Buenos Aires in the 1930s was known as the " Paris of South America " . The center of the city had many cafés , restaurants , theaters , movie houses , shops and bustling crowds . In direct contrast , the 1930s was also years of great unemployment , poverty and hunger in the capital , and many new arrivals from the interior was forced to live in tenements , boardinghouses and in outlying shanties that became known as villas miserias .