Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

It has been written that in 1820 the confusion and discord in the Argentine were so intense that the effort of the revolutionaries of May appeared to have spent itself. In Buenos-Ayres there was a divorce between the factions, and a struggle between Unitarian and federal caudillos: Alvear, Sarratea, Dorrego and Soler; between the municipalities and the rebellious troops; in the country as a whole it was the struggle of the provincial leaders against Buenos-Ayres and the Directory.

In the midst of this period of disturbance the federal democracy was born; the provinces concluded treaties, the capital compromised with the caciques, the governors of the provinces; the cabildo retained its representative character, the military and civil elements entered upon a mutual conflict.

Finally, in 1821, the Directorial party, aristocratic and Unitarian, was victorious. Bernardino Rivadavia was the representative figure of the period. Secretary in the government of Rodriguez from 1821 to 1824, President from 1826 to 1827, a civil dictator like Portales in Chili, a remarkable statesman, a reformer like Moreno and Belgrano, he presided over a premature realisation of the democratic ideal, and symbolised the Unitarian principles in all their force: the supremacy of Buenos-Ayres, constitutionalism, European civilisation, and the ideal Republic. He was the pupil of Lamartine and Benjamin Constant in a barbarous democracy. He had every gift—physical arrogance, oratorical power, honesty, enthusiasm, patriotism. He divined the elements of Argentine greatness: immigration, the navigability of the rivers, the stability of the banks, and external trade. But Buenos-Ayres was then a plebiscitary republic, in which the cabildo and the people resolved all problems of politics, and Rivadavia suffered ostracism, as he had enjoyed the unstable popularity with which democracies endow their leaders.

He was, according to the expression of M. Groussac, a vigorous forger of Utopias. He granted all political rights; he wished to see a republic with a free suffrage; he 'doubled the number of the representatives of the people, and suppressed the municipalities which had prepared the way for the revolution. The executive power renounced its extraordinary attributes and submitted to the legislative power. Was this wise, in a revolutionary country, face to face with the disunited provinces? Rivadavia organised the judiciary as a supreme and autonomous entity. He declared, in messages dealing with the doctrine of high politics, that property and the person were inviolable; he proclaimed the liberty of the press, and recognised the liberty of the conscience.

He commenced the campaign against the Church, suppressing convents, seizing their possessions by mortmain, ignoring the ecclesiastic charter, and secularising the cemeteries. He aspired, like Guzman-Blanco, to found a national and democratic religion upon the traditional elements. A great educator, he had faith in the benefits of popular instruction, erected buildings for the use of schools and colleges, attracted foreign teachers, and promulgated a plan of study in which the physical sciences and mathematics, forgotten under the old system, occupied the first rank. He founded numerous pedagogic institutions: the Faculty of Medicine, the Museum, the Library, special technical and agricultural schools, and colleges for young girls.

He did not overlook material progress. His financial reforms were radical; the national budget was instituted; a tax upon rent was imposed, and the customs duties were regularised. The minister Garcia contributed to this financial reformation. Rivadavia understood that the whole future of Buenos-Ayres depended upon that great civiliser, the ocean, and he ordered the construction of four harbours on the coast. He favoured immigration, protected agriculture, improved the ways and means of transport, reformed the police, and contracted the first loan.

It was under the government of Rivadavia that the Constitution of 1826 was promulgated. This was inspired by the doctrines of J. J. Rousseau, and his Contrat social; but it aimed energetically at centralisation and authority. Senators were to exercise their functions for twelve years; they were the conservative power. The mandate of the deputies and the Director was to last only four years. It was a Unitarian constitution which made Buenos-Ayres, in spite of the protest of the federals, the capital of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, the centre which "rules all the peoples, and upon which all depend."

Rivadavia imposed unity, propagated his ideas, multiplied reforms, and checkmated the Church; he was the civiliser par excellence. He wished to transform a Spanish province into a European nation, a barbarous people into a democracy, a sluggish and fanatical society into a liberal republic. He governed in the interests of Buenos-Ayres and the seaboard, for the future Latin democracy, and neglected the desert, the anarchy of the provinces, the indomitable sierra, the caciques, and the Indian tribes. He was vanquished by feudal barbarism, by a confused democracy, hostile to organisation and unity; but his work remains, in the shape of a constitutional programme. Alberdi writes that he gave America the plan of his progressive improvements and innovations: it is an immense political structure, a gospel of democracy. Were popular myths to rise in spontaneous birth in Buenos-Ayres, before the evocative ocean, as in the Greek cities lovingly bathed by the Mediterranean, then Rivadavia would be the genius of Argentine culture, the patron of the city, the creator of its arts and its laws.

While the magistral President was showering down reforms, the demagogues triumphed over his efforts toward unity. His constitutional labours miscarried in the provinces; the governors would not submit to the haughty supremacy of Buenos-Ayres. They fought for power in rude civil wars, in the North and on the seaboard. Some provincial congresses were precariously installed, and Montevideo renounced its union with the Argentine. A caudillo, who at times rose to the moral greatness of the Liberators, Artigas, longed to see Uruguay, his country, independent. The Empire of Brazil and the Argentine democracy were wrangling for its possession. Rivadavia stoically resigned the Presidency in 1827, having shown himself a prodigal and sumptuous creator and an eminent prophet; he left the country, having wearied the populace with his inventive genius.[[1]] In his place General Dorrego was elected Governor of Buenos-Ayres, the federal chief of the city, as Rosas was of the country. The war with Brazil continued; but in 1828 a treaty was signed which recognised the autonomy of Uruguay.