Hemispheric Flows and the Consumption of Culture

• In Event: 19th Century Re-Loaded: New Perspectives on Science, Visual, Material and Popular Cultures in Latin America

Abstract

In mid-July 1886 Sarah Bernhardt arrived to Buenos Aires, where spectators eagerly awaited her presence at a limited number of functions. Bernhardt had just missed the debut of the wildy popular Creole drama Juan Moreira. Though for the next month and a half, news of both Bernhardt and Moreira appeared together in the region’s press, jostling for audiences. Beyond her fearlessness to brave Transatlantic travel, Bernhardt’s time in the Río de la Plata reveals a rich entertainment market that emerged thanks to hemispheric flows, with performers following a circuit that included Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, and, above all, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and smaller towns along the tributary rivers leading to the Río de la Plata. The decade of 1880 was one of growing economic crisis, with tensions increasing between rural inhabitants and waves of immigrants. It also saw significant growth in the number of performers and consumers in this entertainment market. Yet by this time the new world of entertainment already had a history half a century deep. This paper explores how hemispheric travelers promoted the development of the entertainment market beginning in the late 1820s, and the new forms of cultural consumption these mediators inspired as frontiers clashed and expanded. Through this portrait of flows and consumption we will be able to discuss the transnational character of this moment and reflect on the value of understudied source material for seeing a new nineteenth century.

Author

• William G Acree, Washington University/St. Louis