The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (W W Norton & Company; 1998)

THE SOUTH AMERICAN WAY^317

women—spinning and weaving, potting, soapmaking, cooking oil, can-
dlemaking.^10 In a macho society with values inherited from Spain, adult­
hood brought males "complete independence and idleness."^11
The improvisational character of the colonial administration com­
bined with the unexpected collapse of Spanish rule to make the fate of
this tail-land problematic. Much of post-independence Argentine pol­
itics consisted in a running battle between centralist Buenos Aires and
the disjointed federalismo of the "provinces." Not until 1862 was the
Argentine republic proclaimed; even that was premature. It took an­
other generation of coups and killings to end sedition and secession.
Some scholars dismiss this political instability by pointing to the schiz­
ophrenia of the young American republic: not until the defeat of the
Confederacy in 1865 was the unity of the nation assured. I do not
agree with the comparison. The United States (CCE pluribus unum")
was an effective, working unit until the dispute over slavery became un­
manageable. Argentina was not a working unit for half a century after
independence.

Argentina, always a land of cattle and sheep, knew less of crops and
men. The triumph of pastoralism and the relative neglect of agriculture
were closely linked to land and immigration policies. Foreign observers
saw the country as a potential magnet for settlers. So did some far-
sighted natives, who called for a wider recruitment of immigrants, in
particular, of settlers from Protestant Europe, whom they saw as bet­
ter educated, harder working, politically mature. This would require,
of course, a change in either the policy or the power of the Catholic
Church; also of attitudes deep-rooted in the population:

Respect the altar of every belief. Spanish America, limited to Catholicism

to the exclusion of any other religion, resembles a solitary and silent con­

vent of nuns. ... To exclude different religions in South America is to ex­

clude the English, the Germans, the Swiss, the North Americans, which is

to say the very people this continent most needs. To bring them without

their religion is to bring them without the agent that makes them what they

are.^12

Good advice, but hard to follow. An established population, reared

in Counter-Reformation prejudice and fearful of potent strangers, was

not going to welcome heretics; nor would the Church go quietiy into

retreat.^13

Meanwhile immigrants could go elsewhere. Argentine land policies