A New Era For Argentina, 1880-1930
From the second half of the nineteenth century to the eve of World War I, Argentina went through major economic and social transformations owing to a rapid increase in population, the size and quality of its herds, and agricultural production. The amount of land under cultivation grew from about 100,000 to 25 million hectares between 1862 and 1914, and national wealth increased rapidly in response to higher trade revenues.
This transformation resulted from increased demand for agricultural products — meat and cereals — in industrialized Europe and from the availability of labor, capital, and technology for the development of Argentina, which became a leading world exporter of foodstuffs and raw materials.
The provinces of Entre Rios, Corrientes, and Misiones produced sheep, cattle, flax, and yerba maté; the Chaco area produced cattle, cotton, and dyes; the west produced sugar, wine, and goats; Patagonia supplied' sheep, cattle, wood and, after 1907, oil; the pampas, one of the most important breadbaskets of the world at the time, exported beef, wool, wheat (accounting for 25 percent of all exports in the first decade of the twentieth century), flax, corn, and swine; and even the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego offered grazing grounds for sheep.
At the time of national consolidation massive waves of European immigrants arrived in Argentina. Between 1880 and 1886 some 483,000 immigrants entered the country, and in 1889 alone some 261,000 reached Argentina. This massive influx of Italians, Spaniards, French, Russians, Germans, British, Swiss, Belgians, and even North Americans also stimulated demographic growth. The first national census in 1869 recorded just over 1.8 million inhabitants; by 1895 their numbers had increased to almost 4 million, of which 1 million were foreign-born.
By 1914 there were over 7 million people in Argentina, one-third of those being foreign-born, and by 1930 the country boasted over 11 million inhabitants. The new immigrants tended to remain in the coastal areas and mainly in urban centers. Buenos Aires saw its population double between 1889 and 1909 to over 1 million.
This extraordinary demographic expansion provoked an intensification of the overall development of the country. More land was brought under cultivation, cattle raising improved because of the application of controlled stockbreeding, and the meat industry developed with the advent of refrigeration and better transportation. Crop cultivation, however, was the economic activity that expanded most rapidly along with the increased availability of technology and immigrant labor that came to Argentina in vast numbers, especially during the economic booms of 1882-89 and 1904-12. The ruling criollo upper class became a landed aristocracy, but its members chose to live in the cities. Their wealth was a result of the international demand for agricultural products, cheap labor, and rising land values.
The technological revolution in agriculture in the United States came about with the improvement and marketing of earlier inventions. In Argentina the arrival of new technology — the reaper and the thresher for wheat harvesting in 1870, barbed wire fencing to allow adjacent cattle breeding and soil cultivation in 1876, and the steel windmill in 1890 — played a major role in the revolution on the pampas.
Access to the domestic and international markets was facilitated by the expansion of the railroad network that had begun in 1850. Railroad construction gained momentum after 1870 because of a heavy influx of foreign, particularly British, capital, and the network expanded from 726 kilometers in 1870 to 33,288 kilometers in 1913. Another important innovation was the establishment of regular steamship service both within Argentina and to the leading European markets. A further development in the transport of perishable meats came in the 1880s with the first refrigerated ships, introduced by the French and the British, which made possible the export of fresh meat to the European markets.
Argentine export revenues increased from US$1 billion in 1886 to US$4 billion in 1895 and to US$15 billion in 1914. Distribution was skewed, however, and became a cause for labor agitation. Nevertheless, increased wealth promoted public services, mainly in education, in keeping with the tradition of Mitre, Sarmiento, and Avellaneda. By 1914 the educational system in Argentina, incorporating features such as compulsory education for children six to 14 years old, ranked among the best in Latin America. Whereas the provinces were responsible for the establishment of primary schools, the federal government subsidized all secondary and university education. Between 1869 and 1914, illiteracy among individuals over age seven dropped from 78 to 35 percent.
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