As a follow-up to last week’s post about the early 19th-century associations of Afro-Argentines in Buenos Aires, I want to mention a digitizing project of the national archives: La Ruta del Esclavo.

The project was funded by UNESCO, which provides an introductory overview of slavery in Argentina.

The La Ruta del Esclavo site supposedly provides access to more than 500 digitized documents. Unfortunately, the interface is not very well designed and it’s very difficult to find the digitized images.

To their credit, however, the archives has provided a very detailed listing online as to which documents are in the collection. Providing this degree of metadata is very important to researchers. And, in truth, the descriptive information about a collection is more costly and difficult to develop than the actual digitizing of archival material.

Anyway, it’s a good effort and I suspect, like most libraries and archives, that the Archivo General de la Nación de la República Argentina does not have the resources for digital projects. As a librarian with extensive technological experience I really should get more involved in supporting digital libraries in Argentina.

Augunga, Kisama, Maravi, Monyolo, Mina Nagó, Sabalu … these were some of the names of the more than fifty African “nations” that existed in Buenos Aires during the first-half of the 19th century. In addition to the word nación these social groups were known as candombes, tangos, and tambos.

Popular perceptions of candombes is that these were secretive, underground groups focused on dancing and music. But, actually, these groups were recognized by the government and licensed under the name of Asociaciones Africanas. These African Associations essentially served as mutual aid societies that were responsible for, among other things, the education of emacipated slaves.

Religion & Politics

Candombes attended to the spiritual needs of its members, particularly through funeral rites and memory of the dead. Half of the funds of a candombe would be spent on burials and funeral services. Each candombe had a meeting house, which often included a temple or sanctuary. These candombe meeting houses were mostly, if not all, located in the southern parts of Buenos Aires. The meeting house of Sociedad Congo was located on the three hundred block of Av Independecia.

The candombes were highly politicized organizations. The original charter by the Argentine government in 1825 created just ten African associations. But internal conflicts among the groups resulted in more than fifty associations being formed by 1835.

Each candombe had an elected leader, an elder, the padre de nación. In an effort to maintain control over the African Associations, the government charter specified that the elections within each association must be overseen by the police. This control led to a patronage system between police and African leaders. In most cases, elders led an association for only a few years. But, in others, the leadership was much longer. The Nación Benguela was led by Joaquín Arriola for thirty years until 1864 when he was sued by opposing groups within the association.

The African Diaspora

I’ve written before about the decline of the Afro-Argentine population of Buenos Aires. In 1838 approximately one-fourth of the population was of African descent. At that time, approximately one-third had been born in Africa. Slavery in Argentina ended in 1813.

Update: Slavery in Argentina was not actually abolished until 1853. A law passed in 1813 guaranteed freedom to children born to slaves. The associations described here were the those of freed Afro-Argentines.

One study shows that the majority of slaves in Buenos Aires were the areas of the Congo and Angola.

One of the reasons for the internal strife among candombes was that members often came from different regions of Africa. [Ethnicity in studies of the African diaspora is a complicated issue, which I’m not going to address here]. A scholar who researched the names of the African Associations of Buenos Aires identified that 25 had names originating from West Central Africa, 14 from West Africa, and 10 from East Africa. Some bore non-African names (e.g., the group calling itself Bahiana represented former Brazilian slaves). Other groups had Catholic religious names, such as San Baltazar.

Despite the origin of the names, practices of a specific candombe didn’t represent traditional customs of the corresponding place in Africa. The rituals and activities of a candombe resulted from the blending of different groups since not all members shared the same African ancestry. Many smaller groups did not have the resources to form their own associations, so they aligned with another group.

The Uruguayan artist Figari is known for his paintings of candombe scenes. While there are a greater number of accounts of candombes in Montevideo, the African Associations demonstrate the significant role of Afro-Argentines in early 19th century Buenos Aires.

For further reading on this topic, see “To Honor the Ashes of their Forebears”: The Rise and Crisis of African Nations in the Post-Independence State of Buenos Aires, 1820 – 1860 by Oscar Chamosa in The Americas, January 2003 Vol 59, No. 3, pp 347 – 378.

Continues part I….

Early 1800s a family of singers – husband, wife, brother-in-law – tour the north of Italy, stopping in Piacenza and Reggio Emilia. Performances are becoming more scare as their style of comic opera falls out of fashion for the serious, grander sounds of Rossini. The troupe hears about opportunities in the Americas. The voyage is difficult, still by sail not steam. They play before the royal court in Rio de Janeiro, then head south into the towns of the Rio de la Plata.

The Buenos Aires that they find is not the pseudo-European capital of the later 18th century. The immigration boom has not yet arrived. Early opera productions are not full-length performances, just selections, highlights. Roles depend upon availability, a baritone sings the part of the tenor, a contralto passes herself off as a soprano. This singing family decides to settle in the area eventually becoming teachers, instructing others in the art of music.

The pattern of a family troupe traveling to South America from Italy was repeated throughout the early parts of the 1800s. The singers who came to Argentina in that time were never the leading performers. Buenos Aires received only the ones whose careers were fading, that never really got started, or that were just attempting to make a name for themselves.

Teresa Schieroni and Margherita Garavaglia are two such singers who arrived in Buenos Aires in the late 1820s. From here they traveled on to Chile and Peru before making their way across the Pacific to performances in south Asia. The women were to sail on to Calcutta but there are no reports of their arrival. Like most of us, the pair simply disappeared from history.

Some of the early singers may, in fact, have had very good voices but the opera profession in Italy, then as now, was overcrowded and competitive. Separate circuits developed for Central America and the Caribbean. European performers who traveled to Havana and Caracas rarely made their way to the southern part of the continent.

Serious opera in Buenos Aires languished until the 1850s, coinciding with the fall of Rosas. The mid-century century saw a new society emerging. In 1857 Buenos Aires opened the first Teatro Colón which featured Emma La Grua, one of the first top ranked singers to perform in Argentina. Opera season was starting in Buenos Aires.

What was opera in Buenos Aires like during the late 1800s? Coming in part III.

A fourteen-year-old Yiddish-speaking boy, born in a shtetl outside of Kiev, forced to work since the age of ten, is shot during the 1905 Russian revolution. Wounded, he spends six months in jail. Three years later he moves to Argentina to join his brother. Within a few months he leaves the Jewish neighborhood of Once, learns Spanish, finds non-Jewish roommates, and gets a job as a machinist in an Italian-owned metal shop. He frequents the Biblioteca Rusa where he absorbs the vigorous discussions promoting anarchism.

Barely a year after his arrival, this teenager witnesses the mayhem of the 1909 May Day demonstrations. The police fire upon the protesters. Anarchists shoot back. At least five dead and dozens wounded. The days that follow are a week of violent reprisals and protests. Semana Roja. Sixty thousand people march to the funerals for those who died on May 1. Riots continue along with demands for the removal of police chief Ramón Falcón.

Tensions continue throughout the year. The 17th of October 1909 starts a month of unparalleled anarchist activity in Buenos Aires. Two immigrants from Barcelona, a twenty-two year-old bricklayer and a bookbinder of the same age, place a bomb in front of the Spanish embassy. Two weeks later another young Russian immigrant attempts to detonate a bomb in the church outside Recoleta cemetery. Meanwhile, our teenager, Simon Radowitzky, closely follows the movements of the police chief.

14 November 1909, Colonel Falcón and his aide twenty-year-old Alberto Lartigau ride through Recoleta. As their car approaches the corner of Callao and Quintana, a bomb is thrown inside. The explosion follows. Neither man is killed instantly. Their injuries are severe. Both will die before nightfall.

Massive arrests follow, mostly Russians and Jews. Simon Radowitzky identified as the assasin. Confusion about his age. Confusion about his name, Radowitzky, Radowitsky, Radowisky. Citing the criminology of the day, the prosecution asserts that the defendant’s physical features, his forehead, his jawline, clearly indicate that he possesses criminal capabilities. Too young for the death penalty. Instead, Simon Radowitzsky is sentenced to life imprisonment.

The anarchist press idealizes Radowitzky, casting him as an icon who avenged the deaths of the workers. He becomes “el juisticiero,” the one who gives justice to the working class. Supporters plan bold attempts for his escape. January 1911 a tunnel is dug under the prison. Thirteen escape, including two would-be presidential assasins, but Radowitzky is delayed and misses the opportunity. Radowitzky is transferred to the prison in Ushuaia to forestall any other escape efforts.

Yet, seven years later, on the eve of the end of the first World War, he goes over the wall and catches a waiting schooner. Freedom is short, three weeks till Chilean authorities capture Radowitzky and return him to prison.

The iconography of Radowitzky continues through the 1920s. Leading anarchist writer Diego Abad de Santillan publishes a book in 1927 titled Simon Radowitzky, el vengador y el mártir. In 1930 Radowitzky is pardoned by Argentine president Hipólito Yrigoyen, a few months before the president is overthrown by a military coup.

Eventually making his way back to Europe, Radowitzky fights in the Spanish civil war. Simon Radowitzky spends the last years of his life, ill and poor, in Mexico where he dies in 1956.

(Further online reading includes Simón Radowitzky ¿mártir o asesino? by Osvaldo Bayer and a brief bio of Simon Radowitzky by Nick Heath).

Last week I mentioned that the best illustrated version of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle was a 1942 edition published in Buenos Aires. The librarian within me decided to track down the bibliographic information about this work. The Spanish title is “Viaje de un naturalista alrededor del mundo” and comes out to 617 pages.

I noticed that this version is cited in a number of Spanish articles about Darwin. But the first Spanish translation of Darwin was in 1902 by Constantino Piquer. (The first translation into Italian was 1872 and for those who love trivia, the first translation into Armenian was 1949).

Even though this 1942 Spanish edition was originally published by El Ateneo, a leading bookstore in Buenos Aires, I’m not sure about it’s availability in this city. (Wait, I just learned that supposedly there is a copy at the Biblioteca Manuel Gálvez).Yet, thanks to the wonder of online databases I found it listed with a bookstore in Rome that specializes in Argentine monographs: Libreria El Sur.

Now, I’m very curious about this bookstore in Rome and the Argentine community in Italy. Argentina experienced a significant amount of Italian immigration over the decades. And a lot of those Italians moved back to Italy. So, I assume that one of those families must have opened this bookstore in Rome on Via Sebastiano Veniero. Whenever I go to Rome, it’s going to be a place where I stop for a visit. I’m interested in hearing the story of these Argentine-Italian booksellers.

When I started working with the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami library I was surprised to learn about the Irish who had settled in Cuba. It was then that I realized I knew very little about the Irish diaspora even though the roots of my own family is partly Irish. While Argentina’s role in the Irish diaspora is not so widely known, the majority of the more than 40,000 Irish who came to Argentina in the second-half of the 19th century were from the Irish midlands.

Their journey took them first to the port at Liverpool where they board ships destined for Argentina. Most settled as sheep farmers in the area between Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. There’s even a small amount of literature influenced by these Argentine-Irish settlements.

More on the Irish in Argentina in later postings.

G.W. Ray was a 19th century North American missionary but he is remembered more for being a long rider, someone who traveled more than 1,000 miles on horseback in a single journey. Ray wrote about his experiences in South America in “Through Five Republics on Horseback: Being an account of many wanderings in South America.”

If you can get through his proselytizing and colonial attitudes (which are both laughable and sad), then you’ll find an intriguing work. In much of the book there is a sense that Ray used religion mostly as an excuse to justify his explorations. His journey began in Buenos Aires in 1889 when he arrived by steamer ship after a five week voyage from North America.

How shall I describe the metropolis of the Argentine, with its one-
storied, flat-roofed houses, each with grated windows and centre patio?…The Buenos Ayres of 1889 was a strange place, with its long, narrow
streets, its peculiar stores and many-tongued inhabitants. There is
the dark-skinned policeman at the corner of each block sitting
silently on his horse, or galloping down the cobbled street at the
sound of some revolver, which generally tells of a life gone out….At early morning and evening the milkman goes his rounds on
horseback. The milk he carries in six long, narrow cans, like
inverted sugar-loaves, three on each side of his raw-hide saddle, he
himself being perched between them on a sheepskin.”

Throughout the book is Ray’s love for horses. He describes this scene from late 19th century Buenos Aires:

One is struck by the number of
horses, seven and eight often being yoked to one cart, which even
then they sometimes find difficult to draw. Some of the streets are
very bad, worse than our country lanes, and filled with deep ruts and
drains, into which the horses often fall. There the driver will
sometimes cruelly leave them, when, after his arm aches in using the
whip, he finds the animal cannot rise….

As I have said, horses are left to die in the public streets. It has
been my painful duty to pass moaning creatures lying helplessly in
the road, with broken limbs, under a burning sun, suffering hunger
and thirst, for three consecutive days, before kind death, the
sufferer’s friend, released them….

I have said the streets are full of holes. In justice to the
authorities I must mention the fact that sometimes, especially at the
crossings, these are filled up. To carry truthfulness still further,
however, I must state that more than once I have known them bridged
over with the putrefying remains of a horse in the last stages of
decomposition. I have seen delicate ladies, attired in Parisian
furbelows, lift their dainty skirts, attempt the crossing–and sink
in a mass of corruption, full of maggots.

A few years years later

Ray contrasts those scenes of Buenos Aires in 1889 with the dramatic changes that took place in the city around the turn of the century.

The city, once so unhealthy, is now, through proper drainage, “the
second healthiest large city of the world.” The streets, as I first
saw them, were roughly cobbled, now they are asphalt paved, and made
into beautiful avenues, such as would grace any capital of the world.
Avenida de Mayo, cut right through the old city, is famed as being
one of the most costly and beautiful avenues of the world.

On those streets the equestrian milkman is no longer seen. Beautiful
sanitary white-tiled _tambos_, where pure milk and butter are sold,
have taken his place. The old has been transformed and PROGRESS is
written everywhere.

Interested in South America and have a scientific bent? Then lose yourself for weeks among the complete work of Charles Darwin, now available online. It’s quite an astonishing collection pulled together by the University of Cambridge.

And if you don’t want to wade through all the texts and images, then you can download the mp3 audio versions. Yeah, that’s right, though I suggest not operating heavy machinery while listening to The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. Seriously, though, it’s great that the audio is available for those with vision impairments.

Darwin spent a lot of time roaming around South America. Relevant readings include the 1830s voyage led by Robert Fitz-Roy. During that time Darwin visited Buenos Aires and the pampas where he made the following observation about the diminishing presence of Indians in the pampas:

Among the captive girls taken in the same engagement, there were two very pretty Spanish ones, who had been carried away by the Indians when young, and could now only speak the Indian tongue. From their account they must have come from Salta, a distance in a straight line of nearly one thousand miles. This gives one a grand idea of the immense territory over which the Indians roam: yet, great as it is, I think there will not, in another half-century, be a wild Indian northward of the Rio Negro. The warfare is too bloody to last; the Christians killing every Indian, and the Indians doing the same by the Christians. It is melancholy to trace how the Indians have given way before the Spanish invaders. Schirdel says that in 1535, when Buenos Ayres was founded, there were villages containing two and three thousand inhabitants. Even in Falconer’s time (1750) the Indians made inroads as far as Luxan, Areco, and Arrecife, but now they are driven beyond the Salado. Not only have whole tribes been exterminated, but the remaining Indians have become more barbarous: instead of living in large villages, and being employed in the arts of fishing, as well as of the chace, they now wander about the open plains, without home or fixed occupation.

From Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world, under the command of Capt. Fitz Roy R.N 1845. A later publication of these journals is more commonly known as The Voyage of the Beagle. A bibliographical note states, “The best illustrated edition, in any language, is the Spanish of 1942, printed in Buenos Aires with 121 plates.” Now that’s something to track down at some rare book store around Buenos Aires.

Throughout the works are a lot of other fascinating insights about Argentina and other parts of South America.

Update: May 25, 2010 – Teatro Colón is now re-opened after a 3 year renovation..

At the end of the month, Buenos Aires great opera house Teatro Colón will be closing its doors for a year and a half while the building is renovated. Teatro Colón is scheduled to re-open on May 25, 2008.

(Having been involved myself in a couple of major building renovation projects, I’m sure everyone managing the renovation of the Colón is worried about meeting that deadline. Already, even the announcement on the theater’s Web site says that Teatro Colón will re-open with “most of the works completed.” To see what’s going to be happening, take a look at the master plan for the restoration of Teatro Colón.)

Some history

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about the history of Teatro Colón and opera in Buenos Aires, particularly the influence of Italian immigrants on the local opera scene. So, I’ve decided to create a series of postings, sort of a history of opera in Buenos Aires. I’m not yet sure how many postings will be in this series, but I’m going to try and keep the postings short: nuggets of information rather than encyclopedic. Anyone with more knowledge about any of these topics, please jump in with comments. I’m just learning these things as I read, passing along what’s interesting.

A brief history of Teatro Colón itself is available on its Web site. (That same link is available in Spanish).

While the present Teatro Colón will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2008, there actually was another Teatro Colón that was built in 1857 across from Plaza de Mayo, where the Banco de la Nación is located. The first Teatro Colón closed in 1888. While the new Teatro Colón was being built over the following 18 years, the dominant opera house in Buenos Aires was Teatro de la Ópera, which was built in 1872. Another theater of that time was Teatro Politeama, which remained popular well into the 20th century. The Politeama wasn’t just an opera house, but provided a venue for a lot of popular entertainment. Have a look at this Yiddish poster advertising a show at the Politeama in the 1930s.

Okay, I promised to keep these postings short, so I’m stopping now…need to come back another day and say something more about the Teatro de la Ópera.

It’s not everyday that the body of a famous historical figure rides through the streets. So, I took a break yesterday and walked over to Paseo Colón for the sendoff for Perón. The reburial of his body from the Chacarita cemetery to an expensive mausoleum in San Vicente, south of Buenos Aires, has been well covered by an article in the New York Times and elsewhere.

Tuesday morning the coffin of Perón was transported from the cemetery to the headquarters of the CGT labor union, the bastion of all things Perón. It was a very manly affair. The blocks surrounding the CGT were filled mainly by working men, most wearing hard hats. An odd sight that I should have photographed was the dozens of these guys lined up on the massive steps of the University of Buenos Aires School of Engineering, located across from the CGT. They were a contrast to the students I normally see around there.

Some workers took a rest while they waited.

I estimate that 90% of the crowd were men from the labor unions. About 5% were media and the occasional person like myself who just came by for the spectacle. The remaining 5% were the loyal Peronist, like this mother-daughter pair with the picture of Evita, which they claimed was actually signed by Evita herself.

When it finally came time for the long journey from the CGT everyone jumped to their feet, ran onto Paseo Colón, climbed statues, and pushed for position while singing the Peronist anthem.

It was a false alert as it was only ex-president Duhalde and his wife Chiche walking down the street.

Then came an honor guard, trying to make space through cheering crowd :

The crowd surged when Perón’s casket was wheeled down the street. Until then I had a good view but was immediately swamped by dozens of people making their way towards the remains of Perón. Riding atop Perón’s casket were Hugo Moyano and other millionaires labor union leaders with big smiles on their faces.

As mentioned by fellow BA blogger Ian, the day’s events turned ugly once the procession arrived at the new mausoleum. It’s really not surprising considering that some of the guys were well on their way to drunk by midday, like this guy in the white CGT t-shirt guzzling cheap wine out of a tetra pak.