Argentinian Principles
Following up on Martine´s post on Argentinian history I will add some more of this dry stuff….
Argentinia´s moving history of civil war, military junta´s and revolutions is not only restricted to what happened in the 70´s and 80´s. It goes further back. We began to discover some more of that when we visited Cordoba, the second biggest city of the country.
Having just been in Bariloche, Santiago and Mendoza, Cordoba was a bit of a disappointment. It is one of the major industry centres in Argentina, and as such it lacks any tree, is stuffed with sky-high grey office buildings, but, luckily, it has a few places with some very impressive of the old stuff. In fact, the older buildings that are left, are far more impressive than anything we have seen around here before.
To begin with, there are a couple very beautifull 18th-century churches with mosaic covered domes. And then there is one very nice street covered with buildings from the 17th-century Jesuit university and the very impressive church next to it. Both are UNESCO-heritage. During the visit to this university we found out that it still the most important university of South-America and that they have a pretty rich collection. They showed us a big 20.000+-collection of printed books, originated from the era when the book printing was invented. The funny thing was that they showed us some 100 of the oldest books they have, and all of these books had been printed by a Mr. Elsevier in Leyden…
At the end of our tour around this magnificant university, our guide suddenly tried to convince us that Argentina is not as ´South-American´ as its neighbours, but is more like a ´European´ country. I had read some about the fact that Argentinians are considered to be arrogant, as they are convinced that they are a better than the other South-Americans and that Argentina is just ´a European country´ located in the wrong continent, but now I was hearing this for real, from a highly educated person. He even started giving us ´proof´, giving ´facts´ that Argentinia is building nuclear powerplants for other countries, the bypass-operation was invented here and that the laws of all South-American countries originate from Argentinan law. So, our guide said, in Argentina the people really are more developed than the neighbouring countries, it is just because of all those bad politicians that Argentinia is not rich and that it is not as efficient as its European counterparts…
So, by trying to convince us that Argentina is not a Third World country, our guide gave us a really good look in the mind of the Argentinian people. When you think about it, all of this it is not suprising, as Argentinia was one of the wealthiest countries in the world (but the wealth was only shared by a few people) untill the economy broke down in the 193o´s…
Following up on our visit to the Jesuit university we went to a couple of towns around the city, that each had an old Jesuit estancia to visit, with all of them (there are seven) also being UNESCO-heritage. These estancias are very big farms (up to 300 people working on each) that were created by the Jesuit order to earn money that went straight to their university in the city, and to their missions troughout the countryside to turn the native people to the Catholic belief. This worked out pretty well, as they also had some respect for the native people as they tried to learn their language (we saw some old dictonaries of this ancient language back in the university) and let them use their art skills to build the estancias, churches and university. They even used democratic principles as the Jesuit order didn´t see the Spanish king as their ruler, but only God and the people they served…
That democratic principle didn´t go very well with the Spanish king, so in the 18th century he expelled the Jesuits from the whole of continent. After that the university, the churches and all of the estancias supporting them were taken over by other Catholic orders, but, as they had less respect for the natives (they saw them more like ´dumb´ people who you had to integrate in Spanish society), that didn´t work out very well. Within five years the estancias were all but bankrupt, and as a result the Cordoba university also had become a shadow of its former self. The expellation of the Jesuits marked also the start of the period in which a high number of the native people got killed by the Spainish….
One of the towns around Cordoba did not only have a Jesuit estancia, but also another thing connected to Argentinia´s and Latin America´s moving history, but something more recent. This town, Alta Gracia, was the place were the famous revolutoniar Che Gueverra spent his childhood. Che was somebody who, after having travelled trough South-America & Central-America for a while, got heavily involved with the poor, and wanted to change the fact that all the the rich here rule the whole continent.
So he was a man concerned with the poor people and a man of principle. But, he also was heavily involved with the libaration of Cuba from dicatorship, which in the end resulted in helping another dictator, Fidel Castro, to power. Shortly after Cuba had been ´liberated´ he tried to liberate Bolivia from another dictator, but then the CIA killed him. All of this makes Che a pretty controversial person, but the museum we visted in Alto Gracia didn´t show anything of this and only showed us how nice, friendly and concerned with the poor people Che had been…
We found out that this is pretty typical of Argentian museums devoted to famous person, as the museum devoted to Evita is about the same. We visited this museum a couple of days ago in Buenos Aires and this was a bit of a disappointment. Apart from showing how nice, friendly and concerned with the poor & womens rights Evita had been, it did only show LOTS OF the dresses she had worn in her short life. Nothing about her controversial husband, who was a fan of Mussullini and facism, banned freedom of speech the and who still influences current Argentinian politics.
A strange, confusing and very interesting country…
Jannis.
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