Tourism and resorts in Mendoza (Argentina)

public policies, civil associations and private initiative (1918-1943)

Abstract

This work explores the inaugural steps of balneotherapy during the 1920s and 1930s in Mendoza, a province located in the west of Argentina. After the arrival of the railway in 1885, a process of modernization was recorded at various levels, supported by the liberal-conservative governments in the province and in the country. During the first decades of the 20th Century, spaces dedicated to leisure and sociability  succeeded: in the economic-business sphere, the establishment of hotels and thermal resorts was driven by the public policies of that time or facilitated by private initiative. These ventures expanded the tourist itineraries outside the city, associated with leisure and the treatment of ailments, facilitated by the increase in mechanized mobility and improvements in communication routes. The research seeks to account for the changes and persistence in practices, spaces of sociability, actors involved and the means of transportation, for which it relies on primary sources such as newspaper articles, current affairs magazines, tourist guides, historical photographs, government memoirs, and official statistics, enlightened through the Historical Narrative Model.