The photograph demonstrated above shows a postcard with the Argentine flag on top and a picture of a park, specifically Palermo Park in Buenos Aires. There’s also a blue ribbon tied to the card on the left, perhaps a way to hold the card together. Lastly, probably the whole point of the card, is the message of salutation presented alongside the flag.

Being provided with this information, it can be deduced that this card was sent by an immigrant wishing to write to their family back home. Not rare for the time, similar to the United States, many Latin American countries wished to entice immigration into the country for development. Argentina, for instance, had liberals that espoused immigration as a good for the republic. As illustrated by Domingo Sarmiento in his work, Facundo Civilización y Barbarie, he viewed the Argentine frontier as a threat to nation creation, specifically a threat to progress and to combat this, European immigration was to be encouraged (Sarmiento 1845). For the Argentine, the perfect immigrant was of Northern European descent yet eventually, Argentina received many Southern European immigrants in the end. Much of the attraction to live in Argentina was its development of railroad systems and telegraphs which ensured greater involvement of the central government.

In addition to the topic of immigration, the photograph also reveals the rapid growth of cities. Once again, the need for maintaining cities can be found in Sarmiento’s work where he analyzed how in the cities, there are laws and progress whereas outside the cities, the way of life is different which do not meet European standards (Sarmiento 1845). In other words, cities were where modernization was concentrated and the countryside was meant to keep out those that were seen as hindering progress. Furthermore, markets were also a motivator for the growth of cities since after all, export booms mandate that places like city ports grow for the sake of making trade easier. Growing industries also created many manufacturing jobs within cities.