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Arbiters of Change: Provincial Elites and the Origins of Federalism in Argentina's Littoral, 1814–1820

2008; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 64; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tam.2008.0068

1533-6247

Sujay Rao,

Historical Studies in Latin America

Early in 1817, in the tiny port of Rosario, a deeply troubled Comandante Tomás Bernal sat down at his desk to pen a confidential private letter to Supreme Director Juan Martín de Pueyrredón, head of the national government based in Buenos Aires. Nearly seven years after the May Revolution against Spain, the territory that would later become Argentina found itself buffeted by civil war. Bernal's region, the jurisdiction of the city of Santa Fe, just up the Paraná River from Buenos Aires, found itself enmeshed in the bitter conflict between the government in Buenos Aires, the former viceregal capital, and its principal rival, José Gervasio Artigas, leader of a federalist alliance based in the nearby Banda Oriental, modern Uruguay. Desperate to contain disputes between the national government and the recently created government of Santa Fe, Bernal counseled restraint. However, he knew that Buenos Aires and Santa Fe were on the brink of war. “For my part,” he wrote Pueyrredón: you can count it as certain that in such a war I will not take part but I will not be able to keep myself from lamenting the loss of a precious part of this land, which has sworn to sacrifice its life only against a foreign enemy that would oppose the enjoyment of its rights.