Transnational South America by Ori Preuss

Author:Ori Preuss [Preuss, Ori]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, South America, Social History, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781317435204
Google: fD1-CwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-29T01:44:57+00:00

3  “Everything Unites Us”

Diplomacy, International Visits, and the Periodical Press

In August 1909 many newspapers and magazines in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires reported the brief visit of Roque Sáenz Peña, the Argentine minister in Italy and candidate for president in the upcoming elections of 1910, to the Brazilian capital on his way home from Europe. A short time after the German steamship liner carrying the guest had entered the port, it was approached by several boats. On board were staff members of the local Argentine delegation, a representative of the Brazilian foreign ministry, the Peruvian Minister to Brazil, many Argentine delegates to the Fourth Latin American Medical Congress held in the city at that time, family members, and “a large group of porteño families and gentlemen,” including members of parliament, senators, and other public officials who arrived from Buenos Aires especially for the occasion. All of them had sailed to welcome the honorable guest. Once on shore, two automobiles sent by the Minister of Foreign Affairs picked him up for an intimate lunch at the Itamaraty Palace, seat of the Ministry. The festivities continued with a banquet that same evening in honor of the guest given by the distinguished group of Argentines, and a ball in honor of the participants of the medical congress later that night, again held at the Itamaraty.1

In the midst of all this Brazilian-Argentine and all–Latin American social mingling over lunch, some serious words concerning international relations were delivered by Argentina’s upcoming president (1910–1914). Directing his speech to Foreign Minister Baron of Rio Branco, Sáenz Peña, like many Argentine travelers before him, praised Rio de Janeiro’s natural beauty, which overwhelmed him in “a rapid sequence of images, almost a glare of growing admiration.” Yet, unlike many of his predecessors, he also praised the “human effort, which, confronting nature, had formed sudden creations of beauty, magnificence and attraction.” Going beyond the common tropicalism of incoming travelers from temperate zones, highlighting man-made achievements, heralded the vision of Argentine-Brazilian greatness that was proposed next.2

“Time works for peace, and we live within time […] allow me then, in this fraternal intimacy […] to express our identical ideals of marching forward in peaceful and rapid evolution.” The two peoples, the Argentine and the Brazilian, have always been true to the principles of the law of nations that will mark their inevitable ascendance along the “infinite curve of human development and progress,” in accordance with “the laws of sociology.” Combining the language of evolutionism, Americanism, and what modern historiography concerning the European context of that period has defined as “patriotic pacifism,”3 or “liberal internationalism,”4 Sáenz Peña stressed the effort of both countries in securing peace, a goal that embodied the “superiority of this continent” and its dedication to good government and sovereignty. Then the geographical focus narrowed, with the speaker expressing his “fervent wishes for peace in South America and for an everlasting friendship between Brazil and Argentina, the two great nations who flourish on the shores of the Southern Atlantic.”5

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