Abstract

SALOMON, Alejandra. The Irruption of the Tractor on the Roads of the Buenos Aires Pampas in the Late Fifties and Early Sixties: Meanings, Uses and Conflicts. Hist. Soc. [online]. 2021, n.40, pp.89-115.  Epub Mar 08, 2021. ISSN 0121-8417.  https://doi.org/10.15446/hys.n40.86757.

Within recent rural studies, mobility has gained increasing academic interest, but its history maintains enormous gaps, despite being crossed by meanings, experiences and conflicts that go beyond the present time. Faced with such a void, the aim of the article is to examine the socio-political implications of the diffusion of the tractor in the Buenos Aires Pampa region in the late fifties and early sixties, considering it less as a work item and more as an instrument of transportation. Specifically, it will explore, firstly, its ambivalent values -progress in contrast to destruction- and its use as an unconventional vehicle for the transportation of people and products. Secondly, it will research the state action -punitive and educational- against the deterioration of rural roads that such mobility practices generated. By means of a diverse corpus of primary textual and visual sources, it will be shown that the mechanization that occurred in the agricultural area of Buenos Aires transcended the merely productive sphere, motivating road damage and challenging the regulatory ordering of traffic.

Keywords : rural mobility; transportation; tractor; roads; Buenos Aires province.

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