SOURCE: Foster, David William. “Rural Culture Revisited.” In The Argentine Generation of 1880: Ideology and Cultural Texts, pp. 151-77. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Foster distinguishes between the stereotypes of rural life and the attempted romanticization they inspired versus the realities of that lifestyle by individually examining several prominent works from the period.

The basis of Argentine wealth during the period of immense prosperity from 1880 to the Great Depression is to be found in the rural, agricultural sector. The conquest of the desert, the construction of a vast railway system, and a concerted immigration effort are all elements of the program related to this economic base. Yet prosperity meant the possibility of living in splendor in Buenos Aires, and, as for Andrés in Cambaceres's Sin rumbo, the metropolis rather than the farm or ranch came to represent status and well-being. The consequence in Argentine...