Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

civilized folk defeat the barbarians 195
policy made her deaf to these cries. But the provinces had their revenge
when they sent to her in Rosas the climax of their own barbarism.
Heavily enough have those who uttered it, paid for the saying, “The Argentine
Republic ends at the Arroyo del Medio.” It now reaches from the
Andes to the sea, while barbarism and violence have sunk Buenos Ayres
below the level of the provinces. We ought not to complain of Buenos Ayres
that she is great and will be greater, for this is her destiny. This would be
to complain of Providence and call upon it to alter physical outlines. This
being impossible, let us accept as well done what has been done by the
Master’s hand. Let us rather blame the ignorance of that brutal power which
makes the gifts lavished by Nature upon an erring people of no avail for
itself or for the provinces. Buenos Ayres, instead of sending to the interior,
light, wealth, and prosperity, sends only chains, exterminating hordes, and
petty subaltern tyrants. She, too, takes her revenge for the evil infl icted
upon her by the provinces when they prepared for her a Rosas!
I have indicated the circumstance that the position of Buenos Ayres favors
monopoly, in order to show that the confi guration of the country so
tends to centralization and consolidation, that even if Rosas had uttered
his cry of “Confederation or Death!” in good faith, he would have ended
with the consolidated system which is now established. Our desire, however,
should be for union in civilization, and in liberty, while there has been
given us only union in barbarism and in slavery. But a time will come when
business will take its legitimate course. What now concerns us to know is
that the progress of civilization must culminate only in Buenos Ayres; the
pampa is a very bad medium of transmission and distribution through the
provinces, and we are now about to see what is the result of this condition
of things.
But above all the peculiarities of special portions of the country, there
predominates one general, uniform, and constant character. Whether the
soil is covered with the luxuriant and colossal vegetation of the tropics, or
stunted, thorny, and unsightly shrubs bear witness to the scanty moisture
which sustains them; or whether fi nally the pampa displays its open and
monotonous level, the surface of the country is generally fl at and unbroken—the
mountain groups of San Luis and Cordova in the centre, and some
projecting spurs of the Andes toward the north, being scarcely an interruption
to this boundless continuity [. . .].
The people who inhabit these extensive districts belong to two different
races, the Spanish and the native; the combination of which form a series
of imperceptible gradations. The pure Spanish race predominates in the rural
districts of Cordova and San Luis, where it is common to meet young