Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de La Plata / Their Present State, Trade, and Debt

by Sir Woodbine Parish

The Littorine Provinces are, Buenos Ayres, and Santa Fé, to the west, and Entre Rios and Corrientes to the east of the River Paranã. Those in the Central section, on the high road to Peru, are Cordova, Santiago del Estero, Tucuman, and Salta; to which may be added, Catamarca, and La Rioja. Those lying west of Buenos Ayres, and which formerly constituted the Intendency of Cuyo, are San Luis, Mendoza, and San Juan.

All these together now form the confederation of the United Provinces of La Plata.

Under the Spanish rule, the Viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres comprehended further, the provinces of Upper Peru, now called Bolivia; as well as Paraguay, and the Banda Oriental: and immense as this jurisdiction appears for one government, it was but a portion separated from that of the old viceroys of Peru, whose nominal authority at one time extended from Guayaquil to Cape Horn, over 55 degrees of latitude, comprising almost every habitable climate under the sun; innumerable nations, speaking various languages, and every production which can minister to the wants of man.

To Spain, it was a convenience and saving of expense to divide her American possessions into as few governments as possible; and under her colonial system, without a hope of improving their social condition, their native industry discouraged, and the very fruits of the soil forbidden them, in order to ensure a sale for those of the mother country, it was of little consequence to the generality of the people by what viceroy they were ruled, or at what distance from them he resided.

It became, however, a very different matter when that colonial system was overthrown, and succeeded by native governments of their own election. Then, all the many and various distinctions of climate, of language, of habits, and productions, burst into notice; and as they separately put forward their claims to consideration, the difficulty, if not impossibility, became manifest, of adequately providing for them by the newly-constituted authorities, which, although succeeding to all the jurisdiction of the viceroys, repudiated in limine the principles of the system under which such discordant interests had hitherto been controlled and held together.

The consequence has been, that most of the new states in their very infancy have been subjected to the embarrassing necessity of re-casting their governments, and dividing and subdividing their extensive territories, as the varying and distinct interests of their several component parts have shown to be requisite for their due protection and development. Nothing has tended more to retard the organization and improvement of their political institutions than this necessity; and nowhere has it been more strikingly exemplified than in the widely-spread provinces of La Plata. In the first years of the struggle with the mother country, one common object, paramount to all other considerations, the complete establishment of their political independence, bound them together—perhaps I should more correctly say, prevented their separation;—but the very circumstances of that struggle, and the vicissitudes of the war, which often for long periods together cut off their communications with the capital, and with each other; obliging them to provide separately for their own temporary government and security, gave rise in many of them, especially those at a distance, to habits of more or less independence, which, as they imperceptibly acquired strength, produced in some, as in Paraguay and Upper Peru, an entire separation from Buenos Ayres; and in others such an assumption of the management of their own provincial affairs, as ere long reduced the metropolitan government to a nullity.

It is true that, up to 1820, the semblance of a Central Government was maintained at Buenos Ayres, but in that year the unpopularity of the measures of the Directory and of the National Congress led to its final dissolution, under circumstances which precluded all hope of its re-establishment, and terminated in the system of federalism, which has ever since de facto subsisted.

Experience has taught Buenos Ayres the inefficacy of forcible measures to bring back the provinces under her more immediate control; and though congresses have been more than once convoked for the purpose of establishing something more definite as to the form, at least, of their national government, whether central or federal, individual and local interests have always prevailed in thwarting such an arrangement; and the probability now is, that for a long time to come the national organization of this State will be limited to the slender bonds of voluntary confederation, which at present constitute the soi-disant union of the provinces, not only with each other, but with their old metropolis, Buenos Ayres.

It is not my purpose here to enter into the history of the domestic troubles and civil dissensions which brought about this state of things in the new republic: it is an unsatisfactory, and to most of my readers would be a very unintelligible, narrative. Suffice it to say, that whilst the political importance of Buenos Ayres has been apparently not a little diminished; on the other hand, it may be questioned if the provinces have reaped any substantial advantage by shaking off their immediate dependence upon the metropolis. Most of them have suffered all the calamitous consequences of party struggles for power, and have fallen under the arbitrary rule of the military chiefs, who, in turn, have either by fair means or foul obtained the ascendency; and if in some of them the semblance of a representative junta has been set up in imitation of that of Buenos Ayres, it will be found, I believe, that such assemblies have, in most instances, proved little more than an occasional convocation of the partisans of the governor for the time being, much more likely to confirm than to control his despotic sway.

The present political state of the provinces of La Plata is certainly very different from what was expected by the generality of those who originally took an interest in the fate of these new countries. It is, however, a state of things not confined to this republic; we shall find, more or less, the same scenes; the same violent party struggles, the same continual changes of government; the same apparent incapacity for arriving at anything like a settled political organization in almost every one of the several independent states into which the old possessions of Spain on the New Continent have resolved themselves; and this under circumstances, to all appearance, the most dissimilar with regard to the locality, climate, soil, language, wants, and physical condition of the inhabitants; with no one common element, in fact, in their composition, save their having all been brought up in, and habituated to, the same colonial system of the mother country. What, then, is the conclusion we must draw from this fact? Is it not evident that it was that colonial system which, wherever applied, unfitted the people for a state of independence, and left them worse than helpless when thrown upon their own resources?