Celebrating the countryside in the '90s: agricultural change in the Provincial Wheat Festival (Tres Arroyos)

Abstract

In the last decade of the 20th century, the results of the great changes that had been taking place in the Buenos Aires agrarian structure since previous decades converged with the deepening of structural reforms that completely affected the actions of the State. The debt crisis, the structural reforms and their application, and the future of agriculture were not alien to the physiognomy acquired by the celebrations linked to local economic production that arose in the province of Buenos Aires around the middle of the 20th century. In this work we will focus on one of these festivals that emerged in the south of the province in 1970 in the Tres Arroyos district: the Provincial Wheat Festival (1970). The two pillars (the agricultural sector and the State) on which this celebration had been built adopted a different configuration during this period. How did this affect the celebration? Can the tensions aroused by these changes be observed in festive season? In this approach, we will try to answer these questions, giving an account of the characteristics that the Buenos Aires celebration of wheat assumed in the nineties from the analysis of its celebration programs, the records of the periodical press and the analysis of the speeches of the authorities present at the celebration.