SOUTH AMERICA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19044, 18 June 1936, Page 14

SOUTH AMERICA

STRIKING CONTRASTS

WEALTH AND POVERTY

"I found South America a. land of striking contrasts," said .Mr. Robert A. Campbell, when interviewed in Christchurch on his return from Chile. In many parts enormous wealth and magnificence were, he added, shadowed by squalor and abject poverty. This wafc particularly in evidence, in BuenosAires, a city of 2.500,000 people., with one street the house numbers in which ran from one to 18,003. H-'inan life was rated very cheaply .it: the Latin republics. Murder in the citis-v arid'in the back country—in the laltr case by bandits —was quite common, but strangely enough, there was no capita punishment in the Argentine •'Republic c; in Chile. Friends in Buenos Aires ha< informed Mr. Campbell that one man with four murders to his tally, liar' served only a fortnight in gaol. Another point which impre?scd Mr. C'impbell was that in all the schools it Chile and the Argentine, teachers were not allowed to inflict corporal punish nient in any cirnms-anees. A ciuin":law prevailed in Saritinso, under whi" 1 anv householder on whose premise* i peribus outbreak of fire occurred Wf summarily lodged in gaol, pending pro<- J that the fire was p'ire'y Fortunately, added Mr. Campbell, mo't of the buildings wore constructed o f stone, concrete or adobe.