BUENOS AIRES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4956, 16 February 1937, Page 6

BUENOS AIRES

“THE CITY OF GOOD AIRS.” ITS REMARKABLE GROWTH. Buenos Aires not only is, but has the air of being a great city (says the Buenos Aires correspondent of The Times, London). There are some towns in Spanish America which are soaked in the tradition of the Old Spain in the days of the Conquistadores, and where the speed of the modern world can be forgotten. Such are the Argentine cities of Cordoba, San Luis, and Mendoza. Buenos Aires is not one of them. A recent census, taken (of the municipal area alone) to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of the city’s foundation, places the population at 2,388,645, but unofficial estimates place the population of Greater Buenos Aires at about 4,000,000, or one-third of all the inhabitants of Argentina. In few other countries does such a large proportion of the total population live in or about the capital, and the inhabitants of Greater Buenos Aires are increasing more rapidly than those of the rest of the country. Since 1914, the year of the last census, the population of the municipal area has grown by 812,831 persons. The skyscrapers are climbing ever higher, and many acres of land have been reclaimed from the River Plate. It is one of the anomalies of modern Argentina that with hundreds of square miles of land virtually uninhabited for want of population, where no land exists land is being artificially created. Village to City. From the top of the highest building the city extends as far as the eye can see. It takes nearly half an hour in an ordinary train to reach the outskirts of Great Buenos Aires. The city has followed the main railways. It is impossible to feel “off the map,” despite the distance from the Old World. In the busiest streets the screech of a ship’s siren is heard from the port to remind the loneliest immigrant of home. The streets are brilliantly lit by night and the standard of hygiene is extraordinarily high. Nature has not been especially kind to Buenos Aires, for it has provided nothing save a wide river and a wider plain, although with an abundant rainfall. To make the modern city a little of the best has been picked from every land in Europe as well as from the United States. Even the grass in the well-kept parks and public gardens is sown with European seeds and tropic vegetation grows side by side with plants from temperate lands. All this happened in scarcely more than 50 years. In 1880, when Buenos Aires became the Federal capital, it was, in the words of a contemporary writer, but a “large village,” with some 270,000 inhabitants and a league and a half square—an old colonialstyle city. Historians record that it was invariabley enveloped in a cloud of dust and that its sanitation was deplorable. In 1826 Captain Head “The water in Buenos Aires is very impure, scarce, and therefore dear. The city is badly paved and dirty. The houses are the most uncomfortable that anyone ever entered.”

Buenos Aires is in general still a city of narrow streets running due north and south or east and west on a draught-board plan, each block or manzana being of exactly the same size. This is a legacy of the past, when the Court of Castile forbade the South American colonists to build streets broader than those of Spain. Of late more and more wide avenues have been built for embellishment and to relieve the congestion. The new Plaza de la Republica was inspired by the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and the buildings surrounding it are uniform in height on the Haussmann model. Architecturally, Buenos Aires dates from 1880. The Provincial Capital. It seems that the city will grow ever larger, all efforts at decentralisation and diversion of the human stream having failed. Some 50 years ago the city of La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires province, was built some 85 miles farther down the river. It was designed admirably and upon the most modern plan—with no narrow streets, but only broad avenues, and with a superabundance of open green spaces. It was hoped that this was going to be another and more modern Buenos Aires. By the laws of the •province all members and officials of the Provincial Government are required to reside in La Plata. But 56 minutes’ express train journey from Buenos Aires proved too tempting, and those who could afford it decided to reside in both —with one abode in Buenos Aires to suit their pleasure, and another in La Plata to conform with the law. La Plata is a splendid city, lacking nothing but inhabitants. The Argentines are modern-minded, and no one wants to be a country cousin. Ethnologically, too, Argentina is changing. One hundred years ago, and even much later, there was a large

negro poulation. As in the south of the United States, it was normal to employ negroes as domestic servants. To-day Argentina, or at least Buenos Aires, is almost as white as any town in Europe. The climate did not favour negroes, and much of the negro element was eliminated by the extraordinary fertility and adaptability of the Italian immigrants. The great Italian colonisation of Argentina, which came early in the second half of last century, did more to change the racial composition of the country than anything since the Spanish conquest. The details of the recent census are not yet known, but promise to be striking. At the time of the last census —in 1914 —almost one-half of the population of Buenos Aires was foreign-born. Italians numbering 312,267 and Spaniards 306,850. Among foreigners the Italians are probably still leading but the proportion of foreigners to Argentine-born will surely be shown to have declined.