New
Town, New Names
In 1889,
six years after the foundation, the train arrived to Venado
Tuerto. It was built by the South of Santa Fe and Córdoba
Railway Company. At that time, the city centre was already
settled.
The Land
Company, subsidiary of the railway company, submitted for
approval a new urban plan, which located the city centre to
the south of the original place. Hence, New Town Venado
Tuerto was created. In fact, the new plan followed a pattern
used with other towns: Santa Teresa, San Urbano, Elortondo,
Arias, Canals, etc., including the railway and the railway-owned
lands on sale along the line. At that time, the 1890s, Casey
was no longer operating in the area, and the Land Company
became the new owner of the land along the railway. During
this period, Italian-born residents predominated in the area
and expanded to the rest of Santa Fe province.
![](imagenes/power05.jpg)
Railway
Station in 1938
(Municipality of Venado Tuerto, Official Gazette,
1938) |
The submitted
map of New Town Venado Tuerto included some significant toponymic
changes. The streets in the sixty-four blocks around the railway
station received new names, which were very much influenced
by the Italian immigration: Italia, Milan, Genova,
and Garibaldi are some examples. Other street names
honoured contemporary politicians both from the province and
the nation. It was the case of Galves, Aldao,
Quirno, Sarmiento, and Estanislao Lopez
(though the latter did not belong to the same period as the
others). Other street names had geographical connotations
that appeared in the pattern map of the Land Company. There
were names taken from towns and lagoons in Santa Fe and Córdoba:
Carreras, Funes, Arias, Olmos,
Rueda. [12] Nevertheless, we argue that those names
were related less to the geographic space than to the cultural
heritage and the political and economical space. The strength
of political power was reflected in the street names, as it
was the case of the Italian place names. All of those spaces
represented promising agricultural centres which would comply
with the model of a new country, the Patria Gringa,
or foreign nation.
In the
first years, the Old Town (also known as The Colony)
and the New Town remained separated, but then joined their
urban plans and the old town had to modify its toponymy. From
the time of the foundation and during more or less twenty-five
years, the street names of Venado Tuerto embodied the cultural
origin of the place, i.e., an Anglo-Irish settlement which
was vigorously driven by Italian immigrants to become an important
agricultural centre. However, since the original place names
disappeared, toponymy revealed the origin of the city but
not the memory of the land.
Street
Names as Symbols of the National Identity
In 1910
the street denomination changed again. The centenary of the
Argentine Independence produced a nationalistic policy to
unite the ethnically heterogeneous society of immigrants.
The government strategy was to invigorate all factors connected
with the Argentine patriotic feeling. [13] The Centenary celebrations
were planned in advance and took place at national, provincial
and municipal level. Accordingly, several new schools were
established in different parts of the country, which were
called centennial schools. The same happened with monuments
that paid homage to the national heroes.
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