Carbone Park, Tenement, Slaughterhouse

Elite Imaginaries of Buenos Aires, 1852-1880
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-593-45255-5
Verlag: Campus Verlag GmbH
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 243 Seiten

Welche Wahrnehmungen und Vorstellungen von ihrer Stadt hatte die Oberschicht im späten 19. Jahrhundert? Antonio Carbone zeigt dies exemplarisch am Beispiel von Buenos Aires, wo sich - an einem Wendepunkt der Geschichte des modernen Argentinien und der globalen Stadtgeschichte - nach dramatischen Cholera- und Gelbfieberepidemien eine breite Diskussion um die »Krise des Urbanen« entzündete, die zu einer partiellen Umgestaltung der Stadt führte. In seiner Kultur-, Sozial-, Global- und Umweltgeschichte nimmt er besonders drei urbane Brennpunkte in den Blick: die industriellen Schlachthöfe, die von Migrant_innen bewohnten Mietshäuser und einen Park im Stadtteil Palermo.

Antonio Carbone ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Deutschen Historischen Institut in Rom.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carbone, Antonio

Leseproben

Slaughterhouse: The and the Discussion on Industry40*

In the 1850s, newspapers commented thoroughly on the new opening of almost every brick, candle, soap, tannery, and meat-salting factory. Indeed, industry was one of the main issues occupying the minds of the urban elites of the period. For instance, a series of articles published by in 1856 marked an enthusiastic celebration of the opening of a gas factory for a new streetlight system. The author of the articles saw major progress, both in the factory and the new streetlights. In his opinion, gas would bring the “century of light” to Buenos Aires and “clarity” into the darkness caused by the regular use of bothersome oil lamps.41 Notwithstanding the journalist’s connection between industry, progress, and modernity, the gas factory was forced to endure workers’ strikes and several “attacks” by the “enemies of gas” during its first months of operation.42 Many feared the pollution and risk of explosion that were linked to gas production. In fact, while some saw both the gas factory and industry more generally as forces that guaranteed wealth, progress, and modernity, others regarded such developments as a hygienic, aesthetic, and social threat and as an obstacle on Buenos Aires’ path to a clean, beautiful, and harmonic modernity.

Especially the , the meat-salting factories that represented the major manufacturing branch in Buenos Aires, engendered mixed opinions and emotions. The were slaughterhouses that mainly produced cowhides, jerked beef, and tallow for the export market. These factories were associated with major economic and political interests, yet they were also the cause of dramatic pollution levels that inspired a vast array of fears and concerns. Supported by hygienist arguments, many perceived the pollution caused by the as a threat to public health. During the cholera and yellow fever outbreaks between 1867 and 1871, many questioned the ’ right to pollute and endanger the lives of the city’s inhabitants. Most notably, the dramatic yellow fever epidemic of 1871 triggered a controversial discussion on the that eventually resulted in the decision to ban meat-salting slaughterhouses from the city and to impose a resettlement 50 km south of their original location on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires.

This chapter reconstructs elites’ views and emotions on the and industry in general, and how these conceptions intertwined with the production of urban imaginaries and space. The chapter shows the uncertainties, ambivalences, desires, and contradictions that characterized elite opinions and sentiments on the . By highlighting these contradictions, ambiguities, and uncertainties, this chapter proposes a new historical perspective on the relationship between urban elites and discourses of urban modernity. In fact, though the elites unanimously agreed on modernity as the requisite path for Buenos Aires to follow, this chapter reveals that industry was not necessarily part of the urban elites’ imaginary of urban modernity, and more generally that this imaginary of modernity was somewhat vague, undefined, and malleable.

The first part of this chapter shows how modern science and especially hygiene, as the main field of urban expertise of the time, was plagued by conflicts and contradictions. This first part illustrates, on the one hand, the importance of science for conceiving and producing urban space while, on the other hand, underlining that science and hygiene were contested and partially unsuccessful. The second part reconstructs the system of dichotomies, such as those between urban and rural, barbaric and civilized, and modern and backward, that characterized the way elites interpreted space. This second part revolves around the idea that the had an economic, political, spatial, and cultural position that troubled this system of clear-cut dichotomies. Finally, in the last part this chapter focuses on the discussion on the that took place during the epidemics and reconstructs the urban imaginaries that were connected with the two options of allowing the to remain in Buenos Aires or of banning them from the city.

Hygiene and Medicine: Disease and Industrial Pollution

At midday on January 3, 1868, a clear and hot day of the austral summer, as reported by the newspapers and , gathered in the streets to pay their last respects to the Argentine Vice President, Marcos Paz, who had succumbed to cholera on the previous day.43 On the day of the funeral, Buenos Aires appeared a city in mourning: the flags on all public buildings were at half-mast, as were the flags of the big ships anchored in the roadstead overlooking the city. Since the streets were already lined with hearses for the many victims of cholera, the government, calling for national mourning, decreed that a special funeral train should carry the body of the Vice President from his suburban house in Flores to the , in the city center.44 As and reported, common and the remaining school pupils who had not fled the pestilence-stricken city stood at the side of the railroad waving and throwing flowers at the rolling bier. When the special train entered the station, a group dressed in black solemnly greeted the casket. The gathering of army officials, foreign diplomats, representatives of public institutions, and public servants formed a cortege behind the honor guard and the catafalque, pulled by four white horses in black cloaks. As soon as the catafalque began to move, followed by the men wearing black frock coats despite the summer heat, volleys of artillery fire sallied forth from the Spanish fortress onto the central plaza, while the city’s church bells tolled simultaneously. The cortege moved along the Calle Libertad towards the northern outskirts of the city to reach the Recoleta Cemetery, where the Minister of the Interior, the hygienist Guillermo Rawson, held a eulogy for the Vice President.

Rawson’s dramatic and patriotic speech paid homage to Marcos Paz, who was the incumbent head of state in the capital at the time of his death. The President, Bartolomé Mitre, was in fact in the Chaco, leading the Argentine army in a series of endless military operations against the Paraguayan army. In his speech, Rawson identified the Paraguayan President Francisco Solano López and the “” as the two major enemies of the state.45 Rawson’s words served as a rebuttal to critics such as Raoul Legout, who had broken the spirit of national unity on the day of mourning in the columns of the francophone newspaper , attacking both Mitre and his government. In the article, Legout argued that cholera was not a scourge of God but rather the result of Mitre’s ungodly politics, which had brought the devastating Paraguayan War upon Argentina. According to Legout, the allied Brazilian army had brought cholera to Buenos Aires and he identified therefore the war as the primary cause of the epidemic. The Francophone journalist asserted with extreme clarity: “Mitre is the cholera; the Alliance [the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay against Paraguay] is the cholera.”46

As a leading member of Mitre’s government, Rawson replied to such criticism in his funeral speech, presenting an opposite argument. He did not deny the connection between the war and the cholera epidemic but rather suggested a different form of connection: cholera was not embodied by Mitre but in fact by President Solano López of Paraguay. Rawson illustrated that the death of Marcos Paz had followed the death of the Vice President’s son, who had fallen on the battlefield of Curupayty, a major defeat inflicted on the armies of the Triple Alliance by the Paraguayans. In Rawson’s words, Paz’s son had been killed by “the dark despot of Paraguay, who left his wilderness [] […] to invade our territory gratuitously and treacherously, […] troubling the pacific inhabitants of our land.”47 Paz himself had then fallen victim to cholera, another dark despot, described as “a mysterious enemy, who assaults its victims, chosen by the finger of God, in the dead of night, squeezing, devouring and freezing them without pity and eventually throwing their corpses into the mass grave.”48 In Rawson’s words, both Marcos Paz and his son were victims of...