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Massacre in the Pampas, 1872:
Britain and Argentina in the Age of Migration
National Period
Massacre in the Pampas, 1872: Britain and Argentina in the Age of Migration. By John Lynch. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Illustrations. Map. Tables. Notes. Index. Bibliography. xii, 237 pp. Cloth, $28.95. On January 1, 1872, in the village of Tandil in the Argentine pampas, a band of more than 40 gauchos rose to the cry of "kill the gringos and masons!" and went on a killing spree that lasted for only a few hours but left 36 men, women, and children dead, most of them foreigners. The rebels had been incited by a folk doctor, Gerónimo de Solane (a.k.a. Tata Dios--literally, Father God), who in his preaching denounced Freemasons as "irreligious" and condemned foreigners, blaming them for the unemployment and the epidemics that affected the Argentines. John Lynch, with a long and distinguished career in European, Latin American, and Argentine history, offers here the first study in English of this notable episode. The first three chapters provide a background to the process of national organization, as well as to the agrarian and social transformations that took place as a result of the development of the agroexport economy and European immigration to Argentina. The following two chapters focus on the massacre itself, and the remaining four chapters examine the influence of the massacre and frontier violence on Anglo-Argentine relations. The book concludes with an assessment of the nature and the origins of the massacre and its impact on British immigration to Argentina.
Lynch challenges previous explanations of the event. Although he recognizes that Solane's preaching had millenarian undertones, he emphasizes that the gauchos' violence was the product of beliefs typical of popular Catholicism and a nativist reaction against foreigners, whom the gauchos blamed for some of the worst changes brought about by modernization. Although the author is probably pointing in the right direction, the scarce evidence available on the worldview and motivations of the rebels (a common problem in this type of study) limits the effectiveness of the argument. In this respect, the book could have benefited from a more extensive treatment of popular Catholicism in the Argentine countryside.
Lynch rightly places the massacre in the wider context of daily frontier violence of gauchos against foreigners. His work not only explains the presence of immigrants on the frontier but also shows how widespread xenophobia and violence that targeted Europeans were in the rural areas, a topic that is rarely addressed by specialists on the history of Argentina.
The book provides a good assessment of the impact of nativist violence both on the flow of British immigration to Argentina and on Anglo-Argentine relations in general. Contrary to largely destitute southern or eastern Europeans, British migrants went only "to places that were exceptionally favorable and the risks minimal" (p. 149), and, in this context, gaucho nativist violence was an effective deterrent. On the other hand, the violence against British subjects became a permanent concern for British officials and strained diplomatic relations between the two governments. However, as the author clearly shows, this event never affected vital British foreign policy decisions toward Argentina, because British economic interests were of the utmost importance [End Page 213]
Yet Lynch is not as persuasive when he tries to assess the impact of this specific event on British immigration to Argentina and on the Argentine historical process. With respect to the former, the evidence suggests that for British officials the massacre was not a turning point but just another event (admittedly, a singular one) in a larger trend of violent attacks on Europeans in general (in the most clear reference about the event by British officials, the massacre occupies only a couple of lines and is cited along with other events in Corrientes and in Bahía Blanca) (p. 171). Similarly, the assertion that the massacre was "a significant chapter in the history of...
Massacre in the Pampas, 1872: Britain and Argentina in the Age of Migration (review)
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