Monumento a Julio Argentino Roca: huellas del silencio

Abstract

The sculpture that is the object of our research is dedicated to the former president of the nation Julio Argentino Roca (1880-1886 and 1898-1904). It is located on the avenue that bears the same name and Peru Street, in Buenos Aires City. It has been done by Jose Luis Zorrilla de San Martin and inaugurated in 1941. The whole sculptural ensemble seems like a kind of ship that sails calmly and peacefully towards the nerve center of power. It represents the project in which the country was directed by an elite decision.  At that time the new trace projects were emerging in the city of Buenos Aires. A diagonal and rational city project designed in the French boulevard style. This rationality in the trace hid the violent imposition of blind progress, in which it was believed as if it were a new religion, regardless of the means by which it would be imposed.