It's a very complicated question but you have to understand that british interests were huge in Argentina by the turn of the century. Not only was England by far the biggest market for Argentina's agricultural and meat products but british capital controlled almost the entire infrastructure of the country. Some of the railway companies (all of them privately owned by british citizens at this point) had a guaranteed profit of at least 6% of the invested capital (which was of course very easy to dilute given the total lack of controls enforced by the state and the simplicity of bribing or even co-opting the few skilled employees that were tasked with checking the entire fiscal structure of these companies). These railways companies were in some cases handed huge chunks of land on both sides of the railway line, to exploit at their own convenience.

I mention this because british capitalists owned a great deal of land in Argentina. Historically, even the most nationalist goverments made a fierce effort to protect british capital and citizens and to provide them with a special treatment that put them far above the natural position any natives could aspire to. By this time, we have multiple acounts claiming that most if not all large sheep farms in Buenos Aires were owned by british capitalists. We can't forget the colonization of the Patagonia achieved after the "Conquista del Desierto" Campaigns of 1878-1883. The enormous territory gained by the state was generously distributed amongst military officers and influential capitalists, many of them british citizens.

In the last years of the XIX century, the companies in charge of refrigeration, transport and commercialization of meat and agricultural products were also owned by British citizens. The meat was shipped out of the country in british boats, which themselves returned a few months later full of british industrial goods that would travel all over the country thanks to the centralized network of british owned railways that spread out like a gigantic hand from the biggest port in the country, the only one british capitalists had any interest in operating from. This meant that some farmers that lived a few kilometers away from a fully equiped port like the one set up in Mar del Plata had to ship their goods through a railways system that sent them directly to the Buenos Aires port. Of course, the ticket rates in these railway lines also lacked any sort of state regulation and were decided based on whatever the british diplomacy needed at the time.

From the time of the independence, the patriots did all they could to become a satelite of Great Britain, sometimes even offering themselves as a colony, like the supreme director Alvear did not long before the declaration of independence was finally signed:

"Estas provincias desean pertenecer a Gran Bretaña, recibir sus leyes, obedecer su gobierno y vivir bajo su influjo poderoso. Ellas se abandonan sin condición alguna a la generosidad y buena fe del pueblo inglés y yo estoy resuelto a sostener tan justa solicitud para librarlas de los males que las afligen. Es necesario se aprovechen los momentos; que vengan tropas que impongan a los genios díscolos y un jefe plenamente autorizado para que empiece a dar al país las formas que sean de su beneplácito, del rey y de la nación a cuyos efectos espero que V.E. me dará sus avisos con la reserva y prontitud que conviene para preparar oportunamente la ejecución…"

This letter roughly translates as "These provinces wish to belong to Great Britain, to receive their laws and live under their goverment. They abandon themselves without any condition to the generosity of the british people. (...) It's imperative that troops come and impose themselves against rebelious liders(..)"

By reading documents like the one I just transcribed, it's easy to understand why Argentina lived under the effective economical rule of the British empire throughout its entire history. This is the same reason as for why the first bank was controlled by british capitalists, as was the first national loan ever taken. By the 1890s, the political system was completely controlled by british commerce since most high ranking politicians had strong ties to british financial interests and London's banking houses. The 1890s crisis was well known in the old world since it demostrated the lack of prudence exerted by both British money lenders and Argentinian debtors.

The Argentinian political elite considered themselves a functional part of the british empire, even if not nominally included in the commonwealth. The strength of these bilateral relationships suffered ups and downs after the first world war and particularly after the great depression. Beginning then, Argentina would have to diversify its markets and industrial goods providers. The US and England would fight over the economical control of the country for many years to come.

--*--

I'm not a qualified Historian. I'm simply a young Argentinian who's read a few books here and there. For this subject, my sources come mostly from left wing, nationalist revisionist authors:

• Milciades Peña - Historia del pueblo Argentino (6 tomos)

• R. Scalabrini Ortiz - Politica Britanica en el Rio de la Plata

• R. Scalabrini Ortiz - Historia de los ferrocarriles Argentinos

• David Rock - El radicalismo Argentino 1890-1930

• Juan Balestra - El Noventa

• Felix Luna - Roca

• Felix Luna - la epoca de Rosas

• Vicente Fidel Lopez - Historia de la Republica Argentina (tomos IX y X)

• Arturo Jauretche - Forja y la decada infame