THE LONG JOURNEY OF THE VISBEEK FAMILY TO LA PAMPA






by

Claudia Patricia Visbeek

Docente y museógrafa. Nieta de Teodoro Visbeek, segundo hijo de Klaas (Nicolás) Visbeek




125 years ago the first group of Hollanders arrived at Argentina. Some of them settled in the national territory of Central La Pampa. This is the story of the Visbeek family and their descendant's dream to obtain some farmland of their own.

During the period 1888-1890 more than 4,000 Hollanders arrived in our country. For part of those thousands of emigrants the decision to emigrate to Argentina was not due to a specific reason nor an accidental event but much more to special circumstances and conditions in both countries that coincided and resulted in a new situation. On the one side a main crisis ravaged almost the whole of Europe during that period of time while on the other side the Argentinian policy of "Stimulation of Immigration" should be taken account of.
Round about 1880 the industrialization (and mechanization) of agriculture started by means of the application of "new methods to cultivate grains" on -amongst others- the new exploitation of soil in North- and South America. They competed very favourable to the cost of production in Europe (1) where the price of their grain collapsed. As a consequence thousands of farmers went bankrupt. That economic disaster also hit the cities where many, many jobs got lost and the Netherlands (2) were not excluded from this recession.
In the agriculture areas was lack of food and people were even starving, being the most visible example of the huge social impact of this crisis while the monarchy and churches did their utmost not to notice it (or wanted to notice it). The poor and hungry tried to resist with the help of local socialist leaders who gave them food in order to survive. The provinces that were suffered the most were Friesland (3) and Groningen in the north and Zeeland in the south. That's where people had a common feeling of impotence as to figure out how to survive this situation one way or another. To be more specific: from these regions most of the Dutch immigrants came over in their search for a better life and future on the newly available agricultural land in Argentina.

It is for this reason that the Argentinian government had offices in various cities in northern Europe in order to stimulate the immigration of, in particular, farmers. The government tried to stimulate this immigration of northern Europeans because they considered the farmers from this area as "the white race and civilized" (4). Based on these kind of reasons in combination with a succesfull campaign, many who were interested - also in the Netherlands - paid a visit to meetings and asked information about the conditions and facilities for emigration.
The possibility to emigrate to Argentina came into reach. At the same time they were assured that the Argentinian "Immigration and Colonial-law" supported the distribution of the agricultural land, would pay the passage to Argentina and once arrived, transport for the families to the colonies where they were suppost to settle, would be free.

With this promising perspective ahead of them, various Frisian families decided to leave the  Netherlands. The voyage was made with steamships of the NASM (Nederlands  Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij) which departed from the main Dutch ports (Rotterdam and Amsterdam) to those of Rio de la Plata (Montevideo and Buenos Aires). The NASM owned a number of steamships, one of them being ss "Zaandam" (see picture).
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 The large steamships made it possible to reduce the costs for transportation. As a result freight charges from South America to Spain were cheaper than transportation costs to the far inlands.
"Low lands" is the grammatical name of  this part of Western Europe to which the Netherlands are part of.
Next to the dairyfarms (the Dutch cows produced the highest milk volume in the world), also the growth of crop and fruit.(technique of heated glasshouses) as well as the specialized cultivation of plants and seeds dominated in Friesland
Like the Danish the Dutch farmers are "the best trained and most scholarly farmers in the world" (P. George). The use of fertilizer, the selection of seeds and the profits are record breaking. No less than 60% of the available agricultural land consists of grass-land where the cows graze that have given the country international fame through its selection of breed, one of them being the Holstein Frisian, known by the black and white spots and their high production of milk.

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