The man
Juan Jorge Cabodi was born in the city of Rojas, Buenos Aires, on January 8, 1905. He was the eldest son of the marriage formed by Juan Cabodi and Sofía Roqués.
He received his law degree from the National University of Córdoba, but never practiced the profession. All his life he was part of the important and well-known family milling firm "Cabodi Hermanos", in his hometown, a company established in 1853.
Asthmatic, he spent the hot months in his apartment in Buenos Aires, and when the cold set in he moved to an apartment he had in Rio de Janeiro, and from there to Spain, in a boarding house in Madrid, restarting the same cycle every year. An indefatigable reader, at his advanced age he had the misfortune of losing his sight.
He died on March 5, 1994, at the age of 89, single and without descendants; his remains rest in the city of Rojas.
Reformist university student
During his university life in Córdoba he was part of the leftist reformist movement. At the age of 24, between May 29 and June 7, 1929, he participated in Buenos Aires as a delegate of the leftist university students of Córdoba, in the First National Anti-Imperialist Conference convened by the Left Group League in the Casa del Pueblo, of the Socialist Party (Avenida Rivadavia 2150, Balvanera neighborhood); a political meeting without precedent in Argentine and Latin American history.
Never before had an event of these characteristics been organized, solely aimed at the analysis of the imperialist phenomenon and the different strategies to oppose it. Cabodi was a member of the “Thesis” Commission and supported the general approaches regarding the relevance of agriculture in the question of imperialist penetration of Argentina, to which end he summarized the history of the struggle between the American and English trusts, and also pointed out that the initiative to have trains charge less for transporting cattle than cereals was due, mainly, to the interest shown by England and its meat industry.
The League spoke out against dictatorships in Latin America. He expressed solidarity with Sandino's struggle in Nicaragua, with the victims of repression in Chile, with the International Red Aid and with the persecuted communists in Mexico, against white terror and for prisoners for social reasons (once again he called for the release of the anarchist Simon Radowitski, imprisoned in the Ushuaia penitentiary, and other prisoners for political reasons), for the improvement and lowering of the price of public services, the demands of peasants and indigenous people, support for workers' demonstrations (he denounced the reprisals taken by the oil company Standard Oil in Salta against striking workers in the M. Pedraza oil fields [1]), and he also fought for the preservation of oil and all natural resources, as well as speaking out against the dangers of war, in particular, against the Soviet Union.
In 1933, the magazine Claridad, an organ of left-wing thought directed by Antonio Zamora, published a survey focused on student unions. Should they intervene in the social struggle?, it asked, and, if so, what should be their position, what practical measures and methods of action were considered the most effective to put those positions into motion. Cabodi was interviewed by students at the University of Córdoba [2]. Two years later, in the same magazine, Cabodi published an interesting article on David H. Lawrence (1885-1930), in which, using the correspondence of the recently deceased English writer, author of novels that became widely known to the general public, such as Lady Chatterly's Lover (1928), he analyzed his thoughts on the First World War [3].
He also collaborated with the magazine Transición. Economy, politics, art, philosophy, published in Córdoba, whose first issue appeared in December 1935 and the second in January 1936.
From this stage of youthful militancy, there dates a letter from Luis Reinaudi, of the Socialist Party, to the well-known left-wing poet Cayetano Córdoba Iturburu, written on an undated paper, in which he promises to do everything possible for the New Magazine and the publishing house, and although he states that he cannot promise a collaboration, at the bottom of the letter he tells him not to forget to write to Juan Jorge Cabodi, whom he recommends [4].
We do not know what his last political action was, Cabodi's name simply disappears, to reappear three decades later as a new star in the historiographical field.
The historian
The historical studies linked to the colonial or Hispanic period of his hometown were Cabodi's true vocation, but his historiographical production in this regard, although of great quality, was extremely limited. Focused on the viceregal era, and more specifically, on the time he lived in his homeland.
In 1950, when he was 45 years old, the Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires, whose honorary director was Ricardo Levene, awarded him second prize in the competition for monographs on the towns of the province for his work on the history of Rojas until 1784, a prize that included its publication [5]. And, also that year, he attended as a delegate of the commune of Rojas the First Congress of History of the Peoples, where he presented two original contributions, the result of his findings in the documentary collection formed by Pedro de Ángelis kept in the stately building at Avenida Río Branco, 219 (Rio de Janeiro) that houses the National Library of Brazil. One on a border project by the jurist Pedro Vicente Cañete [6] and the other on the project of Marshal Francisco de Betbezé regarding the advance of the border with the tribes [7].
Today, these three works are considered classics on the subject, particularly the first one, which is still unavoidable.
Cabodi was a man who knew his work thoroughly. Since 1950 he had the idea of continuing this work, but there are no known publications of his since then, except for some sporadic collaboration in a local medium such as «El huracán de 1816» (1957).
And although he did not publish, for years he collected copies of documents from the National General Archive that he himself typed and filed away for when the time came to sit down to write... but as he was the owner of the subject, that time never came and his work remained unfinished. Probably that set is preserved among his work papers.
Perhaps more out of condescension – he was the only professional historian – than out of interest, at the beginning of 1970 he formed part of the Historical Research Department of Rojas with other fellow residents. And in 1976 he participated in the celebrations celebrating the city's bicentennial, where everyone knew him as "Chilín", his family nickname.
When he was in Buenos Aires, for years it was common to see him every morning in the research room on the fourth floor of the National General Archive, then in the old building on Av. Leandro N. Alem, where he occupied a long table next to the large window that looked out onto the avenue, and placed the files of his consultation on a lectern. He only interrupted his work to have lunch at the disappeared two-story restaurant "La Emiliana", located on Corrientes almost Paraná, next to the bar "La Giralda", on the site where today stands the building of the Public College of Lawyers of the City of Buenos Aires
A man of consultation for researchers, Cabodi did not belong to any academic corporation, nor to any institute. Such figures did not attract him. He preferred the personal gatherings that he would hold on Saturday afternoons, surrounded by his books, in his apartment on Federico Lacroze Street, near Chacarita, which were attended by researchers and also American university scholarship holders, among them George Reid Andrews, whose doctoral thesis on Afro-Argentines was published by the University of Wisconsin in 1980.
The Jesuit priest Guillermo Furlong held Cabodi in high regard for his knowledge and in mid-1969 he considered him among the young (and others not so young) historians of that time who worked seriously, such as Víctor Tau Anzoátegui, Pedro Santos Martínez, Carlos Luque Colombres, Ricardo Zorraquín Becú, Julio César Guillamondegui, Eduardo Martiré, Adolfo L. Ribera, Jorge Comadrán Ruiz, Antonio Pérez Amuchástegui, Edberto Oscar Acevedo, José María Mariluz Urquijo, Arnaldo Cunietti and a few others [8].
Among his undisclosed discoveries, I believe he had found, in the Archives of Asunción del Paraguay, the first census that revealed the totality of the ethnic groups of the Paraná River basin, a kind of census of indigenous tribes, the oldest in the territory, which allowed the mystery of the Querandíes to be deciphered. It is a pity that he did not publish this transcendental document.
The scholar of rare prints
Surely, Father Furlong valued Cabodi as a specialist in the same subject of which he was the greatest exponent: the field of rare American prints, for having found them, consulted them, copied them, and when possible, acquired them.
Thus, in the work directed by Rodolfo Etchepareborda on the Lusitanian policy in the Plata, printed in 1963, the volume relating to the years 1810 and 1811 included the until then unknown printed Falla a os Americanos Brazilianos, noting that it was a printed work in Cabodi's possession [9]. Together with Julio César González, he presented a study on the Diario Secreto de Lima (1811) [10] to a congress of historians held in Lima in 1971. Three years later, also in that country, a local scholar gave birth to a revelation: «Juan Jorge Cabodi prepares a bibliography of the Peruvian printing press that considerably expands those of Medina and Vargas Ugarte» [11].
Mariluz Urquijo recalled having seen Cabodi in the city of the bear and the strawberry tree, in the old building on Paseo de Recoletos that is occupied by the National Library of Spain, and having been struck by the fact that Cabodi arrived early, as if he were a punctual employee, and remained in the room, without moving from it even to smoke a cigarette or have a coffee, until closing time. And the Spanish scholar Fernando Soler Jardón has left testimony of “the prodigious erudition of Juan Jorge Cabodi.” [12]
By 1975, I know that Cabodi had already written a Bibliography of the Ibarra printing press and was working on a “History and bibliography of the works written in the Río de la Plata, which were never published.” Unfortunately, those works remain unpublished; perhaps they are preserved among his work papers.
The Editor
An unknown facet of Cabodi is his foray into publishing, which he played a leading role in as a capitalist in the company that he formed for this purpose with a Mr. González, and another whose name I do not remember, which operated as a publishing and distribution firm "Cabargón" (name formed with the first three letters of his surname, the next two of a third partner I do not remember, and the rest, belonging to González), whose headquarters were located at Bartolomé Mitre 766, office 6.
In 1972, under this publishing seal, the Historia de las Armas de fuegos en la Argentina by Rafael Demaría, lawyer, former Chamberlain of the Civil Court and renowned collector of antique firearms, was printed. In 1973, Años de lucha (1841-1845). Urquiza y la política del littoral rioplatense by Pablo Santos Muñoz appeared; Tastil, a pre-Incan city in Argentina by Eduardo M. Cigliano, and Anthropological study of the popular medicine of the Argentine Puna, by Néstor Homero Palma. In 1974, Panorama of lunfardo by Mario E. Teruggi and Origins of the Rioplatense bureaucracy by José M. Mariluz Urquijo (1974) were published. González, I believe also with the contribution of Cabodi, continued with «Ediciones Cervantes», which in 1976 published the Historical Geography of Patagonia (1870-1960) by Raúl R. Rey Balmaceda, with a prologue by Dr. Federico A. Daus; Ethnology and phenomenology by Marcelo Bórmida and Political power and Argentine independence by Héctor J. Tanzi.
From Cabodi's time as an editor, it is worth dedicating a few lines to his greatest contribution: the publication of the adventures of William Morris, a young midshipman who survived the expedition carried out in 1740 by a British squadron commanded by Commodore George Anson. Battered by a storm, the frigate Wager was shipwrecked on the coasts of an inhospitable archipelago in the Gulf of Penas. Morris participated in a rebellion that, in opposition to the orders received, decided to return to England across the Atlantic on the schooner Speedwell, but when it was shipwrecked, Morris and his companions went by land to the area of Mar del Plata. His memoirs offer news about the landscape and the indigenous people. Professor Milcíades Alejo Vignati, who had a rich collection of travelers' books in his private library (today at the University of Comahue) had agreed with the publishing house "Coni" to publish a collection directed by him, entitled Travelers, Works and Documents for the Study of the American Man, whose first volume would be A faithful narration of the dangers and misfortunes that Isaac Morris endured, with translation from English, introduction and notes by Vignati, who had several 18th century editions of the aforementioned work, and the addition of a documentary appendix of the Diary of the trip and mission to the Río del Sauce at the end of March 1748 by Father José Cardiel, S.J.; the Comparative Craniology of the Criollo Horse by Ángel Cabrera, and Difficulties that usually occur in the conversion of infidels and means to overcome them by Father Cardiel, existing in the collection of manuscripts of the National Library and plates.
But in 1956, when all the sheets had already been printed, the printing and publishing house “Coni” was declared bankrupt and the bookseller Fernández Blanco acquired that material. Some time later and by chance, Cabodi found out that that bookseller had the edition in the warehouse of his business located on Tucumán Street; he acquired it and with Vignati's authorization, he asked González to distribute the work by adding a new cover, more suited to the content and editorial purposes of “Cabargon.” [13]
The library
Cabodi had his library installed in two adjoining apartments, connected from within, located on the second floor of the building on Avenida Federico Lacroze 3851, between Roseti and Fraga, next to the old building of the Elementary School No. 19 “Cabildo de Buenos Aires”.
After crossing the white front door and ascending the stairs, upon entering the apartment one was surprised by a large glass lantern with a head reduced by the Jivaros of Brazil, and a set of bows, arrows and indigenous crafts of that origin. His library, which had about 8,000 volumes (all read), invaded every room. With a peculiarity, the books were grouped in sections by the countries of their printing: Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia… Also Spain and Portugal. Except in the main room, the material was located on shelves that crossed them lengthwise, so there were four rows of reference, each of them with several shelves.
Although it was a study library, there was no shortage of old editions or the select and limited editions of societies such as the Spanish Bibliophiles and the Andalusian Bibliophiles. Along with the authors of classical antiquity, of which I remember a copy of the Vida de los ilustres y excelente hombres, translated into Castilian by Juan Castro de Salinas, printed in 1562 in Cologne by Arnoldo Bircman, it was possible to find different editions of the same work, as in the case of the Historia de la Conquista de México by Antonio de Solis, with copies from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, in Castilian and French.
Of course, in a collection of this type there could not be missing authors of diverse nationalities and from different periods. So Marx and Hegel coexisted with Gramsci, Sartre and Althuser, while from his complete works Leopoldo Lugones challenged Ramiro de Maeztu and Manuel Gálvez. And the arid studies of Félix Outes entered into a friendly dialogue with García Merou's Literary Confidences and Arturo Giménez Pastor's medallions in his delightful work Figuras a la distancia. And there was no shortage of authors read in distant youthful days, such as Henri Barbusse's El Fuego, or the always lucid pages of Romain Rolland on his time.
Although, in general, alphabetical order prevailed, it was possible to observe that there were important collections of books on common subject matter. Thus, the wealth of works related to books was remarkable: individual bibliographies and bibliographic catalogues, such as the Dictionnaire bibliografique published in four volumes by Delalain in Paris in the year X (1802), booksellers' manuals, catalogues of public libraries, private collections and old bookstores, as well as biographies of booksellers, works on bibliophilia and everything related to graphic art, typography. This was completed with a valuable set of loose sheets of paper relating to regulations on the printing and trade of books in Spain and America, essential for reconstructing the history of the book. And there was no shortage of editions of the Index of Prohibited Works.
Another set, dedicated to Paremiology, brought together a large number of proverbs, both Spanish and American. A series of Messages from Argentine provincial governors of the 19th and 20th centuries, and ministerial Memoirs presented to the National Congress of the same periods, were particularly noteworthy. The set of works on questions of interprovincial and international boundaries in America was very complete.
It is difficult to know which subjects did not interest Cabodi. Without a doubt, the titles relating to the Society of Jesus in our continent enjoyed his predilection.
The rest of the works, all good, all for reference, addressed different disciplines. And alongside them, a sort of classic, rare, and curious books. Not all classics are rare, nor are all rare classics, and the curious ones are generally not classics and perhaps not rare either.
But books also have their fate. Cabodi had bought the complete works of Father Pastells, much sought after and valued, left them in his apartment in Rio de Janeiro and when he returned the following year, insects had devoured the volumes.
Juan Jorge Cabodi was a complete bibliophile, not a cultivator of the book object. His passion consisted in "collecting books, reading them with profit and annotating them with erudition," without caring whether they were luxuriously bound or disjointed. If he had wanted to, he could have had an impressive ex libris made by a fashionable engraver, but he probably considered this sign of "ownership" to be detestable, as if it were a trademark, or perhaps because, in his ideology, he considered himself nothing more than a mere temporary holder of books. For this reason, he may never have paid much attention to the exterior of each copy.
Fate of the collection
The bibliographic collection that belonged to Juan Jorge Cabodi is the most important acquisition by the National Academy of History, with around 8,000 volumes dating from 1530 to 1987, a collection of old printed pages on the history of the book, and the working papers of its owner, the fruit of many years of work in national and foreign repositories.
In 1998, the Academy held an exhibition displaying a hundred titles from the Cabodi collection [14], on which occasion José M. Mariluz Urquijo, another great bibliophile, referred to the collection and to the person of its author [15].
As we have already said, Cabodi did not belong to any academy or institute, simply because he was not interested, although he had more than enough merits for it. But perhaps it was better this way, because if he had joined any entity out of commitment, I have no doubt, he would have emulated Don Benito Pérez Galdós (whose Episodios Nacionales he admired, not for what they really contained, but for the imagination of their author) who in the sessions of the Royal Academy remained in the most closed silence without anyone ever having heard him say a word.
Helpful to the maximum, his library was open to consultation and lending, without regard to the value of the work. That is why it is impossible to think of Cabodi without imagining him surrounded by his books, faithful and silent companions who accompanied him on his travels, in his insomnia and with a silent presence, in his solitude, when he lost his sight.
From a distance I remember that man whom I met sporadically half a century ago, when he was in the twilight of his life. Today I recall his affable manner, always with a spark of irony on his lips; of medium height, somewhat stooped, clear and attentive eyes, whose pupils lit up with a strange glow when the conversation turned to the topics of his interest and in his words one could hear an echo of distant voices.
Notes.
[1] Daniel Kersffeld, «The Anti-Imperialist Conference of Buenos Aires in the Ideological Definitions of Argentine Communism», in Periferias. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, year 22, n. 21, first semester of 2013, p. 167-184.
[2] «Survey on student organizations facing the Social Problem», in Claridad. Revista de Arte, Crítica y Letras. Tribune of leftist thought, year 12, no. 269, Buenos Aires, September 30, 1933.
[3] Juan Jorge Cabodi, «David H. Lawrence and the war», in Claridad. Revista de Arte, Crítica y Letras. Tribune of leftist thought, n. 295, November 1935.
[4] Letter from Luis Reinaudi to Cayetano Córdoba Iturburu, without place or date, but with the letterhead of the H. Chamber of Deputies of the Province of Córdoba in the personal archive of Córdoba Iturburu that is preserved in the CeDInCI. Nueva Revista was a publication edited between 1934 and 1935, in which Alvaro Yunque (Arístides Gandolfi Herrero), Raúl González Tuñón, Aníbal Ponce and other intellectuals who orbited in communist culture collaborated.
[5] Juan Jorge Cabodi, History of the city of Rojas until 1784. The Fort of the Horqueta de Rojas (1777-79). Rojas' Guard (1779), Publications of the Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires, Contribution to the History of the Peoples of the Province of Buenos Aires, XVII, La Plata, 1950.
[6] Juan Jorge Cabodi, “A project on the security of the borders of Pedro Vicente Cañete”, in Province of Buenos Aires, Ministry of Government, First Congress of History of the Peoples of the Province of Buenos Aires, II, La Plata, Publications of the Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires, 1952, p. [3]-17.
[7] Juan Jorge Cabodi, «The recognition of borders of Francisco Betbezé», in Province of Buenos Aires, Ministry of Government, First Congress of History of the Peoples of the Province of Buenos Aires, II, La Plata, Publications of the Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires, 1952, p. [25]-101.
[8] «Dialoguing with a young man of 80 years: Guillermo Furlong», in Studies, no. 603, Buenos Aires, July 1969, p. 12.
[9] AGN, Lusitanian Politics in the River Plate. Lavradio Collection, volume II (1810-11), Buenos Aires, 1963, p. 325.
[10] «The Buenos Aires reprint of the Secret Diary of Lima (1811)», in Fifth International Congress of American History, July 31 - August 6, 1971, Lima, Publications of the National Commission of the Sesquicentennial of the Independence of Peru, 1972, p. [182]-195.
[11] César Pacheco Vélez, Following the Footsteps of Viscardo Guzmán. Preliminary Study by… Documentary Collection of the Independence of Peru. Volume I, The Ideologists. Vol. 1°, Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán. Compilation, preliminary study and notes by César Pacheco Vélez. National Commission for the Sesquicentennial of the Independence of Peru (1975), p. LXXXIII.
[12] Fernando Soler Jardón, «Typographic art in Spain under the reign of Charles III», in Bulletin of the Royal Academy of History, volume CLXXXVI, notebook 1, Madrid, January-April 1989, p. 118.
[13] Isaac Morris, A faithful narration of the dangers and misfortunes that he endured […], Buenos Aires, Imprenta y Casa Editora Coni, 1956 (Travelers. Works and Documents for the study of the American Man, I, Dir. Milcíades Alejo Vignati, 172 pages plus 5 plates
[14] National Academy of History (Library), Exhibition of the Cabodi Collection. From May 5 to 29, 1998, Buenos Aires, La Academia, 1998, 40 p.
[15] The words spoken on that occasion by José María Mariluz Urquijo were reproduced with the title «Cabodi's books», in the Bulletin of the Society of Argentine Bibliographic Studies, no. 6, Buenos Aires, October 1998, p. [17]-21.