Argentina: A Mirror of Your Future
Argentina became independent from Spain in 1816 just after Napoleos occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. After a period of struggle between caudillos, the country was unified with a constitution inspired, in part, by that of the United States. A generation of brilliant thinkers led by Juan Bautista Alberdi and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento saw European immigration as the key to modernity...
To this end, President Nicolás Avellaneda (1837 – 1885) pressed for the Colonization and Immigration Law of 1876, which established immigrant recruiting agencies in the main cities of Europe. Qualified emigrants were offered third-class tickets on the steamships that ran from Genoa, Marseilles, and Naples to Buenos Aires. Newcomers were welcomed at the Hotel de Inmigrantes, and assigned jobs in the city or on farms in the interior. The architects of the “Great Immigration” made mistakes—little land was made available to newcomers, and many of them ended up in bad housing in the cities—but between 1880 and 1914 Argentina received more than six million Europeans, most of them from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Britain. In that very short period, Argentina went from being a colonial backwater to a First-World nation...
In those days, many thought Argentina was called to be the United States of the south. By 1914, it had the sixth highest GDP in the world. Thanks to immigration, it went from a population of 800,000—mostly mestizos—in 1852, to 8 million in 1914. Eighty-five percent were white, and most of the remaining 15 percent were light-skinned mestizos, completely assimilated to Western culture. The concept of multiculturalism did not exist. Buenos Aires became known as the Paris of South America, with wide avenues, mansions, palaces, theaters, museums, schools, excellent universities, and renowned scholars and researchers...
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...
Very little is left today of that Argentina. It began to fade during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Many historians blame the closing of international markets after the Wall Street Crash—that was certainly a factor—but there was another cause: European immigration stopped. Instead, there was migration of Mestizos and Amerindians, both from the country to the city and from neighboring Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile. These new arrivals were prolific and ringed the main cities—Buenos Aires, Rosario, Cordoba, Mendoza—with belts of poverty. Unlike the Europeans, whose arrival was planned and encouraged, Amerindian migration was uncontrolled...
In 2004, the socialist government of Nestor Kirchner passed a new migration law, implementing what was known as the “Patria Grande” (Big Homeland) program. This included amnesty for all illegals, as well as a relaxation of income requirements for immigrants. It also guaranteed free access to public education at all levels, free medical care, family reunification, elimination of the obligation for public officials to report illegal immigrants, issuance of residence permits with only a sworn statement rather than proof of income, and voting rights in local elections. These measures were clearly meant to win votes from non-whites*...
Unlike the European influx, there has been no planning for recent immigration. All these newcomers occupy space in an irregular way, overloading public services and infrastructure...
You Americans still have a Hispanic population that is only 17 percent of the total, a figure we reached in the 1970s. Argentina is a mirror that shows what your country will be like when that figure reaches 40 percent...
CAIRCO Notes
* It is interesting to note the parallels with the globalist / socialist agenda of the Democratic Party and Identity Politics.