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The Urbanisation of a Secondary City: The Case of Rosario, Argentina, 1870–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Michael Johns
Michael Johns
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Berkeley.
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Extract

In 1845, Argentine statesman Domingo Sarmiento predicted that ‘what took 20 years to occur in North America, i.e. the emergence almost by magic of numerous cities, provinces and states in what was once uninhabited terrain, will occur in Argentina in the same span of time’. Forty years later, however, French writer Emile Daireaux observed that ‘the commercial development of Buenos Aires is that of a satellite which orbits Europe's sphere of attraction; Argentina's other cities and towns are in turn satellites of Buenos Aires’. A half-century later still, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada could complain that ‘the country's progress will come only when…we care for the health of the entire body and not only the euphoria of its decapitated head’. The imagery of Daireaux and Martínez Estrada portrays Buenos Aires' comprehensive domination of the Argentine city system, a city system quite unlike the replica of the US model envisaged by an optimistic Sarmiento.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , October 1991 , pp. 489 - 513
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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2 In general, urban primacy means the economic, political, demographic and cultural dominance of one city over the entire national city system. On primacy in Latin America, see Browning, H., ‘Recent Trends in Latin American Urbanization’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 3, no. 16 (1958), pp. 111–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Browning, H. and Roberts, B., ‘Urbanization, Sectoral Transformation, and the Utilization of Labor in Latin America’, Comparative Urban Research, vol. 8, no. 1 (1980), pp. 86–103Google ScholarPubMed; Castells, M.The Urban Question (Boston, 1977)Google Scholar; El-Shakhs, S., ‘Development, Primacy and Systems of Cities’, Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 7 (1972), pp. 11–36Google ScholarPubMed; Gilbert, A., Latin American Development: A Geographical Perspective (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Morse, R. (ed.), The Urban Development of Latin America, 1750–1920 (Stanford, 1971)Google Scholar; Pederson, P., Urban—Regional Development in South America: a Process of Diffusion and Integration (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar; Roberts, B., Cities of Peasants (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Vapnarsky, C., ‘The Rank—Size Rule and Primacy in Argentina’, in Hardoy, J. (ed.), Urbanization in Latin America (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

3 Argentina's other secondary cities were far less important than Rosario. Tucumán and Mendoza, former long-distance trade centres stationed along the country's western border, developed sugar and wine industries respectively. The development of these industries depended on the sugar and wine tariffs that arose as part of a regional compromise made in a national political system very dependent upon provincial governors; see Peck, D., ‘Argentine Politics and the Province of Mendoza’, unpubl. PhD diss., St Antony's College, Oxford, 1977Google Scholar; Botana, N., El orden conservador: la político argentina entre 1880 y 1916 (Buenos Aires, 1981)Google Scholar. The economic growth of these two cities was stunted by their narrow roles in the Argentine economy, their importation of virtually all productive inputs and most consumer goods, and the shallow market for their staple products, which were not internationally competitive; see Balan, J., ‘Regional Urbanization and Agricultural Production in Argentina: a Comparative Analysis’, in Gilbert, A. et al. (eds.), Urbanization in Contemporary Latin America (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Fleming, W., Region vs. Nation: Cuyo in the Crosscurrents of Argentine National Development, 1861–1914 (Tucson, 1986)Google Scholar; Rosenvaig, E., Historia social de Tucumán y de azúcar (Tucumán, 1986Google Scholar). The city of Córdoba, on the other hand, was according to many destined to become a great city. Its abundant hydroelectric power, central location, and long-time role as the nation's literary and intellectual centre led many to believe that ‘stagnation was impossible’ for this ‘future Pittsburgh’; Masse, J. Bialet, El estado de las clases obreras argentinas a comienzos del siglo (Buenos Aires, [1904], 1985), p. 222Google Scholar. But Córdoba was outcompeted by capital from Buenos Aires, Rosario and Britain for control of the northern Pampa; its interior location denied it the direct international connections so important to the development of a significant circuit of merchants' capital; and Argentina's weak industrial sector left Córdoba's advantages, namely plentiful energy and central location, untapped until the Second World War; see Arcondo, A., ‘La expansión de la agricultura en el interior’, Revista de Economía y Estadística (1973)Google Scholar; Río, M., Las Finanzas de Córdoba en los últimos 20 años (Córdoba, 1902)Google Scholar. For the much smaller secondary cities of Salta and Corrientes, see Scobie, J., Secondary Cities of Argentina (Stanford, 1988).Google Scholar

4 On Rosas, see Lynch, J., Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1829–1852 (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar. The nation's most advanced region at the time was the ‘isolationist’ province of Buenos Aires, which in the 1840s began to develop a prosperous wool industry and was exporting jerked-beef and hides to the slave states of Cuba and Brazil. See Sabato, H. ‘The Wool Trade and Commercial Networks in Buenos Aires, 1840s–1880s’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 15, no. 2 (1984)Google Scholar; Conde, R. Cortes, El progreso Argentina: la formación del mercado nacional, 1880–1910 (Buenos Aires, 1979), pp. 319–35Google Scholar. The comparative wealth of Buenos Aires Province was a key factor behind both its secession from the nation in 1853, for it did not want to share its customs receipts or political power with other provinces, and its bloody but unsuccessful attempt in 1880 to resist the making of Buenos Aires into the federal capital. As late as the 1870s, the interior regions of Tucumán, Córdoba and Mendoza scarcely produced economic surpluses and had no sustained inter-regional links.

5 See de Marco, M. A. et al. , Rosario: Política, Cultura, Economía y Sociedad (Buenos Aires, 1988), pp. 95–6Google Scholar; Gianello, L., Historia de Santa Fe (Santa Fe, 1955), p. 195Google Scholar; Hutchinson, T., Buenos Aires y otras provincias (Buenos Aires [1865], 1945), p. 138.Google Scholar

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7 Alvarez, J., Historia de Rosario (Santa Fe, 1943), p. 14.Google Scholar

8 The Provincial state, in conjunction with local and foreign merchants, attempted to organise agricultural colonies as early as the late 1850s. The colonies would flourish, and then briefly, only in the 1880s. Those with money, credit and political connections bought large parcels of land at bargain prices from a virtually bankrupt state between the late 1850s and 1880s. ‘Public land’, according to one governor, ‘was the only money with which to pay creditors’ or earn hard currency for an indebted treasury that in the 1860s had squandered most of its capital, including several international loans, on war and corruption; see Gallo, E., La Pampa Gringa (Buenos Aires, 1984), p. 121.Google Scholar The new colonisers, a significant number of whom started out as merchants in Rosario, subdivided and sold the land to immigrants, provided them with inputs and credit, and marketed their surplus; see Gallo, , La Pampa Gringa, pp. 33, 40, 68–76, 156Google Scholar; Liebsher, A., ‘Commercial Expansion and Political Change: Santa Fe Province, 1897–1916’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Indiana, 1977, p. 28Google Scholar; Rock, D., Argentina, 1516–1987 (Berkeley, 1988), p. 129Google Scholar; Hotschewer, C., Evolución de la agricultura en la provincia de Santa Fe (Santa Fe, 1953).Google Scholar

9 Melo, C., ‘Formación y desarrollo de las ciudades argentinas’, Revista de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (1963), p. 387.Google Scholar

10 As part of the rapprochement between the Confederation and the Province of Buenos Aires in the early 1860s, the national state gave the Central Argentine Railroad a guaranteed profit rate of 7%, large land concessions, free imported inputs for 40 years, and colonisation rights. The line was financed by a group of foreign (and to a lesser extent local) investors looking to usurp control of the long-distance trade that still moved by ox-cart between Rosario and the interior. More importantly, they invested in anticipation of the region's promising development. The rail corridor cut through sparsely settled but extremely fertile territory that appeared well-suited for agricultural colonisation and, some hoped, large-scale cotton production to fill the market vacancy created by the US Civil War. On the Central Argentine Railroad, see Lewis, C., ‘British Railway Companies and the Argentine Government’, in Platt, D. C. M. (ed.), British Imperialism, 1840–1930 (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar; Ferns, H., Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1960), p. 334Google Scholar; Goodwin, P., ‘The Central Argentine Railway and the Economic Development of Argentina, 1854–1881’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 57, no. 4 (1977), pp. 613–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalduendo, E., Libras y Rieles (Buenos Aires, 1985), pp. 287–9, 295Google Scholar. The delay of economic development until the 1880s meant the slow realisation, and the outright devaluation, of many of the speculative, railway-related investments made in the late 1860s and 1870s.

11 For two decades after the fall of Rosas (1852), the nation suffered continuous civil war, myriad provincial uprisings, and a skirmish with Paraguay. The Province of Santa Fe itself suffered six revolutions, three of which brought down governments. See Gianello, , Historia, pp. 191–206Google Scholar; Alvarez, J., Las Guerras Civiles Argentinas (Buenos Aires, [1912] 1985); Alvarez, J., Ensayo sobre la historia de Santa Fe (Buenos Aires, 1911).Google Scholar

12 Tornquist, E., The Economic Development of the Argentine Republic in the Last Fifty Years (Buenos Aires, 1919), p. 15.Google Scholar

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14 While 29 colonies were established on 315,400 hectares between 1865 and 1870, only 38 were set up on 430,700 hectares between 1871 and 1880. Grain production, concentrated in central Santa Fe Province and to a lesser degree alongside the Rosario—Córdoba railway, accounted for only one-third of the colonies' land use in the 1870s and did not yield a surplus for export until 1878. Despite the fragmentation of large holdings into agricultural colonies and sheepwalks in the late 1860s and 1870s (the number of sheep increased from 400,000 in 1867 to 4,500,000 in 1875), just 1% of all landowners in south-central Santa Fe Province (the future grain belt) held 40% of the land in 1874. On agricultural development in Santa Fe Province during this time, see Gallo, , La Pampa Gringa, pp. 64, 66, 77, 137, 209.Google Scholar

15 Ortiz, R. Scalabrini, Historia de los ferrocarriles argentinos (Buenos Aires, 1983), p. 168Google Scholar; Zalduendo, , Libras y Rieles, p. 300.Google Scholar

16 During the crisis of the mid-1870s, depositors withdrew their funds from banks in general, but showed a markedly greater faith in the British banks than in their locallyowned competitors; they often redeposited into British banks funds withdrawn from domestically-owned banks. The one bank that did not fold was the British-owned Bank of London and River Plate, which started in the region by taking over a small private bank in 1866. It was the first banking establishment in Santa Fe Province with extensive European connections and a sterling capital. In 1876, the Provincial Government supported a campaign by local landowners to force the Rosario branch of the London and River Plate Bank to ease its restrictions on discounts. When it refused, the Santa Fe government suspended the bank's right to issue notes, imprisoned the bank manager, and closed the bank after hauling away its gold. The British government responded by sending a gunboat to Rosario. The conflict was eventually resolved through negotiations between the bank and the national government in Buenos Aires. The Bank of London and River Plate agreed to loan capital to the tottering Banco Provincial of Santa Fe, a joint-stock enterprise (of which the Provincial Government was a major stockholder) originally funded by a large foreign loan. On the Rosario banks, see Jones, C., ‘Commercial Banks and Mortgage Companies’, in Platt, D. C. M. (ed.), Business Imperialism 1840–1930, pp. 27, 28, 32Google Scholar; Ferns, , Argentina, pp. 377–85.Google Scholar

17 Alvarez, , Historia, p. 425.Google Scholar

18 See Gallo, , La Pampa Gringa, pp. 77–84, 215–8Google Scholar; Conde, Cortes, El Progreso, pp. 51–89, 200–1Google Scholar; Pianetto, O., ‘Formación de clase y acción sindical de los trabajadores urbanos en una estructura agro-exportadora, Rosario, 1890–1910’, unpubl. manu., CLACSO, Buenos Aires, 1979, p. 31Google Scholar; Bejarano, M., ‘Inmigrantes y estructuras tradicionales en Buenos Aires, 1854–1930’, in Tella, T. Di and Donghi, T. Halperín (eds.), Los fragmentos de poder (Buenos Aires, 1969), p. 123Google Scholar; Gallo, E., ‘Santa Fe en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Tranformaciones en su estructura regional’, in Donghi, T. Di Tellay T. Halperín (eds.), Los fragmentos del poder, p. 390.Google Scholar

19 One explanation for the later agricultural development of the southern portion of Santa Fe Province, despite its more fertile soil, its early railway, and its abundant urban merchants' capital, was that many thought the south's soil was less adequate for grain production: ‘As late as the early 1880s, land companies as experienced as the Central Argentine Land Co. thought that the land of southern Córdoba [and Santa Fe] was not apt for grain cultivation’; see Gallo, , La Pampa Gringa, p. 179.Google Scholar

20 Scalabrini, , Historia, p. 172Google Scholar; Lewis, C., British Railways in Argentina 1857–1914 (London, 1983).Google Scholar

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22 Ibid., p. 68.

23 On rents and leases, see Gallo, , La Pampa Gringa, p. 104Google Scholar; Bejarano, , ‘Inmigrantes…’, pp. 127–9.Google Scholar

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25 The information on the city's economic structure is taken primarily from Rosario, , Tercer Censo Municipal (Rosario, 1910), pp. 99–110.Google Scholar

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30 Rosario, , Primer Censo Municipal 1900 (Rosario, 1902), p. 302.Google Scholar

31 High housing rents were a constant source of irritation to the working classes, who spent 30–40% of their wages on rent, substantially more than the 20–30% spent in Buenos Aires; see Borea, , ‘Estudio sobre…’, pp. 18–19Google Scholar; Masse, Bialet, Las clases, pp. 248–9Google Scholar; Panettieri, J., Los trabajadores (Buenos Aires, 1982), p. 72.Google Scholar

32 Guía del Comercio Mayorista de la República Argentina, Uruguay y Paraguay (Buenos Aires, 1919), pp. 381, 393–5, 399, 404Google Scholar; Lloyd, , Impresiones, p. 678.Google Scholar

33 These five were the Central Argentine Railroad's repair shop, which employed up to 800; a cigarette factory that employed over 300; a cloth-making firm with 225; the Righetti foundry which employed 150; and a large sugar refinery that employed up to 1,300. See Rosario, , Tercer Censo, pp. 109–10Google Scholar; Lloyd, , Impresiones, p. 659Google Scholar. The Refinería, one of the most technologically advanced enterprises in the country, was owned by the European-financed Tornquist group. Logically, the sugar should have been refined in Tucumán, where it was produced, or in Buenos Aires, which had the largest market. The refinery was never very profitable, and after 1910 began a steady decline until it closed in the 1930s. The plant was built with a production capacity far greater than the Argentine market could absorb, and with Tucumán's relatively poor natural conditions and great distance from east coast markets (the industry required tariff protection to defend it from international competition), the huge size and sophisticated technology made little sense. One analyst argues that the owners were caught up in the myth of technological superiority; see D. Guy, ‘La refinería argentina’, unpubl. manu. This is perhaps the exception that proves the rule of avoiding fixed capital investments in Argentina. Other large firms (those with a total capital of over 40,000 in Argentine paper pesos) as listed in Guía, pp. 376–407, included: four small furniture producers and one carriage shop that supplied only a fraction of the market, which was dominated by firms from Buenos Aires; several food and beverage producers, the largest of which were three makers of alcoholic beverages that together employed about 190 workers; six metal-working shops which concentrated on local repair work; and one manufacturer of metal bed-frames.

34 Pianetto, , ‘Formación de clase…’, p. 33Google Scholar; Argentina, , Tercer Censo Nacional 1914 (Buenos Aires, 1917), p. 122Google Scholar.

35 Argentina, , Tercer Censo, p. 122.Google Scholar

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39 An individual may have several different investments in any particular economic field or circuit, such as a rural property owner who has five different properties, or a merchant who owns an import firm and a retail shop.

40 Sabato, J., La Clase Dominante el la Argentina Moderna (Buenos Aires, 1988), p. 207.Google Scholar

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42 Hardoy, , ‘La vivienda…’, p. 104Google Scholar; Query, L., ‘Private Interests and Public Welfare: Rails, Sewers and Open Spaces in Urban Rosario, Argentina (1865–1914)’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Indiana, 1981, pp. 104, 246.Google Scholar

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69 This was the case throughout Latin America. In Mexico, for example, the relatively small size of the Mexican market compared to the productive capacity of its imported manufacturing plant meant that the rate of capacity utilisation was very low, especially in the capital goods sector; see Haber, S., Industry and Underdevelopment (Stanford, 1989).Google Scholar

70 Schvarzer, J., ‘Bunge y Born, crecimiento y diversificación de un grupo empresario’, unpubl. manu., CISEA, Buenos Aires, 1989Google Scholar; Gallo, , La Pampa Gringa, pp. 249–51.Google Scholar

71 Alvarez, , Historia, pp. 530, 577.Google Scholar

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73 Industrial capital in the city of Córdoba also lost out to Buenos Aires. In 1903, Bagley, a Buenos Aires cracker, biscuit and beverage producer, negotiated a deal with a cracker factory in Córdoba, which had begun to lose its northern Argentine markets to Bagley. The latter paid the Córdoba company not to produce. This lasted until 1910; the Córdoba company folded in 1912. See H. Iparraguirre, ‘Crecimiento industrial y formación de la burguesía en una subregión argentina: Córdoba a finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX’, in Florescano, E. (ed.), Orígenes y desarrollo de la burguesía en América Latina, 1700–1955 (México, 1981), pp. 592–3.Google Scholar

74 La Nación, , Edición aniversario de la Independencia, p. 234.Google Scholar

75 Cited in Gutiérrez, L. and Korol, J. C., ‘La fábrica Argentina de alpargatas’, unpubl. manu., CISEA, Buenos Aires, 1987, p. 12.Google Scholar

76 The city awarded generous concessions to foreign capital to finance, construct, operate and own all of the city's infrastructure, which the city monitored but hardly taxed; see Rosario, , Contratos celebrados por la Municipalidad de Rosario con las empresas que explotan servicios públicos (Rosario, 1926)Google Scholar. Foreign capital controlled Rosario's infrastructure for two reasons. First, the city lacked the necessary resources. This was due to an unwillingness to tax the elite or to enforce the collection of the few taxes that did exist, and the inability to obtain foreign loans after three major defaults in the late 1880s; see Masse, Bialet, Las clases, pp. 248–9Google Scholar. Second, local capital refused to engage in large-scale projects that required long-term investments, and for which it possessed little of the requisite expertise. Moreover, many of Rosario's utility companies were unprofitable in their early years of operation; see Jones, C. et al. , ‘Public Utility Companies’, in Platt, D. C. M. (ed.), Business Imperialism, p. 85Google Scholar. On the public utility, port, and transport companies, see Lloyd, , Impresiones, pp. 625–7Google Scholar; Query, , ‘Private Investments…’, pp. 136–203Google Scholar; Gombos, El Puerto; and Kraft, Puerto.

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