“Introduction to Argentina”: Cultural Pan-Americanism and Argentine Tourism in the Early Twentieth Century

The outflow of tourists from the United States accelerated in the first decades of the twentieth century as the industry modernized and the concept democratized.  Yet few of these travelers set their sights on the farthest reaches of South America, contributing to what several contemporary observers described as lamentable mutual unfamiliarity within the Americas.  Attempts to develop tourism between the U.S. and Argentina during an era of cultural Pan-Americanism were thus framed in both economic and political terms.  This paper will situate the question of U.S. tourist travel to Argentina within a wider context of regional geo-politics, advances in transportation and communication technologies, and civil society advocacy of cultural exchange.  By the 1930s, tourism had become integrated into strategies for regional cooperation, regulated by both U.S. and Latin American actors.  The paper will engage with recent historiography that has interpreted US tourism in Latin America (mostly in the circum-Caribbean) through the lens of empire, offering the Argentine case as a useful comparison.   Through close analysis of early guidebooks available to U.S. tourists, particularly Alexander Wilbourne Weddell's highly entertaining Introduction to Argentina (1939), it will also consider the expectations that U.S. travelers to Argentina may have held and the hopes that were pinned on the potential inter-American civilian interactions.  As a conclusion, the impact that the pre-Second World War tourist industry had on U.S.-Argentine relations and, more ambiguously, on images of Argentina in the U.S. will be questioned.  Tourism travel in the early twentieth century was meant to introduce Argentina to the U.S., though persistent obstacles to accessibility limited its impact and set the stage for continued misunderstanding in the post-War period.