From Mercantilism to Imperialism: The Argentine Case
Daniels, Ed
INTRODUCTION: The present contradiction between Argentine national liberation'and U.S. imperialism has at its roots a process that goes back to the colonial period when the structural foundation...
...With the disappearance of this source of rapid capital accumulation, the regional economies supported by the PotosiBuenos Aires trade route collapsed...
...This activity could never serve, however, as a base for autonomous capitalist development given British command over those industries vital to agricultural activity...
...In the period from 1600 to 1750 the vaqueria developed -- the slaughter of wild cattle for the clandestine export of hides, fat, tallow and horns to and through Brazil...
...In order to satisfy this need and permit the distribution of large tracts of land, it was necessary to expel the indigenous population by military means...
...1 .When wire fencing was introduced in 1850, the enclosure of lands permitted the refinement of the cattle stock...
...The population growth, owing principally to European migration, altered the composition of classes...
...Such communities were mainly concerned with the raising of donkeys for transportation'and the production of textiles for trade...
...Irazusta, pp...
...In 1880, Argentina exported 103.9 million gold pesos worth of goods...
...These notes are used extensively for the section in this article, 'From Colonialism to Neo-Colonialism...
...This illegal trade generated surplus capital beyond the control of Spanish imperial authorities...
...Using the income from the hides, they purchased arms in Buenos Aires and sold them in Asuncion...
...Copyright 1970 by the North American Congress on Latin America, Inc...
...In 1910, only 20 percent of the native population could vote...
...Throughout the 19th century, the landowning class utilized the State as the main mechanism for territorial expansion and the satisfaction of its trade and labor needs...
...274,501 772,717 5,420,782 12,659,831 32,561,520 42,916,636 Profits in gold pesos 6,737 2,890 1,146,317 3,488,232 8,463,636 17,324,264 42,000,933 52,724,416 Source: Roberto Cortes Conde and Ezequiel Gallo, La Formacion de la Argentina Moderna (Buenos Aires - PAIDS, 1967), Cuadro IX, p. 47...
...1 The Benevolent Empire...
...After the opening of the country to foreign trade in 1809, the economy of the Buenos Aires province came to rest on cattle production...
...Minimum contribution for one-year subscription: $5.00...
...2 8 The liberal constitution enabled the landowning class to exclude all other sectors from political power...
...The concentrated flow of capital and technology to one or another satellite was determined by the economic complementarity of the regions to primarily British and European industrial expansion in general: i.e., the need for raw material goods (foodstuffs and textiles) and a market for the outlet of manufactures...
...4 - This shift further integrated Argentina into the world market...
...See Clark, p. 29...
...Peter H. Smith, Politics and Beef in Argentina: Patterns of Conflict and Change Newg Yor-: Coliumiia University Press, 969), pp...
...3 0 The uprisings reflected the powerlessness felt by these middle sectors when battered by the contractions of the world market to which they owed their subsistence in a dependent export economy...
...Spanish America is free...
...The third, from 1534 to the end of the 16th century, consisted of attempts to incorporate the peripheral zones such as the Rio de la Plata into the Spanish American Empire...
...In the third decade after her belated attempt (1776) to exercise greater control over the thriving illegal commerce of Buenos Aires by establishing the Viceroyalty, Spain found herself engaged in European wars (1795-1806) which diverted her attention from the satellites...
...Most who expected to work their own lands found that they could only get work as tenants or sharecroppers because the land was already owned by a small landowning bourgeoisie...
...The present study is part of a larger project assisted financially by the Rabinowitz Foundation.8 2. Most of the analysis and background material for the colonial period was drawn from Manfred Kossok, El Virreynato del Rio de la Plata: su estructura economicasocial, translate Tiom the original German into Spanish by J.M...
...The 1813 General Assembly barred non-citizens from carrying on domestic business transactions...
...Congruently, the introduction of the saladero transformed the nature of the colonial estancia...
...3 (May-June, 1970), anichiiar Locker, "Perspective on the Peruvian military," NACLA Newsletter, Vol...
...In 1890, the crisis which hit the stock exchange and trade and finance sectors was characterized by rising inflation and urban dissatisfaction...
...A. M. L. F., Sobre el Tipo de Revolucion en la Argentina, Boletin de Discusion TArgentina: PCR,- May 1969), p. 19...
...10 T h is The Imperialist Role of the American Sugar Company...
...On the other hand, such interludes have been followed by the re-establishment of some sort of imperialist hegemony, whether by the previous or by a new metropolis...
...Given its weakened condition, however, it failed to achieve national consolidation for half a century...
...Spain's decline opened the door to British economic penetration of Argentina and to the political emancipation of the Buenos Aires commercial bourgeoisie which declared independence from Spain in 1816...
...Following the seating of the viceregal administration, Buenos Aires became not merely the port for the litoral (see map), but also the center of the southern zone of the empire...
...Cortes Conde and Gallo, pp...
...The chief vehicles were the Banco de Descuentos de Buenos Aires and the Banco Nacional, as well as the credits extended by Baring Brothers of London...
...In the latter half of the 19th century, British penetration in the form of capital investment was concentrated in two industries central to an agrarian export economy: transportation and banking...
...The social implications of this policy were profound...
...Thus the Buenos Aires commercial bourgeoisie was forced to readjust its economic base to a growing international demand for agricultural products...
...When the Argentine bourgeoisie attempted to exerNORTH AMERICAN CONGRESS ON LATIN AMERICA (NACLA) Vol...
...For example, the railways fanned out from Buenos Aires but no lines connecting the various branches were built...
...78, p. 3. 6. Kossok, p. 123...
...Third, the highly fertile Pampas and the area between the Uruguay and Parana rivers were practically unpopulated and potentially a source of those foodstuffs on demand in the world market...
...imperialism has at its roots a process that goes back to the colonial period when the structural foundation of underdevelopment and international dependency was laid...
...Hilda Celis kindly made the notes available...
...159, 160, 161...
...5. Quoted in Miron Burgin, The Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism, 1820-1852 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946), Harvard Economic Studies, Vol...
...7. Burgin, p. 47...
...1 2 In the meantime, the civil war permitted the interior provinces to sustain a degree of local economic development, since the breakdown of mechanisms in the mercantile infrastructure also halted the consonant flow of surplus capital to the litoral...
...Once her sources of metallic wealth began to dry up, Spanish mercantilism was obsolete...
...The first determining factor in the emergence of the beef industry was foreign demand, primarily British, in the mid-19th century...
...The development of communications and financial infrastructure by foreign capital was geared to reinforce a dependency on exports and impeded the development of local manufactures...
...Alfredo Galletti, La Realidad Argentina en el Siglo XX: La Politica los Partidos (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1961), Vol...
...41.8 percent to the middle sectors (middle sized farmers and merchants, industrialists and public administrators representing 13.6 percent, and small and poor farmers, merchants, artisans and lower echelon administrators representing 28.2 percent...
...To satisfy this demand, the Argentine Rural Society was founded in 1866 to refine the quality of livestock...
...During the 1880's British investments "grew from about $125 million to $850 million...
...In the case of Argentina, the predominar.:e of the Pacific port of Lima-Callao in the export of gold and silver impeded the full emergence of Buenos Aires as a commercial center until nearly two centuries after it was first settled...
...39-40...
...The debilitation of viceregal control during the European wars and the British presence in the same period gave the creole merchant class a taste of free trade and a semblance of economic autonomy which allowed it to accumulate a larger portion of the economic surplus generated in the Rio de la Plata area...
...During the two centuries of Lima's role as the center of Spanish imperial administration for the southern cone of South America, peripheral centers such as Valparaiso (now in Chile) and Buenos Aires enjoyed prosperity as foci of contraband trade...
...Box 226, Berkeley, California 94701 The NACLA NEWSLETTER is published ten times a year by the North American Congress on Latin America...
...3 I FOOTNOTES: 1. The theoretical framework of this article, as well as the definition of terms used, draws on the writings of Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), Susanne Bodenheimer, "Dependency and Imperialism: The Roots of Latin American Underdevelopment," NACLA Newsletter, Vol...
...IV, No...
...III, Nos...
...including seasoned labor leaders, all of which enabled the Argentine working class to benefit from the existence of the First International when it began to rganize at the end of the nineteenth century...
...7 The implementation of this policy was closely related to the drainage of metal from the area...
...A. M. L. F., p. 20...
...The industrial process of salting meat for export (mainly to the Brazilian plantations) marked the end of the direct commercialization of cattle by the hacendados...
...Insuch moments, when their capital resources are dedicated to internecine struggle, they have typically been unable to sustain the exploitative operations of expropriation/appropriation of economic surplus from their satellites...
...Census figures for 1895 and 1914 show that the foreign-born made up 39 and 47 percent respectively of the economically active population, providing from two thirds to four fifths of the commercial and industrial entrepreneurs, slightly over half the personnel of the liberal professions, and more than half the commercial office workers...
...The Radical uprisings of 1890, 1893 and 1905 coincided with acute economic crises...
...Since Argentine firms concentrated on the domestic market, the British companies accounted for a higher proportion of the export trade than their two thirds control of the country's national freezing capacity represented...
...See Giberti, pp...
...For example, there was the case of the Robertsons...
...For the latter, the only possibilitie of expansion lay beyond the constrained monopoly struc tures of Spain...
...This transformation, in turn, led to a system of land concentration which impeded the development of homesteads and independent farmers...
...and 55.1 percent to the proletarian and seniproletarian (seasonally employed and rural-to-urban migrants) class...
...Spain's creation of the Viceroyalty in Buenos Aires failed to contain the divergent commercial pressures of the local bourgeoisie, long accustomed to trade with other satellite centers and the British...
...In 1796, of a total export value of five million pesos, 4.5 million were in silver and gold coin...
...The first attempt by the middle sectors to seize political power was the revolt of 1890, known as La Revolucion del 90...
...Under conditions of superexploitation, this movement did not have to undergo the classical process of organization and building of class consciousness which occurred in Europe...
...The only areas that developed were Asuncion, already prospering from domestic agriculture,, and Tucuman, a satellite of the Potosi mines with complementary production of cotton textiles...
...The opportunity came in the 17th century when the exploitation of mineral resources in Alto Peru (now Bolivia) began to annihilate the indigenous population, thus requiring the importation of black slaves from Guinea and Brazil...
...Starting out with only a small amount of capital, they made their profit through numerous speculative transactions...
...While in 1869 the population of Argentina was 1,737,076, by 1895 it had reached 3,954 911, and this number increased to 7,885,231 by 1914...
...10025 ~,, P.O...
...IV, No...
...Shortly afterward, the National Packing Company, a Chicago combine (Swift, Armour, Morris), purchased another Argentine plant at La Blanca, while Sulzberger & Sons negotiated a takeover of the Frigorifico Argentino...
...Serglo Bagu, Evolucion Historica de la Estratificacion Social en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Departamento de Soclogia, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, September 1961), p. 64...
...The imposition of mercantilism, based on the accumulation of precious metal, created a chain of exploitation throughout the region...
...Transportation of the cattle was facilitated by the railroads, also under British control...
...Spin's dependence on other European countries and on Britain for manufactured goods relegated her to the status of a dependent satellite...
...When the Buenos Aires provincial legislature created the Banco de Descuentos in 1822, eleven of its 23 stockholders were British...
...With the founding of Jujuy to the north and Buenos Aires to the south, by the second half of the 16th century, the colonization of the Rio de la Plata came to an end...
...The relations between classes molded a power structure, which, in turn, consciously acted to sustain and perpetuate the economic structure...
...The significance of British speculation lay chiefly in the role it played in weakening the Buenos Aires commercial bourgeoisie, rather than in any integration of a national market...
...This lack of consolidation permitted further British penetration of the economy, particularly in the transportation and banking sectors...
...See Ortiz, Vol...
...In so doing, the Robertsons introduced a more efficient and thus more profitable trade based on currency where barter had been the norm...
...The words of the British Minister Canning made his country's intentions clear: "The deed is done, the nail is driven...
...This was possible because the main working class contingents were composed of immigrants who had already experienced class struggles...
...Her decline was due, not only to the rise of Great Britain, an increasingly industrial nation in search of raw materials and consumer markets, but more notably, to the inherent structural weakness of her economy...
...In fact, plata means silver, and Argentina is derived from the Latin word argentum, meaning silver...
...In Argentina, the unfolding of capitalist relations of production created a power structure in which the relations of classes to the dynamic sectors of the economy were characterized by the dominance of national and international capital interests...
...23 initiative through the development of meatpacking industries, they were rapidly eclipsed by competing British ventures, better able to coordinate their activities with the international monopolies...
...This gave them a distinct advantage in that area over the Buenos Aires traders...
...The predominant position of the litoral landowning class, closely tied to foreign monopolies reinforced the articulations of the Argentine economy as a satellite of the metropolitan economy and provided the economic base for the dominant classes.21 Within the industrial, commercial and rural bourgeoisies there developed certain sectors whose interests were oriented toward the domestic market...
...Smith, p. 68...
...1 1 ' When it closed in 1826, its capital was used, together with that of the Baring Brothers loans and other private and state monies, to establish the Banco Nacional de las Provincias Unidas del Rio de la Plata...
...2 6 Economic structure has always determined class structure...
...Once it became apparent that the zone lacked the precious metals whose exploitation provided the economic backbone of Spanish mercantilism, Spain relegated the zone to secondary importance, incorporating it into the Viceroyalty of Lima...
...THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE BOURGEOIS-LANDOWNING CLASS -1880-1914: With its repeal of the Grain Laws in 1860, Britain emerged as a free trade country.1 3 From then on, British control over the world market was translated into increased penetration and domination of the economies of the peripheral countries...
...The confluence of national and international capital came about through the alliance of the Argentine landowning and foreign industrial-commercial bourgeoisies...
...Under such conditions the debilitation of the imperial political, administrative and military apparatus has often provided the colonial bourgeoisies with interludes of relative autonomy in which to accumulate and control the surplus generated in their hinterlands, and to establish trade relations in different sectors of the world market...
...Following the leasing, in 1913, of the Frigorifico Argentino to Sulzberger & Sons, and the merger of the River Plate and Las Palmas firms into the British Argentine Meat 64.0 5.6 ** 277.1 63.7 25.0 to 30.0 11.07 Company, a new pool was established through which the Chicago-based plants came to control 58.5 percent of the market, the British 29.64 percent, and the Argentine 11.86 percent...
...This was accompanied by an ideological independence, notable by comparison with the much more colonized mentality of Lima-Callao...
...in short, the proletarian and petit-bourgeois elements oppressed within the established relations of production...
...This is probably the best English language study on the meatpacking industry...
...The principal point in their program was universal male suffrage, which reflected a strategy for obtaining political power by capitalizing on the socioeconomic discontent of the masses...
...The strategic role of the Argentine economy in the world market as an exporter of beef, cereals, wool and hides also stimulated immigration...
...Aldo Ferrer, The Argentine Economy, translated by Marjory M. Urquidi (Berkely: University of California Press, 1967), p. 103...
...From here on I have used the Spanish translation Aspectos Economicos del Federalismo Argentino (Buenos Aires: Editorial Hachette, 1960...
...See Table II for figures on railway expansion...
...and Oct., 19...
...For one of the best studies on this topic ee .7, Fred Rippy, British Investments in Latin Aerica, 1822-1949, A Case Studyi n th0perations of Private Ent rprise in Reta egions (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966...
...8 While coins represented nearly 80 percent of Rio de la Plata exports during the vicerega...
...The British introduced new modalities that replaced the older local ones...
...Roberto Cortes Conde and Ezequiel Gallo, La Formacion de la Argentina Moderna (Buenos Aires: PAIDOS, 1967), pp...
...There were stringent property requirements for voting, thus excluding the entire lower and most of the middle sector...
...Liberal alien laws gave little incentive for immigrants to become citizens...
...1857 and 1914 well over ,300,000 peasants and workers migrated to Argentina, which became, after the United States, the largest recipient of immigrants in the period mentioned...
...Between6 TABLE 1: BRITISH INVESTMENTS IN ARGENTINA, 1880-1949 (In millions of .) 1880 1890 1913 1929 1930 1949 Total nominal investment 20.0 157.0 357.7 428.5 68.5 Nominal aggregate/face value of Argentine gov't and gov't guaranteed securities held by British Nominal investment in Railways Nominal aggregate/Miscellaneous publ.util., real estate, finance Nominal investment in Public Utilities Nominal investment in Real Estate 20.3 82.7 7.6 64.6 215.0 1.5 61.1 111.2 9.5 39.6 2.8 13.0 * Figure for 1918...
...Ferraris (Buenos Aires: Editorial Futuro, 1959...
...This was followed by the establishment of the Las Palmas Produce Company (1886), the La Plata Cold Storage Company (1902) and the Smithfield Argentine Meat Company (1903...
...THE COLONIAL PERIOD: Columbus' discovery of the Antilles in 1492 marks the beginning of Spain's conquest and colonization of the Americas...
...2 4 In 1907, Swift Company purchased the largest Argentine-owned meatpacking plant, the La Plata Cold Storage Company, bringing U.S...
...The incorporation of the Argentine economy into the world capitalist market, however, stifled the evolution of these elements into an incipient national bourgeoisie, and tended to integrate them into or graft them onto the export market...
...4 / July-August 1970 NACLA NEWSLETTER P.O...
...Their ability to pay in coin helped undercut the barter system of the local5 traders...
...1 Spain's search for precious metals led to the colonization of Latin America...
...By 1880 Lincoln cattle had replaced Merino sheep as the predominant livestock...
...Interprovincial trade was discouraged...
...5 6 (Sept...
...capital into competition with the British...
...By 1910, Chicago-based packing houses were exporting over half the chilled beef from the Rio de la Plata zone...
...This is evident from the fact that in 1899, of the total fixed capital in Argentina, 31.8 percent was foreign, a figure which increased to 47.7 percent by 1913.23 This capital was invested in those sectors of the economy which were strategic in the drainage of the country's surplus capital: railways and meatpacking...
...Moreover, when in 1750 the estancia (small cattle ranches) supplanted vaqueria as the mode of production, the cosmopolitan commercial bourgeoisie was able to strengthen and perpetuate itself as the predominant class, through either the direct purchase of lands or through its strategic role in the marketing of cattle products and the importation of slaves as farm NACLA NEWSLETTER Vol...
...See map...
...By 1914, 3.1 percent of the economically active population belonged to the ruling class (terratenientes, bankers, large industrialists and high functionaries...
...The first, from 1492 to 1510, was the occupation of theCaribbean islands which became stepping stones to the second stage, the penetration of the mainland through Panama and Mexico, 1510 to 1534...
...By the end of the 18th century, when the Rio de la Plata zone (now Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) achieved economic importance, eclipsing Lima-Callao as an outlet for gold and silver, the Spanish Empire was already subservient to the industrially-based British imperium...
...British interests controlled the primary wealth-producing industries, thus depriving the commercial bourgeoisie of the surplus capital necessary for national development...
...The "failure to develop a national capitalist group interested in public utilities meant that, when Britain after the First World War was no longer able to export capital in large amounts, the infrastructure began to deteriorate...
...55-57...
...The structural role of this class was twofold: first, it served as the intermediary agent for the further integration of the country into the world capitalist market...
...Again the British were the predominant stockholders, linking the State's fiscal and financial base to their metropolis...
...In addition, they held over one third of the government office jobs, represented from 50 to 60 percent of the industrial workers, but only ten percent of the landowners and about one third of the domestic servants...
...4 / July-August 1970 Published monthly, except May-June and July-August, when it is published bi-monthly, at 418 West 25th Street, New York, New York 10001...
...in 1914, 36 percent of the total was invested in railroads, 36 percent in government bonds, eight percent in public utilities, 20 percent in trade and financial enterprises and five percent in agriculture and livestock...
...In order to assure the transportation of unspoiled meat to Europe, technological innovations permitted the founding, in 1882, of the country's first frigorifico (meat packing plant), the River Plate Fresh Meat Company...
...4. For a detailed study of Argentine agrarian development see Horacio C.E...
...In 1913, exports amounted to 1,015.4 million gold pesos...
...By the time the Viceroyalty was instituted (1776),however, the exploitation of cattle by vagueria had nearly annihilated the livestock in certain parts of the litoral, eroding a potential economic base for an autonomous landowning class...
...This can be seen from the composition of exports of the Rio de la Plata...
...This is an extremely useful study on the civil war period...
...Second, it was the dominant social class within Argentina, spearheading the consolidation of national power...
...A. M. L. F., p. 20.9...
...9 The British were the only intermediaries for foreign consumption of the region's produce...
...II, chart on Class Structure in 1914, p. 191...
...First, Argentina, because of its economic and political characteristics, increasingly attracted foreign capital, primarily British...
...Concurrently, social classes developed whose relations to production placed them in contradiction with the economic structure...
...91-95...
...1857 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1913 10 39 732 2,313 9,254 16,767 27,713 33,478 TransCapital in ported gold pesos Tonnage 285,108 741,033 18,835,703 62,964,486 346,493,054 551,515,980 1,099,700,353 1,358,849,967 2,257 n.a...
...3 In the context of mercantile capitalism, money itself was a commodity rising in value as it was traded...
...A commercial bourgeoisie arose in Buenos Aires to act as an intermediary between two economies: the world economy of which it was the emissary, and a domestic economy of which it was the dominant class...
...The rivalry would eventually be resolved with the establishment of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1776 -clear recognition on the part of the metropolis of the shift from one satellite center to the other...
...6 This sector, however, was not homogeneous: the minority of native Spaniards, who controlled the fiscal and administrative apparatus were tied to the Cadiz monopolists, entering into contradiction with the creole bourgeoisie, both landed and commercial...
...These immigrants were primarily Spanish and Italian, with some German, French and Swiss...
...Congressional representation was based on giving all the provincial seats to the party gaining a majority of the votes...
...In 1893, the fall of wheat prices on the world market led to an uprising of farmers affected by a decline in income...
...Box 57, Cathedral Park Station, New York, N.Y...
...From Mercantilism to Imperialism: The Argentine Case...
...Therefore, most of the immigrants remained in or returned to the litoral cities becoming part of the secondary or tertiary sectors of the economy...
...Irazusta, quoted on p. 53...
...Between 1810 and 1818 the Britis] appropriated for themselves ten million dollars in metallic monies...
...10 for institutions...
...2 9 The growth of the urban middle sectors and working classes, however, made increasingly difficult their continued exclusion from the political process...
...This expansion policy worked against the development of rural middle sectors (homesteading and small, independent farmers...
...1 4 Second, political power was concentrated in the hands of the landowning class whose economic predominance was established immediately following the civil war, in the period from 1852 to 1880...
...Herein rested the kernel of emancipation: free trade -- an alteration of commercial loyalties...
...In short, three'fourths was invested in the infrastructure necessary to carry on the appropriation of the country's economic surplus...
...14-18...
...2 7 Growth was most pronounced in the rural and primarily urban middle sectors...
...Coming on the heels of the economic boom which followed establishment of the Viceroyalty, this prosperous freetrade interlude was an important power source for the imminent movement for independence, Prior to emancipation, the colonial bourgeois evolution was kept to the commercial arena, being confined to the role of comprador and junior partner of foreign capital interests...
...Subscription price: $5 per year for individuals...
...RADICALISMO -- THE INTEGRATION OF THE PETITBOURGEOISIE INTO THE POLITICAL PROCESS: The ability of foreign capital to penetrate and dominate the meatpacking industry was contingent on the very fact that the government, from 1880 to 1914, was controlled by the landowning class -- a class whose interests lay in protecting the export market...
...this forced out the remnants of Spanish mercantilism...
...In the context of civil war this kind of speculative activity overwhelmed the traders because -- unlike the Robertsons -- they were not protected by a British consulate...
...8. Julio Irazusta, Influencia Economica Britanica en el Rio de la Plata (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1963), pp...
...In fact, it was not until the introduction of the railroads in the second half of the 19th century that the development of such a market took place...
...Figure for 1937 Source: J. Fred Rippy, British Investments in Latin America, 1822-1949: A Case Study in the Operations of Private Enterprises in Retarded Regions (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966), pp...
...This change resulted from the 1875-1910 fall in wool prices on the world market and was encouraged by the emergence of British meatpacking plants in and around Buenos Aires...
...Buenos Aires was not to "develop" until it could prove economically useful and profitable within the structure of the world 2 market...
...In response to this bourgeois and petit-bourgeois combination, a nascent working class movement emerged into the political arena...
...The saladero thus gained hegemony over the hacendados and, moreoever, many became proprietors of haciendas as well...
...By the end of the century, the "modernizing" sectors of the landowning bourgeoisie, in concert with large tenant and sharecrop farmers, medium-sized merchants and industrialists and the liberal intelligentsia, maintained a hegemonic position in the UCR...
...Herein resided the socio-political contradiction which dominated this period of Argentine history...
...34-35...
...Consequently, the need for territorial expansion arose...
...By 1889 Argentina was absorbing between 40 and 50 percent of all British foreign investments...
...2 2 Foreign capital dominated the relations of production...
...3. Taken from the notes in a class on Argentine socioeconomic history offered by Tulio Halperin at the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, in 1965...
...and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English...
...All were British owned or controlled...
...Ferrer, p. 89...
...The utilization of a sound currency where money was becoming increasingly scarce catalyzed the collapse of the commercial network once monopolized by the Buenos Aires traders...
...In addition, rapid demographic growth in Europe necessitated the overseas migration of economically displaced rural and urban petit-bourgeois and proletarian elements...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, New York.3hands...
...Whitaker, p. 55...
...The exportation of coins from Alto Peru not only meant a certain surplus in the world market, but also permitted a large concentration of wealth in the hands of a reduced number of Buenos Aires traders...
...5 Andre under Frank has shown that the engagement of metropolitan centers in wars about access to and control over various segments of the world market tends to weaken temporarily the hold of each center over its respective satellites...
...capital in the marketing of these products, however, inhibited the landowning bourgeoisie from accumulating surplus capital for national development...
...At this point, the Buenos Aires upper class was forced to accelerate its turn to agricultural production for new sources of wealth...
...This stimulated immigration to the region...
...FROM COLONIALISM TO NEOCOLONIALISM: Just as the growth of the colonial system was determined primarily by the needs of the mother country, so its disintegration was conditioned by the inability of Spain to adapt the system to the changing economic relationships within and without the Empire...
...THE NEOCOLONIAL PERIOD: Following emancipation, the region suffered chronic civil war as the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie centered in Buenos Aires attempted to gain cntrol over the Rio de la Plata provinces...
...The commercial bourgeoisie, consigned thus to a state of critical dependence, allowed the British to trade directly with the interior...
...I, p. 33...
...Clark, p. 30...
...In this area, British activity was of a speculative nature...
...First they bought hides in Santa Fe, a fairly isolated province, and returned to Buenos Aires to sell them...
...See Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966...
...57-58...
...See Table I for figures on British investments...
...Rene Herrera Zuniga, Problemas de la Industrializacion en Argentina Z Sus Implicaciones Socio-Politicas, thesis tor licenciatura n International Relations (Mexico: Colegio de Mexico, Centro de Estudios Internacionales, mimeo, 1969), pp...
...In addition to their penetration of the commercial and productive sectors0jOthe British came to dominate finance...
...Worth 2.5 million pesos at the points of origin (silver in Potosi and gold in Bajo Peru), these coins had gained two million pesos in value by the time they were shipped out of Buenos Aires...
...This foreign monopoly over marketing began to displace the bourgeois-landown'ers from the center of economic power: the primary surplus capital was generated by the export sector of the economy...
...The resultant balance of payments crisis, which was felt throughout the 19th century, produced a severe dislocation in the Argentine socio-economic structure...
...The utilization of Buenos Aires as a port of entry was far more convenient than to move the slaves by sea to LimaCallao and then overland...
...Subordinate to and dependent on this sector were the numerous local economies along the Potosi-Tucuman-Santiago del Estero-Cordoba-Buenos Aires trade route...
...The Desert Conquest under Roca's presidency expanded the grazing areas, and the growth of the railways enabled livestock to reach the Buenos Aires port...
...Important in shaping the entire movement of colonization was the Treaty of Tordesillas (1491), which divided the world between Spain and Portugal...
...With the loss of the mines and the entry of British commerce, the Buenos Aires bourgeoisie was forced to increase its exploitation of the land with the production of meat and wheat...
...2 5 The ensuing rivalry was temporarily settled by a packers' pool in 1911 which distributed total shipments among the three contending groups as follows: 41.35 percent to the United States, 40.15 percent to England and 18.5 percent to Argentina...
...From 1880 to 1914 the Argentine economy "developed" as a result of certain national and international factors...
...period, the loss of Alto Peru (1811) during the wars of emancipation meant that those coins which continued to be exported were increasingly hard to replace and, in fact, represented circulating monies...
...There they learned of a demand for munitions in Paraguay...
...Giberti, El Desarrollo Agrario Argentino (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA7-1964...
...2 0 Some went to the countryside and worked in agricultural colonies based on purchased public lands...
...To this end, the city of Asuncion was founded in 1541 as an operational base from which several search parties were sent south and southwest in the vain hope of reaching non-existent treasures...
...43-44...
...This mercantilist expansion developed in three successive stages...
...In the process, various towns were established in what are now the central and northwest rgions Of Argentina...
...9. Halperin lecture...
...By the middle of the 18th century Buenos Aires was attracting most of the trade from northwest Argentina and Alto Peru, a situation which prompted a bitter rivalry between the Lima commercial oligarchy and their counterparts in the Atlantic port city...
...Almost immediately (1810), the struggle for independence exploded throughout her American colonies...
...The following were the sectors most deeply affected by the structured underdevelopment, which confined them to the position of greatest exploitability: the rural and urban working classes, most tenant and sharecrop farmers (chacareros), numerous private and public employees, small businessmen and merchants, artisans and minor industrialists...
...19 Issue . . . Excerpts from a speech by John A Hannah...
...Different regions "developed" at different rates according to their ability to service this mercantilist requirement of the mother country...
...15 Fourth, the potential capacity of the Argentine economy as the "world's breadbasket" coincided with the transition from pre-monopoly to monopoly capitalism in England, Germany, France, and the United States during the last two decades of the 19th century...
...This represented a mere nine percent of the total population because of the exclusion of immigrants...
...See Arthur P. Whitaker, Argentina (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1964), p. 50...
...Spain's decline as a world power, however, had begun long before the dramatic setbacks of this period -- with the defeat of her naval force by the British at Trafalgar and the Napoleonic invasions which menanced the monarchic core of her imperial system...
...Numbers and a high degree of geographic and industrial concentration assured this class an exceptional importance within the country's social structure...
...1 6 Foreign capital penetrated those sectors of the economy closely linked to the formation of an export economy...
...This commercial structure shaped the cattle economy as well...
...Edmund Clirk, Economic and Political Aspects of Argentine Development (m-imeo monograph, no date), p. 21...
...The heterogeneous composition of the UCR dominated by the more enlightened elements of the ruling landowning class, served to neutralize whatever impulses might have emerged toward transforming the Argentine political economy...
...Smith, pp...
...The strategic position of first British and then U.S...
...Although suppressed, it led to the formation in 1892 of the Union Civica Radical (UCR) -- a party predominantly petit-bourgeois in composition...
...When the Assembly moved to curtail British penetration of the market, however, the administration argued that such a policy, if implemented, would destroy the economy...
...By controlling the mechanisms of international trade to direct the investment of trade surplus in the 1853-1880 period of "national organization," the landowning class was able to assert itself and consolidate its political power after 1880.19 The overwhelming force of British expansion pushed the colonial bourgeoisie into a land-based mode of production...
...Ricardo M. Ortiz, Historia Economica de la Argentina, 1850-1930 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Raigal, 1955), 14...
...This shift in world economic power and the appearance of petit-bourgeois and proletarian sectors -- as a result of European immigration -were determining factors in forming the Argentine political economy in the 20th century...
...TABLE 2: RAILWAY EXPANSION Year Kas...
...2 The first Spanish expeditionary forces to reach the Rio de la Plata zone were spurred by the belief that the area was saturated with silver deposits...
...But just at the juncture at which the British monopolies obtained a stranglehold on the Argentine economy (1900-1910), they were in turn elbowed out by the vigorously expanding new meat trusts based in the United States...
...IV, No...
Vol. 4 • July 1970 • No. 4
