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Historical Archives of Argentine Banks
Introduction
Among the oldest operating enterprises in Latin America are banks. From the nineteenth century banks provided models for new business organization, as did the early railway companies. Banks generally were organized as joint stock firms, thereby stimulating the development of formal capital markets, which began to slowly develop in Latin America from the 1860s. They also contributed to the expansion of local credit markets and of knowledge of how to use modern financial instruments. In addition, banks required the establishment of more sophisticated and complex accounting methods, which spread to municipalities and state and national governments. Furthermore, business innovation was fostered by the early banks that developed more complex managerial and organizational structures than existing merchant banking firms, many of which pooled resources to form the capital of the first banking institutions in most countries. Early banks also provided governments with access to previously unavailable volumes of short and long-term credit, which accounts for the interest that Latin America states began to manifest in the establishment of banks, a few in the first half of the nineteenth century, but mostly in later decades.
While a few banks began to be established in various Latin American nations from the 1850s and 1860s, it was in Argentina that banks developed on the fastest and largest scale in the nineteenth century. These included both state banks, mortgage banks, provincial banks, and a large variety of commercial banks, investment banks, and private financial firms.
Banco de Descuentos and Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
The first bank established in Argentina was the Banco de Depósitos de Buenos Aires, which was set up in 1822 by Argentine and British merchants a decade after independence. It operated as a commercial bank but also served as bank to the government, which deposited revenue in its coffers, including proceeds from the first foreign loan, the famous Baring loan of 1824. The money from this loan ostensibly was to be used for port works but actually went mostly to pay for the naval war with Brazil between 1826 and 1828. In 1826, the bank was nationalized and renamed Banco Nacional but only lasted until 1835. For twenty years after, the government headed by dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas used the official mint (Casa de Moneda) to print paper money on a large scale. After the fall of Rosas, proposals for the establishment of a bank gained support among merchants and landowners. The Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (established in 1854) began operations initially as the Casa de Moneda y Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, but as of 1863 was transformed into a joint stock company, with heavy participation of the provincial government. The bank rapidly set up branches throughout the province, which experienced an eighty-year economic expansion (based mainly on ranching and agriculture, transport and services) that had few parallels in Latin America. By the 1870s this bank was the largest in Latin America in terms of capital, deposits, and number of bank offices. In the following decade it continued to expand and helped finance not only the provincial government but also a state-run railway (the largest company of its kind in Argentina at the time), ranching and agricultural enterprises, and a great number of commercial, service, and manufacturing firms. The bank closed as a result of the financial crash of 1891 and would not reopen until 1905. It again became a premier bank in most of the towns of the province and continues to be a major state bank, combining public with private commercial business.
The Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires has the largest historical archive of any bank in Argentina and, in fact, of any Latin American nation. The documents are conserved in three basement floors under the bank’s huge numismatic museum in downtown Buenos Aires.[i] Researchers are treated well by a small staff of archivists who supervise what is a veritable treasure trove of documents harking back to 1822. The bulk of documents are from the period 1860 through 1940 and include the reports of the meetings of directors, a vast amount of bank correspondence with clients and local bank officers, accounting records, information on mortgages, deposits, loans, and so forth. The abundant and excellently preserved documents are an extraordinary but underused source for economic and financial historians. The leading academic expert on this archive is the historian Gerardo Martí, who has written several essays on the operations of the bank and its relation to monetary policy in the 1880s as well as an article that summarizes the bank holdings.[ii]
[i] The Web site of the Archive and Museum of the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires is http://www.bapro.com.ar/museo/index2.htm
[ii] Gerardo Marcelo Martí, “El Archivo del Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires,” Revista de Historia Económica de América Latina, no. 3 (Jan.–June 1995): 29 –37.
Banco Nacional and the Banco de la Nación
In the early 1870s, during the presidency of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the national government of Argentina established the Banco Nacional, which soon set up more than twenty branches throughout Argentina. This bank began to rival the Banco de la Provincia, as it controlled the accounts of the federal government, but it was also important because it introduced banking practice into many Argentine provinces of the interior that previously had no banks. The Banco Nacional lasted until 1890, when it collapsed as a result of government bankruptcy during the Baring Crisis. However, the Argentine economy was so dynamic that in a few years the financial sector was restructured and prospered once again. In the midst of the financial crisis, in 1891, the Banco de la Nación of Argentina was established, an institution that continues to be the largest bank in the country.
The Banco de la Nación does not have a historical archive but its documents are administered by the personnel of a small numismatic museum in the central office of the bank in Buenos Aires. A number of years ago, I visited the museum in the top floor of this building on a corner of the Plaza de Mayo, next to the Casa Rosado, the presidential mansion, and was able to consult a considerable range of documents. The minutes of the governing board of the old Banco Nacional (1872–1890) are conserved, although apparently most of its other documents were destroyed. On the other hand, there is a great volume of material from the Banco de la Nación from 1891 onwards and a few scholars have used them to reconstruct the economic history of Argentina, such as Jeremy Adelman at Princeton.[i]
[i] Jeremy Adelman, Frontier Development: Land, Labour and Capital on the Wheatlands of Argentina and Canada, 1890–1914 (Oxford, 1994).
Mortgage Banks
The two leading state banks helped to create two great mortgage banks in the 1870s, the Banco Hipotecario de la Provincia de Buenos Aires and the Banco Hipotecario Nacional, which continued operating for more than a century. These banks played a crucial role in financing landowners and urban property owners in Argentina during the golden age of sustained economic expansion from 1870 to 1930. The historical archives of both banks have survived, at least in part, but have scarcely been explored by economic and banking historians. Several years ago, I was able to review the large holdings of the Banco Hipotecario Nacional, which are held in the Academia Nacional de la Historia in its offices just off the Plaza de Mayo. My guide to these documents, the distinguished economic historian Samuel Amaral, explained how they came to the Academia and suggested their use in the agrarian and financial history of Argentina.[i] The historical archives of the rival Banco Hipotecario de la Provincia de Buenos Aires are also fortunately conserved and can be consulted in the state archives, the Archivo de la Provincia de Buenos Aires in the city of La Plata.
[i] See Samuel Amaral, The Rise of Capitalism on the Pampas: The Estancias of Buenos Aires, 1785–1870 (New York, 1998).
Commercial Banks
While the Argentine government was active in founding large banks, a considerable number of commercial banks set up shop in the 1870s and 1880s in the main mercantile district of the Argentine capital, which came to be known as the “City” of Buenos Aires, an expression still used there to describe the local financial market. Among these were the Banco de Londres y Río de la Plata (1863), the Banco de Italia y Río de la Plata (1873), and the Banco Francés del Río de la Plata (1887). These banks were established mainly by the more prosperous immigrant merchants of European origin.[i] While a large number of documents of these old companies were destroyed as a result of the bank selloffs during the government of Carlos Menem in the 1990s, a fairly considerable volume of documents have survived. Most of these are held at present in the excellent Prebisch Library of the Banco Central de Argentina in Buenos Aires. Among the materials held, according to the library catalogue, are historical collections of the following institutions: Banco de Italia y Río de la Plata (Actas, 1871–1956), Banco Español del Río de la Plata (Actas, 1886–1943), Banco Germánico de la América del Sur (Inventarios, 1945), Banco Alemán Transatlántico (Inventarios, 1945). The same library holds documents from two banks that operated in sugar-producing regions in central and north Argentina: the Banco Comercial de Tucumán (Actas, 1912–1965) and the Banco Comercial del Norte (1965–1979).[ii]
[i] The best guide to the important French immigrant merchant community and to foreign investments in the period in Argentina is the study by Andrés Regalsky, Mercaderes, inversores y elites: Las inversions francesas en Argentina, 1880–1914 (Buenos Aires, 2002).
[ii] For on-line information of the Biblioteca Prebisch see http://www.bcra.gov.ar/index.asp.
Torquist Investment Bank
Another important resource for banking and financial history is the library of the now defunct Tornquist investment bank. This was the leading private investment bank in Argentina between 1880 and 1930, particularly active in the promotion of industry (in which it played a vanguard role) and as intermediary for foreign banks engaged in providing loans to the Argentine government and channeling foreign direct investments to the River Plate, particularly between 1900 and 1914. With a total of close to 40,000 volumes, the Tornquist library, now held by the Argentine central bank, is perhaps the best specialized library on economic and financial affairs of any South American country for the period 1880 to 1940. While specializing in Argentina, it also holds many international journals and a large series of business guides from that early period of economic globalization. (See annexed guide).
Little is known about the private archive of the Tornquist bank, which presumably has the banking correspondence of Ernest Tornquist and his son Carlos Tornquist with clients, including European bankers and government functionaries during the period 1870 to 1940 but it presumably remains is in the hands of the family descendants.
Banking History and Archives of Mexico
Introduction
Of the larger Latin American nations, Mexico was relatively slow in the development of banks. The Bank of London, Mexico and South America, which established its main office in the nation’s capital in 1864, soon opened branches in five provincial capitals, mainly in regions with silver mines. This early financial firm introduced bank notes and allowed circles of Mexican merchants and property owners to become familiar with modern banking practice. But it was not until the 1880s that a true banking system began to take root. The largest institution, the Banco Nacional de México (later known as Banamex), was founded in 1884 by a coalition of French bankers and investors who allied with a large group of merchants and merchant bankers in Mexico, mostly of Spanish and German origin. This joint stock company (with a nominal capital of 20 million silver pesos or some 16 million dollars) immediately became banker to the federal government, handled its accounts and issued much of its internal and external debt. At the same time, Banamex performed as a commercial bank that soon set up over twenty branches throughout the country, creating the first broad-scale branch bank network in the nation.
The Banamex and the Banco de Londres y México remained the two largest financial firms until the outbreak of the Mexican revolution (1910–1920).[i] But from the 1880s a fairly large number of regional commercial banks in most provincial capitals began to emerge. By 1910 there were some twenty-five regional banks as well as five investment banks and two small mortgage institutions. Virtually all placed their stock in formal and informal capital markets and most prospered until the crisis of 1907, from which they recovered quickly.
The first stirrings of the Mexican revolution, which began in late 1910, did not immediately threaten the banks since conflict was initially most intense in rural areas. But as the conflict broadened and as the government of Victoriano Huerta (1913–1914) faced increased opposition, financial markets weakened. The Mexican stock market soon closed and the government suspended payments on the foreign debt. Following the defeat of the Huerta administration in February 1914, there was an all-out struggle between the revolutionary forces of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata and the constitutional army led by Venustiano Carranza that pushed the country into full-fledged civil war. The immoderate issue of paper money by all the rival armies led swiftly to a process of hyperinflation and the virtual collapse of the banking system. Most banks were taken over by the administration of Carranza in late 1915 and placed under the control of the new office called the Comisión Monetaria, which nationalized their gold reserves and put many of them into a process of liquidation. The whole process of financial reconstruction would take years. Some banks began operating normally but on a much-reduced scale after 1920, although it was not until the establishment of the central bank, the Banco de México, in 1925 that it became clear that the government authorities desired financial reconstruction. The 1930s saw the establishment of a number of development banks and regional commercial banks and by the 1950s the Mexican banking system was contributing to the expansion of the economy.
[i] For an overview see: Carlos Marichal and Paolo Riguzzi, “Bancos y banqueros europeos en México, 1864–1933,” in México y la economía atlántica (siglos XVIII–-XX), ed. Sandra Kuntz Ficker and Horst Pietschmann ( Mexico City, 2006), 207–37.
Banco Nacional de México
For business and economic historians interested in the rise and fall of the early Mexican banking system as well as its subsequent reconstruction, there are several excellent archival sources. There is the magnificent historical archive of Banamex, which was organized in 1989–90 as a result of a cooperative agreement between the bank and the Colegio de México, the latter providing academic counsel and support. This archive provides excellent service to researchers.[i] Located in the annex to an eighteenth-century palace in downtown Mexico City, the holdings include extensive minutes of the executive board from the early 1880s, reports of annual stockholders’ meetings (with detailed information on stock distribution for the first four decades), extensive bank correspondence with clients, accounting reports and much information on branch business. It also has a complete run of contracts of the public debt of the Mexican government taken or issued by the bank between 1884 and 1914.[ii]
Research in the Banamex archive has been essential to at least six doctoral theses on the history of Mexican banking and finance produced in the last fifteen years. These include the Stanford doctoral thesis (now a first-rate book) by Noel Maurer of Harvard Business School, that of Emilio Zebadúa at Harvard University on Mexican finance in the 1920s and 1930s, the University of Chicago thesis on Porfirian finance by Thomas Pasananti , doctoral theses by Mónica Gómez and Luis Anaya at the Colegio de México, and that of Leonor Ludlow at the Colegio de Michoacán on the origins of Mexican banking. Jointly these works have helped transform the formerly barren field of Mexican banking history, which is now covered by a broad literature of detailed studies that span from 1860 to the 1980s.[iii]
[i] The Banamex is now owned by Citicorp which was sufficiently impressed by the historical archive in Mexico that it carried out a survey in the year 2003 of its other bank subsidiaries on a world scale. The result was that it found that there was no historical bank archive equivalent in quality to that of Banamex in any other country in which the the banking group had offices.
[ii] Archivo Histórico Banamex, Isabel la Católica 40, Mezzanine, Centro Histórico, C.P. 06000, México, D.F. Tels: 1226-4019; 1226-4840; 1226-4821; 1226-5161. Fax: 1226-5342. E-mail: ahco@banamex.com.
[iii] An extensive review of the banking history literature in Mexico is found in Gustavo del Angel and Carlos Marichal, “Poder y crisis: Historiografía del crédito y la banca en México, siglos XIX–XX,” Historia Mexicana 52, no. 3 (2003): 677–724.
Antiguos Bancos de Emisión
Another rich but less-explored source is the repository of documents known as “Antiguos bancos de emisión” at the Archivo General de Nación (AGN). Here are some three thousand volumes of books and papers of fifteen Mexican banks that were taken over by the government during the revolution in 1916, including the leading banks in Oaxaca, Veracruz, Puebla, Zacatecas, Nuevo León, and Chihuahua.[i] Leonor Ludlow has produced a detailed study (published by the AGN) of the archival holdings of the Banco Mercantil de Veracruz, an especially dynamic bank between the 1880s and 1914. In the same archive there are five hundred volumes of the Banco Minero de Chihuahua, one of the most important banks in northern Mexico before the revolution. The founder of this bank was the entrepreneur and politician Enrique Creel; fortunately for historians the Creel papers have been conserved and recently donated to the private library of the Condumex/Carso historical foundation in Mexico City. At this same library can be found the personal archive of José Yves Limantour, minister of Mexican finance between 1892 and 1910. His papers are of interest to economic historians particularly because he was behind the key legislation of 1897, which set down the basis for the reorganization of the Mexican banking system in the early twentieth century.
[i] Several articles that analyze both this repository and others useful for banking history can be found in the Boletín de Fuentes para la Historia Económica de México, no. 5 (Sept.–Dec. 1991).
Difficulties and archival culture
While these sources on the financial history Mexico are rich and accessible to researchers, there are difficulties in exploring recent bank archives. Some important troves of documents are as yet largely unclassified, as are the papers of Nacional Financiera, the government investment bank that has been active since 1934, deposited in the AGN.[i] Similarly, the large archive of the Banco de Comercio Exterior (Mexico’s Ex/Im Bank), established in 1938, are stored, unstaffed and inaccessible, in a warehouse in Mexico City. No banking historian has worked with these papers.[ii] Private commercial banks in Mexico have no historical archives outside of the splendid one managed by Banamex. The Banco Serfin/Santander, the direct descendant of the first banking institution set up in Mexico in the 1860s, unfortunately has not conserved its historical records. There is no public information on the holdings of other private banks or of banks privatized in the 1990s.[iii]
[i] For some additional information see Carlos Marichal, “El papel de la banca de desarrollo en México,” Comercio Exterior: Revista de análisis económico 54 (2004): 812–15.
[ii] In 1995 I was invited to a brief tour of the warehouse of the Banco de Comercio Exterior (located on the Cerro de la Estrella, Iztapalapa) and was impressed by the huge amount of documents quite well organized. Though I have requested information repeatedly since then, I have gotten no response from bank officials. I hope the archive survives.
[iii] Gustavo del Angel has recently finished an official history of BBVA/Bancomer, the second largest commercial bank in Mexico, and reports that there are considerable historical records for this institution not open to researchers.
Banco de México
Fortunately, the Banco de México, the Mexican central bank created a historical archive in 2006 which has vast holdings. For decades there was virtually no access to the records of this key and powerful institution, but in the last few years a major effort has been launched to save, conserve, and classify its historical documents. A new building is being planned and some twenty young archival specialists and historians have been hired to carry out conservation and classification tasks under the direction of a small but dedicated supervisory staff.[i] The bank’s library holds not only a large collection of economic and financial texts but also a series of non-bank archival sources that have been made available to historians in the last year. These include a large portion of the historical records of the Ferrocarril Nacional, one of the two largest railway companies in the country between 1882 and 1906, as well as important holdings on the Mexican foreign debt between 1920 and 1946. Both the Banco de México and the Banamex historical archives are leading the way in the preservation of the main sources for the banking and financial history of Mexico.
[i]The address is Banco de México, and the present coordinator is Lic. Mireya Qutinos, who can reached by email; mireya.quintos@banxico.org.mx. Tel: 5237-2722.
