"La Gringa" Theme in River Plate Drama

N O NATION of Hispanic America owes more to European immigration than Argentina does. No one knows when the Europeans first began arriving, perhaps in 1508, probably by 1513, and certainly by 1515. The first waves, however, being soldiers rather than colonists, did not settle. Of the 1800 soldiers in the company of Pedro de Mendoza, who landed in Buenos Aires in 1536, all were killed or forced to flee to Spain or Paraguay. When Buenos Aires became a permanent settlement, in 1580, Spain did everything possible to discourage visitors from Europe. Later, Alberdi declared: To govern is to populate, and the new-born Argentine Republic tried to foster immigration, even to the extent of giving foreigners advantages not shared by the natives (exemption from military service, for instance), but at that time prospective settlers were discouraged by the unsettled political situation of the nation. Anticipating an influx of immigrants, private individuals in 1857 formed the Philanthropic Immigration Committee to keep track of the strangers within their gates. That year, 1805 more immigrants entered than left. In 1862 the government took over the task of keeping records and declared that in the next two decades a yearly average increase of 8000 could be attributed to immigration. Once in Argentina, these foreigners found their place, not only in national life, but in national literature, where they were chiefly clowns or villains. Martin Fierro describes one of them

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