Passengers and goods. Debates and projects around the opening to the river and the development of the river station on the central coast of Rosario (1930-1960).

Abstract

This paper focuses on the study of the visual and textual representations, as well as on the material interventions, which gradually modified the image of the central coastline occupied by the railway-port facilities in the period 1930-1960. In this sense, we analyse the discourses of the Rosario newspaper as an active agent in the construction of these imaginary meanings, both in its argumentative strategies and in the use of visual resources in relation to representations from other fields such as urban planning, the cartographies of the competent bodies in the sector, photographs and postcards, among others. In particular, the construction of a passenger river station is studied, for which various projects were presented in the 1930s. However, it was not until the beginning of the 1950s that it materialised, articulated with other interventions that enabled new discursive constructions that were aimed at reactivating port activities in decline, while at the same time considerations began to appear for the development of tourism by passenger boats, renewing old discussions that confronted the strictly productive conception of the Paraná with the sensitive view of the landscape of the river and the islands.