The emergence of a great nation
Sarmiento’s schools produced brilliant minds in philosophy, literature, and science: Alejandro Korn, Leopoldo Lugones, Eduardo Wilde, Paul Groussac, Carlos Octavio Bunge, Agustín Álvarez, Juan Agustín García, Miguel Cané, Ricardo Rojas, Alfonsina Storni, Cecilia Grierson, among many others. If they had lived in Europe, they might have achieved global fame.
In 1912, Argentina was one of the first countries to establish the secret, universal, and mandatory franchise. It was democratic while Europe turned fascist. One of the first subway services of the world was built in Buenos Aires by the Anglo Argentine Trolley Co. in 1913. That same year, Ford Motor Company opened its third overseas plant in Buenos Aires.
The first and only branch office of Harrods of London opened in Buenos Aires in 1914. It was a luxury shopping center of seven floors and 506,000 square feet that operated in the center of the city until closing in 1998. The elegant building stands empty today.
In the 1920s, tango music and tango orchestras triumphed in the ballrooms of Paris, and became, together with jazz and the foxtrot, the fashionable rhythms of the day. Incomparable tango singer Carlos Gardel, the son of immigrants who starred in such films as The Tango on Broadway, could have become the next Rudolph Valentino. He died at age 44 in an airplane accident in 1935.
In 1918, the University Reform Movement started in Cordoba and Buenos Aires, transforming medieval canons of teaching into modern academic freedom. The movement then spread to all of Latin America. Argentine publishing houses were the most prolific in the region and the entire Spanish-speaking world read Argentine authors, books, and translations.
Peruvian Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa remembers how the Argentine children’s magazine Billiken shaped his childhood in the remote city of Cochabamba, and how he discovered modern literature—from Faulkner to Sartre—through the translations of Argentine publishers that served the entire continent: “Like uncountable number of young people of my generation, I owe a good part of my literary formation to that passion for books that nests in the heart of Argentine culture.” Even today, Buenos Aires has more book shops than any other city in the world.
In 1913, the Argentine GDP was almost as great as that of the rest of South America combined. Per capita income was 50 percent higher than in Italy, 85 percent higher than in Spain and Norway, 170 percent higher than in Japan, and more than 4 times greater than that of Brazil. Our Armed Forces were the most powerful, well equipped, and best trained in South America. The Military College of the Nation, where army officers are still educated, was at a level that rivaled that of West Point.
Argentina was neutral during the First World War, and exported beef and grain to both sides. It accumulated so much capital and gold that the Argentine peso became one of the strongest currencies in the world. Rich Argentine families would spend part of the year in Paris—as Arab sheiks now do in London. The French still use the Belle Époque saying, “rich as an Argentine.”
Cities were safe; women and children could walk anywhere any time. Aside from a few cases dealing with Russian anarchists or Italian Mafiosi, police mainly dealt with violations of municipal ordinance. There was great social mobility; a farmer’s son could study, work hard, and become a doctor or businessman.