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Book Review
Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930. By JOSE C. MOYA. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xviii + 567 pp. $25.00 (paper).
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With the publication of this prize-winning book, Jose Moya established himself as a leading scholar in the fields of modern Latin American history and transatlantic migration. The theoretical, methodological, and historical problems he examines and the scholarly and analytical abilities and creativity he brings to bear in addressing them make Cousins and Strangers a tour de force that sets new standards for scholarship. Prior to its publication, modern emigration from Spain to Argentina had received little attention, overshadowed by the larger movement of people from Italy (of the 6.5 million European emigrants to Argentina in the period 1820–1930, Italians accounted for 45 percent and Spaniards one-third). In examining the Spanish movement to Argentina, Moya illuminates an important phenomenon with broad and complex social, economic, cultural, and, of course, demographic repercussions for the two societies. No less important, perhaps, he presents his findings and analyzes them in such a way that the resulting work goes well beyond the kind of narrow, "national" history that often seems to defy attempts to define a coherent, recognizable field of modern Latin American history. His comparisons of Spanish migration to other contemporary transatlantic movements; emphasis on the varied, fragmented, and localized nature of the movement in terms of its Spanish origins (which he maintains consistently throughout the book); consideration of the diverse and changing relationships between Spanish immigrants and various elements of the host society (including, of course, other immigrants); and discussion of patterns of urban settlement all have significant implications for understanding social and cultural formation and change, urban development, and the results of large-scale, mostly privately organized, movements of people. What might have been a relatively circumscribed case history here yields insights that point to the need for this kind of detailed study that allows us to understand both the particularity and the universality of socioeconomic development in modern Latin America and to view that development in the context of the larger world. |
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