One main reason for Argentina’s relatively successful and, in Latin American eyes, idiosyncratic development during this period was in fact something which, at first sight, may seem to be a fundamental weakness, namely the country’s shortage of manpower. Argentina’s landowners did not have access to large numbers of cheap, often semi-servile Indians and mestizos, as was often the case in most other parts of Latin America. So the Argentine élite was compelled to look further afield for its manpower. Earlier the »natural« solution to this kind of problem had been massive imports of slave labour from Africa. That, for example, was the expedient adopted by the Portuguese in Brazil and other European powers in the Caribbean. But this way out was now closed, with the Atlantic slave trade in its death throes due to very active English resistance. Nor were mass imports of, say, Chinese contract labourers a practical solution, least of all for the South American nations on the Atlantic coast. The remaining option was a revolutionary one by Latin American standards, namely the encouragement of voluntary labour immigration. It was the poor children of the south of Europe which in Argentina’s case provided the solution to the manpower shortage. This arrangement was perfectly compatible with the country’s Europeanised politics and culture. The Argentine Constitution adopted in 1853 made this a central component of the new Argentina by allowing Europeans to immigrate freely.
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