Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

36 Romance in the Argentine Roger was the first of a pioneering fraternity of six Leach brothers who were to make their homes in the Argentine. San Pedro is the second city in the province of Jujuy, which lies in the north-western tip of the Argentine bordered by Chile and Bolivia. In the city stands a monument, erected in 1943, that is a tribute to the Leach brothers. Their involvement with the Argentine began in 1876 when Roger, then aged 23 and newly qualified as a civil engineer, travelled out to Jujuy with a colleague at the behest of local sugar manufacturers to install new machinery they had ordered. Roger’s first trip to the north of the Argentine opened his entrepreneurial eyes to the possibilities in this remote region, where the tropical climate of the San Francisco river valley had proved ideal for the growing of sugar cane. The opportunities he saw for the supply of machinery and the development of plantations through partnerships with local producers eventually led five of his brothers to follow him. Between 1881 and 1893 Walter, Stephen, William, Norman and Frank, all left the security of England for life in Jujuy or the neighbouring province of Salta. A sister Emmeline, who never married, also emigrated, devoting her life to looking after her brothers and other family members, notably Norman’s three children. When plans were laid for a radical new sugar mill of greatly increased capacity at San Pedro, boilers and other machinery were ordered from England. Facing a 300-mile journey with their cargo from the railhead at Tucuman, Roger and his helpers battled to drive carts drawn by mules or oxen across sandy wastes, bogs and swamps. They fought their way along forest tracks that often had to be widened as they travelled. They removed the railings to cross bridges, sometimes needing to resort to pontoons to cross swollen rivers they encountered on their way. Low sugar prices and the problems of transportation to wider markets meant that it was some years before the brothers reaped the full reward of their enterprise and by this time Roger had died, at the age of 36, a victim of typhoid. The railway reached Jujuy in 1890 and, as the sugar industry began to prosper, the Leach brothers saw that it was soon supported by the provision of social, educational and sporting facilities for the workforce and local community. Meanwhile the brothers’ business broadened, Leach’s Argentine Estates eventually becoming an enterprise with interests in fields as diverse as mining, fruit, timber and tobacco. The British influence had already brought cricket to the Argentine,