The Arrival of the Electric Streetcar and the Conflict over Progress in Early Twentieth-Century Montevideo

The inauguration of electric streetcar service by two foreign-owned companies in Montevideo in 1906 set off an intense debate between the city's elite and its anarchist workers over the nature of progress. The streetcar became a contested symbol of modernity as the elite attempted to dictate the terms of a new urban order. Anarchists countered with an alternative vision of progress that emphasised social equality, education and liberty, and they competed for the sympathy of the middle class which grew increasingly ambivalent towards the streetcar. Trolley workers resisted a new system of discipline at the workplace and eventually led the city's first general strike, with broad public support. The opening of the twentieth-century in Montevideo is clearly marked by two public events. First, in the last two months of 1906 an electric streetcar service was inaugurated in this quickly evolving metropolis, the third largest capital city in South America. Tens of thousands of people participated in a series of public spectacles which opened the lines of two competing companies. These events provided a public forum for the elite to extoll the virtues of a foreign technology and entrepreneurship. The inaugurations also redefined the social space of the city by reducing perceived distances between beaches, parks, neighbourhoods and commercial districts, and symbolically demonstrated that the new urban order was in the hands of a political hierarchy which controlled the streets as well as the future of modern Montevideo. The inauguration of electric streetcar service was enveloped in an elite-dominated discourse on ' progress' which was articulated in speeches by dignitaries and politicians and in editorials in the popular press. * Research for this article was sponsored by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, a Fulbright Faculty Study Abroad Award, a Social Science Research Council Advanced Grant, a Faculty Travel Grant from the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas and a University of Kansas New Faculty Award. An earlier version was delivered at the 1992 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association. The author would like to thank David Sowell, Ann Schofield, Elizabeth Kuznesof, Josh Rosenbloom, Peter Mancall and Carl Strikwerda for their helpful comments. Anton Rosenthal is Assistant Professor of History, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. J. Lai. Amir. Stud. 27, j 19-541 Copyright © 199; Cambridge University Press 319