It only offered a relentless horizontality, a reality that made it quite difficult to understand given the European predilection for picturesque juxtapositions and sweeping vantages. Coastlines were generally an object of focus for the scientists, illustrators, and navigators of the Malaspina Expedition, a fact that reflected Spanish imperial geography. 7 Despite such expertise, the coast of Buenos Aires elided description, with Malaspina seeing nothing of aesthetic interest in the low-lying vice regal capital and its seemingly formless surroundings. While Malaspina and his artists struggled to represent anything noteworthy, it was the scientific curiosity of the naturalist Antonio Pineda that first unlocked the coast for the Europeans. He noted not only the vegetation and groves of the area, but also the colorful scene created by the collision of then-modern maritime technology and the mudflats. Ships had to anchor some distance from the shore, with their goods being brought through the shallow flats by donkey carts, skiffs, and rowboats— depending on the tides—all of which gave rise to a riotous scene of inefficiency. 8 The mudflats together with the low beach at the base of the bluff formed the ribera, a continuous gradient between water and land, river and downtown. It was a site of innovation, speculation, encounter, and cultural expression; a type of cultural and geological contact zone, to use Mary Louise Pratt’s resonant phrase. 9 A Horizontal Cosmopolitanism In the history of Buenos Aires, the late 19th century was a period of tremendous optimism fueled by demographic and economic growth in Argentina. As noted by Malaspina, in the
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