| Abstrakt: |
One cannot conceive modernity today without taking into account the events and changes that marked the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – a time when society, in the global context, experienced transformations reverberating across political, economic and social issues. The concept of 'progress' permeated the political discourse of a period during which the technological and scientific advances achieved in Europe spread to other continents, including Latin America. The period, known as the Belle Époque, entrenched the consolidation of the bourgeoisie and the extension to different parts of the world of a 'civilizing process', as highlighted for instance by Elias (1993). Cities in Latin America were entangled in the same process. The present article highlights the changing modus vivendi and shifting physical aspects of the city of Montevideo, documented by the essayist and social chronicler José María Fernandez Saldaña (1967). His 'El Mercado Central' and 'Los Tranvías de la Capital' are leveraged here in a qualitative, bibliographic and descriptive framework, to probe the processes of European modernization in the Uruguayan environment. The study builds on Berman (1986), Rama (1985) and Ramos (2008), to engage with the concept of modernity in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
