The Supreme Paradox and Tragedy of Argentina
And we shouldn’t bother crying for her..
No other country in Latin America has a carefully cultivated European outlook than Argentina.
Even though it was colonized by Spain, Argentina in the 19th century drew great inspiration from the United Kingdom. The English immigrants who settled there hundreds of years ago did more to shape this European outlook; certainly much more than the Italian, Polish and the German immigrants.
How so, I hear you ask?
By setting up banks, constructing railways, introducing sports like Rugby and football to the native populations and the importation of luxury goods.
We should never forget that Argentina was the country to have another branch of the world famous Harrods superstore.
But it also must be stated that no other country in Latin America went to great lengths in being very white.
Unlike Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and to a lesser degree, Uruguay, which still have a sizeable population of people of African descent, Argentina actively pursued a policy of wiping out its Black populations in the 19th century.
It did this by having its African citizens on the frontlines of its wars and also by miscegenation.