CHAPTER III 



TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA 

 THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES 



Tucuman and the road to Chile — The climate and the cultivation of 

 the sugar-cane — The problem of manual labour — Irrigation at 

 IMendoza — Water-rights — Viticulture — Protection and the 

 natural conditions. 



The great industrial forms of cultivation, the sugar- 

 cane and the vine, gave a new aspect to the scenery 

 of Tucuman and Mendoza at the end of the nineteenth 

 century. The increase of population and wealth which 

 they entailed was so sudden, the economic advance 

 so swift, that the owners of vineyards and the sugar- 

 makers have now lost all recollection of the primitive 

 industries which gave life to colonial Tucuman and 

 Mendoza, and were maintained until the last generation. 

 Nevertheless, if one compares Tucuman or Mendoza 

 with some centre of irrigated tillage in north-west 

 Argentina, one quickly perceives the original features 

 which three centuries of history have given them. 

 The system of land-tenure, water-rights, the distribution 

 of the cultivated zones, and a thousand other features, 

 show that the colonization is old. The exploitation 

 of the soil and utilization of the water have not pro- 

 ceeded on a methodical plan, conceived in advance, 

 which would make each piece of work — the dams and 

 channels of distribution, for instance — subordinate to 

 the whole. The engineers who constructed the great 

 modern dams of Mendoza, San Juan and Sali, had 

 not to create a region of new estates, but merely to 



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