Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City

Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City
Author: James Gardner
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1466879033

Buenos Aires, Argentina, recognized for its European-style architecture and lively theater scene, is a truly special place. The second-largest city in South America, it has been the home of such renowned cultural and historical figures as Jorge Luis Borges and Astor Piazzola, Che Guevara and Eva Peron. Like every truly great city, New York, London and Prague; Buenos Aires is its own universe, with its own center of gravity, its own scents and flavors, its own architectural signature-in short, its own way of being. From San Telmo's oak-paneled restaurants and brightly tiled apothecaries from 1900, and the phantasmagoric Beaux Arts palaces along Avenida Alvear and Plaza San Martin, to the parks of Palermo and the bustling bars and cafes along Corrientes and LaValle, Buenos Aires is steeped in exotic culture and history. In Buenos Aires, Art and culture critic James Gardner offers a colorful biography of the "Paris of the South," from its origins and time as a colonial city, through its Golden age, the rise of Peron, and the Falklands War, to the present day. With entertaining asides about art, architecture, literature, food and dance, as well as local customs and colorful personalities, this is a rich and unique historical narrative of Buenos Aires.

A Brief History of Argentina

A Brief History of Argentina
Author: Jonathan C. Brown
Publisher: Brief History
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780816083619

Argentina has a population that ranks among the most educated and skilled in Latin America, and its middle class has historically been large and politically engaged. Yet Argentina remains mired in economic instability, chronic unemployment, strict class divisions, and political corruption. Still, Argentines refuse to accept their current conditions. There has been a continuous effort to address the injustices and tyranny that occurred during the Dirty War (1976-83) and the two-decade silence that followed the military dictatorship. Additionally, in a significant demonstration of progress, October 2007 marked the first time a woman was elected president. Continuing where the first edition ended and spanning more than 12,000 years of history, A Brief History of Argentina, Second Edition thoroughly and comprehensively explores the country's obstacles and triumphs and discusses how they will affect Argentina's future. Coverage includes A comprehensive summary of Argentina's diverse geography and its varied natural resources The effects of neoliberalism on Argentina's large working class and urban poor, culminating in the caserola movement, the piqueteros movement, and the birth of the cartoneros The impact a changing global economy has had within Argentina's borders The rich culture of Argentina, which has fostered five Nobel laureates, vibrant cities that draw millions of tourists annually, and sports teams that have won multiple world championships Basic facts, a chronology, a bibliography, and a list of suggested reading make up the appendixes. Book jacket.

The Conquest of the Desert

The Conquest of the Desert
Author: Carolyne R. Larson
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2020-11-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826362087

For more than one hundred years, the Conquest of the Desert (1878–1885) has marked Argentina’s historical passage between eras, standing at the gateway to the nation’s “Golden Age” of progress, modernity, and—most contentiously—national whiteness and the “invisibilization” of Indigenous peoples. This traditional narrative has deeply influenced the ways in which many Argentines understand their nation’s history, its laws and policies, and its cultural heritage. As such, the Conquest has shaped debates about the role of Indigenous peoples within Argentina in the past and present. The Conquest of the Desert brings together scholars from across disciplines to offer an interdisciplinary examination of the Conquest and its legacies. This collection explores issues of settler colonialism, Indigenous-state relations, genocide, borderlands, and Indigenous cultures and land rights through essays that reexamine one of Argentina’s most important historical periods.

Britain and the Making of Argentina

Britain and the Making of Argentina
Author: Gordon A. Bridger
Publisher: WIT Press
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 1845646843

The author reminds us all of the huge part that British capital, British people and British technology played in transforming Argentina into a modern 20th century economy. He also analyses the reasons for Argentina's loss of momentum in the post-war world.Much of the history has been forgotten and/or misjudged. That does not make it any less important. In fact, it deserves to be recognised as there are lessons that could be learned from the “golden decade” of development. Those who have an interest in history and development, especially in Argentina, including academics, journalists, historians, and economists will all find this economic and social history of interest.

Secondary Cities of Argentina

Secondary Cities of Argentina
Author: James Scobie
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1988-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804766622

This study of three Argentine provincial capitals introduces a new concept in Latin American urban studies: the historical role of secondary cities, settlements large enough to possess all the elements commonly associated with urban areas and yet too small to figure among a country's major cities. The principal contribution of the book is to explain how and why smaller cities grew. What determined and shaped their growth? How did local inhabitants, and especially the dominant social elites, react to internal and external influences? To what extent were they able to control growth? What relationships developed with the surrounding regions and the outside world? The study shows that secondary cities linked rural economies and inhabitants with the outside world while insulating the traditional rural environment from the changing character of large urban centers. In this intermediate position, economic relationships and social structure changed slowly, and only in response to outside innovations such as railroads. Continuity within the secondary centers thus reinforced conservatism, accentuated the gap between the major cities and the rest of the country, and contributed to the resistance to change that characterizes much of Latin American today. The book is illustrated with photographs and maps.

Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation

Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2010-07-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822392607

In Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation, Sandra McGee Deutsch brings to light the powerful presence and influence of Jewish women in Argentina. The country has the largest Jewish community in Latin America and the third largest in the Western Hemisphere as a result of large-scale migration of Jewish people from European and Mediterranean countries from the 1880s through the Second World War. During this period, Argentina experienced multiple waves of political and cultural change, including liberalism, nacionalismo, and Peronism. Although Argentine liberalism stressed universal secular education, immigration, and individual mobility and freedom, women were denied basic citizenship rights, and sometimes Jews were cast as outsiders, especially during the era of right-wing nacionalismo. Deutsch’s research fills a gap by revealing the ways that Argentine Jewish women negotiated their own plural identities and in the process participated in and contributed to Argentina’s liberal project to create a more just society. Drawing on extensive archival research and original oral histories, Deutsch tells the stories of individual women, relating their sentiments and experiences as both insiders and outsiders to state formation, transnationalism, and cultural, political, ethnic, and gender borders in Argentine history. As agricultural pioneers and film stars, human rights activists and teachers, mothers and doctors, Argentine Jewish women led wide-ranging and multifaceted lives. Their community involvement—including building libraries and secular schools, and opposing global fascism in the 1930s and 1940s—directly contributed to the cultural and political lifeblood of a changing Argentina. Despite their marginalization as members of an ethnic minority and as women, Argentine Jewish women formed communal bonds, carved out their own place in society, and ultimately shaped Argentina’s changing pluralistic culture through their creativity and work.

Jorge Luis Borges in Context

Jorge Luis Borges in Context
Author: Robin Fiddian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2020-01-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781108470445

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) is Argentina's most celebrated author. This volume brings together for the first time the numerous contexts in which he lived and worked; from the history of the Borges family and that of modern Argentina, through two world wars, to events including the Cuban Revolution, military dictatorship, and the Falklands War. Borges' distinctive responses to the Western tradition, Cervantes and Shakespeare, Kafka, and the European avant garde are explored, along with his appraisals of Sarmiento, gauchesque literature and other strands of the Argentine cultural tradition. Borges' polemical stance on Catholic integralism in early twentieth-century Argentina is accounted for, whilst chapters on Buddhism, Judaism and landmarks of Persian literature illustrate Borges's engagement with the East. Finally, his legacy is visible in the literatures of the Americas, in European countries such as Italy and Portugal, and in the novels of J. M. Coetzee, representing the Global South.

Immigration and Nationalism

Immigration and Nationalism
Author: Carl Solberg
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 1969-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1477305017

“Dirtier than the dogs of Constantinople.” “Waves of human scum thrown upon our beaches by other countries.” Such was the vitriolic abuse directed against immigrant groups in Chile and Argentina early in the twentieth century. Yet only twenty-five years earlier, immigrants had encountered a warm welcome. This dramatic change in attitudes during the quarter century preceding World War I is the subject of Carl Solberg’s study. He examines in detail the responses of native-born writers and politicians to immigration, pointing out both the similarities and the significant differences between the situations in Argentina and Chile. As attitudes toward immigration became increasingly nationalistic, the European was no longer pictured as a thrifty, industrious farmer or as an intellectual of superior taste and learning. Instead, the newcomer commonly was regarded as a subversive element, out to destroy traditional creole social and cultural values. Cultural phenomena as diverse as the emergence of the tango and the supposed corruption of the Spanish language were attributed to the demoralizing effects of immigration. Drawing his material primarily from writers of the pre–World War I period, Solberg documents the rise of certain forms of nationalism in Argentina and Chile by examining the contemporary press, journals, literature, and drama. The conclusions that emerge from this study also have obvious application to the situation in other countries struggling with the problems of assimilating minority groups.

A Woman, a Man, a Nation

A Woman, a Man, a Nation
Author: Jeffrey M. Shumway
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826360912

In 1837 Mariquita Sánchez de Mendeville was so fed up with governor Juan Manuel de Rosas that she chose to leave her beloved city of Buenos Aires. Leaving was especially hard because Mariquita felt that she had played an influential role in transforming Buenos Aires from a Spanish colonial outpost into a brilliant capital in a world of republics. Juan Manuel de Rosas’s version of order alienated Mariquita, who chose self-imposed exile in Montevideo over living under Rosas’s stifling rule. The struggle went on for nearly two decades until Mariquita finally came home for good in 1852 while Rosas went into exile. Mariquita’s and Juan Manuel’s lives corresponded with the major events and processes that shaped the turbulent beginnings of the Argentine nation, many of which also shaped Latin America and the Atlantic World during the Age of Revolution (1750–1850). Their lives provide an overarching narrative for Argentine history that both scholars and students will find intriguing.

Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina

Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina
Author: Paulina Alberto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2016-03-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316477843

This book reconsiders the relationship between race and nation in Argentina during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and places Argentina firmly in dialog with the literature on race and nation in Latin America, from where it has long been excluded or marginalized for being a white, European exception in a mixed-race region. The contributors, based both in North America and Argentina, hail from the fields of history, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. Their essays collectively destabilize widespread certainties about Argentina, showing that whiteness in that country has more in common with practices and ideologies of Mestizaje and 'racial democracy' elsewhere in the region than has typically been acknowledged. The essays also situate Argentina within the well-established literature on race, nation, and whiteness in world regions beyond Latin America (particularly, other European 'settler societies'). The collection thus contributes to rethinking race for other global contexts as well.