TRÁNSITO

REM (Made in Argentina)

Construction and deconstruction of Argentine Identity

Immediately after the arrival of the first Spaniards (1), we could recognize a model of the country based on the agricultural exploitation without the association to a real structure for the production. Close to the Declaration of the Independence from Spain (2), our territory began to experience several divisions of the big “latifundios” in private persons (those lands were originally stolen by the Spanish Crown and afterwards matter of new merchant’s transactions). The families that had been the possessors of those lands became later the social body of the “traditional families”, whose branches last today.

But we’ve described only a part of the reality at this moment. This first "layer" or model of country didn't superimpose over the precedent layer. It was really a replacement of the above-mentioned. The possibility of the existence of an "another" different (the Indian inhabitants of the America before Spanish Conquest) was denied either for peaceful means (forcing them to apprehend the European culture), or by means of a dirty war of extermination. Both procedures pursued the same goal: the uniformity, the existence of a single layer established by displacement and elimination of the previous. This displacement was not virtual: there was a real border articulated like a live membrane. Lines of forts existed with an artificial barrier (the Alsina’s Gutter (3)).

When it was necessary to change the configuration of the hand of work, this layer was then the place for the "Argentina of the Immigration" (4). The real gauchos, that in some way were the result from the mixture of Spaniards and the old inhabitants from America, were considered lost. They were replaced by “imaginary gauchos” created by the intellectuality of the “traditional families”, in some way as characters in the scenery prepared to the World, and in another way as an artificial identity made hastily as a defensive reaction against the avalanche of immigrants. We don’t know if the characters of "Don Segundo Sombra" or "Santos Vega" (5) were real or beings created from another that dreamed them (like the being created in the short story Circular Ruins by Jorge Luis Borges (6)).

The immigrants that had arrived over the layer of the “Traditional Society” finally destabilized the system. A significant amount of anarchist thinkers (7) arrived from Europe with their new ideas, either in order to stay or escaping from the persecution in Europe.

A next layer of the "Argentina of the Manufacture" could be recognized over the previous layer (8). The pivots of this layer were surprisingly three military: the general Savio, the general Mosconi and the general Perón. The first two dedicated their life to the primary exploitation of the steel and the petroleum respectively. It was the time for the basic industries, a state of puberty of argentine economy. Perón (9) on the other hand understood the economic necessities of most of the argentines. He talked about the "New Argentina"; a county of five years’ macroeconomic plans. Everything was foundational. Everything also rotated around the "infinite gratitude" of people to the leader and driver of the change. Really it was an elaborated "layer" by superimposing over the previous one. A not very transparent layer that didn't allow us to see the one that was hiding. This was the time of medium level-industrial developments and curious frustrated experiences like Pulqui airplanes and Huemul Project (10).

The incipient World economy’s globalization, at that time only bipolar (process that Perón titled "Universalización"). Perón’s model of country was obviously not able to fit in this reality,

The removal of this "layer," parallel to the development of the globalization, is going to take around a half of a century. The previous layer is now appearing. This process is really bloody in economic terms, but mainly in social terms. We must simply remember some episodes of a wild war that cost the lives of a lot of citizens of this country.

We are probably looking now to the elimination of the last remains of this layer and in parallel to an updating of the layer originally established in the XIV Century.

(3) Alsina was a Minister during Julio Argentino Roca’s administration. He built a 100 km-radium gutter as a defense against the Indians around Buenos Aires.

(4) Beginning with the first contingents at the middle of the XIX Century, foreigners represented the 21% of the Argentinean population in 1940.

(6) The Circular Ruins is the name of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, in which a character built a being by dreaming him.

(9) Constitutional President in two periods (1946-1952 and 1952- 1955) ending the last of both because a revolution that took him over.

(10) Pulqui airplanes were jets developed in the Argentina, extremely modern for the 50’s. Because of different politic pressures only some prototypes were made. Pulqui II was a project by Kurt Tank, who used to be an airplanes’ designer in Germany during the Second World War. Ronald Richter, a German scientist too, directed Huemul Project too. He tried to obtain nuclear energy by means of a controversial method that demonstrated to be conceptually useless. Due to the great mystery he created around his activities, he kept Perón interested. Richter persuaded Perón to announce wrongly that Argentina had dominated nuclear fusion.