Racial superiority
Racism is the promotion of theories that demean other peoples. The Argentines promoted it as a way to belittle their indigenous people in anticipation of the arrival of European immigrants.
Domingo Sarmiento, a liberal theorist who served as president of Argentina, claimed that only a large number of immigrants could "drown in the industrial waves the vile, stupid, barbaric and vulgar Creoles who prevented us from civilizing our continental nationals." ”。
In addition, the bourgeois democrats, represented by Alvetti, believe that the ancient Spanish tradition is dark and that the gauchos are "barbarians", symbols of perversity, arrogance and conformity. Creole culture is stale and inactive, and Creole traditions were the cause of political turmoil in the decades following independence.
In their view, the only way to change the status quo in Argentina is to bring about changes in life and inactive culture and to bring about order in chaotic political processes". at
Some Argentines saw European immigration as a way to help the government change Argentina's relatively backward socio-economic landscape through agricultural and industrial production and education and health policies. It is not difficult to see that there is discrimination and prejudice against the lower classes of the people at the top. The root of this prejudice is the white idea of the supremacy of Europeans.
It is not difficult to understand why the Argentine government's "desert expedition" of 1879-1883 took place. During this period, the Indians were almost wiped out, and the Gaucho lost their land. This expedition brought millions of acres of unpaid fertile land to the Argentine rulers and ample land for white immigrants.
The superiority of European immigrants is also inseparable from their hard work and hard work. Many immigrants come to Argentina to do jobs that Gaucho do not want to do, such as digging ditches to protect orchards and vegetable gardens. Moreover, despite repeated efforts by the government, there was no way to get Gauchos to be managed at work.
Therefore, European immigrants, who are deeply influenced by advanced European culture, active in thought, and rich in organization and discipline, are naturally favored by the local government.
Similar languages, customs and cultural traditions
The similarities in language and living customs were also one of the main factors that prompted Europeans to migrate to Argentina. As we all know, Argentina was originally a colony in Spanish America, and Spanish was widely spoken, so the Spaniards moved here and there was no language barrier: in addition, Spanish and Italian belong to the Latin family, many words are shared, and French is also a Latin language.
Therefore, this linguistic bond undoubtedly made it easier for a large number of Europeans to emigrate to Latin America, and it is understandable why the largest number of European immigrants in Argentina are Spanish and Italian.
The similarity of living customs is also a factor that cannot be ignored. Because after more than three hundred years of colonial period, Spain's politics, religion and even culture have had an impact on Argentina that cannot be ignored, and even most of Latin America is the product of the combination of European culture, especially Spain and Portugal, and local indigenous American culture.
By the 19th century, European living customs were deeply rooted in Latin America, so Europeans would never have the strangeness of this place in Asia and Africa, and the common religion of Latin Americans is Catholicism and primitive religion, and the same religious beliefs will make immigrants yearn for this land.
Of course, the European tradition of immigration and the spirit of adventurous spirit is also one of the driving forces of immigration. Without this adventurous spirit, there would be no discovery of the New World: without this adventurous spirit, Australia would not be where it is today.
This spirit of constant adventure was the source of wealth and development in the capitalist world, and was the main reason for the great migration of Europeans in the late 19th century. After the United States, Latin America became the region with the largest number of immigrants in Europe.
The geographical surveys and expeditions of Moreno, Ceballos, Ristan Fontana and de Caslio provided the immigrants with basic knowledge of these areas, which gave them a rough and intuitive impression of the new world they were about to go to.
Capital investment in the UK attracts immigrants
Capital is the premise of the development of modern commercial economy, but until the 50s and even the early 70s of the 19th century, Argentines only owned large areas of real estate, real estate in towns, livestock, etc., and there was very little capital to develop the modern economy. The development of the Argentine economy in the 19th century was mainly dependent on trade and investment in Europe and North America.
The gradual subsidence of the civil war after the 60s and 70s of the 19th century and the formation of national unity created favorable conditions for the investment of foreign capital, and Britain was most prominent in this regard. In fact, as early as 1822, 50.9% of Buenos Aires' imports came from Britain, while North America accounted for only 12.1% and France only 7.3%.
In 1830, about 100 British trading houses appeared in Buenos Aires, compared with seven in the United States and five in France." British input into the Argentine economy and trade allowed Britain to establish a dominant position in Argentina's economic development. Before the First World War, British investment in Argentina accounted for 40% of its total investment in Latin America."
Of course, this trade was accompanied by the first British immigrants to Argentina: in 1825, Britain established its first tentative European settlement, and 250 men, women and children who crossed the ocean from Edinburgh were encouraged by travel expenses of 23 pounds each."
It is recorded that in the 40 years from 1857 to 1897, about 32,501 British immigrants to Buenos Aires, the highest proportion of British immigrants to Argentine." It should be said that British immigrants contributed to the socio-economic development of Argentina.
The indirect influence of American xenophobic ideas
There have been several waves of xenophobia in U.S. history, mostly against people of color, but also against some whites, mainly Italians and Jewish immigrants.
In the United States, Italian immigrants worked "everywhere ordinary labor was needed," doing heavy and menial tasks that Native Americans and older immigrants disdained, "enduring the worst working and living conditions that Americans could offer," and working long hours for extremely low pay. "
They live in urban slums, and their influx has led to increasingly congested living conditions and alarming sanitary conditions. In fact, it is a variety of factors such as religion, language and culture that make it difficult for Italian immigrants to integrate quickly into American society.
The arrival of Italian and Southeastern European immigrants, mostly Catholic, made the number of Catholics in the United States "first occupied the first place with 7.3 million believers (including children)" in 1890, completely breaking the monopoly of Protestantism in the United States and causing panic among white and Protestant believers.
These people used the "doctrine of racial superiority" to exclude new immigrants, believing that the peoples from the Alps, the Balkans and the Mediterranean region were inferior races, and if they intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons and even the Teutons, the offspring they would inevitably produce would degenerate the blood of the noble race and seriously challenge American culture.
The American Protection Society, founded in 1887, fanned the flames everywhere, blaming the arrival of new immigrants for the various social problems of the Gilded Age in the United States, and accusing them of turning American cities into "birthplaces of political and social unrest." Blamed for the large number of Italians among new immigrants to the United States, there were frequent cases of killings and lynchings of Italians in many places.
In contrast, Jewish immigrants to the United States suffered even more. The large number of Jewish immigrants in Eastern Europe, combined with their poverty and concentration in the urban slums of the United States, is very striking. They were Jewish, Yiddish spoken, strangely dressed, and rude in their manners, and apparently they were an unwelcome bunch, and General Theodore Benheim, a New York City police chief, once boldly declared: 50 percent of those accused of crimes are Jewish.
So, xenophobia spread like a plague in the United States, and the Immigration Ordinance of 1789 gave the president the right to deport immigrants who threatened the new country, mainly against immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. Then came a series of organizations, such as the American Protection Society and the Coalition to Restrict Immigration, to severely restrict certain immigrants.
Argentina is one of the main destinations for many migrants who have had to abandon their emigration to the United States in order to survive and have a better life.
In short, through the analysis of the above European immigration to Argentina domestic and foreign factors, it can be seen that Argentina has great attraction to European immigrants, and at the same time has the driving force of the international environment, which makes Argentina an ideal place for Europeans to immigrate to Argentina European immigration to Argentina not only alleviates the "labor shortage" in Argentina, but also enables a large number of surplus European labor to find more suitable jobs.
More importantly, the immigrants brought Argentina's socio-economic development to a new level, and eased the contradictions in European society.