Domestic Finance in the Growth of Buenos Aires, 1880–1914

Abstract

Torcuato de Alvear, the great intendente of Buenos Aires, gave finance first priority in his administration; without financial resources there was no hygiene and no improvement — nothing was possible.1 Nevertheless it remains the case that in the vast literature on urbanisation — a recent bibliography listed over 7000 Latin American items2 — finance receives barely a mention. Migration, urban transport, housing, planning, slums, hygiene, industry: these are the common coinage of urban history. Finance, the element essential to them all, is missing. Surely, 'money answereth all things.' Without it how can we begin to explain the transformation of Buenos Aires from the gran aldea of the 1860s to the metropolis of 1914?