History.

Yellow fever: the epidemic that transformed the city of

Buenos Aires
Almost 150 years since the plague that killed 8% of the city's inhabitants
and a reflection: viruses do not discriminate according to social class, death
does.

Yellow fever: the epidemic that transformed the city of Buenos Aires
Anna Sanchez
Today we are going to tell you how this epidemic developed in the city of
Buenos Aires, what consequences it brought to the lives of its inhabitants
and what measures were taken by the government. To reflect in times of
quarantine: are deaths from viruses and epidemics avoidable misfortunes?

The city

It was in 1871. At that time Buenos Aires had almost as many immigrants
as natives and the city was just beginning to take the form it has today. The
number of inhabitants barely reached 190,000 and it is estimated that the
final balance of deaths left by the yellow fever epidemic was 14,000 in just
six months, or 8% of the population, although some say that the real
number could have reached up to more than 10%, without a doubt, an
outrage.

It must be said that Buenos Aires was a very precarious city: the majority
of the population was supplied with water from cisterns and rivers, the
saltery (saladeros) and the Riachuelo were sources of rot and infections. Of
course, not everyone lived the same: immigrants and the poorest sectors
lived crowded in the famous conventillos, places where there was no access
to basic services or minimum hygiene measures, despite very high rents
being paid.

The epidemic

It started in January. It is believed that the disease reached the coast of the
city from countries such as Brazil and Paraguay and that it was brought by
the successive groups of combatants that arrived from the War of the Triple
Alliance. Others say that it was brought by sailors and ships that traded,
bringing and carrying merchandise. What is certain is that this transit
through the port favored the movement of the vector agent, which a few
years after the terrible epidemic was discovered to be a mosquito: the
Aedes aegypti. Yes, the same one that transmits dengue today, a disease
that is also advancing in several areas of the country and that these days has
a peak in the City of Buenos Aires.
The first cases were detected in the San Telmo neighborhood, and yellow
fever quickly spread throughout the southern part of the city. It is important
to clarify that the city was just being armed and that the inhabited area was
concentrated mainly around the port; The northern part of the city that we
know today was completely uninhabited. The center was located in what is
now the neighborhood of Barracas, San Telmo and La Boca. How was it
then that the richest neighborhoods are concentrated in the north? Because
in those years, the wealthiest and most powerful sectors quickly abandoned
their mansions and country houses in the south, fleeing from the epidemic,
and moved north, thus neighborhoods such as Recoleta or areas that were
not yet urbanized at that time began to be populated, such as Palermo or
Belgrano. In this way, the south, to this day, is the most impoverished area
of the city and the province of Buenos Aires.

The yellow fever epidemic started from the bottom: European immigrants
and poor people who lived in tenements, especially the Italians, who were
stigmatized for it for a long time.

Politics

The president was Sarmiento and the first step he took was to leave.
Sarmiento, advised by his ministers, left the city and went to Mercedes, in
the province of Buenos Aires, while his vice president did the same. Given
the criticism and loss of prestige that he began to have, he had to return, but
he did not go anywhere in the city, nor did he appear before any of the
Commissions that worked to combat the epidemic. Narciso Martínez de
Hoz did something similar. He was the president of the municipal
commission that measures to deal with the epidemic. He ignored the
warning of several doctors who had alerted him to a possible epidemic and
did not publicize the cases or plan prevention. A week after the first case
there were already 100 deaths from yellow fever.

The number of dead was enormous, and the cemeteries were not enough.
At that time the city had only 40 hearses, the dead multiplied exponentially,
that's why the coffins were stacked on the corners waiting for someone to
take them to the cemetery. As the dead were more and more and among
them carpenters were counted, they stopped making wooden coffins and
began to wrap the corpses in rags. Even the cars that carried the garbage
had to join the funeral service and collective graves were set up. The South
Cemetery, where Ameghino Park is today, on Avenida Caseros at 2300,
immediately filled its capacity. The municipal government had to
improvise a new cemetery and the Chacarita de los Colegiales cemetery
was created there (where Los Andes Park is today, between the current
Corrientes avenue and Guzmán, Dorrego and Jorge Newbery streets) and
created there the New West Cemetery. Fifteen years later, it would be
moved a few meters to the current Chacarita Cemetery. In Chacarita, 564
people were buried in a single day, and the macabre memory of the
nocturnal burials of corpses remained in the collective memory.

It is said that the Ferrocarril del Oeste extended a line along Corrientes
Street (nowadays avenue) to the new Chacarita cemetery with the aim of
starting what was called the "death train": it made two trips every night,
only to transport the corpses of people attacked by the epidemic. It had two
stops to pick up corpses, the final one was next to the cemetery, where the
corpses were left piled up in sheds that served as deposits.

As is happening now, that epidemic brought an economic crisis. According

to some historians, the bordering provinces prevented the entry of people
and merchandise from Buenos Aires and the price of rents on the outskirts
of the city registered strong increases. And those who suffered the most
from the crisis were the poorest sectors, immigrants, women, children and
workers who had to stay and live in the most affected places because they
could not pay the rent elsewhere, added to the fact that many lost not only
their families, but also their jobs and their few belongings that, if infected,
were burned as a preventive measure.

After the epidemic, the city of Buenos Aires was completely transformed.
Important infrastructure works were carried out, such as the sewers, the
running water network, and the centralization of garbage collection. Meat
salting sheds on the banks of the Riachuelo were also prohibited because
the contaminated waters were one of the causes of the rapid spread of the
disease. The largest number of works focused on the north, such as parks
and green spaces that began to be valued for oxygenation and open air that
combat confinement and overcrowding that favored contagion.

But the south remained the south. All the buildings that the rich abandoned
when they fled north from the plague were occupied by immigrants who
continued to arrive from Europe. There many things had not changed and
overcrowding, and shortages continued. That is why, later, the tenants'
strike will break out, a movement led by immigrant and working women
(many had workshops in their homes and sewed outside, in the same room
where the whole family lived) who asked for a reduction in rents and better
housing conditions for the working class.

Of heroes, without heroines

In history, Eduardo Wilde and Guillermo Rawson remained as heroes, who

were doctors who stood out in their publications and were at the center of
patient care. Also, painters who reflected the images of the time, various
journalists who narrated the events and denounced what was happening in
the southern part of the city, as well as members of the Church, many
priests and priests were heroes for their collaboration. But who is missing
in this story? Obviously, the women. They hardly even figure in the story
that is told about those events. Where they do appear is in a painting by the
Uruguayan Blanes that he painted that same year and titled it “Episode of
yellow fever”. In it you can see a poor woman lying dead on the floor, with
a baby trying to take her breast. Although women up to that time were
prohibited from any kind of autonomy and had no political rights, of course
they worked and many did so at home sewing outside, cleaning, in the first
textile workshops or as teachers. That is why it is strange that they do not
appear in this story, because it can be inferred that many must have died in
harsh conditions and many others must have been part of the fight against
this epidemic and have a role in caring for the sick.
At that time women were prohibited from studying, the first doctor was
Cecilia Grierson who could only graduate in 1889, 18 years after the
yellow fever epidemic. This indicates that this plague and the population's
health problems were not enough of a concern to consider incorporating
more people into health tasks, for example women, half of the population.
It was necessary to wait for the fight of many women like Cecilia to access
university spaces, professionals among other conquests. Today, almost 150
years later, Malbrán, the only place where tests have been carried out to
find out whether you have Covid-19, has eleven biochemists, nine of whom
are women, most of them working under precarious contracts. with salaries
that do not cover the needs.
It is not a paradox of history; it is a system of speculation and inequality
that is sustained.