"From natives to settlers to immigrants", a series of posts to tell the brief history of Latin American cities through a diversity, money, density, and creativity lens, borrowing the model from the Museum of the City of NY.
Upon arrival to Buenos Aires, the spaniards came across the fishing and hunting yarós in Rio de la Plata. Very few records exist of the yarós, it was a very small tribe of about a hundred families and they had a different language than the other tribes. Despite their small size, they killed multiple spaniards but were quickly exterminated by another tribe in the 16th century, the charrúas. This tribe kept the yarós women and children and are now mixed without the ability to distinguish between the two.
The city of Buenos Aires was founded twice, first in 1536 by an expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza as "Our Lady St. Mary of the Good Air", a settlement that fell victim to local Indians, and then again in 1580 "City of Trinidad" by Juan de Garay. Huge lands were given to expedition members, who right away began to harvest the pastoral animals.
Copia del atribuido a Juan de Garay. "Plano que manifiesta el repartimiento de solares que hizo el Gral. Juan de Garay a los fundadores de Buenos Ayres. Año de 1583". Buenos Aires. 1583.
The entire Rio de la Plata region was made part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, governed from Lima. Rigid organization from Spain only allowed trade from selected ports of the city; goods could only leave from the Callao port near Lima, so it took nearly 24 months for a complete trade exchange with Spain.
Due to the vast distance between Buenos Aires and the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Argentinian city gradually evolved on its own with ranching and contraband trade while the rest of the viceroyalty focused on mining enterprises of the Andean region "Upper Peru" (modern-day Bolivia). The porteños, the people of Buenos Aires, thrived during the last quarter of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th. They exported significant amounts of cereals, cattle hides, and dried beef to Northern Brazil and Caribbean Islands; the British were the principal source of capital and transportation for this contraband trade.
Buenos Aires became a successful commercial port city with 20,000 inhabitants by mid 18th century, and in 1776 it was named the capital of the new Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata as part of the Bourbon monarchy. This is when the city started developing significantly. Because of major mining towns of Upper Peru were now within the confines of the viceroyalty, silver was the most valuable export and the city flourished, with its population growing from 24,000 at the end of the 18th century to 42,500 in 1810, and reaching 93,000 by 1855.
Plano de la ciudad y Plaza de la SS Trinidad
Puerto de S. María de Buenos Ayres, situada sobre la costa del sur del Río de la Plata. 1772.
Administrative reforms in 1776 led to a split of the elite into two groups with divergent economic interests: one had international interests with focus on pastoral activities in the city's hinterland and trade with Cuba, Brazil, and Great Britain, while the other group had regional interests and was linked to official economic and administrative activities of the viceroyalty.
During early 1800s, local militia forces fought off two attempted British invasions, which had an impact in the beginning of Argentine nationalism and boosted the city's independence. With Napoleon's invasion of Spain, many porteños reconsidered their loyalty to the crown.
The division grew between the city and outer provinces over the next decade and in 1816 the provinces declared their independence. For nearly 30 years the provinces were held together by federalism which gave "autonomy" to each province. Although central authority took place in Buenos Aires, interior provinces had leeway to go their own way, but provinces were the worst performers out of this arrangement.
Political struggles between the porteños and the interior became more intense after 1850 now that the stakes were greater as the city's commercial activities expanded. European industrialization and the transformation of capitalism, alongside technological advances, made exploitation of fertile plains of Argentina economically viable, all that was required was labor to work the land and the capital to pay for the transportation of products to the ports. Capital usually came from Britain and labor came from Spain and Italy. By the beginning of WWI, Argentina was one of the world's principal exporters of agricultural products.
Economic change in the countryside led to fundamental changes in the city's character, including a changing population. Immigrants who had at first been attracted to the country with hopes of settling on the land found it difficult to buy land and migrated back to the city. Additionally, growing exports created a need for new port facilities and service activities, which meant a new labor demand, with many jobs located at the port or in slaughterhouses on the city's outskirts. Newcomers, mainly from Spain and Italy, and some from Eastern Europe and Germany, were moving into older houses on the city's south, pushing middle class residents north.
The Avellaneda Law in 1876 accelerated European immigration. This law, which facilitated immigrants the access to property and land ownership, was established with the goal of turning immigrants into farmers and develop a small and medium farmer economy. The effort was inspired by the US dynamic of having immigrants relocate to rural areas and to vast agricultural land whilst forcing industrial capitalists to keep urban salaries above a certain threshold to retain the workforce. However, the culture in Argentina of dominant land ownership or "latifundismo" hindered this goal; it only worked in marginal lands where agricultural activity was not profitable. By 1895, Buenos Aires had a population of 664,000 inhabitants, which was mainly driven by immigration.
Plano de Buenos Aires, Guía Nacional 1895. Realizado por Pablo Basch [AGN]
While in 1904, 26% of people in Buenos Aires lived over 5km away from the Plaza de Mayo, by 1914, this number had grown to 46% of the city's population. Two main reasons behind that growth were culture and transportation changes. The North continued receiving higher wealth population accompanied by better transportation services and high lands, while the south was linked with the working class due to the growing local industrial sector.
Plano de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, capital de la República Argentina. Intendencia del Dr. Arturo Gramajo. 1916.
After the 1930s, international immigration slowed down and most labor demand in the metropolitan area was met by migrants from the interior: Argentinians of mestizo origin, i.e., mixed Indian and European ancestry, who had conflicts with porteños. Mestizos came from northwestern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia and there was movement of mestizos, who found the inner city slums too crowded and settled on unoccupied land in the suburbs near manufacturing establishments where many jobs were provided. Their dwellings, made out of corrugated metal, were the first shantytowns or "villas miseria" (neighborhoods of misery) in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.
The metropolitan region's population experienced accelerated growth, much higher than the country average, which increased the city's density from 25% of the country population in 1935 to 35% in 1970. Ethnic differences of these new migrants added bitterness to the social conflicts that characterized the development of industrial capitalism in the area during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. These newcomers would become followers of populist leader Juan Perón, who came to power via a military coup in 1943 and was president from 1946 to 1955 and again in 1972 until his death in 1974.
The second half of the 20th century saw the replacement of tramway and train by the automobile and colectivo (microbus) as dominant transportation modes in the city. Unlike other large western cities, Buenos Aires was not ringed by a network of superhighways, and economic and political difficulties after WWII prevented the construction of this network. At the beginning of the 21st century, the network of streets was saturated with vehicular traffic and it was imperative to improve transportation.
The country's economic crisis and default on its foreign debt payment in 2001 impacted Buenos Aires, Porteños lost significant amounts of money, social services were cut, and pension payments were delayed. Dissatisfaction with the government's economic policies led to violent protests in the city streets.
Los barrios actuales de la ciudad de Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires recovered from the crisis by 2004, and although the economy was booming, the city started experiencing challenges of modern urban life. The new underclass, its most recent migrants, crowded into shantytowns are disproportionately undereducated and unskilled and have not been easily absorbed by the city's service-oriented economy. Despite national and local governments' attempts to close the gap, there has been little success; the cost of living in the city is amongst the highest in Latin America and 25% of the population in the metropolitan area lives in poverty and crimes are a major concern in the area.
In 2007-2008, power shortages in Buenos Aires indicated broader infrastructure issues and the city often experiences periods of high inflation. Despite numerous obstacles, Buenos Aires has exhibited signs of social improvement and a burgeoning economy, especially with technology and the city's increasing globalization - internet cafes have proliferated since the 1990s, increasing the city's electronic connectivity to the rest of the world. Buenos Aires, with over 15 million inhabitants. is the cultural heart of the country and it shapes its identity with education, art, publishing, and a strong local industry of television, advertising, radio, and movies.
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Sources:
Britannica. Buenos Aires History.
Cervantes Virtual, Description e Historia del Paraguay y Rio de La Plata.
Geografia Infinita, La Evolucion de Buenos Aires a traves de los mapas, 2018
Google Sites, Atlas Historico de Planos Urbanos, Buenos Aires.
Instituto Nacional de Asuntos Indígenas, Mapa de pueblos originarios.
Trascarton, A 140 anos de la Ley Avellaneda.
Universidad de Moron, Los Indigenas de Buenos Aires a comienzos del siglo XVIII: Los Reales Pueblos de Indios y la Declinacion de la Encomienda.
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