| Summary: | How does modernity arrive and take hold? In this article, I examine efforts by the recent administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to modernize railroad infrastructure in Argentina amidst ongoing decay. In the wake of a large-scale train crash and decades of improper railroad maintenance, in 2013 former President Fernández de Kirchner's administration launched a so-called railroad revolution (revolución ferroviaria), predicated on the purchase of new trains from China, the renovation of track and station infrastructure, the renationalization of the railroad network, and the reeducation of the traveling public. Tracing the awkward arrival of new rolling stock and the patchy renovation of aging railroad infrastructure, this article examines how glitches in this highly-anticipated modernization project fueled anxieties over the incompatibility of foreign technology and local infrastructure, the tenuous nature of modernity, and the obduracy of decay. The technologies and infrastructures that underpin modernity, it illustrates, are entangled in messy relationships and shaped by unruly material histories.
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