Rise of the Argentine Empire

These past few days, Saint Hérse had been training alongside his soldiers, sharing their meals and sleeping quarters, even using his personal funds to provide them with extra rations and post-training recovery.

This experience not only benefited the squad members but also significantly improved Saint Hérse's own morale. His soldiers gradually began to accept some of Saint Hérse's ideas.

"What white masters can do, we gauchos can also do."

"What white masters cannot do, we gauchos can also do."

"Why should we be inferior to white masters?"

He instilled in them various egalitarian ideas, which aligned with Argentina's inherent rights, democratic, and free-thinking principles.

These gauchos generally had limited education. Initially, Saint Hérse recited simple military theories verbatim, but he found that many of them didn't understand. Most of these gauchos had only attended primary school, with very few completing secondary school, and their basic knowledge was lacking.

Therefore, some cheap slogans were created. Of course, Saint Hérse wasn't aiming for rebellion or anything of the sort. In fact, he became increasingly committed to industrial reform rather than revolution. The country was already chaotic enough and didn't need a bloody revolution, but proper reform was essential.

All men are born equal, and gauchos should strive for the same status as others. Gauchos were indeed at the bottom of society. Even with the newly enacted conscription law prohibiting forced conscription,

the old practice of 'recruiting strong men' still existed, evolving into the Argentine conscription law. Most people with connections avoided military service as low-ranking soldiers.

Although it had a legal facade, the treatment requirements were basically the same, yet they received unequal pay. Gaucho soldiers were paid less than white soldiers, and the strong gauchos were mostly drafted into the army. This was a different form of 'forced conscription'.

Argentine secondary school lasted for six years. Saint Hérse dropped out in his fourth year, equivalent to the first year of high school. People in the squad with his level of education were rare. Most could only write simple words. The Spanish language was forcibly taught in provincial schools, but some people didn't learn it thoroughly due to school size and family reasons.

Saint Hérse began to try to teach them some simple military theory knowledge with simple principles, and even planned to hire teachers for these soldiers, so that they can better learn, encourage learning through learning competitions, and rewards, and made good progress, but for some reasons it ended.

The backwardness of the gauchos was first and foremost cultural backwardness, followed by ideological backwardness. Saint Hérse started by improving their cultural level, increasing their knowledge, and changing their thinking, so that they might have a higher status in the future.

Even the status of Saint Hérse, a slightly higher-level lackey, didn't mean much. What he wanted was the improvement of all gauchos, from the Andes to the Atlantic, from Jujuy to Ushuaia, all Argentines, regardless of their status, working together for the rise of this country.

This was the consciousness of a socialist successor.

....

One evening, Saint Hérse was reading a book, "Argentina National Education Bulletin - 1950 Statistics", brought by Klein. It was a thick book of more than one hundred pages, with fairly good paper quality. Klein said that he had asked his university classmates to bring it from the capital, and his classmates were basic officials in the administrative statistics office in the capital.

Saint Hérse took it and read it carefully, taking notes on the paper, hoping to analyze some data and gain a deeper understanding of the country.

Although Argentina fully implements a public free education system, in remote border provinces, due to economic backwardness, relatively short funds, and the level of teaching is indeed much worse, this is the reason why Gaucho soldiers cannot quickly learn slightly deeper military theory knowledge.

After reading the basic education report, Saint Hérse flipped through it boredly. Saint Hérse suddenly discovered a problem. Although he originally felt that it was not quite right, there was no basic data.

That is, this country does not seem to have a specialized university of science and engineering. Most of them are comprehensive universities and normal universities, church schools, etc. The entire country has less than 50 universities, which is very few, because universities are scarce, and funds are also lacking, so the level is generally average.

And the common universities in later generations of New China, such as technical universities, industrial universities, and science and technology universities, were not seen at all.

And there is another problem, this country rarely implements English teaching schools, and fully implements Spanish textbooks. It is not that Saint Hérse looks down on Spanish or something, but currently and in the next few decades, Spanish is indeed not a world power. The best economy is Spain, and Mexico can develop in later generations, but it is a lackey of the United States.

Currently and in the future, the most powerful country in the world and the most widely used language are English. Many important documents are in English, which makes people feel very wrong.

As a time-traveling person, I basically understand the development history of later generations for decades. The so-called living in line with the trend of history, the language problem is still very big. The so-called learning mathematics, physics and chemistry is not afraid to travel all over the world, penetrating into the bones of the idea of a powerful industrial country, Saint Hérse carefully studied and read the entire government report, and gained a deeper understanding of these shortcomings in education.

The next day was Sunday, and Saint Hérse finished studying this statistical annual report and fell into a deep sleep.

Early in the morning, after washing up, I ran back and forth a few times downstairs in the rented house, practiced a few sets of physical exercises, did push-ups and sit-ups, and simply dealt with a simple breakfast.

I read the newspaper and studied in the morning, took a nap at noon, and woke up after one o'clock in the afternoon.

After a simple hot shower to clear my mind, it was time to go and find Commander Thompson. I had already made an appointment with Thompson's secretary on Friday, at three o'clock this afternoon, and there was still half an hour left.

Saint Hesser stretched, found his ironed military uniform, put on his clothes and shoes, and tidied up his appearance.

He started shaving in front of the mirror. Just like in his previous life, his beard grew very thick in just one day, which was really troublesome.

His hair was also a bit long. He would need to go to the barber shop to get a haircut in the next few days. He still wasn't quite used to the razor, the kind that was long and required breaking the blades in half and inserting them into the long, curved outer frame. He wondered if some company's new version had been invented yet. He really couldn't get used to this thing.

A few minutes later, he finally finished. This time he didn't cut himself, which was some improvement. He wiped his face clean with a towel.

He patted and combed his hair, which had become fluffy from sleeping. His hair was black, and his eyes were light blue.

He took another sip of cold water, called Aragon, and went out the door, as usual in the tuk-tuk.

He arrived at the gate of the headquarters at half past two on the dot. The security at the headquarters didn't make things difficult for him, but there was another security checkpoint in front of the commander's residence. He handed the guard his officer's certificate. Although it was called an officer's certificate, it was actually just a two-page piece of paper.

Aragon parked the car not far from the headquarters and told him to sit and wander around. He would pick him up at the gate at half past three.

Aragon was also happy to sit around. Saint Hesser stuffed him with two thousand pesos. It had to be said that the face value of the peso was also large. Fifty pesos was equivalent to one US dollar, and it would depreciate in the future, which was quite outrageous. He gave him free rein. Aragon knew that he couldn't drink today, so he simply went to the underground boxing arena in the city, took the dilapidated bus, and watched people boxing.

The headquarters had a six-story building, and the commander was on the top floor. He pressed the elevator to go up.

As far as the decoration of the headquarters was concerned, it was indeed more luxurious and newer. The mental outlook of the headquarters staff was also good. It seemed that the commander was not as defeated as he appeared to be on the surface.

Saint Hesser had heard rumors that the city guards were retreating steadily in front of the national defense forces, but from the headquarters, it felt full of energy. Rumors were just rumors after all.

Putting away some of the little thoughts and cleverness in his heart, being able to become a commander, no matter where, was definitely the elite among the elite, just like a saying in his previous life, those who can leave their names in history books are all awesome people.

He came to the door of the commander's office and knocked gently.

"Please come in,"

Saint Hesser opened the door and went in.

"Oh, it's Comrade Cohen, please sit here."

"Don't be nervous, just chat as usual,"

Little Thompson put down the documents in his hand and said to Saint Hesser with a smile.

"Okay, sir."

"Regarding your proposal, I have decided to adopt it. Is there anything else you want to say?"

"Sir, I think that in order to better show our training results, we can invite the head of the Cordoba Administrative Office to watch, as well as... colleagues from the National Defense Forces. This will better show the face of our Cordoba City Defense Force," Saint Hesser said in a loud voice.

Little Thompson looked at Saint Hesser and nodded, "Your proposal is good, but I think our city guards are usually more lazy, and this exercise is a bit boring. We can add some rewards, such as outstanding squads or companies can be used as promotion qualifications, the first, second, and third place can get prizes, or have a vacation, etc., what do you think?"

"The commander is considerate, I think it's okay," Saint Hesser also thought this method was good.

"Also, it's not interesting for us to practice alone. How about we choose a powerful team to have friendly exchanges with the National Defense Forces?"

"Okay, that's very good," Saint Hesser nodded in agreement, as expected, he had some skills.

"Well, I have another proposal," Little Thompson smiled.

"I wonder if Cohen, are you interested in being the temporary person in charge of this exercise and carrying out the training work?"

"Uh... Sir, I don't have enough qualifications, do I?"

"I think your team is training very well."

"Yes, sir! I will work hard to complete the task!"

It seemed that many things in the military camp could not be hidden from these people. The canned food factory was probably exposed as well. Saint Hesser felt a little cold in his heart and sweated a little on his back.

After leaving the commander's office, the commander's formal appointment would not arrive at the military camp until Monday.

As Saint Hesser left the office, the commander opened some of Saint Hesser's information.

"This Cohen is a talent, a little clever, runs a canned food factory, has good communication skills, secretly runs a training school, and can also train his subordinates."

Little Thompson picked up the phone, "Clyde Mann, you order to go down, you guys put aside this Saint Hesser's matter, you don't need to stare at him anymore, pay more attention to the people in the National Defense Forces and the government in the city, and also, warn that Chambers, let him not try to stretch his hand into the defense forces, this is not something a small councilor like him can get involved in."

"Yes, sir," the person on the other side responded and made a record, and hung up the phone after chatting for a while.

Saint Hesser took the tuk-tuk back to his residence, his back was covered in cold sweat, and his face was a little pale.

But on second thought, no one had touched the canned food factory recently, so it seemed that it was still relatively safe. He put away his careful thoughts, kept the canned food factory as it was, and it was best to support someone to hold it on his behalf. He would first seriously do this temporary teaching post and could not slack off.

This time, by proposing a proposal, he hugged the commander's thigh and also got a teaching position. Overall, he was lucky.