Argentina: a land of seduction, rejection … and promise
Strolling along the busy café-filled streets of Buenos Aires, it’s hard to image a more desirable place. Argentina has it all: a California-like climate, a multicultural population of well-educated people and almost limitless physical resources.
Stroll through the many exotic flower-filled parks in Buenos Aires and you’ll find young families enjoying picnics, lovers holding hands and open tango dancing cantinas filled with swirling couples.
Argentina is a proud nation and shares a particular kind of colonial bravado with Canada. Early in the last century, Canadian Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier humbly (and wrongly) proclaimed the 20th to be “Canada’s century” – and so did Argentina.
With all due respect to Laurier, Argentina had the numbers. In the 1920s, this South American dynamo was poised on the brink of greatness. It was the most desirable New World destination for immigrants. It had a booming agricultural economy and its trade relationships were growing rapidly around the world. It looked like a winner.