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.

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.