It’s interesting that you say that Southern Cone nations did not have a Gilded Age. You are correct; as far as I know, there is no equivalent to “Gilded Age” in Latin American nomenclature. To my knowledge, no historians have made the argument that the late 19th century was a gilded age, and the name “edad dorada” refers only to the United States. However, the characteristics that Mark Twain used to describe the Gilded Age in the United States, namely excessive, wasteful wealth that only benefitted some at the expense of others, is arguably more fitting when used to describe the Southern Cone.

During the second half of the 19th century, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay finally put the wars of independence and civil wars behind them. At long last, Argentina and Uruguay crystallized into nation-states. Stable democracies took shape in all three nations that became more and more inclusive over time (with exceptions of course). The economies of all three nations took off, supporting the Industrial Revolution in far away nations with their raw materials. Wool, hides, flax, and grain from the Pampas and minerals like nitrates drastically improved terms of trade. According to Michael Johns in his article “Industrial Capital and Economic Development in Turn of the Century Argentina,” the Argentine economy alone “grew at an annual rate of five percent; experienced a ten-fold increase in foreign trade; became home to over three million immigrants from southern Europe; and absorbed foreign investments that increased from 132 million gold pesos in 1875 to 2,835 million by 1913” (p. 188). By the end of the 19th century, according to Jose Moya in The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History, Argentina and Uruguay “boasted the highest levels of international trade per capita in the world and ranked among the ten richest countries” (p. 11). Chile wasn’t far outside the top ten. All three nations also stood near the top of the “most urbanized” list. Chile controlled the southern tip of South America, and Valparaíso was a world-class port in a critical location. Railroads crossed the Pampas and the Banda Oriental and connected previously isolated communities, tying them to the central hubs of Buenos Aires and Montevideo respectively. Valparaíso, Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo were ranked alongside European cities in terms of development. Uruguay is considered one of the world’s first welfare states, providing a safety net for many of its citizens, limiting work hours per week, and instituting extensive social reforms. To outsiders, all of this economic expansion was impressive. They optimistically called Argentina, for example, the “United States of South America” and Buenos Aires “the Paris of South America.”

Yet this “golden age” was not nearly as rosy as one might expect. For example, economic expansion on the frontiers came at the expense of indigenous peoples, who were violently exterminated in the conquista del desierto campaign in Argentina and the pacification of the Araucanía in south central Chile. The nitrate boom came at the expense of Bolivia and Peru, who lost territory following their defeat in the War of the Pacific. To make matters worse for locals, foreigners often provided the capital to develop infrastructure during this period or signed deals which granted them monopolies over natural resources. Huge amounts of money left the countries as a result and led to the rise of the “dependency theory.” Though in recent years there has been a reexamination of this theory, certainly a lot of foreigners made excellent investments and sizable profits. But rarely did this wealth remain in the Southern Cone. At the same time, Jeffrey Williamson, in his recent book Trade and Poverty: When the Third World Fell Behind, argues that the gains from globalization at the turn of the century benefited the core of the nations but did not spread to the peripheries. This led to the de-diversification of many Latin American economies. As a result, life for the gauchos of Argentina and Uruguay remained largely the same as it had always been. Immigrants struggled to escape the conventillos of Buenos Aires (out of which the famous tango would spring, as the poor tried to forget their suffering). Poor houses sprang up in Montevideo and Santiago. Wealth remained highly concentrated in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and the central valley of Chile. Expansion benefited the wealthy elite more than the average farmer or rancher. Michael Reid in his book Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul points out that “the Pampas had been divided up very unequally: according to the 1914 census, the largest 584 farms occupied almost a fifth of the total area, and those of over 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) more than 60 per cent. The mean average landholding in Argentina was 890 acres, compared with 175 acres in New South Wales and 130 acres in the United States” (p. 87). The same can be said of Chile’s landed elite, who dominated the central valley and controlled most of the nation’s mineral wealth. Though there was some “trickle down” as it later became known, a huge gap opened between the wealthiest and the poorest sections of society. Inequality, a crucial element of left-wing fury against the old order, took hold and was exacerbated during this period. As a result of all these challenges, as demonstrated in Tulio Halperín-Donghi’s essay published in Di Tella and Platt’s book The Political Economy of Argentina, 1880-1946, pessimism took hold about Argentina’s economic outlook at the turn of the century. He finds that not everyone was as optimistic about Argentina’s future as foreigners were.

I could go on and on but hopefully you see where I’m going with this. Although it wasn’t a gilded age in name, in nature, one could argue that it was. The “golden age” ended with the Great Depression, exposing the shallowness of modernity in the Southern Cone and ushering in a whole new set of problems. The collapse helped bring about the classic image of an economic meltdown in the twentieth century, although in many ways this view is ascribed by outsiders who lack a deep understanding of the realities present in the Southern Cone at the time. It took the Southern Cone most of the twentieth century, along with all the chaos, dictatorships, and economic policies encountered in the process, to rebuild a more stable foundation on which the economy could develop in a post-modern world.