MODERNISM WITHOUT MODERNITY The Rise of Modernist.pdf

M O D E R N I S M W I T H O U T M O D E R N I T Y: The Rise of Modernist Architecture in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, 1890–1940 Mauro F. Guillén The Wharton School Instituto de Empresa, Madrid Abstract: Why did machine-age modernist architecture diffuse to Latin America so quickly after its rise in Continental Europe during the 1910s and 1920s? Why was it a more successful movement in relatively backward Brazil and Mexico than in more affluent and industrialized Argentina? After reviewing the histori- cal development of architectural modernism in these three countries, several ex- planations are tested against the comparative evidence. Standards of living, industrialization, sociopolitical upheaval, and the absence of working-class con- sumerism are found to be limited as explanations. As in Europe, Modernism dif- fused to Latin America thanks to state patronage and the professionalization of architects following an engineering model. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Latin American countries borrowed from Europe both the ideal of the oligarchical re- public, and the architectural eclecticism and monumentalism that still characterizes the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, the Avenida Cen- tral of Rio de Janeiro, and the Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires. French beaux-arts classicism appealed to the europhile-landed elites that ruled Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina for about one hundred years after inde- pendence in the 1810s (Gutiérrez and Viñuales 1998, 162–65). Modern- ism in architecture only appeared on the Latin American scene after dramatic turning points, that is, in the wake of revolution and counter- revolution, the shift from upper-class rule to the rule of the masses, the introduction of