," Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent., xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368.

64 J. V. Siemiradzki, Eine Forschungsreise in Patagonien, Petermann's Mitteilungen, xxxix. 1893, pp. 49-62.

65 J. B. Hatcher, Reports of the Princeton University expeditions to Patagonia 1896-9 (Narrative of the Expeditions and Geography of Southern Patagonia, Princeton, 1903).

66 C. Villanueva, "De Mendoza a Narguin," Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent., v. 1884, pp. 171-4.

67 Chilean woodcutters have sometimes got as far as the eastern valleys in search of larch, but these were nomads who did not settle.

68 Furque, "Descripción del Pueblo General Roca," Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent., ix. 1888, pp. 124-132.

69 In spite of their importance we must regard as mere episodes in the story of Patagonian colonization the influx of population caused on the eastern coast by the discovery of placer-gold at Cape Virgenes and on the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego (1884), and the discovery of petroleum at Rivadavia (1907) in the course of drilling in search of water. Rivadavia is already, with its 3,000 inhabitants, one of the chief centres in Patagonia.

70 The search for possible routes for cattle in the districts that were not yet colonized helped in the study of Patagonia. Moyano was doing this when he explored the route from Santa Cruz to Lake Nahuel Huapi.

71 This was the area studied by the Commission of which Bailey Willis was chairman.

72 Pedro Ezcurra, "Camino indio entre los rios Negro y Chubut: la travesia de Valcheta," Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent., xix. 1898, pp. 134-38.

73 The district of the Rio Negro is not the only part of Patagonia which faces the problem of increasing the winter pasture. Attention has been drawn to the possibility of enlarging the lucerne farms in the district of Colonia Sarmiento, south of Lake Musters, and making this a great wintering area for the Santa Cruz flocks.

74 The work now (1914) in hand will reduce the risk of floods, and will enable them to enlarge considerably the extent of the tilled land. The Cuenca Vidal, which opens amongst the sandstone, below the level of the valley, on the tableland to the north of the Neuquen, will be arranged so as to absorb the flood-water, and it will feed a canal which will serve the left bank over an area of 100 miles. The waters of the Limay will be available for the lower valley.

75 As a matter of fact, of recent years there has been a practice on this slope of disguising the smuggling of animals under the name of "transhumation," as the removal of the sheep facilitated it and helped to maintain it. The shepherds got certificates exaggerating the number of their sheep from the Chilean officials before they crossed the frontier, and under cover of these they came back to Chile with additions to their flocks which they had bought on Argentine territory.

76 On the left bank of the Salado, west of the Resistencia railway, a great gulf of low prairie penetrates into the forest of the Chaco in the north, almost as far as 28° S. lat., but it has rather the character of one of the floodable clearings of the Chaco (esteros) than of the temperate Pampa.

77 Argentine Mesopotamia, which is a continuation of the Pampean region from the climatological point of view, is also, even in its northern part, without the rigorous dry seasons of the Chaco. Ascending the Paraná, from Corrientes to Posadas, just as in passing from Córdoba to Buenos Aires, one notices that the winter minimum decreases, and a secondary maximum appears in the spring. The predominance of the spring rains, which is a characteristic of southern Brazil, is conspicuous on the middle Uruguay. On the lower part of that river the rain-system approaches that of Buenos Aires, with maxima in spring and autumn, a principal minimum in winter, and a secondary minimum in summer.

78 While the Pampean deposits lie immediately on the crystalline and Paleozoic formations in the sierras of the lower Colorado and of the central Pampa, in the south of the province of Buenos Aires and in Uruguay, they are, on the eastern edge of the Sierra de Córdoba, separated from it by red sandstones and conglomerates of uncertain age, perhaps synchronous with the continental red sandstones of Corrientes which outcrop east of the Paraná and have been known since D'Orbigny's time as "granitic sandstones."

79 At Rancul, in the east, 660 feet of loess overlying red sandstone: at Telen, in the west, 2,800 feet of sand, marl, sandstone and gravel.

80 Roth claims to have found gravel in the San Nicolas barranca on the Paraná. I have myself found small rounded flints in the clay of the Chaco at Tartagal. But these deposits probably come from the left bank of the Paraná, where the beds of river gravel are considerable.

81 In Ales Hrdlicka, Early Man in South America (Smithsonian Instit. Bull., 52, Washington, 1912).

82 Many attempts have been made to classify the Pampean lands, but the results cannot be regarded as final. Ameghino, who is first and foremost a palæontologist, has done a service in showing the futility of these geological divisions based upon the actual surface of the deposits (colour, fineness, etc.). But even palæontology gives rather uncertain results, as it is impossible to recognize and follow step by step the various stages of the movement of the fossils. All the classifications of the Pampean are based upon a study of two groups of sections. The first group comprises the cliff on the right bank of the Paraná from Rosario to Buenos Aires and the coastal cliff which is a continuation of it, with a break from Enseñada at Mar Chiquita to Bahía Blanca. Ameghino has recognized there a thick series of æolian deposits separated by several discordances, the oldest elements of which, at Bahía Blanca, belong to the Miocene. The second group comprises the cliffs which enclose the valley of the Rio Primero above and below Córdoba. Doering and Bodenbender in this case describe two stages of æolian loess, each covered by torrential gravel.

From the study of these sections geologists have drawn certain conclusions as to the movements which have affected the soil of the Pampa and the changes which the climate has experienced. These conclusions have in each case only a local value, and they have not yet been co-ordinated. The majority of the observers, from Doering to Bailey Willis and Rovereto, seem not to have taken into account sufficiently the fact that in the continental formations the most diverse deposits may come next to each other in the same series, according to the particular process of deposition, and that their alternation does not imply a general change in the conditions of erosion.

83 Certain features of the hydrographic network clearly have the character of having been superimposed: that is to say, the path of the watercourses has been bequeathed to the actual plain by former erosion-surfaces, which have now disappeared, on which the valleys were originally imposed. That is why in the district of the confluence of the Colorado and the Chadi-Leuvu the valleys pass from Pampean deposits to the crystalline sierras, which were at one time entirely covered with water.

84 In the vicinity of San Luis and Córdoba the hard strata which are called tosca are beds of eruptive ashes.

85 The surface of the tosca tableland is further punctuated by a great number of closed depressions of various depths: long tunnels (dolines) which can only be explained, apparently, as an effect of the dissolving of the limestone by water.

86 Outside the districts with quick and dead dunes, a frequent type of landscape on the Pampa is a plain thinly sown with very small lagoons, generally circular, between which develop a series of barely perceptible undulations. The inequality is at times so slight that one only notices it by the contrast between the vegetation of the lower and the higher ground. This type of landscape, which is especially seen in the district of Lincoln or of Nueve de Julio, is due to the action of the wind on a plain where the level of the underground water is near the surface. This level marks a limit below which æolian erosion does not take place: a sort of base-level. The periodic variations of level of the underground water reduce or enlarges the undulations of the surface.

87 Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Aires, y Tucumán (3 vols, in 16mo) Buenos Aires, 1816, t. iii, p. 214.

88 The number of wild animals and the area over which they roamed have often been exaggerated. It does not look as if they ever covered the whole of the Pampean plain. A salter who crossed Patagonia and the whole of the Pampa in 1753 (Voyage du San Martin au fort de San Julian, Coll. de Angelis, v.) only found wild herds near the Salado frontier, and he knew by this that he was close to the ranches. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no wild cattle left on the right bank of the Paraná. There were still some in Entre Rios.

89 The water problem is not as important for the history of colonization in the Pampean region as in the north. Primitive breeding was confined to natural supplies of water, lagoons or streams, and to shallow wells (jagueles) dug down to the superficial sheet, which is generally not deep, but is liable to dry up. As colonization improved, the breeder, and subsequently the farmer, were better equipped for boring wells, and no longer feared drought. They got down to the deeper waters, semi-artesian (Buenos Aires district) or artesian (west of the Santa Fé province, round San Francisco). In other places the superficial waters, which are fresher than the deeper layers, were used by adapting new types of filters to the wells (Buena Esperanza district). The only two districts where the quest of water offered any difficulty are the south-west corner of the Pampean region and the northern extremity of the prairie in the Sante Santa Fé province. The sheets of water are very irregular there, often saline, and it was a long time before the ranches got an assured supply.

One remarkable circumstance is the importance of the dunes in connection with the distribution of the underground water. The rain-water accumulates in the dunes and flows slowly through the sand to the sub-soil. The level of the underground sheet in the clay on which the dune rests is always nearer the surface in the neighbourhood of the dune. The dune itself has often a greener vegetation than the land around it. Nothing is more surprising than to find at Medanos (west of Bahía Blanca), in the middle of a plain of arid aspect, fields of lucerne and orchards lodged in the hollows of dunes that are still fresh. In the whole of the Buenos Aires province the dead district of the dunes is, on account of its water-supply, a good place for habitation. D'Azara notices the numerous water-spots which ran along the foot of the dead dunes of the Cerillada. All round were the white bones of the baguales. In the valleys of the central Pampa, where the sheet of water in the centre of the valley is often saline, the underground water improves gradually as one approaches the line of the dunes.

90 V. Galvez, Memorias de un viejo (Buenos Aires, 3 vols, in 16mo, 4th ed, 1889).

91 Diario de un reconocimiento de las guardias y fortines que garnecen la linea de frontera de Buenos Aires (1796), by D. Felix de Azara (Coll. de Angelis, vi.).

92 Nueva plan de fronteras de la Provincia de Buenos Aires por el Colonel Garcia (1816, Coll. de Angelis, vi.).

93 This is, in a special form, the first instance of specialization, in the cantons of the Pampean region, in the breeding industry, properly so called (producing breeders).

94 The variations in number are less considerable for the Pampean region than for the whole of Argentina. It is better supplied with capital than the other breeding districts, and can rapidly replace the losses caused by excessive export by buying cattle in the adjoining provinces.

95 Fernando Barrero, Descripción de las provincias del Rio de la Plata (published by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, 1911).

96 Amongst the specialized industries connected with the development of the lucerne farms we must mention the growing of lucerne for seed, which has settled in the dry zones, where the lucerne is not so much invaded by other species; for instance, the district of Madanos, west of Bahía Blanca.

97 The population of the Santa Fé colonies in 1882 was 52,000, of whom 12,000 were in the colonies of the San Javier, north of the town of Santa Fé.

98 The names of departments which belong in their entirety to the maize region are given in italics. The department of San Jeronimo straddles the maize region and the region of the colonies. The General Lopez territory also extends, in the south-west, far beyond the limit of the maize belt.

99 Wheat-area in 1889 in the Olavarria department, 319 square kilometres; in the Suarez department, 118 square kilometres.

100 Draught animals in 1908: at Chivilcoy, 17,000 cattle and 10,000 horses; at Junin, 15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses; at Nueve de Julio, 15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses. In the region of the Santa Fé colonies: at Castellanos, 17,000 cattle and 54,000 horses; at Las Colonias, 6,000 cattle and 35,000 horses. In the wheat belt (South of Buenos Aires): at Puan, (no cattle) 29,000 horses. At the sierras (no cattle), 14,000 horses.

101 The Agricultural Centres Law, passed in 1887 by the province of Buenos Aires to encourage colonization, has not had good results. By the terms of this law, owners who professed themselves willing to devote their lands to colonization received an advance on the value of the lands in the form of mortgages, the interest and repayment of the mortgage being charged to the colonists. Many owners took advantage of the law, but, after a pretence of colonization, kept the ownership of their lands.

102 A. Jegou, "Informe sobre la provincia de San Luis," Ann. Soc. Cientifica Argentina, xvi. 1883, pp. 140-152, 192-200, and 223-230.

103 For Argentina as a whole the percentage is: milch cows, 55 per cent.; oxen, 26 per cent.

104 A large number of the cattle which are to be fattened are bought at the market in Buenos Aires; but these do not, as a rule, come from the Pampean region.

105 J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viàje a la Pampa central," Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent., xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368.

106 Certain duplications in the actual scheme of the railways are due to this need to correct a line that had been planned hastily and was useless. The line from Justo Daract to La Paz (1912), on the Pacific railway, avoids the steep inclinations of the first line, which followed the course of the wagon-road via San Luis. The interpretation of the relief is particularly difficult in a country which has not been shaped by normal erosion. Blunders detected by later topographical inquiries were similarly committed in constructing the Patagonian railways.

107 Coll. de Angelis, v.

108 Est. Zeballos, Descripción amena de la Republica Argentina, vol. i, "Viàje al païs de los Araucanos" (Buenos Aires, 1881).

109 Martin de Moussy says that a more direct route, avoiding the detour to the north by the Rio Tercero, was followed in the eighteenth century between Buenos Aires and San Luis, by way of Salto and the Rio Quinto as far as the latitude of fort Constitución (Villa Mercedes). Woodbine Parish's map (1839) and Napp's map (1876) both show a road by way of Salto and Melincue to the Rio Cuarto, where it joins the ordinary road. However that may be, these roads were never used regularly, from fear of the Indians or—which comes to the same thing—because the area they cross, in the south of the actual territory of the provinces of Santa Fé and Córdoba, was not yet colonized.

110 Between 1852 and 1862, during the period when relations were suspended between the Argentine Confederation and Buenos Aires, there was a beginning of a general reorganization of the roads in harmony with the new political conditions. The road from Santa Fé and Paraná to Concepción (in Uruguay) across the Entre Rios tablelands, and from there to Montevideo, had owed its initial importance to the closing of the lower Paraná under Rosas, and Woodbine Parish records that there was already a good deal of smuggling there. This road became an essential artery when Paraná made itself the federal capital under Urquiza. He intended to connect Paraná with the western provinces, and he created a mail service from Santa Fé to Córdoba. Ephemeral as the good fortune of Paraná was, its influence on the organization of the roads of Argentina was too material to be ignored by the geographer.

111 According to the details given us by De Angelis (1837, Introduction to the Diario del viaje al Rio Bermejo de Fray Francisco Moritto, Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi) a convoy of fourteen wagons from Salta to Tucumán required three relays of oxen. The first, comprising a hundred animals, went from Salta to Tucumán; the second, of 130 animals, went from Tucumán to the Buenos Aires frontier; the third (84 animals), went on to the capital. The first and last relays were hired animals, the second alone being the property of the tropero.

112 Thirty days from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, and seventy days from Buenos Aires to Jujuy, says Barrero (F. Barrero, Descripción de las Provincias del Rio de la Plata, end of the eighteenth century, published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, 1911).

113 The line from Bahía Blanca to the Rio Negro, of which the Neuquen line is a continuation, was constructed in 1896.

114 The continuation of many of these lines was contemplated for the future, so as to secure for them at a later date a long-distance traffic. The Resistencia and Formosa lines, which reach the Andes, may compete for traffic with the Rosario and Tucumán lines. In Patagonia, the continuation across the Andes of the line from San Antonio to Lake Nahuel Huapi has been considered. A pass has been found at a height of 4,000 feet. When this plan is carried out, the Trans-Andean from Nahuel Huapi would be in a position to compete successfully with the Trans-Andean from Uspallata, which is condemned by its elevation to remain a passenger line. These plans, still far from realization, do not deprive the Ramos Mejia lines of their character as colonization lines, entirely devoted at present to conveying the timber of the Chaco and the wool of Patagonia.

115 J. Lopez Mañan, El actual problema agrario (Buenos Aires, 1912, Ministerio de agricultura, Dirección General de agricultura y defensa agricola).

116 The war and the difficulties of marine freightage have lessened the seriousness of the problem of carrying goods rapidly by rail in Argentina.

117 The transport of mineral stuff, apart from salt, has been greatly reduced by the war. In 1916 it was only 637,000 tons for the Southern and 157,000 tons for the whole of the lines of the Central Argentine, Pacific, Central Córdoba, and State.

118 There is still a certain amount of goods traffic in this latitude between the river and the Santa Cruz district by the Puerto Suarez and Puerto Pacheco tracks.

119 The local south winds which help the voyage upward below Rosario may be due to the high temperature of the water of the river; this also gives rise on the lower Paraná to thick fog of which warning is given.

120 According to Rengger, sailing ships sometimes succeeded in crossing the Salto d'Apipé.

121 At one time the boats on the upper Uruguay saved transport by going from Salto to Arapehy, midway between Monte Caseros and Concordia (see Isabelle).

122 It is as well to notice that the profile determined by the altitude of the zero of these different scales, or the low-water profile, is of a purely theoretical character. The river is never at low-water over its whole course. The real profile is always varied by slight movements of flood and ebb.

123 Observations of the sediment held in the water have been made at Campana, 32 miles from the estuary. At this point the Paraná only holds in suspension fine particles of clay, but sand travels slowly along its bed. The weight of the clay in suspension varies from 179 grammes per cubic metre in March during the flood, to 42 grammes at low-water in July. The stuff mostly comes from the Bermejo, which carries 5 kilogrammes of sediment per cubic metre. The load of the Paraná is much heavier than that of the Uruguay, but far lower than that of the Mississippi.

124 The district on the right bank of the Paraná, above Santa Fé and Paraná, seems to be due to a recent subsidence. The river is, on the other hand, compelled to effect active erosion in crossing the high lands between Santa Fé and Buenos Aires. It is curious that the break or fall at Villa Urquiza occurs precisely above the bend of the Paraná. A less marked break has been recognized further north, in the latitude of Lavalle, above the Goya bend. It seems that the diminution in the excavation of the valley is due to the erosion which the current effects laterally on the cliffs of the left bank.

125 In the space between the frontier of Entre Rios and the Rio Empedrado, south of Corrientes, the cliffs expose, above the red sandstone, beds of sand and clay, fluvial alluvia left by former beds of the Paraná, the traces of which can be followed from the north-east to the south-west diagonally across the province of Corrientes.

126 In point of fact, the ridge is lower at the time of low water, when the current is concentrated in the main channel, so that one always finds one or two feet greater depth there at low water than soundings taken at high water would lead one to expect.

127 A little above its actual position.

128 In studying the variations of the bed of the Paraná it is necessary to avoid comparing maps drawn at dates separated by long intervals. The differences of such maps are such that they do not enable us to follow the processes by which the actual forms have been derived from earlier forms. The analogies which they show are sometimes due, not to the permanence of the topography, but to the return of a complete cycle of changes, or of conditions analogous to the earlier conditions.

129 The secondary arms of the right bank, north of Santa Fé, were not explored until 1870. Sullivan's map (1847) only mentions the Riacho de San Jeronimo, which is visible for a short distance below 20° S. lat. The right bank was the domain of the Indians, and the Correntinos would not venture near it. In 1870 ships began to use the San Javier arm, on which many colonies arose. Further north the Paraná Mini has been used since 1890 for exporting quebracho timber.

130 As between La Paz and Paraná, it seems possible to show some relation between these alluvial stretches at the foot of the cliff and the confluence of the small valleys of the Pampean plain.

131 The Paso Paraguayo, which has cost the Argentine hydrographic service most work, did not exist at the middle of the nineteenth century. It seems that the channel then kept to the cliff as far as Benavidez, and was continued as far as the source of the Paraná Pavon by a very pronounced buckle, of which the Monriel lagoon is a scar. In 1895 the Paso was only fifteen feet deep.

132 The granite which outcrops at Martin Garcia also forms the platform of the English Bank in the outer harbour.

133 The water in the estuary, worked up by waves and tide, contains more sediment than the water of the river.

134 The current at high tide is stronger than at low tide, and it has shifted to the north-east the streams which find an outlet on this side.

135 Movement of internal navigation at Rosario (average 1912-1914): entries, 1,108,000 tons, of which 690,000 in ballast; clearances, 580,000 tons. At San Nicolas: entries, 400,000 tons, of which 440,000 in ballast; clearances, 4,000 tons. The difference between the entries and the clearances represents ships starting straight for Europe.

136 The density is twenty times less in the ranches which use the meagre pastures of the Rio Negro.

137 All Europeans, except a few tens of thousands of Bolivians in the Salta and Jujuy provinces, a few thousand Brazilians in Misiones, and a few thousand Chileans at Neuquen.

138 I have referred elsewhere to the magnitude of the stream of European immigration at Mendoza. In Patagonia (territory of the Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the Chubut, the Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego, of which the total population is only 104,000) sheep-breeding has attracted a considerable number of immigrants (428 foreigners per 1000 in 1914).

139 D'Orbigny, Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale, vol. i. p. 528.

140 Lorenzo Fazio, Memoria descriptiva de la provincia de Santiago del Estero (Buenos Aires, 1889).

141 F. de Azara, Memorias sobre el estado rural del río de la Plata en 1801, p. 10.

142 Sarmiento, El Facundo, p. 19.

143 Published by the Revista del Instituto Paraguayo (vol. iv. p. 334).

144 Only two of them, Villa Mercedes and Villa Maria, are on the edge of the Pampa. We have seen elsewhere the part which the extensive breeding of the north-west plays in the business of the Villa Mercedes cattle-market. Villa Maria also derives some advantage from its nearness to the scrub. Its limekilns receive limestone from the Sierra de Córdoba, but they get their fuel locally, from the men who clear the scrub.

145 Buenos Aires and Rosario alone have independent grain markets, though it is differently organized in each case. At Buenos Aires the exporters have entered into direct relations with the producers and eliminated intermediaries. At Rosario they have to use the services of a strong body of agents.

146 The 1914 Census does not give reliable details on this point.

147 During the same period the Argentinian refrigerators killed 1,490,000 head of cattle. Therefore, about half of these were bought at Buenos Aires.

148 Besides the publications of the Jesuits, which can easily be consulted, a fairly large number of texts bearing upon the history of colonization have been published or re-published in the nineteenth and the twentieth century. See especially:

Relaciones Geograpicas de Indias (vol. i, 1881; vol. ii, 1885, Madrid).

Anales de la Biblioteca National, Buenos Aires, Publicación de documentos relativos al Rio de la Plata (from 1900).

Publications of the Junta de Historia y Numismatica Americana (Buenos Aires, 7 vols., octavo, from 1905 to 1915).

Valuable notes on some of the most important historical documents will be found in E. Boman, Antiquités de la region andine (see North-West Argentina).

The most curious collection of all for the geographer is: Pedro de Angelis, Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Rio de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1837, 6 vols, octavo, containing many itineraries, journals of expeditions, etc., together with notes by D'Azara).

INDEX

A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z

  • English Bank, the, 252
  • Entre Rios, 169, 182, 186, 194
  • Epecuen Lake, 212
  • Exhibition, San Francisco, 7