Becoming Irland…
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 3 BECOMING IRLANDÉS L.O.L.A. BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 4 © Copyright de esta edición L.O.L.A. (Literature of Latin America) Copyright 2005 by Edmundo Murray Revised Edition in English Title of the original edition in Spanish: Devenir irlandés. Narrativas íntimas de la emigración irlandesa a la Argentina (1844-1912), Buenos Aires, Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires (Eudeba), 2004. Editorial, responsable: Colin Sharp Rodríguez Peña 115 (1020) Buenos Aires, República Argentina. Teléfono: (+ 5411) 4372 - 0518 Fax: (+ 5411) 4372 - 2787 Web site: http://www.lola-online.com E-mail: [email protected] Murray, Edmundo. Becoming Irlandés: Private Narratives of the Irish Emigration to Argentina, 1844-1912. Buenos Aires: Literature of Latin America (L.O.L.A.), 2005. Includes appendices, bibliographical references and index. Diseño gráfico: Víctor C. Sarracino. Se terminó de imprimir en el mes de diciembre de 2005, en los Talleres Gráficos Lux S. R. L. H. Yrigoyen 2463 - (3000) Santa Fe, República Argentina. Quedan reservados los derechos para todos los países. Ninguna parte de esta publicación, incluido el diseño gráfico de la tapa y de las páginas interiores pueden ser reproducidas, almacenadas o transmitidas de ninguna forma, ni por ningún medio, sea éste electrónico, mecánico, grabación, fotocopia o cualquier otro sistema, sin la previa autorización escrita de la Editorial. Queda hecho el depósito que previene la ley 11723. ISBN: 950-9725-71-4 Keywords: migrations, Ireland, Latin America, Argentina, history, emigrant letters. Cover photograph: Group of Irish settlers (1890s). St. Patrick’s old chapel in Santa Lucía, San Pedro, Buenos Aires province (Roberto Young Collection). Buenos Aires, República Argentina. diciembre 2005 BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 5 BECOMING IRLANDÉS Private Narratives of the Irish Emigration to Argentina (1844-1912) EDMUNDO MURRAY 2005 Revised Edition in English L.O.L.A. (Literature of Latin America) Buenos Aires 2005 BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 7 To Statia Joyce and Héctor Roldán, who treasured with love and shared with generosity their documents, family letters, and photographs. They were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of. HORACE WALPOLE VII BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 9 All was spacious – earth, sky, the waving continent of grass; the fierce and blinding storms, and, above all, the feeling in men’s minds of freedom, and of being face to face with nature, under those southern skies. Robert B. Cunninghame Graham (Rodeo, pp. 70-72) IX BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 10 CONTENTS List of Tables . .XI List of Illustrations . .XI List of Abbreviations and Symbols . .XI Foreword to the First Edition in Spanish . .XIII Acknowledgements . .XVII 1 Introduction: Faces, Places and Encounters . .1 ‘Identikits:’ the Statistic Approach . .7 Trees: the Genealogical Approach . .12 Private Documents . .14 The South Atlantic Experience . .17 The Irish in the Argentine Polyglossia . .22 Notes to this Edition . .26 2 ‘I began to Think of Leaving Ireland’ The Memoirs of Edward Robbins 1800-1853 . .29 3 ‘The Best Country Under the Sun’ Letters to Martin Murphy 1844-1879 . .37 4 ‘Everything Came Together, War, Plague and Locusts’ Letters to John James Pettit 1864-1875 . .85 5 ‘We began to make a garden’ The Memoirs of Tom Garrahan 1864-1912 . .115 Epilogue: Irish Gauchos . .131 Appendix 1 Chronology . .139 Appendix 2 Genealogic al Guide: Some Persons Mentioned in the Letters and Memoirs . .145 Appendix 3 Money, Currency, Value, and Other Conversions . .155 Appendix 4 Glossary . .159 Bibliography . .161 Notes . .167 Index . .205 X BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 11 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Counties of origin in Ireland . .7 Table 2. Parishes of origin in Ireland . .8 Table 3. Age upon arrival to Buenos Aires . .9 Table 4. Age at marriage . .9 Table 5. Age at death . .9 Table 6. Place of residence in 1869 census . .10 Table 7. Place of residence in 1895 census . .11 Table 8. Places of death . .11 Table 9. Occupation in 1869 and 1895 censuses . .12 Table 10. Occurrences of ‘camp’ in the original texts . .25 Table 11. Occurrences of ‘home’ in the original texts . .26 Table 12. Exchange rate of £1 . .157 Table 13. Purchasing power of £1 . .158 Table 14. Other conversions . .159 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS Born: b (eg. b1820 = born in 1820) Death: d (eg. d1906 = died in 1906) Approximate date: c (eg. c1850 = circa 1850) Illegible text: [*] Damaged manuscript: [torn] Ellipsis: [...] Father (priest): Fr. Pound Sterling: £ Peso: $ XI BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 13 FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION IN SPANISH Migrations between Europe and the Americas go back a long way, and they still continue. However, during the nineteenth century they were significantly important in one direction, namely, from the old to the new continent. At that time, Ireland was a net emigration country. Conversely, Argentina ranked high in number of immigrants relative to its native population. In 1900, more than one third of the Argentine residents were born outside of Argentina. Among them, the Irish left their marks and influence in the Argentine social and cultural tissue, though quantitatively they were not the largest immigrant group. Argentina gained a place in the Irish Diaspora, even if it was not a major destination for the emigrants compared to the United States, England or Australia. Therefore, there is a history of this migration or, better said, histories, and this book includes some of them. Edmundo Murray has compiled, translated, and edited a corpus of documents, including four collections of letters and memoirs from Irish emigrants and their families in mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This material is remarkable for three reasons. This is the first attempt to publish this kind of documentation of the Irish-Argentine community in a scholarly format. 1 These are accounts narrated by a multiplicity of voices, including men and women at different ages, from diverse geographic origins, and with heterogeneous life experiences. In addition, since the compilation combines letters and memoirs, and each of these genres include distinct descriptive styles, the collection includes a number of types of narratives. Furthermore, Murray has done a very admirable job of editing. To familiarise the reader with the context, the material has been framed between an introduction and an epilogue. A collection of difficult and heterogeneous texts has been translated with fluency. Valuable and detailed comments have been appended as reference notes. A chronology and a genealogical guide have been produced, and a bibliography and a helpful conversion table have been included. Yet, are a few letters and memoirs able to depict the Irish who emigrated to Argentina and their new country? This question has, at least, two immediate answers. The first one refers to historiography, and the second one to the text itself. In the last decades, historiography has gone through important changes. One of those key changes is the new interest on individual activity and contingency, as essential dimensions of historical interpretation. Contrary to the progress models of clear-cut causality (traditional among historians after World War II), today there is an interest on the role of uniqueness and specificity within the social process. These dimensions, that before were considered trivial in contrast with structural and supposedly determinant forces, are not neglected anymore. This 1 Note from the author. I use Irish Argentine as noun, to refer to Argentine-born children and other descendants of the Irish. I use Irish-Argentine as adjective, to qualify Irish Argentines or their cultures or characteristics. XIII BECOMING IRLANDÉS pp. 1-84 11/19/05 7:51 PM Página 14 FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION IN SPANISH revolutionary perspective has generated new fields of study and has opened new ways to understanding the past, which today is accessed through a variety of sources. For example, a national census must be weighted on the same scale as a letter from a farmer or a merchant, or an official document as a private text. Any vestige of the past, no matter its origin, is available to historical examination. The heuristic potential of letters (particularly, emigrants’ letters), has been examined to a great extent. There are interesting studies that collect, reproduce, and use this type of documentation as a major source. Among other researchers, we may recall the authors of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1920), a book published previous to the supremacy of post-World War II structuralism. W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki brought together hundreds of letters from emigrant Polish farmers, as well as an extensive autobiography and other primary documents. 2 Nearer to the subject of this book, among the studies collecting and analysing the correspondence of European emigrants to Argentina and other South American countries, we find the pioneering work of Emilio Franzina about Italian settlers Merica! Merica! Emigrazione e colonizzazione nelle lettere dei contadini veneti in America Latina, 1876-1902, published in 1979. 3 About ten years later, appeared One Family, Two Worlds from Samuel Baily and Franco Ramella, including a sequence of letters from a family that emigrated in the early twentieth century from Italy to Argentina.4 Even closer in time is David Fitzpatrick’s book based on Irish emigrants to Australia, which Edmundo Murray mentions in the introduction. The other book cited in the introduction is the Memoirs of John Brabazon, translated and edited by Eduardo Coghlan in 1981, which represents another focal change in the historian’s interest in historical documents.