Image: Boats entering the port | Tulane University Digital Library

In this image of the Port of Buenos Aires, taken in the latter half of the 19th century, we see the bustling ambiance of international trade, and the local focus on export. Buenos Aires emerged as a center of transport early on, due to its strategic location at one of the only navigable rivers in Latin America. The latter construction of railways further cemented it as the undisputed center of trade in Argentina. Railways spread out like a spider web across the nation, all originating from this center of commerce. This clear focus on connection of rural areas to a major trading port already hints at the importance of raw goods exportation within Argentina. As Celso Furtado marks in his writings on Neocolonial Economics, the case of Argentina was one of the most remarkable. Along with railway construction, the nation’s population doubled, and cereal exports rose five-fold. Cereal would be a typical product of Argentina, as it focused on the first of three commodities, temperate goods. The image encapsulates the very focus of Argentina at the time, maritime export of raw goods and the focus on the development of Buenos Aires and its connection to rural areas. 

Neocolonial foreign investments were rampant around these times. The buildings in the harbor may not merely look European architecturally, but could even be foreign owned, by nations like the United States or Great Britain. If this image was shown unlabelled it could have well been assumed that this was a harbor somewhere in the British Isles. 

Ultimately the influence and sheer reliance on foreign nations is evident. Should this harbor become empty, the entire nation would grind to a halt. The beating heart of Argentina at the mercy of the industrialized nations of the world. Inseparably, Argentina and other producers of temperate commodities like Uruguay had turned themselves into a new frontier of the European economy. 

Source:
Boats entering the port | Tulane University Digital Library
Wood, James A., and Anna Rose Alexander. Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019., p. 267-270